Expi Feliton's Corner

To be honest, after reviewing the SNES and Nintendo Switch last year I really wanted to do a review of all of Nintendo’s consoles. Aside for the aforementioned consoles I had also reviewed the Wii and Wii U, and had wanted to review the Nintendo 64 and GameCube as well but just never got around to it. I did review the NES Classic earlier this year, but I think it’s time I finally got around to reviewing Nintendo’s 64-bit fifth gen console, the Nintendo 64. In the mid 90s, it’s safe to say video games were evolving. Going from the fourth gen to the fifth was quite a leap for gaming, with games jumping to the third dimension for the first time. In 1994, the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn were released in Japan and worldwide a year later. This left Nintendo to make the jump, and in 1996 after several delays they released the Nintendo 64. This being a 64-bit system with contribution from Silicon Graphics, Inc., a hardware and software company that built computers used by movie studios fo...

NOTE: This review is part 5 in a retrospective on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I've done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective Before I ultimately moved on to Sonic Adventure, I kind of wanted to take a look at some other Sonic games. Maybe not every single one made between 1991 and 1999, but some of the spinoffs, lesser known titles in the series and… Sonic’s entries to the Master System and Game Gear. The Sega Master System, released in North America in 1986, was Sega’s first console released outside of Japan and was their answer to the Nintendo Entertainment System. While the Masters System saw success in some countries, particularly in European countries and in Brazil - the latter of which oddly enough is still producing and selling the system - the Sega Master System really didn’t take off in North America and Japan and in those countries is really nowhere as remembered compared to the NES or Fa...

I can’t really deny that I’ve never really been a big fan of the Xbox line of consoles. Growing up, my brother had an Xbox 360, but all I really played on it was The Simpsons games he had for it plus a few Sonic games, and even when I truly felt like I got into gaming, I was always more interested in the libraries of both the Wii and PlayStation 3. Had it been up to me, I would have definitely gone with the PlayStation 3 if I had to make the decision between the two. I did review the original Xbox in 2018 (albeit the OG Xbox I had failed a couple weeks after I got and reviewed it) and did express some interest in it’s PC-like architecture and even some of it’s exclusives but I felt that even then it didn’t really have the vast variety that both the GameCube and PlayStation 2 had. So, going into the Xbox One’s announcement, I was just kind of apathetic to it all. After the Wii U’s announcement and release I was still somewhat interested in seeing everyone else’s offerings for the ei...

NOTE: This review is part 4 in a retrospective on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Feel free to read the other Sonic reviews I’ve done here - https://expithecat.blogspot.com/search/label/sonic%20retrospective So now we get to the last game in the Genesis trilogy (or quadrilogy if you count CD), that of course being Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The game turned out to be 2 parts sold over 2 separate cartridges, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was released on Groundhog’s Day of 1994 (or… Hedgehog’s Day) with it’s second half, Sonic & Knuckles, being released in October of the same year. The two were intended as one whole game, but due to time constraints and a McDonald’s promotion, only Sonic 3 was released with the first 6 levels of the whole game at first with the rest coming later. Sonic & Knuckles used what Sega called “lock-on technology”, coming in the form of a cartridge slot that had another on top of it, and by attaching it to a copy of Sonic 3, you basically got the full game as ...

For a while, I’ve been considering doing a top list of my personal favorite consoles of all time. I did a top 10 list of my own in 2015, one of my earlier video game-related posts, but in retrospect I’ve found myself not really agreeing with what I put for my original list. I guess that’s to be expected - after all, it’s been almost 5 years since I wrote that and not only have I gotten older but have also collected more consoles over time and my game collection has generally gotten much bigger and of course my tastes have long since changed as I continue to gain new experiences. I mean, I’m sure that in 5 years my top list will be different from what it is now, but for now I still want to talk about what consoles I consider my favorite and why I feel that way for each system. But before I get started, I decided to put a couple rules for myself, similar to what was on my original list. In my original list, I decided not to count any consoles that I have little to no experience with (f...