PixlBit

Two of the biggest arcade games of the Golden Age of Arcade Games were Scramble and Super Cobra. These side-scrolling tunnel shooters were produced by Konami, and were both released in the same year, with Scramble being released early in 1981 and Super Cobra being released later the same year. Both were notable for being among the earliest forced-scrolling games and for having distinct stages that flowed into one another. Konami considered Scramble and Super Cobra to be precursors to its popular Gradius games, and in some cases even listed Scramble as the first Gradius game.

One of my first RPGs was Ultima III: Exodus on NES and PC. Ultima, along with Wizardry, was considered to be one of the two ancestors of the video RPG genre. Eventually I was able to get a hold of the other games in the series. The entire series is on GOG, including the spinoffs like Worlds of Adventure and Underworld. 

Even in the early 80s I was a video game fan, and I consumed the very limited media at the time for video games where I could. Other than the Pac-Man cartoon, one of the earliest cartoon shows related to video games that I remembered was Saturday Supercade, which aired on CBS from 1983-1984.

One of the releases today on the eShop and the PS Store was the Arcade Archives version of Kangaroo, made by Sunsoft. Kangaroo was originally published in the US by Atari, which had begun supplementing it's own output with licensed games from Japan after the success of Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

What's Konami's single most successful game? Metal Gear Solid 2? Nope. It's Frogger.

The arcades were my first gaming experiences, and I've alwasy had a soft spot for the arcade classics. Thanks to Atari, Namco, and the Arcade Archives series, my Nintendo Switch looks like the arcade of my fever dreams. But I've always enjoyed the look and feel of arcade cabinets. When I was a kid in Arizona, the local Ak-Chin commissary always had arcade cabinets like Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Ms. Pac-Man, plus arcades were at grocery stores, movie theaters, travel plazas, and of course, shopping malls. 

As of January 1, 2020, we're entering a new decade in gaming (let's not go into pedantic debates about the.year zero here). It's hard to believe, it just seems like 2010, a time of Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, and Kinect, was just yesterday, and the world of the 2000s was still fresh in my mind.

Since 2019 is, for all intents and purposes, over, I am posting my top 10 games of the year for 2019. 

Back at the beginning of 5th gen, I got a N64, and was looking forward to games like Zelda 64 (Ocarina of Time) and Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon. I remember being impressed by screenshots from the N64 prototype of Mother 3, which Nintendo Power called Earthbound 64. The realization that it was going to be vaporware and games like Quest 64 were going to be representative of what the N64 would get for RPGS eventually drove me to get a PS1 and Final Fantasy VII. Mother 3 ended up being a Game Boy Advance game, and of course Nintendo still shows no signs of localizing it. 

Right now, I'm playing Dragon Quest XI S on Switch, along with Astral Chain and Ni no Kuni. It is an amazing game and is currently battling it out with Fire Emblem for my GOTY, so if you haven't played it yet, I strongly recommend it.