I used to sell them when they first came out, because I was broke and they used to sell for more than 5 cents a card, some games I remember getting like $1 a card. They made it so much more annoying to sell, (2FA, etc.) it kind of became no longer worth the time.

The one that pops out at me, at least as far as something I played recently. Atlantis no Nazo, which I saw on the NES game selection on the Switch. Oh, I never heard of this game. I beat it, making copious use of save states, thinking the whole time, damn this is horrible, yet still kept playing.

That also reminds me of the Magma Bell and how I got way more utility out of that than I expected. Not just reducing damage from falling in lava from 2 to 1, but any fire attacks, including Last Judge and the fireball spitting summons during Beastfly rematch. Great on both escape sequences too.

I enjoyed Dread well enough at the time- it does have some good moments but not a fan of the parry at all. And collecting some of the items required some absurdly precise shinesparking, like... damn.
I can enjoy parry stuff depending on implementation, but it doesn't make sense for Metroid, IMO.

Was not expecting that at all! Game always managing to surprise and delight. Even when frustrated at one thing, there'd always be something cool around the corner. Clockwork Dancers, First Sinner, the whole Green Prince thing which I wasn't expecting to be a whole area like that.

After finding the wall climb in Act 1, while exploring with it, the last thing I expected to find was a bug with a cage that captured me, brought me somewhere I never been before, and stole all my stuff in a prison escape sequence. And, from my understanding, completely optional.

"People will conform themselves to the game and its expectation because it is worth conforming for." It's just so well crafted and such a joy to play that it's worth persevering. Nothing felt insurmountable and there was always something cool to find. Some neat interaction, or a bug funeral.

I find most of the difficulty allegations to be a bit exaggerated myself. There are two bosses that gave me significant trouble so far, but they've generally been pretty manageable. What helped immensely on one was just changing my loadout, one easily overlooked accessory helped immensely.

Is he somehow related to Johnny?

Forever burned into my brain, "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace..."

Which is a lot to mainly just say, I love Record of Lodoss War. That first episode triggers all sorts of stuff in my brain. As I'm sure you can tell lol. I even enjoyed that Deedlit metroidvania they have on Steam.

They had a game copier in the 90s. Big ass thing that fit on top of the SNES. They'd rent games and it'd dump the ROMs onto 3.5" floppy disks, splitting as needed onto multiple disks. They had a huge plastic bin full of disks.

No idea what was going on, but back then it was a far cry from the cartoons we had in 1992. They always had all sorts of new tech stuff. Where I first saw SotN, once again a japanese bootleg copy which led me to get the game when it came out in NA.

My first exposure to Lodoss War was at a friend's house when I was... maybe 10-12-ish? His dad was a huge nerd basically, they had single episodes on VHS of various anime. Lodoss was just the first episode, in japanese. Not even subbed. Also stuff like Macross and Bubblegum Crisis.

Out of so much cool shit in UFO50, that one stands out the most to me. I was already digging it before getting the shrink potion, when it's just, "Wait, WHAT?" and the whole scale of the game just multiplies.