Rockafeller

You have to enter either "HOLIDAY20" or "HOLIDAY30" as a promo code at the end of the checkout process. The former will work for either $40 or $60 games, but I believe the latter will only work for $60 games.

A few highlights:

• Super Mario Bros. Wonder (with caddy and case)
• Spider-Man 2 (PS5, with headset - comes out to $60 with the discount)
• Metroid Prime: Remastered

EDIT: I recently learned that the $30 deal, at least, will only last for the next day (give or take a few hours).

If you hold L or R while entering your name, you can put in the following initials & birthdates to access the two:

• Tim Kitzrow: KIT, June 8
• Fox: FOX, August 3

Long story short: during the lead up to the English release of Pokémon the Movie 2000, Nintendo gave Warner Bros. permission to release tie-in products to promote it. Warner Bros. opted to commission Cyberworld International Corporation to create a short browser game to that end. According to Eddie Ruminski, an employee who kept the files and allowed them to be shared online, the game was downloaded more than 1,000,000 times within a month - which led to Nintendo forcibly shutting it down, as they felt the game was "[exceeding their] contract's allowable scope."

Short summary: in a Japanese journal from 1997, an employee of Ikegami Tsushinki (the company that programmed Donkey Kong for Nintendo) wrote about the process. He still had documentation from back in 1981, and his account provides brand-new historical details.

Critical Kate happened across the journal and, knowing that its length (11 pages) would be beyond the usual remit of volunteer translations, organized a fundraiser with Hit Save! and Gaming Alexandria to raise $750 to commission a translation from Shmuplations. The goal's already been met, but you can still donate if you'd like!

I'm a bit late to post this, but this article weaves together many different sources (old magazines, internal Sega communication, Usenet reactions, etc.) to explain just how big Adventure was to Sonic and Sega fans in 1999.

In order:

• Nintendo
• Sony
• Microsoft (Xbox)
• EA
• Ubisoft

I remembered this older article just recently - it outlines Nintendo's attempts to market the GameCube in America, with Kyle Mercury (who worked with Nintendo during the console's lifespan) shining some light on some of their inner workings at the time. Among other tidbits, he claims that he recommended that he recommended Nintendo focus on Resident Evil 4 during a meeting with then-new hire Reggie Fils-Aime and that Nintendo began to feel spite for their own audience near the end of the era ("they felt as if they were being betrayed by the gamers they created," additionally figuring that they didn't need to appeal to their hardcore fans because they'd buy their games no matter what).

This is admittedly a bit old (originally posted on July 4th, 2020), but I still think it's an interesting historical piece about the game's unusual past (including the version that did see release: Special Champion Edition).

There's currently 3,253 ads on here!

If you're at all interested in platformers, I highly recommend this. It's a remake of both Klonoa: Door to Phantomile & Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, two great games with particularly excellent stories.