One of my earliest formative games from the 70s was Bee Wary, a TRS-80 game from 1979. I've featured it in a couple of blogs.

To anybody who has seen how Microsoft has worked in the past, the collapse of the Xbox and the terrible damage done to so many studios was an entirely predictable outcome, and sadly an inevitable one.. We've seen it time and again. Microsoft is a veritable graveyard for its acquisitions. I'm honestly glad Nintendo laughed them all the way out of Japan in 2001, when they tried to buy their way into the industry by way of buying Nintendo.

Oh, and to the question "What is your favorite non-Nintendo N64 game," that's easy. It's Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, where Konami made the N64's sound hardware literally sing in a game that did 3-D Zelda before Ocarina of Time did it. Really, Konami's N64 games were all interesting. Even if they weren't entirely successful, I appreciate Castlevania 64 and Legacy of Darkness for what they did to try to advance Castlevania to the 3D era.