While the circumstances were certainly different, I recall that one couldn’t simply walk into a store to purchase the Wii on a whim until sometime around the late summer of 2008.

I thought there was a toggle for those subway vignettes. Or am I thinking of the original?

I thought Yakuza 7 showed a lot of promise, particularly as a first effort from a studio that was retrofitting the mechanics onto a project that was already well underway as a beat ‘em up.

If I had to guess, it’s likely because Call of Duty Zombies as a whole is too hard.

Yeah, as a Mac user, emulating anything beyond the 5th gen is a nonstarter. I’ve found a passable Dreamcast emulator, but if your needs or expectations venture much beyond ‘demo purposes’ you’re gonna be left wanting.

Will double dip on the PlayStation 5 version eventually as I own multiple copies of most every other game in the series, so why stop now? And it’ll be nice to play with that next-gen spit shine if I ever decide to replay the game from scratch.

Well, a number of the references are a good deal more than Easter eggs. The early game mention of an attempt on President Shinra’s life is lifted directly from Before Crisis. Additionally, you have a short but hugely significant sequence tied to Crisis Core’s ending. And then there’s the aforementioned Deep Ground…

Hate to be the bearer of bad news (well, bad for you, because I hugely dig the compilation), but Final Fantasy VII Remake was already incorporating elements of both Before Crisis and Crisis Core in the form of both narrative references and easter eggs. And the Yuffie chapter being added this summer appears to focus…

The wait until 2022 for this is going to be agonizing. Especially since (unless I missed something) we don’t actually know when in 2022 it’ll drop. It could be practically 2023 before the game launches.

Despite the need for a little polish, Yakuza: Like A Dragon definitely proved that there’s still room to make turn-based JRPGs more dynamic. Which I honestly didn’t expect to see happen after it felt like Final Fantasy XIII pushed that type of combat as far as it could go.

The lighting’s felt rather flat in everything shown thus far. But, again, it’s early days. Quote unquote realistic medieval settings also tend to be rather drab, which likely isn’t helping.

I feel like once the seal is broken with the Analog Duo, we’re gonna start seeing an uptick in fifth and possibly sixth-gen third-party consoles. The entire aftermarket scene has been treading water in the third and fourth-gen for so long - and specifically with cartridge-based platforms - that there’s likely no…

I could honestly see Twisted Metal working as a show if those making it just go full Ash Vs. Evil Dead with the project. Goofy, violent, goofily violent, and with the edgelordy shit left in the aughts. Where it belongs.

I’d really like to get a Pocket at some point as it seems the dream of a Gameboy Classic is well and truly dead.

Yeah, I had at least a few options when it came to buying Turbografx-16 games near me, but it still reached a point where the imports were hugely outnumbering the domestic titles in terms of purchases. By the end, I think my collection was roughly fifty-fifty in terms of U.S. titles versus Japanese.

Yeah, between Mega Man 2, Bionic Commando, Blaster Master, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, Super Mario Bros. 2, and especially Double Dragon (with Ninja Gaiden following closely on their heels in early ‘89), 1988 was a very special year for the NES and for me personally as a budding layabout.

If we’re talking a single year, 2020 by a country mile. In terms of current hardware, I only own a PlayStation 4, and not only was the release list still insane, but I’ve rarely felt more catered to as an enthusiast with weirdly specific tastes.

Would love to see announcements of a Zelda Game & Watch, a localization of the Great Ace Attorney collection, a port of Pathway, and an update on Ushiro.

Tifa and Kiryu are the only guest characters I wanted to see in Tekken 7. So we got Negan. A choice which I’m sure will age super well.