I think it was actually a NES, and one of my first games must have been Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. I must have been 4 or 5 when I got the NES. When I got my hands on it, the NES was already past its prime (I received it from my cousin, who was getting rid of it when the next generation of consoles came in), but that didn’t stop me from having loads of fun. Didn’t care about graphics or the next big thing. Perks of being so young.

Interesting! I didn’t know Nintendo released a home video game console before the NES. And it was quite successful too, from what I’m reading. Perhaps the reason for my lack of knowledge is the fact that the Color TV-Game consoles were released only in Japan.

Damn, I remember this game! One of my childhood favorites. I borrowed it on a CD from my neighbor. The destruction system blew me away. After numerous other racing games where cars were basically tanks, it was such a breath of fresh air to be able to smash a car into pieces. In the 90s, that was a very memorable game mechanic. To this day, I remember this game while I forgot dozens of others.

Thanks, good job. I always loved that subreddit. The comments there, made by actual historians, were always a treat for a history fan. At this point, it’s a huge repository of reliable knowledge and it would be a shame to lose it.

What the…? It’s such a nonsense business move. The app store now shows this pixel icon when you search for the Reddit app. At first glance, it looks as if it was some shitty clone or something, not the original client.

It shouldn’t if you install it as a separate app.

Emulating PSX games on it. It was a great emulation machine at that time.

Playing jRPGs. This was where the Trails in the Sky series first came out in English, years before the PC. I loved that game, still do. Spent hours playing this game under the blanket of my bed. Also Persona 3.

Sounds massive. These days it’s not necessarily a plus. Most times if games are this long they tend to get bloated with open-worldy filler. Let’s hope they manage to fill these 200 hours with fresh content.

The rumor you mentioned originated from an article by Jake Adelstein, an American journalist writing about Japan, especially crime/yakuza. He claims he knows a lot of insiders in the yakuza and often covered stories about them.

In one such story, he claims he let a few yakuza guys play Yakuza 3 and they seemed to like the game and even praise some stuff as true to life: https://boingboing.net/2010/08/10/yakuza-3-review.html

However, this article (and others he wrote about the yakuza) may very well be fake - there are many doubts if Adelstein even knew any yakuza at all. I think one of the arguments is that it simply wouldn’t be possible for a ‘gaijin’ reporter to get inside access into the yakuza to be able to talk to them like this, and some of the stories he published are too fantastical, involving sex, martial arts etc. - just makes him hard to believe.

Just saying this because I see this rumor repeated from time to time and while it seems cool, it’s probably just fake.