That's a pretty dumb reason, but that's what's been putting me off for so long. Oh well, I'm a konvert now...

Saad ='(

Me too! I had only scorn for the initial comment, but this response was perfect

I can also confirm. I write software for a living. A hammer is a must-have.

I love how the post never mentions the country, but everyone just knows.

Thanks for your time and efforts!

I grew up with FF7 so I'm a bit biased there, but that was instantly recognizable to me.

Good job!

Definitely FF7. It's the hero's Buster Sword and the villain's Masamune.

The holes in the Buster Sword are Materia slots, some kind of gems that grant magical powers when equipped.

I've got one of these, and I'm pretty sure I found a subreddit about people like us at some point. There are dozens of us. Dozens!

[Edit] There ya go: https://www.reddit.com/r/PencilStabbers/

Some arcade-y faves of mine:

Gradius V: a classic horizontal scrolling shooter, it gets hard quickly! (This is the game series the Konami code originates from)

Neo Contra: a twin-stick shooter inspired by B-movies, also kinda hard, and incidentally also a series that made the Konami code famous.

The Red Star: a bit obscure I think. It's a twin-stick with both shooting and melee. I like the girl's fast melee moves a lot, you need to use combos to juggle your enemies. I think this one got a bad reception because it arrived quite late in the life of the PS2 and was a bit underwhelming graphically.

That's what we call lla here at ~

That's it, I'm jumping in the nearest warp storm.