PixlBit

One thing I recently discovered, germane to the discussion of customized characters, is that there is a costume pack for the Mii Swordfighter in Smash Ultimate to dress him up as Goemon. I downloaded that. It's cool that Konami and Nintendo are recognizing Goemon, even in the form of DLC that costs less than a dollar.

Stage Select:

1. Final Fantasy II. Yes, it was something of a broken mess with great ideas that didn't quite pan out in execution, such as improving your stats through using them. But it had the best story of the 8-bit FF games (which I'll admit isn't saying much) and the best music. It's the only 8-bit Final Fantasy I've managed to finish to date.

2. On a related note, SaGa Frontier for PS1. The SaGa series was created by FF2's director, Akitoshi Kawazu, who refined the game mechanics he introduced in FF2 in the SaGa series (known in the US as the FF Legend games on Game Boy). SaGa Frontier didn't get much respect back in the day, but I was in love with the neon dystopian neo-Tokyo aesthetic of FFVII and SaGa Frontier gave me more of that aesthetic, especially in its core city. It also had one of the most amazing soundtracks of its generation. Even the characters were generally likeable.

3. The Kid Icarus series. When I was a kid I loved the original in spite of all the cheap deaths, in part due to my fascination with Greek mythology. Kid Icarus, of course, played fast and loose with Greek mythology, but it actually inspired me to read the real thing.  The sequel was one of the Game Boy's unsung gems, notable for being a huge improvement on the original in pretty much every way at a time when Game Boy games in general were either "lite" versions of NES and SNES games, or were just cheap cash-ins on movie licenses. I was always disappointed that it didn't get the same 16-bit treatment that its sister series, Metroid, did. 

4. The N64 Castlevania games. Konami was generally the only Japanese third party company making any kind of effort on the N64. Everybody fawns over Symphony of the Night, while these games are pretty much forgotten. But they were good games, though certainly not on the level of Mario 64 or the Zeldas. Legacy of Darkness especially so, since it came a lot closer to what Konami wanted to do with the games to begin with.  really, they were a good first effort at 3-D Castlevania.

Cage Match:

Going with Silent Hill 3 on this one. Konami nailed down the formula pretty good for the series' freshman PS2 entry, and Heather is a likeable protagonist.

This looks cool enough, but I could just get most of these games on the Switch, and this is missing a few games like Shining Force II that the console collections do have. My two favorite Genesis games were Sega CD games - Lunar: The Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue. Those two games were as good as the best SNES RPGs and I still have the PS1 versions of both games complete with all the feelies. If this thing had those it'd be a must-buy for me.

The Genesis Mini does have one game I've never seen on any other collection - Alisia Dragoon, a cute platformer game I played at a kiosk years ago. It was actually made by some of the same people who made Lunar.

I remember wanting the Xbox 360 version of Deathsmiles that came in the collectors' edition. I don't know why I never pulled the trigger on it. I guess I was afraid my wife would roll her eyes so hard at the moe waifubait that they would fall out.

Looking at your avatar, one of my recent purchases was the Switch version of Ni no Kuni.

I think that may have only been for the Japanese market. The US Atari version had Tang billboards as well.

That's actually antithetical with Miyamoto's depiction of Mario. He never intended for Mario to become anything more than a plug-in character for whatever scenario he wanted to create. Even his name came from Minoru Arakawa after Mario Segale's infamous barging in on a NoA board meeting asking "Where's my money? You gonna give me my money? Where's my money man?!" Miyamoto just called him "Mr. Video."

I mostly remember Pole Position II because the arcade version was the first game I recall that had in-game advertising. The billboards alongside the tracks advertised such products as Dentyne gum, Marlboro cigarettes, Champion spark plugs, Pepsi, and 7-Eleven stores. In the US, they also advertised Atari's games, since Atari was PP's US publisher.

It was probably one of the most state of the art video games in its day, yet it paradoxically aged among the worst of Namco's old arcade games.

It's too bad the Alien series hasn't really translated well to video gaming. It's perfect for it. As it is, if you want a good Alien game, you play Super Metroid, Zero Mission, or Metroid Prime. My favorite actual Alien game has been Konami's run-and-gun 1990 arcade game that was built off of the TMNT engine. I hear Isolation is pretty good though.

The idea for Luigi being more timid and cowardly than Mario seems to have originated, of all places, with an American commercial for the Atari versions of Mario Bros. I tried to post it but I don't seem to be able to link YouTube videos.

Stage select:

I actually created a pretty good Terra Branford in SoulCalibur IV for Xbox 360. Namco seems to have a knack for skirting copyright laws in its character creators for Soulcalibur. She honestly looked about the way she does in Dissidia.

Cage match:

Gonna go with the RE2make. The original was the best game on PS1 that wasn't made by Squaresoft, but there have been an awful lot of QOL improvements to the series from the Gamecube onward.

Funny thing: Most people see a Dragon Quest game for the first time and ask why it looks so much like Dragon Ball Z. I was the opposite. Since I played the games and watched the anime years before DBZ started being localized, I thought, "This looks a lot like Dragon Warrior!"