PixlBit

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs started a campaign in 2018 to persuade English-speaking media to refer to the city as Kyiv, the traditional Ukrainian pronunciation, as a opposed to Kiev, as the latter was a Russian-language pronunciation held over from the USSR. The US government fully committed to using the name Kyiv in 2019.

Turkey officially changed its name in the UN to Türkiye. For the time being, they accept the spelling of Turkey from foreign media, but I foresee a time not too far in the future where Türkiye will be adopted by Western media and politicians. It's still listed under its traditional English spelling in Wikipedia.

The reason why PlayStation dropped backwards compatibility for PS4 was because they moved from the Cell architecture to a completely different architecture. The Cell is tough to emulate even to this day and would have been expensive to implement, and ultimately was found not to be worth it. The PS3 didn't exactly light the world on fire with sales records, and most of its best games are now available on PS4 and PS5, and PS5 is fully backwards compatible with PS4. Sony made a decision to get a fresh start in order to be able to price the PS4 competitively against the Xbox One. 

Likewise, the PS3 originally included PS2 compatibility, but that was dropped because it was too expensive and Sony needed to cut costs. The PS3's original models included both the PS2 Emotion Engine CPU and the Graphics Synthesizer. So it basically had a complete PS2 in the PS3 casing. I had one of the original CECHA models. That was the only way to do backwards compatibility for PS2 on PS3, because the PS3 simply didn't have the power to brute-strength PS2 emulation. In the next round of revisions, they dropped the EE but kept the GS and maintained BC through partial software emulation. After that, they dropped the GS as well, because it was still too expensive. Sony had to kill the PS2 to move forward.

In re: Nintendo, of the Wii U's best games, and a lot of the Wii's best games, are on Switch now. In addition to new architecture, Nintendo also went from optical discs to cartridges. I can see them letting you play Switch carts on Switch 2, as long as the architecture itself is compatible. They were actually pretty good about backwards compatibility for a long time, especially with their handheld lines. They actually wanted the NES library to carry over to the SNES, but the realities of the market, which dictated hardware that compared to Genesis and TG-16 while not costing Nintendo an arm and a leg to manufacture and having to make customers pay an arm and a leg to cover, made that impossible.

The decisions to drop BC thus weren't arbitrarily made. They were the only reasonable decisions those companies could make at the time. Now that Sony has settled on an architecture for PlayStation going forward, it shouldn't be an issue, and as long as Nintendo sticks with tis architecture, it will likely have BC. 

I agree on emulation. I'm not a fan of piracy, and emulation is a somewhat synthetic experience. When possible, I play games on original hardware (I own a Saturn and a Gamecube for their rare games). It simply isn't possible in all cases. I have considered building a JAMMA arcade cabinet. 

I'm thinking of dedicating one day a week to RPGs on my YouTube channel. I'm also thinking of doing a SRPG Saturday/Sunday on my channel where I play one of those. My debut for that may well be Shining Force III.

I played Zelda when it came out in the US in 1987. It was the most amazing game I'd ever played up until that point. I have a tattoo of the Triforce on my left leg.

Most of this stuff is on Sega Genesis Classics and NSO Sega Genesis. I'd always hoped that the Data East titles, Chelnov: Atomic Runner and Midnight Resistance, would see releases as Arcade Archives titles, but right now that company seems to be laser-focused on Taito and Namco. 

Shining Force II was one of the best Genesis/SCD RPGs, along with Lunar 1 and 2 and Phantasy Star IV. I'd have definitely bought this mini-console if they'd included Lunar on it, but licensing on it is a bit of a mess, from what I understand. I'm trying to get myself psyched up to do a longplay of Shining Force III (Saturn) on my Youtube channel.

Sky Kid has catchy music. There's a game on the Switch called Sky Skipper, which is sort of like Sky Kid, except that instead of being an automatically scrolling game you fly in all directions through a closed area. It was one of Nintendo's first arcade games.

Being able to play Spy Hunter on Switch would be nice, but WB Discovery doesn't care about Midway's old library. I'm stuck playing the Midway Arcade Treasures collections on GameCube. 

Nintendo ramping up that marketing machine. 

My buddy at the time had a 2600 Jr, and we played late 2600 games like Vanguard, Kangaroo, Mario Bros, and Solaris. Vanguard actually wasn't too bad on 2600, but I did end up getting the Atari 8-bit version, which was great. 

Rampage is a classic, of course. WB actually made a successful movie out of it. It would be nice if they'd make a home video game, but they don't seem to care about anything that isn't Mortal Kombat or Wizarding World.

I didn't play Dragon Warrior until my friend got it. I have always felt that Dragon Quest on NES was better than Final Fantasy on NES. 

My favorite game of 1986 is Starflight, a PC space sim from EA and Binary Systems. It nailed the Star Trek experience better than any licensed Star Trek game ever did. Its modern spiritual successor is No Man's Sky.

Stage Select:

1. Super Mario RPG. Looks like an already awesome game is going to get even better. This shot up to the top of my list the second it was announced.

2. Mortal Kombat 1. Looks amazing, with all my favorite fighters, and a Jean-Claude Van Damme skin for Johnny Cage.

3. Super Mario Wonder. This game reignited my excitement for 2-D Mario in a way that I haven't seen in a long time. 

I actually have quite a few anticipated games coming up, like Star Ocean: The Second Story Remake, Metroid Prime 4, and the next Zelda. Also strongly considering Baldur's Gate 3.

Cage Match:

Speaking of Star Ocean 2....

Tough call. Grandia is a successor to the Lunar series, which is near and dear to my heart, and also held cult status as the Saturn's queen-bee RPG (at least other than Panzer Dragoon Saga). Honestly, though, given that both games were trying to accomplish similar things with their battle systems, I have to give the edge to Star Ocean: TSS, which has a much smoother battle system reminiscent of Tales (no surprise since the Star Ocean series was made by many of the same people.) Motoi Sakuraba's banging soundtrack only sweetens the deal.

My antipathy towards Microsoft goes back to over half a decade prior to the launch of the original Xbox. I always viewed them as an out-of-control, rapacious company that ruined whatever it touched. It's colored my perception of both the Xbox line and PC gaming. 

I actually owned a 360 in its early years, when Microsoft was paying Japanese developers to make games exclusive to 360. Almost all of the companies who took them up on it, ended up regretting it. It's why you saw enhanced versions of games like Eternal Sonata and Tales of Vesperia on PS3, because the companies were trying to make their money back. That plus the E74 error that fried my Xbox (that MS was still trying to deny at the time and wanted to charge me $150 to remediate) soured me on Xbox for good.

And if that weren't enough, Microsoft locked my Microsoft account, which had Xbox 360 content tied to it. They won't release my account until I can remember the number of the credit card I used to buy this content, 15 years ago. I pretty much stopped using my Microsoft account after my email became a spam-ridden hellscape. I've been having to switch a lot of stuff that was tied to my Microsoft email to iCloud while my passwords still work because it's clear that nothing I do will satisfy them, even though their shoddy security is why I stopped using Microsoft email.

So yeah, I'm done with Microsoft.

And even in everyday computing, my last Windows computer was bought in 2011. I switched to Mac and have no interest in going back.

Rant over.