Nothing super-special about seeing the MVS here. It just reminded me that I’ve been seeing fewer and fewer of these. This is also one of the machines I’d like to have one day. I’m not 100% set on which cartridges to use, but the ones seen here are good picks.
Virtual On (Sega)
A pretty fun head-to-head arena fighter featuring mechs that behave more like people than giant robots (you still control them with twin flight-sticks, though). You can’t really tell from the angle of the photo, but the machines actually have a built-in partition to prevent screen-looking.
Fix-It Felix (Disney?)
I had no idea that they actually made a real machine based on the game from the movie! The cabinet does a great job of imitating the Donkey Kong artwork. The game itself isn’t anything too special, but I felt a pretty strong sense of novelty from the fact that someone actually made this machine.
Fun fact: although the concept for this game was obviously inspired by Donkey Kong, the characters, level design, and gameplay more closely resemble those of Beauty and the Beast, a Donkey Kong ripoff that was released for the Intellivision:
Ice Cold Beer (Taito)
Not a video game, sure, but this was unusual enough that I wanted to include it. Basically, you have to control a ball bearing that’s tucked between a metal rod and a vertical playing field. You can control the slant on either side of the metal rod, and your goal is to navigate the ball bearing into one of the designated goals. It’s ridiculously challenging, but the idea is really cool.
The cutscenes in Story of Seasons are usually fun little moments, but this was a complete tonal shift from the rest of the game. I don’t know why this was in the game at all.
There’s additional dialogue that pretends to dress it up and put a lighthearted spin on it, but this still felt like a dude creeping on his daughter’s friend, and both conclusions are upsetting.
