KOF98!! Once Street Fighter II hit the scene in the early to mid 90's it made the first and greatest impression on me when it came to what a 'fighting game' should be. I had fun with the likes of Mortal Kombat and Clayfighter on my Megadrive/ Snes during the years to follow (as well as continuing to enjoy Street Fighter's small updates) but nothing really stole the spotlight I had personally shone towards SFII when it came to wanting a fighting game to try and out "button bash" a friend (back in those n00b kid days). That remained until I first played the "King of Fighters" series. This happened around 1997 in an arcade in USA, and it was that brief awesome arcade impression that left me thinking "Ohhh!!! I hope I can play this at home somehow!". That didn't happen for a while though. Partly due to no internet back then alerting me too what console the game was on, and partly due to the fact I couldn't realistically afford a Neo Geo AES system no matter how many birthdays and christmas's I tried to tell my parents to tie together. As time went on, and I got my hands on the likes of a PS2, and then a Dreamcast, I finally got to secure my home copy of King of Fighters, and not just any King of Fighters...it was 98!! King of Fighters 98 was the product of several years fine tuning the original King of Fighters game, new character were added, tweaks were made, and new features were chucked in. It really padded out what I had already considered to be an impressive game. Moving to were it matters though, King of Fighters 98 was definitely up to the same standards as the Street Fighter series when it came to an amazing fighting game to play. Admittedly I was still a n00b when it came to understanding fighting games back then, but even as a n00b...it was easy enough to filter the good games from the bad even with the most minimal skills and understanding of the fighting game in question. You cannot argue that King of Fighters owes a lot of it's success to Street Fighter, what with it borrowing a lot from the formula that made Street Fighter II so great, but within the game you have a wide range of original characters and moves, characters that feel great to play as and improve your skills with. King of Fighters as a series has had it's ups and downs, but overall I've enjoyed the series a lot more than I have some other big names such as Mortal Kombat or Tekken, I don't want to take away from those franchises as they all have made there lasting marks on me in terms of nostalgia, but it's just that KOF is the only game I have a high level of respect for as a fighting game as I do for the Street Fighter series (which has paid many dues and earnt all the respect it gets). I'm nominating KOF98 over say... '95 or '02 because it arrived at a great time, and didn't over exert itself as a fighting game. I would definitely recommend fans of Street Fighter II to give it a shot, and stick with it long enough to learn a particular character and appreciate the games mechanics. *Wishes for SNK Playmore to get King of Fighters back on track and back to a high standing within the fighting game community of the world* POWER WAVE!!!!!

Yes, this was the one that started it all in terms of video game adaptations of Ghostbusters. David Crane designed this for the C-64 from Activision. The Sega Master System port was more or less based off this. Essentially, you open up your own Ghostbusters franchise, investing in equipment, and dispatching your team to rid the city of ghosts, hoping to pay off your bank loan, and of course, the final confrontation with Gozer the Destructor! (He's big and Sumerian! ^_^;) Most of the time, I had fun playing the game, or just hitting the space bar to make the computer yell out "Ghostbusters!" during the title screen song. (They were able to do a SID chip arrangement of the ENTIRE song - Pretty impressive for a computer with 64 KILOBYTES of total system RAM in 1984 ^_^;) "Hey, anybody seen a ghost?" - Think about that when you're fanboying over the 3-d adaptations for modern consoles. Yeah, that's my name in silver Sharpie on the disk label. No secrets here. There was a time when I called myself "Mike" rather than "Michael" - I was young and stupid then, and I'm just old and stupid now. ^_^;