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!"
Wendy's was my first job. I got a 50% employee discount at lunch and when going home, so I ate a lot of Triple Cheeseburgers and Big Bacon Classics. Surprisingly I wasn't overweight during the entire 2 1/2 years I worked there. I miss the old kaiser buns they used to have for the Big Bacon Classic.
One time, the shift manager, who is still a friend today, made me a burger with six patties and six pieces of cheese for lunch. And I ate it. He did pay for it since he came up with it.
The first thing I bought with my first Wendy's paycheck was a PS1 to play Final Fantasy VII on.
It turns out that there are a couple of Portillo's here in Phoenix.
Guess I shouldn't be surprised. A lot of people living here nowadays are Chicago and Detroit transplants. People get all surprised when they hear my family has been in Arizona for almost 100 years.
I remember playing a platformer called Alisia Dragoon at a Genesis kiosk at Walmart when I was a kid. It never made any Genesis collection, but I believe Sega did put it on the mini-Genesis.
We have Culver's all over Phoenix. I have never tried Culver's.
They do have small grocery areas in most stores I've been in, at least since the 90s, mostly selling beef and dairy products. Braum's won't open any stores that are more than a day's drive from their farms in Tuttle OK and Byars OK, I guess so they can claim their product is fresh. I've actually seen their farms. They actually drove Dairy Queen out of business in Oklahoma for ten years, that's how popular they are there.
