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Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers

Year: 2018
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Vanpool
Genre: Action, strategy
Completion: No

A cute little game that I got in a stack of discounted games from a store getting rid of the last of its 3DS games. As such, I haven't played it much but I did give it a bit of a whirl. I really liked the feature that turns your Mii into a furry, because of course I do, though ultimately it looks like this game doesn't have all that much going for it.

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Year: 2015
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Genre: Tactics JRPG
Completion: Yes

Found this in the used DS/3DS shelf at the local not-Gamestop and stupidly only picked up this one, where I could have taken both Birthright and Conquest, not knowing that they had different storylines, whereas I thought it was merely a Poké-like version difference. Yeah, this was my first Fire Emblem game. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20. Hoshido is cooler than Nohr anyway so my weeb ass isn't too sore about it all. But yeah. I straight up devoured this game, I had so much fun. Also, I would very much like Rinkah to step on me.

Pokémon Y

Year: 2013
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Game Freak
Genre: JRPG
Completion: Yes

Pokémon Y is special to me for one particular reason - It's the first one in the series that I had my own copy of. I bought it along with the 3DS I own in anticipation of Sun/Moon, that would be coming out a little later, and it turned out to be a great choice! The 6th gen is somewhat maligned in some circles of fans due to the somewhat janky 3D and a lacking postgame, but I didn't really care about that. I'm just tired of the sprite art after having played gens 3 and 4 ad nauseam (I couldn't get any of the gen 5 games to work in emulation), so it was a breath of fresh air to me. I also loved the fact that you could, for the first time, customize your character, and you can bet your ass that I made the cutest lil Mira trainer as I could. The music is also a highlight, with my favorite being the Route 18 theme.

Hall of Fame team: Greninja, Charizard, Espeon, Noivern, Zoroark, Lucario

Pokémon Moon

Year: 2016
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Game Freak
Genre: JRPG
Completion: Yes

It's weird how a sequel can improve on practically 90% of its predecessor and still take a backseat to it in one's memory because of some inconsequential ways in which it was worse, which was exactly the case with Sun/Moon. It has better story, better traversal, better overall presentation, but I ended up liking Y better for two reasons: 1) I preferred Mega Evolution to Z-Moves, and 2) The presentation of the player character. In X/Y, the player characters look a bit older, and as somebody who's been with the series in some way from the start in the West (I started with the TCG and anime, got into the games later), the older the player character is (within reason lol), the better. That's an extremely minor quibble, though. Also I didn't like any of the hairstyle options and was just wishing I could have the same one I was rocking in Y the whole time. But the worst bit was the character's face. The X/Y faces were very simplistic but good enough, I never felt it was detrimental to the experience. However, in Sun/Moon, they had this weird dead-eyed smile on most of the time which felt super jarring in cutscenes, which ruined my immersion in the otherwise excellent (for Game Freak) cutscenes you got to see in the story. That said, I'm a big fan of how they shook the formula up in this generation with the whole island challenge gimmick, having to fight totem pokémon and island kahunas in place of the usual city gym structure, before moving on to the traditional Pokémon League endgame involving Victory Road, the Elite Four, and the Champion. Also I gotta give a shout out to Team Skull and my man Guzma, for having the best villain themes in the whole series.

Hall of Fame team: Decidueye, Lycanroc (midnight), Vikavolt, Espeon, Salazzle, Lunala

Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition

Year: 2011
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Dimps, Capcom
Genre: Fighting
Completion: Arcade Mode x1

While not the first Street Fighter entry I tried, it was the first one I owned. Got this in the same 3DS clearance sale that I've mentioned elsewhere, so it was kind of a throwaway title I was mildly interested in at the time. I did give it the time of the day once though, which is more than some things I still have sitting in my queue, enough to finish the arcade mode once, as Ryu. Since then I've picked up the PC version of Ultra Street Fighter IV in anticipation of Street Fighter 6's imminent release, and now that SF6 is out I've been playing a bunch of that thanks to its fun World Tour mode that's the perfect way for a online-avoiding scrub like me to actually start making progress towards gittin gud.