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• On the Importance of World Maps

  One of the major reasons JRPGs lost me a little during the last generation was the stripping away of one of the genre's most defining features: the explorable world map, which was taken out of many games in favor of less resource-intensive travel options. Now, I'm still a little conflicted about this; on one hand, I do like the intuitive menu-based exploration of games like Persona, and I've repeatedly learned (especially this fall with Opoona) that making a player traverse large expanses of land is an excellent way to pointlessly stretch out a game for dozens of hours. On the other hand, including a Super Mario World-ish map in an RPG always felt a little cheap and cop-outey to me; when I saw this choice show up in Final Fantasy X, I assumed that Square had signed some sort of contract with The Devil himself (little did I know they had done this a few months prior with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within). It seems that the whole world map issue is entirely about fooling players into thinking your game world is more than a bunch of "rooms" stuck together, all while making sure not to bore them with interminable traveling. It's a tricky balance. Read More... Posted Feb 09 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, dragon quest, earthbound, jrpg, bob mackey, square enix, design

• Phantasy Star: My Upcoming Maiden Voyage

  When I was a young SNES fangirl, and I was up to my knees (okay, ankles) in great Squaresoft RPGs like Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger, I made sure I took time out of my playing to point and laugh at Genesis owners. Said Genesis owners would clutch their Sonic dolls to their chests and say, “Well...well we have the Phantasy Star games!” And then their lower lips would start to tremble, and I would laugh harder. Now that I'm older, wiser, and too boring to taunt people about the video games they don't own, I know that was an unfair reaction on my part. I regret never getting to know Phantasy Star. Maybe it wasn't as pretty as Final Fantasy III, but it often went far beyond the realm of fantasy and presented a technological-storybook mix that defines the series to this day. I haven't played the games, but even I know what a Numan is. Recent journeys through old RPGs like Secret of Mana cemented my resolve to finally experience Phantasy Star. I had intended to download the games on Virtual Console; I rolled up my sleeves, when hark! I got word about Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. The compilation will reportedly include all four Phantasy Star games in one convenient, emulated package. Well! If it has Sonic's name on it, I know I won't be steered wrong. Read More... Posted Jan 27 2009, 09:33 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, retro, phantasy star, nadia oxford, sonic's ultimate genesis collection

• Chrono Trigger Musical: A Lovelorn Frog

  It's not easy being green, amigos. Especially when you're valiant Mr Frog from Chrono Trigger, and you don't want to risk offending your beloved Queen Leanne with suggestions of romantic bogs and external fertilization. What do frogs naturally do when they're troubled and/or horny? They sing, of course. They sing their hearts out. They lament their fate (“Oh God, so slippery!”). In this animated Chrono Trigger musical, Frog does just that. He doesn't expand his throat though, so don't get too excited. Read More... Posted Dec 18 2008, 10:44 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, chrono trigger, square-enix, nadia oxford, frog, musical

• Hey, RPG Hero: Go Home and Be a Family Man

  So on Saturday I indulged in my weekly Mother 3 play session-- ("Oh God, she's talking about Mother 3 again, you sneak up behind her with this piano wire while I slip this cyanide into Mackey's coffee.") Please let me live. I don't know when I'm going to be so motivated to pick a game's brain ever again. Mother 3 is unlike any RPG I've ever played--and for the simplest reasons. This, more than anything, is what fascinates me about the game. Shigesato Itoi realises that the easiest way to get people to love your characters is to treat them like human beings. For some reason, woefully few of his fellow RPG designers have picked that up. It's rare to find an RPG cast that everyone can relate to on a human level. Mother 3's world-saving brigade casts ground-shaking magic and racks up experience points and throws giant staples at enemies like any other JRPG (okay, the staples, not so much), but Itoi wants us to feel close to them. So he draws us in by being realstic about the one thing that unites even Superman with the common Earthling: family. Here there be spoilers. (Oh and don't feed Mackey any cyanide. Thank you. His parents appreciate your restraint.) Read More... Posted Nov 24 2008, 07:35 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, earthbound, mother 3, gba, jrpg, nadia oxford, shigesato itoi, famly

• 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

• WTFriday: The Chrono Trigger Anime

  Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week. We're all excited about Chrono Trigger again--and why shouldn't we be? This November, we'll finally have the chance to pay $40 for a game we could've plunked down $70 for back in 1995. I'm such an unabashed Trigger fan that I actually unlocked all of the bonus content on the terrible PSX port of the game. Hey, it was new, and it was Chrono Trigger, so I was all over it. So when the Chrono Trigger anime surfaced just a handful of years ago, of course I wanted to see it. It felt like some sort of crime that an animated version of one of my favorite games could be made and hidden from the world for so long. Only after watching it did I learn that the real crime was the making of the Chrono Trigger anime. But you don't have to take my word for it: Insightful criticism after the cut. Read More... Posted Oct 17 2008, 10:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: snes, rpg, chrono trigger, square, anime, bob mackey, wtfriday, chrono trigger ds

• Persona 2: Innocent Sin Translation Complete

  With the Mother 3 translation looming on the horizon that is Friday (or Saturday), this is looking to be a great week for the fan translation scene. But Mother 3 isn't the only Japanese game to receive obsessive attention from devoted fans; yesterday marked the release of the translation patch for Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Due to their general size and complexity, very few PSX games are fan-translated (the most notable one being Tales of Phantasia), so this is quite a feat. But I'll let the trailer say more than my words ever could: The story behind Persona 2 is an interesting one; we actually got one of the Persona 2 games, Eternal Punishment, in the States back in 2000. For whatever reason--probably the low profits involved in localizing a niche RPG on a dying system--Atlus opted to bring out the second Persona 2 game, leaving Innocent Sin to the same fate as the last two chapters in the Shining Force 3 trilogy. Now, thanks to the work of a few devoted fans, we'll finally get to play one of the missing chapters in a series that's really picked up steam in the US since Persona 2's release. Read More... Posted Oct 16 2008, 12:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, mother 3, translation, bob mackey, rom hacks, psx, persona 2

• Secret of Mana is Bug-Tastic

  If you're like me, then you're probably playing Monday's Virtual Console release of Secret of Mana. The only excuse I'll accept is massive head trauma--and we're talking brains-leaking-from-a-gaping-wound trauma. That's the only way you can explain not playing Secret of Mana for the low, low price of eight bucks. Why, in 1993 I had to do some hardcore begging to get my parents to drop 60 dollars on this game, and that's back when American money had value! But I digress. After playing Secret of Mana, you've probably recognized two distinct facts: 1.) The game is awesome as hell, and 2.) It's also buggy as all get-out. I've never been privy to any real game-destroying antics, but the general weird glitchyness of Secret of Mana always made the game feel like its programming was held together by bubble gum and string. We can't exactly blame Square's Iranian super-programmer Nasir Gebelli, though; while originally designed to take advantage of the doomed SNES CD add-on (which eventually became the Playstation), Secret of Mana was hastily transformed into a regular-old SNES game once Nintendo washed their hands of CD-ROM technology. This change left some unfortunate problems in its wake. Read More... Posted Oct 15 2008, 08:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: wii, rpg, square, bob mackey, virtual console, secret of mana, glitches

• RPGs Make Me OCD

  Playing Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen has unleashed my inner demons--but luckily for me, these demons are neat, orderly, and keep everything in nice little piles. Now, I'm normally just a neat freak, and I try to keep my OCD tendencies to a minimum; but there's just something about RPGs that turns me into a hand-washing, tile-counting, light-switch-flicking freak, and I'm not sure if I can help it. On the brighter side of things, this behavior of mine makes certain games last, much, much longer than they should. For the darker side of things, please see my last point. When playing console RPGs, there are certain things I just have to do no matter what--and whether or not I need to be on prescription medication should be decided by you, dear reader. What follows is a list of my RPG compulsions: - Talking to everyone in town, then talking to everyone again once an event changes their dialogue. - Checking every desk/drawer/lamp/treasure nook in every possible location. - Not being able to leave or move on from an area until I have the best possible weapons/armor available from said area. - Making sure my status-ailment curing items are always in totals divisible by 5 (this worries me) - Never, ever using my uber-powerful items, even when I need them. You want elixirs? I've got 'em. Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 02:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, ds, final fantasy xii, dragon quest iv, ocd

• The Dividing RPG: Secret of Mana

  Squaresoft's Secret of Mana will be coming to Virtual Console this September, probably as Seiken Densetsu 2. It's probably a good thing Square-Enix didn't try to reshuffle the Mana titles when they came to America. Re-numbering Final Fantasy already requires more math than I want to do outside a school setting. (Yes, I was a dunce, and I still am according to expert testimony.) Secret of Mana's VC revival got people a-muttering on message boards and IRC. And I was shocked and appalled to learn that there are people out there who care not for Randi's pastel-coloured adventure to find a giant tree. They called it dated. They called it boring. They called it buggy, and "buggy" is actually being generous. By all programming logic, every copy of Secret of Mana should have imploded on the store shelves. I might be biased. Secret of Mana was my first RPG outside of the Dragon Warrior/DragonQuest series, so it wasn't too hard for me to be blown away by the harrowing story of an orphan who was fathered by a sword. Read More... Posted Sep 02 2008, 04:00 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: snes, rpg, japan, square-enix, 16-bit, nostalgia, nadia oxford, virtual console, computer ai, seiken densetsu 3, seiken densetsu 2, secret of mana

• Ys and You

  Monday saw the release of Ys Book I & II for the Wii's Virtual Console, making it the first time since mid-May I was remotely interested in anything on the service.  Standard VC bitchery: Nintendo, I am willing to buy digital versions of games I already own.  The save battery on my Earthbound cart still worked in 2005, but in the horrible year of 2008, who knows? If you weren't too aware of gaming in the early 90s, Ys Book I & II was basically the Halo of the ill-fated TurboGrafx-CD--not in how it was treasured by millions of gamers, but by what a showpiece it was for the hardware.  In 1990, CD-ROM technology was still astoundingly new, and NEC knew it could impress the pants off of prospective console buyers; hence, the showing of promotional videos featuring footage of Ys in gaming stores across the country (and I should know, because for some reason NEC also sent a handful of copies to my house). Read More... Posted Aug 26 2008, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: wii, rpg, bob mackey, ys, virtual console

• Time Investment

  Hooksexup, that monolithic purveyor of literary sex and cultural commentary that spawned 61 Frames Per Second from its lurid brain, has, broadly speaking, a pretty open mind about everything. We are free wheeling folks accepting of both things that are not stupid and many, many things that are stupid but still fun. Great cultural criticism and stunning new fiction? We love that heady stuff. Brainless celebrity gossip? We love that too (well, some of us. Frankly celebrity culture confounds me. That is, unless the celebrities in question are, like, Brenda Brathwaite. Or Prince. Or Optimus Prime.) What I am trying to express is that we are not easily shocked. Earlier today, videogames managed to shock our fearless editorial leader, Will Doig. He stumbled upon a story that’s been making the internet rounds of late concerning the discovery of a boss in MMORPG Final Fantasy XI that takes close to a full day of constant play to beat. Not just one player, mind you, but an entire team. The intrepid adventures in Beyond the Limitation, the name of the FFXI crew in question, spent eighteen hours straight fighting the Pandemonium Warden, stopping only because, according to one member, “People were passing out and getting physically ill.” They also apparently vomited later on. They didn’t even win the fight. This staggered Commandant Doig to the point where his only comment about the story was, “Physically! Ill!” I’m right there with him. But it concerns me that I can imagine spending that kind of time playing a game. Read More... Posted Aug 20 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, final fantasy, rpg, brenda brathwaite, dragon quest, will doig

• Gaming on a Train: Final Fantasy IV

  Before I start, let me officially state that DAYUM Rydia is smokin' hot. There, I said it; I'd say it again if I had to. Let's move on, averting our attention to the right only when hormones deem it necessary. One benefit of taking a mass transit vacation--aside from inexplicably being surrounded by Amish people--is that you can kill most of your travel time by playing video games, instead of waiting for stop signs or the odd empty stretch of highway to squeeze in a quick few turns of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (I have never done this).  On my most recent trip, I had initially planned on dabbling in quite a few different games I'd picked up over the summer, but ended up devoting all of my time to the Final Fantasy IV remake for reasons that say a lot about the decisions I make in life. Read More... Posted Aug 18 2008, 04:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: rpg, ds, nostalgia, final fantasy iv ds

• Are You Buying Final Fantasy IV DS? Huh? Huh? Huh??

  (Pant pant pant, eager tail wag.) Square-Enix's remake of its SNES classic is garnering good reviews, though I've seen more than one make mention about how it's a bit early for yet another Final Fantasy IV remake. For those of you at home keeping count, Final Fantasy IV has been released on the SNES, the PSOne, the Wonderswan (I think?), the GBA and now the Nintendo DS. I'm going to go ahead and offer myself up for blame: I buy every remake Square-Enix throws at me, except for the WonderSwan remake because that would just be wack. I can't help it; Final Fantasy IV, when it was known as the dumbed-down Final Fantasy II was a cornerstone of my awkward teenage years. I actually played it after getting through Final Fantasy III/VI, but I enjoyed it for its simple story and gorgeous music. I also played it while recovering from major surgery and I was pretty high, so there might be a bit of bias there. I'm pretty sure it's okay to love a game because it reminds you of your youth or the carefree summer days you should've spent outside, but it's less okay to love a game because it reminds you of a codeine daze. Read More... Posted Jul 23 2008, 05:24 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 9 comment(s) Filed under: remake, review, nintendo ds, rpg, square-enix, nostalgia, final fantasy iv ds

• Sega CD on iPhone: I Like Where This Is Going

  The iPhone is new and exciting. Sega CD games are pretty old, but still kind of exciting. What happens when you put the two together? I often wish I could go back in time and torment my younger self. I think we'd have some really cool conversations about video games. I mean, who cares about the fact that we've made major medical advancements or that we can travel in space buses (oh shit wait no we can't)? I want my younger self to hear all about how we can play the coveted games of our childhood on our telephones. Not that I have an iPhone. It's totally because I'm not into that useless capitalist waste. It's not like my mom's the only person who ever calls me. Sniff. You know I've never played a Lunar game? I know what I want to see next in the iPhone, thank you. Oh and it must retain the bizarre Working Designs "translation." Read More... Posted Jul 18 2008, 07:10 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with no comments Filed under: rpg, working designs, sega, retro, iphone, lunar, sega cd, vay

• 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

• Earthbound 2/Mother 3 Fan Translation Nears Completion

  Shigesato Itoi's brainchild was known in the West as Earthbound, a quirky RPG that eschewed every role playing convention. Like L. Frank Baum and Lewis Carrol before him, Itoi lured ordinary children into a world of bizarre fantasy. Itoi realized the limitations of his technology and the infancy of his medium, opting for a breezy, existentialist humor. Deconstructing the console RPG into its fundamental parts, Itoi was able to bring RPG mechanics outside of Tolkien-esque storyboards and into a world closely resembling modern-day suburbia. Its hero wasn't a muscled he-man nor a femme half-elf, but an ordinary adolescent kid. Ness saved the world with a cracked baseball bat and a t-shirt rather than a broadsword and chain mail. Read More... Posted Jun 12 2008, 10:00 AM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments Filed under: rpg, earthbound, mother 3

• Where is Victor Ireland?

  As with any art form, videogames have their share of notable people and subjects that fall through the cracks of time. Trends fade, voices go quiet, and games that were seemingly complete disappear entirely. 61 FPS’ Where Is? feature asks where the lost have gone. Anime-styled Japanese games, particularly RPGs, are a dime a dozen on store shelves these days. Though they’ve been a staple of gaming in the United States since the mid-‘80s, there was a time when only a select few of them made the Pacific jump and even fewer of them made it over without being heavily censored and altered to suit more western tastes. Working Designs was one of the few companies out there devoted to faithfully localizing quirky Japanese titles and was a fan-favorite throughout the 1990s. Read More... Posted May 15 2008, 11:00 AM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, where is, rpg, victor ireland, working designs