2004-06 gave rise to some of my favorite games to this day.
2005, in particular, my jams were Resident Evil 4 and Dragon Quest VIII. Dragon Quest VIII was such an awesome game. It was what I hoped PS2 RPGs would be.
Hey, Larry. Good to see you. Sounds like you've been busy. I've been getting into real estate investing myself.
On the subject of anime, the Dragon Warrior anime aired for a time in my area, but it was at 6 AM on Sunday. I got up to watch it because I loved the games on NES.
I always thought it was funny that people started who started playing Dragon Quest after Dragon Ball Z came out would ask why Dragon Quest looked like Dragon Ball. When I first saw Dragon Ball, I was surprised by how much it looked like Dragon Quest.
My favorite Saturday morning cartoons were Garfield and TMNT. That was also the time that they started phasing them out. NBC stopped doing cartoons altogether in favor of Saved By the Bell and golf. I also liked The Smurfs, The Littles, and Alvin and the Chipmunks. "Dave Seville" was actually Ross Bagdasarian Sr. His son Ross Jr. and Ross Jr's wife Janice still own the franchise, and they did the speaking voices. In one of my mom's high school yearbooks, she and a couple of her friends are dressed as the Chipmunks (that was the year that "Witch Doctor" was a huge hit). I had one of the first albums Ross Jr. released after he brought the Chipmunks back, Urban Chipmunk.
I also liked Saturday Supercade and Captain N, just because video game stuff was hard to come by.
Tales of Symphonia is actually pretty reasonable priced on Gamecube. It's also available on every modern ecosystem. The Switch version was kind of rough at first but they've patched it up nicely.
The only thing is, the Gamecube version runs at 60 FPS where the modern versions run at 30 FPS. PC modders have tried for years to get it to run at 60 FPS but it doesn't work right.
Tamson is loving it as well. I'm enjoying it myself.
I just wish someone could wrestle Ultima out of EA's grip and give it the same treatment. I'd be so down for that. I'd even settle for re-releases of the Ultima games on NSO.
I actually picked up the Paper Mario: TTYD remake. It's a lot of fun. It was a game that i missed in 2004 for... reasons, plus, I was really into Harvest Moon and Tales of Symphonia at the time.
My early 2000s shortlist:
Zelda: Wind Waker
Metroid Prime
RE4
Final Fantasy X
GTA Vice City
Virtua Fighter 4
Tales of Symphonia
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (this game is super-rare)
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
Soul Calibur 2 (Gamecube version)
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King
My shortlist of 95-99 greats
Chrono Trigger
Super Mario RPG
Super Mario 64
Star Fox 64
Mario Kart 64
Goldeneye
Final Fantasy VII
Resident Evil 2
Shining Force III
Panzer Dragon Saga
Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon
SaGa Frontier
Parasite Eve
Xenogears
Ocarina of Time
Pokemon Red/Blue
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
Final Fantasy VIII
Star Ocean: The Second Story
SoulCalibur
Square and Enix were rivals back when FFI was first released. When FFI was released on PS1, Square was in the midst of being bought by Enix and wasn't on great terms with Nintendo.
The NES version of Ultima III also mentions Link.
