After Skylanders and Disney Infinity went under, I thought Amiibos would follow suit, since Nintendo didn't seem to be releasing any new ones for a few years. But they've gone all in on them again with Switch 2.
I bought it myself. Like I said, the games are great, but the behind-the-scenes stuff with Nintendo and Wayforward messed things up. Nintendo backed out of releasing it earlier because its release date coincided with Russia's invasion of Ukraine (the first Advance Wars released the day after 9/11, incidentally).
I'd love for an Advance Wars DS collection to come to Switch/2. Sadly, the first collection was a huge mess that didn't sell well (the games were good, but the marketing around it was a disaster), so I doubt that's ever happening unless Nintendo decides to fill a hole in its release schedule.
I did mention Ladybug in the Preppie! II video. The first Preppie game actually was a Frogger-style game where the main character was tasked with fetching golf balls while dodging the lawnmowers and golf carts that appeared in this game.
They still do have alligator shirts. They are (and always have been) a trademark of Lacoste, a French company. IZOD was their U.S. licensee in the 1980s, when they were popular here, but Lacoste does continue to sell clothing with the iconic alligator.
I looked up the Kirby cafe. You cannot just walk in. They require a reservation, often made months in advance. On our way to Mount Fuji, we did stop at the world's largest Starbucks, which is in Tokyo. They have huge coffee-bean grinding machines and all kinds of coffees and other foodstuffs that my humble Starbucks outlets in Phoenix simply don't have. All in all, it was a wonderful trip, and my friend really went out of her way to make it special.
I feel this. I have a lot of long games, but it's hard to sink a lot of time into them. I'll find one game I like and focus on that. At some point I'll hopefully finish the Trails saga.
I have dabbled in emulation of systems I didn't have, though I am doing this on a Steam Deck. On the TG-16, the games I wanted to try the most were Dragon Slayer VI: The Legend of Heroes (the precursor to the Trails series) and Tengai Makyo (Far East of Eden.) Far East of Eden has an interesting concept and a lot of nice art, but it's still not quite on the level of the great SNES or Genesis/SCD RPGs. On the other hand, I've gotten to play quite a few Saturn classics, like the Sakura Wars games, Albert Odyssey, Magic Knight Rayearth, and the second and third chapters of Shining Force III that were never officially localized. I've also gotten emulation for the Bally Astrocade, a 1970s-1980s-era console that was a technological marvel in its time, running on Steam Deck.
Xbox was the only 6th gen console I skipped. Other than Ninja Gaiden, nothing there really appealed to me compared to PS2 and Gamecube. Only Xbox I ever owned was the 360.
My game of the 2010s was easily Breath of the Wild. I poured so much time into that game. The return of huge overworlds instead of the skimpy overworlds that plagued the series since Ocarina of Time (Twilight Princess had a decent enough overworld, though it still suffered the same issues of being linear and a bit empty as the othe rgames), a complete 180 from Skyward Sword.
Other games I especially enjoyed from the decade: Ni no Kuni, Dragon Quest XI S, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fallout: New Vegas (I enjoyed 4, but New Vegas was basically like the CRPG Fallouts in then-modern form), Persona 5, Bayonetta 1 and 2, the Trails of Cold Steel series, the Xenoblade games, and the Tales and Yakuza games. Ni no Kuni actually rekindled my interest in gaming. By the time the 7th generation came to a close, I was pretty burned out.
There are a lot of games that I thought were made by Atari that were in fact Japanese imports, thanks to Atari's licensing. I thought Pac-Man was an Atari franchise thanks to the 2600 and 8-bit games. The arcade version of Dig-Dug is actually a part of this DLC, with Atari's logo appearing in place of Namco's logo on the title animation. Other games I thought were Atari franchises but aren't included Kangaroo (which was Sunsoft) and Vanguard (which was SNK). Atari had a habit of putting its name on the games it licensed from other companies but not actually mentioning the original owners in the game. The labels Pac-Man cartridges for the 2600 and 8-bit, for instance, had an asterisk notation noting that the games were licensed from Namco-America. Atari also got the rights to some of Nintendo's IP on the 5200 and 8-bit systems, but Nintendo didn't let Atari get away with taking credit for the IP, as all Atari-published versions clearly state "By Nintendo" in the games themselves and on the packaging.
Namco actually got its start in video games after Nolan Bushnell realized that Atari Japan was not a legal business. He had started it unawarae of Japanese business regulations and was eventually forced to sell the company, and since Namco was already helping distribute his games, that was the natural buyer.
Tales of Symphonia is my favorite Gamecube RPG. It was really the herald of proper RPGs returning to Nintendo systems. The Gamecube version also runs at 60FPS, which no other version does. All subsequent versions of the game were based off of the inferior PS2 version and can only do 30FPS. Even modders haven't been able to get the modern versions to run in 60 FPS.
I just saw a an ad for the American Red Cross featuring Pac-Man, offering a free pair of Pac-Man socks if you donate blood.
