I always liked the cabinet artwork for Pac-Man. I think I liked it better than the Japanese art, for once.
Now here's a bizarre version of Pac-Man. This is the box art for the Atari 8-bit versions. I actually had this box art.
Amistrad was the one you were thinking of there.
I had a couple of observations on this podcast. Firstly, a game where Fire Emblem characters appeared in the real world was brought up. I think that was actually addressed in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, which was basically Persona with Fire Emblem characters in modern day Japan. It was actually Nintendo Power that compared Hybrid Heaven to MGS, though that might have been due to early appearance of Johnny Slade strongly resembling Snake.
Anyway:
Stage select:
1. One of my most memorable "Oh Shit" moments was fighting the boss at the top of the Cultists' Tower in Final Fantasy VI, when, after an hour and a half, he killed my entire party with the Ultima spell right before he died. It was my first time playing the game, so I naturally came without the Life 3 spell. I had to take a day off from FFVI after that one.
2. The first time I encountered an Arch-Vile in Doom II.
3. My first time encountering a Lynel in Breath of the Wild and it noticing me. Nintendo sure figured out how to make Lynels appropriately menacing for the 21st century. Imagine if all the Lynels you saw in the original game were as strong as the ones in BotW.
Cage Match:
I didn't have a lot of experience with Power Stone until I got the PSP Power Stone collection. I probably would have gotten it if I had a Dreamcast. I may have played it at a Dreamcast kiosk here or there. But either way, the Final Fantasy VII fanboy in me gives the nod to Ehrgeiz here. Nothing in the fighting game world at the time could beat Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth. The home version included a roguelike dungeon crawler.
I would actually like Nintendo to consider doing a Smash Bros as a 3-D fighter along the lines of Power Stone and Ehrgeiz, however.
1981 was when I started playing. My first game was a Donkey Kong arcade machine at the Ak-Chin commissary in Arizona. At home my mom introduced me to a charming little game on the TRS-80 called Bee Wary.
My first encounter with Pac-Man was the weird 2600 version. My first arcade encounter with Pac-Man was Ms. Pac-Man. I enjoyed it, but my favorite game in the arcades was Donkey Kong. Even then I was a huge Nintendo nut, as I also loved Mario Bros in the arcade and played a lot of its home versions. I also played the Atari version of Berzerk.
I actually enjoyed tinkering with the Junction System. As unbalanced as it was, it was satisfying AF to be able to demolish enemies.
Looking at sales numbers for FF7, FF8, and FF10 compared to FF9 or Square's pre-PS1 games, it's easy to see why they went in that direction. FF9 deserved better, as it was both highly polished and well-balanced, but it also had the problem of releasing the same year the PS2 did.
Dragon Quest is interesting. Unlike Final Fantasy, its designers refuse to change the series other than some quality-of-life changes to take advantage of modern technology. After over 30 years, Dragon Quest still has the same three core creative designers that led development on the original NES game - Yuji Hori, Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama. And the games still sell like hotcakes, at least in Japan.
River City Girls is out now, right?
To be fair, Fighter's Destiny did look okay in the same way that San Francisco Rush looked okay compared to Ridge Racer or Daytona USA. Solid B-tier game. Certainly better than the likes of M.A.C.E. or (ugh!) War Gods.
That Mana collection is really good stuff. Glad we got an official version of Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana. That was always one of my most wanted localizations.
Love Valkyria Chronicles. So far I've played it on PS3, PC, PS4, and Switch.
