PixlBit

When I was a kid, I was really fascinated by Xevious for some reason.  It was HUGE in Japan, and one of the first games to use pre-rendered graphics on the sprites.  I was always intrigued by the land you fly over.  It looks like a golf course to me.  When I was a kid, I got a sheet of my dad's dot matrix printer paper, spread it out, and drew a Xevious map on one side and a Zaxxon map on the other and used my toy spaceships to play pretend Xevious and Zaxxon on them.  I got in a little bit of trouble for using up so much paper, though. :)

Gyruss and Time Pilot are awesome.  Two of my favorite early Konami games.  Gyruss was like a cross between Galaga and Tempest, and the creator of that game would go on to Capcom and make a game you might've heard of called Street Fighter 2.

Gain Ground is surprisingly good.  It's like they took Ikari Warriors and made it a puzzle action single screen Bubble Bobble game.

It's funny that you posted this because I'm actually playing Crusader of Centy right now!  I'm playing it for a blog project I'm working on that'll post later this summer.  Yeah it's definitely a Zelda clone.  The graphics are so similar that I wonder why Nintendo didn't sue!  Definitely the type of game I enjoy, though.  Aside from Nintendo's online service, there is another way you can play it.  It's on the SEGA Genesis Mini 2.

In Japan they did a remake of Star Blazers a few years ago.  I watched the first season of it on one of them new fangled anime streaming services called Crusty Roll or something like that.  It was pretty good, but not good enough for me to watch past the first season.

There's also a remake of She-Ra on Netflix, and it's decent, but defintely targeted toward a younger crowd.

I don't mind if other characters use the He-Man sword.  But then, I'm not a big fan of He-Man so I don't really care.  If I ever got the He-Man sword, I'd just shoot YOU with it and power you up!  So there!  

This stage select topic reminds me of the Nintendo Direct we had in June.  It had a lot of exciting things in it, and people even make videos of themselves watching it and getting all excited.  But it also makes me miss the days when I could go to E3 and PAX and play these games myself, and read other press people's experience with those games.  The press, myself included, would be able to talk about what they liked and didn't like about whatever we played.  A lot of people say E3 and PAX are dead since we can all watch videos of them now, and they're probably right.  But I don't like that because with videos, the companies have control over what you see and hear, and they make it all sound good.  So when you watch these videos, make sure to have a critical eye about them, too.

OK so you probably want a more specific example so here's one.  And I am wearing my cynical hat, so watch out.  I'm really excited for the Super Mario RPG remake, as I have a lot of special memories with the original.  But if they add Mario's voice, that'll ruin it!  I loved how Mario DIDN'T talk in that game.  I have a lot of respect for Charles Martinet voicing Mario and other characters as long as he has (I even met him once), but I really don't like his Mario voice.  Sound like someone kicked Mario where the sun don't shine.  So keep Mario quiet!

It's going to be really hard for Tears of the Kingdom to win the GOTY award at the end of the year for me, especially after that June Nintendo Direct.  Games like Detecive Pikachu Returns, WarioWare: Move It, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and especially the Super Mario RPG remake are so enticing.  And Tears of the Kingdom frustrates me so much sometimes, and if any of those games don't have that, they'll be likely to win!

Yeah Trinity Trigger definitely feels like something that would've come out during the GameCube days.  And I like that it plays like Secret of Mana.  I have a feeling that Super Mario RPG is going to beat it by the end of the year, though.  But that's why I have this blog now!

Is the arcade Round 1?  Because I'd try to play it soon if I were you.  I think the Round 1 near me got rid of it recently.  

I swear that game just confuses me sometimes.  It makes me feel like an idiot, but I think ti's the game's fault for not explaining things very well.

I remember watching three of the four robot cartoons you listed.  Voltron was one of my first introductions to anime, alongside Star Blazers.  Of course I was a big Transformers fan, and the Go-Bots cartoon felt like a budget Transformers so I mostly avoided that one.  But I had never remembered watching The Mighty Orbots.  I didn't even know about it until many years later, when I watched it with some friends I made after college.  Seemed pretty cool.

Man I loved watching Starcade when I was a kid.  I always wanted to be in that arcade they started out in.  I learned about a lot of arcade games from watching that show.

Wait did I read that right that you said the animation in He-Man "isn't that bad?"  I have to disagree on that one!  That's the poster child for bad animation in 80s cartoons.  I never got into He-Man toys, but I had to watch the cartoon because my mom watched a lot of the neighborhood kids and they all wanted to watch it.  

You know about the female version of He-Man, right?  She-Ra?  Well when I was a kid, I was playing outside with a neighbor kid and he asked, "What's your mom's name?" And I said, "Sheilah."  And his eyes got real big and he said, "Whoa, your mom is She-Ra?"  My mom heard that and loved it, so from then on we had to watch that cartoon, too.  To this day, my mom names her characters in video games "She-Ra."

There's a new He-Man cartoon on Netflix and most everyone hates it, and I can't blame them.  But I watched it all anyway because they take some crazy liberties with the plot, and it's almost the same plot as Final Fantasy 6's, so that got me intrigued.  Plus other characters besides He-Man use the sword to power-up, so that got my attention.

Yeah I didn't get far in Fantasy either.  There's a part where you're supposed to land a balloon on a pirate ship and avoid the cannon fire, and I couldn't do it.