Hey Bombarinos, how is September treating you all? I think I've discovered why I'm getting so far behind on my video gaming and TV watching, and it's twofold: there's just way more of it than usual, and I've been watching far too many PUBG streams. As I've said before, PUGB kind of has the pace of a soccer match, where they spend a whole lot of time doing basically nothing before it builds up to these incredible moments of tension and joy. I can't get enough, but I think if I want to make a serious stab at getting through half the games on the ol' you-know-what I'd better cut back. Or, at the very least, skim around the various runs until there's only a dozen people left and it's tense as all heckers.

Anyway, when I haven't been watching people pick up 7.62 ammo and grouse about a dearth of scopes, I've been pondering what Nintendo might do with their retro gaming delivery system in the near future, given how the recent frantic demand for the NES Classic and SNES Classic has once again pushed the topic to the forefront. It's fair to say that we'd all prefer a subscription service that gave us unlimited access to the libraries of the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and N64, but it doesn't seem characteristic of Nintendo to offer that level of universal admittance, especially since they're gearing up to make Switch's online service subscription-based that will toss in a random NES/SNES game every month for subs to play. Realistically, I think might look to the success of their miniature consoles for a new model. I figure that new model might involve bunching a group of around six to eight games together in mini-compilations and releasing those for a mid-tier price, say around $20 for the digital version, or $30 for the retail game with bonus amiibo. If that's the case, I have a few proposals for what these compendiums might contain:

The Super Mario Medley

• Games: Super Mario All-Stars (SNES), Super Mario World (SNES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Super Mario Land (GB), Super Mario Land 2 (GB). (Amiibo: Kuribo's Shoe Mario.)
• Pros: A simple and obvious one to start us off. With these eight games, you get the best of Mario from all of Nintendo's early consoles.
• Cons: Nintendo semi-recently put out a special 25th anniversary edition which just included Super Mario All-Stars, so maybe they're a little reluctant to put all their Mario eggs in one basket. Ew, Mario eggs.

The Super Mario Miscellany

• Games: Donkey Kong (NES), NES Open Tournament Golf (NES), Dr. Mario (NES or GB), Donkey Kong '94 (GB), Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 (GB), Super Mario Kart (SNES), Yoshi's Island (SNES), Mario's Super Picross (SNES or GB). (Amiibo: Mario in his NES Open costume.)
• Pros: An accompaniment to the above, meant to include all the games that aren't core Super Mario Bros. that tend to feature Mario's extended cast (yes, I know Yoshi's Island is "Super Mario World 2", but c'mon).
• Cons: Kind of an odd premise for a set, I'll admit. Nintendo could split these games up any number of ways.

The Zelda Zelection

• Games: The Legend of Zelda (NES), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES), The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (GBC), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64), The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (N64), The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GBC), The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC). (Amiibo: The "A Link To the Past" Link, with pink hair.)
• Pros: Another no-brainer. I'd love to see a fully stacked Zelda compilation with tons of extras for all the games. Maybe like a mini Historia? It'd be a cool idea to play the games in their supposed "chronological order".
• Cons: Like anyone could convince Nintendo to put all these games into one collection. Zelda might be one of the few game series for which Nintendo could convince everyone to buy the games separately.

Kirby Your Enthusiasm

• Games: Kirby's Dream Land (GB), Kirby's Dream Land 2 (GB), Kirby's Adventure (NES), Kirby Super Star (SNES), Kirby's Avalanche (SNES), Kirby's Dream Course (SNES), Kirby's Dream Land 3 (SNES), Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (N64). (Amiibo: Whispy Woods!)
• Pros: Everyone loves Kirby. He saw enough games across older systems to justify his own collection, I'd have thought.
• Cons: That name's probably gotta go, huh?

The Nindulgence Knapsack

• Games (NES Edition): Metroid, StarTropics, Zoda's Revenge: Star Tropics II, Punch-Out!!, Excitebike, Kid Icarus, Adventures of Lolo, Balloon Fight. (Amiibo: Excitebike biker.)
• Games (GB/GBC Edition): Alleyway, Solar Striker, Metroid II: Return of Samus, Tetris, Revenge of the Gator, Game & Watch Gallery, Balloon Kid, Mole Mania. (Amiibo: Muddy Mole of Mole Mania.)
• Games (SNES Edition): Pilotwings, Super Metroid, F-Zero, EarthBound, Super Punch-Out!!, Star Fox, Star Fox 2. (Amiibo: Pilotwings protagonist with jetpack.)
• Games (N64 Edition): Super Smash Bros., Pilotwings 64, Wave Race 64, F-Zero X, Star Fox 64, 1080 Snowboarding. (Amiibo: Wave Race jetski.)
• Pros: Some of Nintendo's individual first- and second-party titles, either one-offs or from smaller series like Metroid.
• Cons: Like the Mario Miscellany, I could see Nintendo breaking up these games in any number of ways. With no strong connective tissue, these particular groupings don't really gel so well for promotional purposes.

The Squaresoft Seven Stars Selection

• Games: Final Fantasy (NES), Final Fantasy Adventure (GB), Final Fantasy IV (SNES), Final Fantasy VI (SNES), Secret of Mana (SNES), Chrono Trigger (SNES), Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES). (Amiibo: Geno, from Super Mario RPG.)
• Pros: Square Enix is happy enough to play ball with Nintendo and their own 16-bit legacy, with many of the above appearing on the SNES Classic. I'd think they'd be down for making more money, especially since most of the emulation work's already been done.
• Cons: Square's been gearing up their remakes of late, including almost all of the above, so they'd probably want to focus on trying to sell those than these originals. (I also wanted to include Secret of Evermore, but I suspect Square would prefer to bury it. Shame, because it's severely underrated.)

The Secret Squaresoft Seven Stars Selection

• Games: Final Fantasy V, Romancing SaGa, Romancing SaGa 3, Live a Live, Bahamut Lagoon, Front Mission, Treasure of the Rudras (all SNES). (Amiibo: Front Mission wanzer.)
• Pros: A perfect accompaniment to the Square collection above: seven more SNES games that hardly anyone outside of Japan got to see (well, besides FFV).
• Cons: All these games would need to be translated. Fortunately, because of Square's popularity, most already have expert fan translations that Square Enix just needs to sign off on.

The Capcom Collection

• Games (NES Edition): Commando, Trojan, Gun.Smoke, Strider, 1943, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Bionic Commando, Destiny of an Emperor. (Amiibo: Strider Hiryu.)
• Games (SNES Edition): Super Ghouls N Ghosts, Demon's Crest, Final Fight, Final Fight 2, Final Fight 3, Breath of Fire, Breath of Fire 2, UN Squadron. (Amiibo: Firebrand/Red Arremer.)
• Pros: You could probably make two compilations with the vast number of hits that Capcom produced for Nintendo's home consoles. I've gone with a possible set for either NES or SNES.
• Cons: Given there are separate Mega Man compilations, I didn't think to include them here. Ditto for the Disney-themed games in the Disney Afternoon Collection. Instead, I suspect those compilations would make their way over to the Switch in some form eventually. As for Street Fighter II, that recently saw that Switch-exclusive thing with the bad first-person touch controls mode. Kinda weird to have a Capcom collection without all those, though.

The Konami Kompilation

• Games (NES Edition): The Goonies II, Castlevania, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Life Force, Gradius, Contra, Super C, Jackal. (Amiibo: Simon Belmont.)
• Games (SNES Edition): Super Castlevania IV, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Axelay, Gradius III, TMNT: Turtles in Time, Sunset Riders, Sparkster. (Amiibo: Goemon.)
• Pros: Konami, like Capcom, was a former arcade developer that really took a shine to Nintendo's consoles with a string of hits. I've gone with a possible set for either NES or SNES.
• Cons: Whatever pale shadow of its former self that Konami might be now, they clearly have an interest in licensing old games if there's money to be made for little effort. Even so, I'm not sure how dependable they are to do even that much. Certainly can't expect a whole lot of extras; just the minimum of what is expected.

The Quintet Sextet

• Games: ActRaiser, ActRaiser 2, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma, Robotrek (all SNES). (Amiibo: Ark, from Terranigma. Or maybe the ActRaiser angel? You know, the wingaling baby?)
• Pros: Fantastic games that, due to Quintet's weird undead state of present, have yet to be rereleased in any form.
• Cons: I'm not sure if Nintendo would allow any release that has the word "sextet" in the title...

Anyway, that's enough Nintendo collections. I believe that Nintendo has been given a fresh start with the Switch and its unexpected success and could use that to figure out a better system than trying to sell NES and SNES games for $4 each through the Virtual Console when most of the no-name filler titles will just sit there on the servers taking up virtual space and prominence that up-and-coming Indie games should instead enjoy. Conversely, and I've heard this from a few retro gaming experts, giving players 100+ games in one swoop as part of a subscription service would greatly devalue them. I think these smaller compilations, based on the likes of the Mega Man Legacy Collections with all sorts of bonus extras, are the way to go to ensure developers can provide the right level of reverence to their older games. It's just a matter of pricing them appropriately for anyone to give a damn.

Any ideas for your own groupings? I've just been sticking to 6-8 games per pack, but there's so many options out there. It's definitely a fun exercise, if a little sad that none of these are likely to ever happen.

What did happen, however, are all the blogs I done wrote this week. Here they be:

• The Top Shelf is still rocking Shelftember with another seven entries this week. Those include: the spooktacular J-Horror stealth game Forbidden Siren 2, a title that proved unfortunately literal to North American audiences; Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, a WW2 game for you all since they're suddenly back in vogue; the pioneering assassination game Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, featuring everyone's favorite barcode battler; the cult favorite and Clover treasure God Hand, to which I was surprisingly lenient this time around; Carpenter homage The Thing, a video game sequel to the movie that captures its paranoid spirit; The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, an improved sequel in EA's series of licensed hack-and-slash action RPGs based on the movies; and The Suffering, a jailbreaking, earthquaking, sanity-shaking creature-feature of a third-person shooter. I'd promise that next week won't be quite as spooky, but I'd be lying. I have a lot of scary PS2 games it turns out.
• The Indie Game of the Week was Detective Grimoire, a 2014 adventure game that balances detective work with a LucasFilm comedy presentation. While decidedly short and not particularly taxing on the ol' gray matter, the game's art direction, voice acting and humor are all great and I hope to see the developer make more sequels. Fortunately, since those developers produced the wonderful and well-received Snipperclips, they should have the resources to go bigger and better if they so choose.

No supplemental section this week. I've mostly spent the time playing the above games and finishing off Stella Deus, about which I probably exhausted all my topics of conversation last week. As well as the final eight PS2 games for Shelftember and a new Indie Game of the Week, I'm planning to use my gaming time next week to knock off a few more promising The Top Shelf candidates like The Mark of Kri, Champions of Norrath andRogue Trooper. I'll also be playing those games throughout October too, in addition to a return to more contemporary games like Danganronpa 2 (I'm not going to be done with that game before the 26th when Danganronpa V3 rolls around, and I've made my peace with that) and the newly purchased Torment: Tides of Numenera (which dropped in price suspiciously quickly). So look out for more on those, and thanks as always for following my misadventures. Until next time, Bomb buds.