It’s amusing that you liked Kingdom Hearts - when it first was announced, I read on a gaming board someone whose opinion I used to trust that it was “a harbinger of the apocalypse.”

I never played Tactics Ogre, but the one argument I’ve read against Final Fantasy Tactics is that FFT borrowed too much from Ogre. Uhh…well…uh, that’s…uh, too bad? I guess I’d have to play the game to be sure but FFT is a HUGE game to me…

SMB: Oh sure, it does hold up. But no, just running and jumping will get you killed in the later levels (you’re right that it works on the Cheep-Cheep levels.) You wouldn’t try that tactic in World 8-3, would you? (That’s the Hammer Brothers level.) I would never warp through any Mario game; it’s all there to be cherished. The only pre-SMB game that I like to play at all is Dig Dug.

If that TMNT arcade game you’re talking about is TMNT 2 for the NES, then yes I have played that one, though not all the way through. Every kid I knew who was a gamer in the 80s played the first two TMNT games. I hated the first one and have never revisited it as an adult. TMNT 4 for the SNES was a lot of fun and hell there was even a not-bad TMNT fighting game!! I would not play a TMNT Game Boy game at gunpoint.