PixlBit

Thanks for watching!

Since these videos were grabbed directly off of my desktop, the video quality has no excuse for being anything less than good. I knew that sound was was going to be a weak point. I don't know much about sound mixing, which would balance out the voice-over and the game when properly executed, and the software I use (OBS Studio) doesn't offer that. As to my narration, I didn't do a lot of things that the big YouTube gamers do. They have good sound editing equipment that allows them to filter out noise, they use scripts and rehearse, and it's going to take some practice before I become anything resembling a good broadcaster. Honestly, a lot of these old games have really annoying sound. That's been one of the hardest aspects of game design for developers to wrap themselves around.

Twilight Princess is far and away my favorite Zelda. In fact, on my list of all time favorite games, it ranks at number 2, behind only Final Fantasy VII.

To me, it was everything I wished Ocarina of Time could have been. A large world, lots of enemies, and TP's Epona actually seemed like an integral part of the game instead of just a novelty for being an admittedly good-for-its-time horseback-riding simulation. I had the Gamecube version rather than the Wii version and was glad that TP HD took its design cues from the Gamecube.

Your game collection is a collection after my own heart. I ought to post pics of my setup, but I'm kind of embarrassed about it. I have an unhealthy number of games, but the problem is, I don't have a lot of space where I currently live. Most of them are packed away and only my PS4, Wii U, and PSTV are connected. :(

Sounds like you had a busy year.

I played a lot, but finished little. :( My big accomplishment was getting my first even platinum trophy... in my favorite video game of all time (FFVII) no less. I'd like to repeat that feat with Valkyria Chronicles.

I played a lot of HD remasters. An awful lot of my favorites got that treatment. Twilight Princess, Valkyria Chronicles, FFVII (sort of), Odin Sphere. A

It is a beast of a game. Much more than its austere presentation on PS1 suggested. :)

See also: Final Fantasy II, Ultima II, Joust II, Donkey Kong Jr (and DK 3), Super Pac-Man. Other than FF2 these examples came from non-NES sources.

A lot of game companies just wanted to make sequels bigger, better, more convoluted, and differentiate them from their originals. That's the thought process that guided these games.

Compare that with better-received sequels like Galaga (sequel to Galaxian), Ms. Pac-Man (an unofficial sequel made in the US; Super Pac-Man was the "official" sequel made by Namco of Japan), Xanadu (Dragon Slayer II), Mega Man II, Dragon Quest II, Metroid II. Also third-generation sequels like SMB3, A Link to the Past, FFIII, and Ultima III. These games kept or returned to the basics of the original game and built on that instead, and the series generally followed that template thereafter.

Also agree that I liked what was called Super Mario Bros 2 in the US better than I did what was called SMB2 (The Lost Levels) in Japan. Considering that enemies like Birdo, Shyguy, and Sniffit made it into Mario canon, Nintendo must have liked it, too.

My dad used to be the same way. He had an IBM PC clone for work and wouldn't let me play games on it. He also said video games were a waste of time.

The funny thing is that he got into gaming when he retired and even built himself several gaming rigs. He even told me one time that he'd been wrong about video games.

I downloaded a TRS-80 emulator, managed to get it working, and found a bunch of ROMS for it. It's pretty mind-blowing playing those old games again.

I never played the game, but I think I read about that somewhere. I just looked it up, the name was a coincidence. It was written by a high school kid in California. He ended up getting sued by Atari, who held the US rights to Pac-Man, and in order to dodge legal penalties, he sold the game to Atari so they would drop the lawsuit.  Atari sued a lot of people in its time. They also sued Magnavox over K.C. Munchkin, their clone of Pac-Man for the Odyssey 2. Atari even tried to sue Nintendo a few times once the NES took off. Nintendo almost always won those lawsuits, though, since they were as mean as Atari in the courtroom and had deeper pockets. :)

I miss the days when arcade games were everywhere. The Wal-Mart in Norman (which is now a Sam's Club) used to have games like Pig Out, The Simpsons, and Mortal Kombat II. The first video game I ever played was the Donkey Kong machine the Ak-Chin commissary had (it also stood next to a Dig-Dug machine and a Ms. Pac-Man machine.)

The Hammerhead garage looked like a lot of old service stations I've seen in the Southwest over the years. The diner even looks a bit like a Whataburger restaurant (on the inside, anyway). :)

It is a great game. Merry Christmas, old friend.