@Salil Panvalkar: Oh, don't I know it! My older brother and I scraped and saved and bought the deluxe system with R.O.B. and the light gun not too long after it came out. It was fantastic stuff.

Out of curiosity, I plugged in the price of the original NES into an inflation calculator:

"No 2010 Kotaku game of the year contender gave us an entirely new experience, they are all iterations on their predecessors, but Call of Duty: Black Ops at least provided a platform for lasting play."

The Thrulls always struck me as genetically modified abominations, too.

@Morgan King: Interesting stuff. I played from Revised through Ice Age, and again a bit from Onslaught through Kamigawa. I do miss it, but it can be hard getting a group of likeminded people together anymore. If I could, though, I buy a booster box and do a booster draft in a heartbeat, so much fun. You should get…

I'm in total agreement with McWhertor. I was not a fan of the cow-herding mechanics... stupid wandering cows.

@Antiterra: I will gladly take Greg Land over the job that Whilce Portacio has been doing on UXM of late. It pains my eyes to look at those awful, cross-eyed, distorted faces. (I dig the Dodson's art, though, and I would be more than pleased if they brought back Chris Bachalo as the regular artist.)

@Deuce: Wow, amen to that. I had all but put that movie out of my mind. So very forgettable.

"Endlessly flying down a tunnel in between pictures of a pretty blonde in black leather."

@Tenacious_Z: I agree, but I think game developers are getting better about ruining the endings with it. I actually like seeing it pop after the credits finish rolling. which more games are doing now.

I'm a big fan of games with high re-playability. I played through ME2 two or maybe three times and 100%ed the challenges in RDR, but I've spent at least as much time kicking ass with my Trail Blazers as I have with each of those games. I expect that in another six months, this will still be the only one of those three…

@The Black Pigeon: Haha, that would be awesome.

@Pitchswitch: With my RB2 drum kit, the yellow cymbal wouldn't register at all, but it was a problem with the kit itself. Using the new cymbals with a newer kit (from the Beatles game), they work fine.

@Neige: I think it's more a matter of, say, if "pro guitar and bass" modes are a big part of your game's evolution, it would sure be nice to be actually able to play pro guitar and bass sometime within a few months of your game's release.

@Snow leopard: I think I would have to agree.

I was just thinking the other day that this should be a preference. Then it occurred to me: if the switch behavior is just controlled by software, why not have a bunch of possible options? For example, it could be used as a dimmer switch for the screen, to turn WiFi on and off, or to kick it into airplane mode...

I think a dungeon crawler a la the PS2 Baldur's Gate or the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games would be spot on (although hopefully not as... dull as M:UA2). Who wouldn't want to play as Ram-Man or that guy with the extendable limbs?

@Stephen Totilo: I think it's a particularly valid point given that it's a new medium, you want to entice people into trying it, but your most-likely audience is the one that's liable to end up buying the same thing twice if they buy it digitally.

@pkmaster1: That's just "b a": [www.sporcle.com]

Fwoom!