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• The Final Fantasy Rule: Why the New Final Fantasy XIII Demo Matters, Even if You Hate the Series

  I’ve had to stop myself from doing something stupid many, many times in the past few weeks. Late at night, typically before bed while I’m enjoying that just-brushed-just-flossed feel of my teeth and that last drink of water, I’ve opened my laptop and gone to Play Asia, added an item to my cart, and made it all the way to the check out before stopping myself. What am I, an idiot? What kind of person would do this? I’ve slapped my own wrist, both literally and metaphorically, closed the computer, and waited for morning, when the sobering light of day inevitable reintroduces logic to my shoddy impulse control. Honestly. Spending eighty dollars on a demo of Final Fantasy XIII, a demo in a language I don’t even understand, is stupid. Very, very stupid. Yes, it comes with a nice new version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, but even that little perk isn’t worth blowing two weeks worth of grocery money on an hour long sampling of a game that will be out before too long. The impulse is detestable. It is, however, an inevitable impulse, one that isn’t rooted in fanaticism. The allure of a new Final Fantasy, even just a taste of it, has less to do with fetishism and everything to do with wanting to see just what any given game console can do. Read More... Posted Apr 16 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, final fantasy, square-enix, tetsuya nomura, final fantasy iv, final fantasy xiii, final fantasy x, final fantasy vii

• The All New Retro: Bust-a-Groove and Low-Poly Love

  I won’t deny it. My gaming tastes are a little unusual. Take my emulation aversion. Does a normal person spend months and months tracking down a rare and expensive cheat device so they can play an imported SNES game when they could download a ROM and SNES emulator in about ten seconds? No. This is not how a normal person behaves. As I slowly morph into something approximating an adult, I’ve been noticing another strange predilection in my gaming brain: a love of low-polygon graphics. Some games do not age with grace. Their mechanics, and especially their graphics, develop the distinct taste of vinegar when they used to be wine just five years before. Yet the games of the 32- and 64-bit era, games that I thought were repulsive even at the time, are starting to take on a strange allure. Read More... Posted Mar 31 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, mega man, katamari damacy, Playstation, square-enix, tomb raider, retro, final fantasy iv, sega saturn, Retro game challenge, nintendo 64, enix, tomb raider 3, bust-a-groove

• Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is Coming, and Cecil is a Clod

  A strange thing happened to me when I heard that Final Fantasy IV is coming to Virtual Console: I didn't care. I think I burned out on the title with the swift finality of a doused candle flame. I can't imagine why. I've only played and completed Final Fantasy II (SNES), Final Fantasy IV (Playstation), Final Fantasy IV Advance, Final Fantasy IV DS and innumerable fan translations. I am, however, pretty excited about Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for WiiWare, despite the cringe-inducing title. I guess I'm happy enough to slay the same monsters and abide by the same archaic menus if it means glancing at Kain's bum from a whole new angle. I also think it's going to be kind of cool playing as Cecil's son. Bonus points if the boy has to earn his place as a hero. One of my favourite kids' books is “Mattimeo” by Brian Jacques. The story is a sequel to “Redwall,” and the running theme involves the maturation of the spoiled son of Matthias the Warrior. But I'm already facepalming over the name “Ceodore.” Cecil's brand for his first-born son is a perfect example of the moon warrior's boring tendency to flip-flop. Read More... Posted Mar 25 2009, 09:09 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: wii, wiiware, final fantasy iv, nadia oxford, final fantasy iv the after

• Please, JRPGs, Let Me Run Free

  One of the Internet's favourite hobbies is complaining about the senility of the JRPG genre. The behemoth genre is in fact staggering, and it might not be long before its chest touches the ground. I think the wolves are feeding a bit early, though: JRPGs are a huge market, and it takes a long time for a disease to run its course through a big animal. Besides, there's very little wrong with JRPGs that can't be chased off with a few shots. The rambling stories can be re-written with a more consideration for subtlety, the characters can be given goals beyond being spokesgirls for moe, and random encounters don't have to, y'know, exist. Where no such improvements are possible for whatever reason (laziness, fear of change, a deal with the Devil that ended with the developer being forced to play cruel jokes on players), I would settle for just one tweak. It's not hard to implement, and it's not too scary, but it could help save the genre. Please, please, please, JRPG developers—all RPG developers—if you're going to make me suffer through random battles, at least guarantee that I will be able to run from them. Read More... Posted Mar 19 2009, 11:37 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: dragon quest, final fantasy iv, nadia oxford, jrpgs

• Final Fantasy IV the After: Will America Land on the Moon?

  Do you like the moon? Of course you do. You've wanted to visit the moon since you were a child. You want to gorge on its green cheese. Don't contradict me. Final Fantasy IV catered to childhood dreams by sending Cecil--and you!--on an adventure that climaxed in the core of the moon. When the world-consuming evil was put back to bed, Cecil had a climax of his own (sorry) and fathered a son with Rosa. “Ceodore” had his own adventure, known as Final Fantasy IV the After: Return of the Moon. But whereas his father was grand enough for the SNES, the DS, the GBA, the Wonderswan, the Playstation and God knows what else, Ceodore got a pat on the head and was sent off to wave his sword and make heroic declarations on cell phones across Japan. But as the moon's phases change, so too does Ceodore's fate. Maybe. Read More... Posted Jan 27 2009, 11:47 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: xbox 360, rumor, final fantasy iv, xbla, nadia oxford, final fantasy iv the after

• Whatcha Playing: On the Road Again

  Wherein travelling inevitably leads to thinking about Zelda, the nature of game linearity and unskippable passive sequences in games. Five men in their late 20s are heading south on route 80 through New Jersey in a white Dodge Caravan. They listen to loud music and discuss plans for the weekend ahead of them. Before too long, they pass signs for a town called Hibernia. As they are a group raised on far, far too many videogames, the fanciful name of what is likely a small, simple town full of good, honest folk quickly transforms it into a land of adventure, intrigue and obnoxious obligation. “Ho stranger! You have stopped for gasoline in Hibernia? I would love to give you some, but first you must travel beyond the woods and acquire a ruffled dragoon feather. I need them to make gasoline!” “Hey! Hey! Have you tried pressing Z to look at signs? Press A to read signs! Hey!” “You must equip a sword and a shield before you can leave the car. Who would leave the car without a sword and a shield?” Yes, even something as an innocuous as a roadtrip leads to making fun of Zelda, and by proxy, every other videogame that makes you engage in a string of needless bullshit before letting you actually play. After we got the jokes out of our systems, we did start talking about how, when the itch arises, we all love going back and replaying past Zeldas, but have almost no desire to replay any of the 3D games any time soon. Everyone in the van has affection for Ocarina and Wind Waker – Opinions on Majora’s Mask vary. Personally, I find it to be a freaking chore to play, no matter how creative. Twilight Princess, we agreed, feels like actually doing chores when you play it. – but the prospect of wading through a never ending stream of unskippable conversations makes returning to these games unsavory. The constant handholding is bad enough, even without taking five minutes to listen to some owl made of triangles rant about a mountain, finally getting through the diatribe, and accidentally asking him to repeat himself. The conversation was oddly prescient. Read More... Posted Dec 08 2008, 08:15 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, whatcha playing, the legend of zelda, final fantasy, ocarina of time, wind waker, twilight princess, hironobu sakaguchi, final fantasy iv, final fantasy iv ds, final fantasy III, final fantasy iii ds, majora’s mask

• On Renaming Characters: My Own Naughty Experience

  Mackey's post about re-naming RPG characters took me back to a special place. I admit I'm lazy about re-naming my characters these days, but there was a time when my habits made my parents fear for the monikers of their grandchildren. Actually, thinking about it, my mother mostly egged me on. I think there's some kind of karma going on for people who gave game characters swear-names. Recently I needed a video of Cloud in the Mako reactor at the start of Final Fantasy VII for a whimsical, memory-heavy blog post elsewhere. The only appropriate video had Cloud branded as "El Boner." Secret of Mana was my first Super Nintendo RPG. I named the girl "Bitch" because I'm creative and hilarious. After that, the the fate of each female character in subsequent RPGs was sealed. Nothing against the characters themselves. It was just tradition. Read More... Posted Oct 28 2008, 06:40 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, final fantasy vi, final fantasy iv, final fantasy vii, nadia oxford, secret of mana, characters, naming

• On Renaming Characters

  As part of my generally anal-retentive gaming habits, I never rename characters in RPGs.  In my eyes, anything other than the original, intended names would be sacrilege; even at the age of twelve, you could find me correcting the all-caps names of my characters in Final Fantasy III to a more sensible case setting. For me, it's always been about immersion. As creative as I can be, it just feels so wrong to go against the designers' original choices, even when I'm given the option to change those choices. Maybe watching my stepdad play through Final Fantasy II starring my family warped me somehow--after all, he made me Kain. When I'm given an array of ready-to-be-names blank slates, I typically don't get too wacky. The guys are typically named after me and my friends, while the single girl character (there's usually only one) is reserved for my current girlfriend or possible girlfriend-to-be (god willing). I'll admit that games like Earthbound, with relatively personality-free main characters, also fall into this habit of mine, as do games like Secret of Mana, where I learn that the characters have names years after the fact--and also that these names are very dumb. In the era of voice-acting, renaming characters is no longer the norm. The awkward, off-putting, just-chugged-a-bottle-of-NyQuil conversations of Final Fantasy X were made all the more creepy by the simple fact that the other characters could not say Tidus' name--after all, you might've changed it. Years later, Dragon Quest VIII handled this problem much better; the name you'd chosen for your character still appeared in the written dialogue, but characters would say things like "my boy" and "guv'nah" instead of the offending proper noun. Here, I could name my character "Bob" and not worry about the consequences. So where does everyone else fall on this issue? I can't be the only one who feels compelled to stick to the original names I'm given, no matter how asinine they may be. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 08:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: final fantasy vi, earthbound, final fantasy iv, bob mackey, character names

• Fever Gaming

  Many in the Game Kingdom have experienced gaming while under the influence of, er, illicit substances. We won't go into detail about those sins, but instead we'll talk about a similar, more legitimate gaming experience: gaming while sick. Hey, if your immune system crawls off to the pub and leaves you at the mercy of a high fever, can The Man blame you for enjoying the pretty colours your brain soothes you with while it slowly turns into fricassee? I speak from experience. This weekend, which was a gloriously warm Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, I found myself knocked out with the flu. Today, I'm able to sit up again and this coincides with my decision to keep on living. I was honestly too sick to game at all this weekend, but I remember some good times when the doctor prescribed long doses of "sit down and don't move" and gaming became my number-one pastime. Read More... Posted Oct 13 2008, 02:28 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: final fantasy iv, super mario kart, nadia oxford, secret of mana, fever, sickness

• Ne, Rokkuman! Yaranaika?: The World of Hayadain

  Yesterday afternoon, our hero John Constantine became frightened and confused when he inadvertently discovered Mario and the Western Show. In this jaunty showtune, which is set to music from Super Mario World, Super Mario and his nemesis Bowser haggle back and forth over which one of them loves Princess Peach more (and Bowser picks his nose hard enough to make it bleed). Both seem oblivious to the fact that Peach wants neither of them. In fact, she sounds like she's on the verge of initiating that sexual harassment lawsuit that should have been filed years ago. Mario and the Western Show is written by a Japanese remixer named Hyadain. Whereas America treats its video game remixes with the awe and dignity you'd expect with a revered hobby, Japan's remixes tend to be a bit more silly. Hyadin has become especially famous for cutting loose and giving us beauties like The World Warrior. The World Warrior features the cast of Street Fighter. Each fighter sings about what motivates them to get their face stepped on by M Bison. True to the series, Honda says, ”Sumo is the greatest fighting style in the world!” When is someone going to conjure up the stones to tell the dude that he's the #1 choice of n00bs? Nobody who doesn't want to be sat on, I guess. Other delights by Hyadin include Appearance of Golbez's Four Lords of the Elements and (oh God) CRASH! Let's Do It!, which is Crashman's love song to Mega Man. Don't act disgusted, you only wish you could make love to your hero while Airman fans you gently. Read More... Posted Aug 28 2008, 03:16 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: street fighter, japan, mega man, final fantasy vi, game music, final fantasy iv, fandom, nadia oxford, hyadain, my first friend, crashman, mario and the western show, rockman, remix

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 3

  And now, the bad... Metroid: Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance) Is Metroid: Zero Mission a terrible game? By no means. On its own terms, it's rather good. But as a reconception of one of the greatest, most influential games ever made, it's a disaster, taking everything that made Metroid spooky and replacing it with a thick layer of corn. Metroid was heavily influenced by Alien. Remember the petrified extraterrestrial skeleton in Alien? What if that bastard had gotten up and started bombarding Sigourney Weaver with some hack's idea of ancient wisdom? Wouldn't that have pretty much thrown the movie's chilly austerity out the window? Like so many latter-day games, Zero Mission thinks comic-book jibber-jabber is cooler than eerie silence. This lack of subtlety is echoed in the gameplay itself, which, while it controls a lot better than Metroid, is chock-full of egregious hand-holding and advice-giving — pretty much the exact opposite of the original's sprawling openendedness. Metroid is practically Lovecraftian in the way it makes you feel tiny and alone in a vast and hostile universe. Don't look for that feeling in Zero Mission. Oh, and it also mangles the most immortal climax in videogame history — the truly unsettling slaughter of a shrieking brain in a jar, followed by a hair-raising escape sequence — by tacking on a (sigh) stealth section. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:02 PM by Peter Smith with | with 17 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2

  Final Fantasy (WonderSwan Color) The first in a vast battalion of Final Fantasy rereleases, the Wonderswan remake actually gets it righter than any that were to come. Sure, the Playstation version has FMV intros (whoo-hoo?), the GBA version has some mostly extraneous new dungeons, and the PSP version has sharper graphics. But the Wonderswan version gave the NES original a beautiful visual makeover that later ports would simply poach, and more importantly, it corrected some of the original game's antiquated design quirks in a totally optional fashion. In the NES game, if two characters attack one enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will be ineffective. This is annoying, but it also forces you to plan; it adds some strategy to the essentially one-dimensional battle system. You could really argue for or against the feature, and the Wonderswan port gives you a choice. The same goes for a number of other idiosyncracies we cranky old-timers like to keep in our enhanced remakes; subsequent rereleases dumbed the game down until you could grind through it with a rubber band around the A button. — PS Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:01 PM by Peter Smith with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1

  Well, having burned through our annual pants-replacement fund on the announcement of Chrono Trigger DS, we here at 61FPS now find ourselves surprisingly ambivalent about this remake (or is it just a rerelease?) of the greatest game Square ever made. Sure, it could be handsome and polished. But it could be sloppy and buggy, too. It could add new gameplay elements, or it could dumb down those that were already there. Chrono Trigger's a delicate thing! Be careful with that priceless art item, you sausage-fingered renovators! And here to guide you on a righteous path are five enhanced remakes that got it right — and five that didn't. — Peter Smith FIVE GREAT REMAKES Tomb Raider Anniversary (PlayStation 2) Most games simply do not need to be remade. As beautiful and ambitious as Square's impending Final Fantasy IV DS is, its voiced dialogue, new script, and three-dimensional overhaul are icing on a cake that was already delicious despite its simplicity. The original Tomb Raider, however, is a once-revolutionary title ravaged by the passage of time and the growth of technology. Forget how Lara's 1996 debut looks. Just think about trying to play a fully-3D game that requires precision platforming using only a d-pad. Crystal Dynamics' full remake of Tomb Raider put the engine from Lara's rebirth, the decent Tomb Raider: Legend, to great use, re-introducing the world to the game and, most importantly, preserving it in a way so people can actually play it in the years to come. Plus, grappling hooks are awesome. — John Constantine Read More... Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:00 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments Filed under: john constantine, peter smith, metroid zero mission, resident evil, super mario bros 3, final fantasy, top ten, list, rondo of blood, chrono trigger, final fantasy iv, ninja gaiden trilogy, golden axe, super mario kart, space harrier, castlevania dracula x chronicles, sega ages, tomb raider anniversary, tomb raider legend, super mario advance 4, five greatest enhanced remakes, five bad enhanced remakes, mega man powered up, gunstar heroes, square, mario kart wii, panzer dragoon, outrun, cruis'n usa, best of 2008

• The Chrono Trigger Port: Are You Excited or Disappointed?

  Though the 16-bit console wars were savage in the early '90s, the end was in sight by 1995 and the Super Nintendo was crowned the obvious winner. (Except by pouty Genesis fanboys who feebly compared Phantasy Star IV to Final Fantasy VI. I mean, it's a good try, but...nah.) The Genesis was panting and dry-heaving at the finish line, but the Super Nintendo barely broke a sweat. In fact, it looked healthier than ever thanks to an injection of A+ games at the end of its life. One such title was Chrono Trigger, a now-legendary RPG by Square(-Enix). We should all hope for the dignified hero's death that the Super Nintendo recieved thanks to Chrono Trigger's legacy. Read More... Posted Jul 02 2008, 07:30 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: remake, nintendo ds, rpg, chrono trigger, Playstation, square-enix, genesis, chrono cross, luca, port, marle, robo, super nintendo, phantasy star, crono, 16-bit, final fantasy iv, console wars