Of the games I can think of, probably Super Mario Land.

They are. The IOC is just incredibly slow on the uptake, as they are with many things.

I’m pretty “basic” in my choices. Both Zelda titles, Mario 64, Mario Kart, the three Mario Parties, StarFox 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Kirby 64, Banjo-Kazooie. I just bought an N64 a few weeks ago partially because I wanted to experience the games I had growing up again and also play a bunch I missed. I tried Mischief Makers because it looked interesting and I enjoy the unique mechanics but the controls are hard to master enough to feel like I even have a basic handle on them.

I think our parents eventually made us give them back in the end, but my brother and I certainly held on to a bunch of our friend’s Game Boy games a lot longer than he originally meant to lend them to us. We fell out of contact with him after high school.

It would really depend on the individual game itself as to what I would pay, but I suppose if I had to give a hard upper price limit, I would probably say $100. Don’t care what the game is, I’m not spending triple digits on it, old or new.

2 was the best for actual fighting gameplay, 3 had the best outside content (good campaigns, extra modes, and create-a-fighter with actual unique movesets), IMO. 4 just felt underwhelming (they gutted pretty much everything but a brutally short story mode and arcade ladder and then PVP) and had the real most broken guest characters (the Star Wars characters). 5 is the “black sheep” of the franchise but I actually still enjoyed the short time I had with it, I liked the new characters that weren’t copies/descendants of the old cast. 6 felt mid to me, don’t have much to say about it since I played it even less than 5.

Or Meta Knight in Brawl or Bayonetta in Smash 4, haha.

Game Sack is a great channel. Been watching since the days when it was both Joe and Dave (hard to believe Joe’s been doing it on his own for a few years now). One of the best retro game channels on YouTube.

This game is one of the most brutally difficult games I’ve ever played if you want to get any sort of good ending. It’s quite thematic in that way: the player is trapped in the curse with the main character, forced to meet unreasonable demands, but aware of the consequences of using the most effective tool to meet them. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I could never attempt it without giving up still relatively early on. That said, I still own my copy so maybe one day I’ll try again if I feel like a true test of my patience.

Death Battle did two episodes on the matchup, with each of them winning once. Link won when he had all his items and Cloud could use materia but couldn’t use summons (they were considered outside help which was against the rules in DB at the time). They said Link’s massively varied arsenal more than made up for Cloud’s pure strength advantage. Rematch, they added Link’s abilities from BotW and gave Cloud his summons back, and Cloud won, with the pure overwhelming power of the summons, of course.

I was able to get the good ending in CD with a guide, but the fact I needed a guide is ridiculous in the first place.

You don’t get anything except a very small and effectively insignificant change to the ending if you get all the emeralds in Sonic 1 (you don’t even get 7 emeralds) so I’d say it counts. Sonic 2 and 3/Knuckles actually give a meaningful reward for getting all the emeralds so it’s worth it to go for them, even if going for them in Sonic 2 is a real pain in the butt (and the one real bad thing about Sonic 2).

Oh I’m not saying that the PS1 has the “best” library, but among the 16-32 bit console generations it likely has the most varied library of games that are generally more difficult to emulate/play properly on other things like emulators and which is likely to be in more danger of losing more of its library to the aether of lack of preservation than the Genesis, SNES or perhaps even the N64. Also, while you can find the classic PS1 games such as FF7/8/9, Twisted Metal, Castlevania SotN, Metal Gear Solid, Crash, or Spyro all over in collections or remakes like Crash N-Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited, there’s a lot of weird and fun experimental stuff on the PS1 while devs were figuring out what they could do with 3D and mastering 2D gameplay that I would absolutely love to give a try. There’s a certain aesthetic of 2D PS1 and Sega Saturn games that has always looked oddly charming to me and I enjoy.

At first I was going to say SNES, since I did not own one as a kid and I’d have the chance to play all the 16-bit games I missed, but instead I’m going to say PS1. The classic SNES games are being re-released in various services or packs including Switch Online in their original form and if push comes to shove SNES emulation has been quite good for a long time. I’ve played even less PS1 and it has a huge library full of “hidden gems” and classics in all sorts of genres, many of which may never see a re-release on retro consoles or services. Just pick a type of game you want, the PS1 probably has it, something that even the SNES may not be able to say.

I was in Japan from 2008-2012 and had both games. Frankly, while both games were good, I remember preferring Super Stars even though Ultimate Stars upped the amount of just about everything. I think the thing was that partially due to the language barrier (I learned a good amount of Japanese while there but never became fluent enough to understand manga-type writing, lol), the simpler mechanics of Super Stars were easier to manage and the ton of stuff Ultimate Stars gave you was just overwhelming.

Yes, Wario Blast! It was actually my introduction to Bomberman.

For mine, I always enjoyed the original Mario Land and Kirby’s Dreamland, and always wanted the sequel to each, but never got them.

I was just going to comment that the wheel was exactly like the Life board game, lol.

To be fair, you could bring it to play in your hotel at the end of the day just before bed and/or for the trip to and from your destination. But other than those times, yeah, leave it in the hotel room or in your luggage.

Fortunately the Genesis version doesn’t have any of those issues (aside from the first stage, ironically enough, there’s only one insta-death place in each of the other stages), though it is weird that the portable version doesn’t have a pause or save function.

If it wasn’t for the non-existent battery life the Game Gear could really have competed pretty strongly with the Game Boy, at least in the early '90s (nothing could stop the juggernaut that was Pokemon, though). The game library was decent, it had a backlight and color, and you basically had a portable Master System when it came to power. I was a Genesis kid who had a Game Boy, but still always wanted the Game Gear to play the franchises I had on the Genesis on the go.