SNES #4: Final Fantasy 3

I am having so much trouble writing about this game. I've deleted and started over several times. I even had a high quality post, but somehow accidentally deleted it. Now that I'm writing this for the 50th time I'll try to do it right. One thing I've learned about gaming is that it's much easier to write about a bad game than it is a good one. Bad games are funny and insightful. If you ever want to learn about what makes a game great than go play some awful ones. With great games all you want to do is sit back and say "aw yeah, this is the good stuff." In fact, I think that's what I'm going to do.

I think this would be a good time to make some ridiculous comparisons. Of course everybody knows that FF3 is the greatest game ever made. It kicks Ocarina of Time's ass. It makes Super Metroid look like regular Metroid. It's as good as Duck Tales and Bionic Commando put together. FF7 has to bow down to it when they walk past each other in the hallway. It even makes Mario a bit nervous. Of course, the crazy thing about all these comparisons is that they are all true but one. Also, you either agree with me or you are wrong. Like a politician I have no middle ground on this issue.

So I played through this game again after about 10 years and I discovered that it is still the Citizen Kane of gaming. Playing it for even five minutes make me happy that I was born in the 80s. Screw you 1960s. All you had was The Beatles. Today I am much more acclimated to modern RPGs, so the slower story parts are much easier to sit through. When I was 9 and playing through this game I wanted to fight monsters and walk around town more. I found the first half to be a little too slow. I always hated going through the opera house back then, but now it only takes like five minutes. Why did that bother me so much? I must've been a jerk back then. That's the only explanation.

Of course the first half is great, but the game's true bread and butter is the remarkable second half. Every RPG before this one would've ended on the floating island in the World of Balance. However, once the world is torn asunder the bleak and dying World of Ruin opens up many new possibilities and freedoms. It's the most open ended RPG I've ever played that doesn't lose track of itself. There is truly only one thing on the agenda in the World of Ruin, and that is fighting Kefka in his fortress. Before that all you need to do is gather your companions, collect magicite, build up your character's abilities, gain levels, and do side quests. The best part about this is that it's mostly up to the player to decide what to do next. I remember finding it very liberating to do something in a different order than what the strategy guide told me. I didn't have much to rebel against back then. It seems like today's games have two templates. They either tell you exactly what to do and you move in a straight path to complete them, or they are completely open ended and have no ultimate goal. FF3 allowed you to explore and solve mysteries while making you feel like you were playing towards something. They sure don't make them like that anymore.

Heck, this is such an great game that even the flaws are engaging. I'm not sure that the game would be as good if we ever found out what was up with Siegfried or what happened to Bannon. Or how about the bugs and glitches? I fought the dragons legit this time, but as a kid I x-zoned like crazy. How about the one in the Veldt that when you sketch Gau you get like a million dirks? Love that one. These are all things that add color to the game and I'm truly glad they are there. I mean, if games didn't have bugs than what would people make all their youtube videos about? I just wish it didn't take me 15 years to find out the evade stat is meaningless.

So this is a game that has left an inedible impression on me. I know that I have been gushing in this review, and greatest game of all time is always a debatable topic. However, sometimes all a writer has is his hyperbole. What else is there to do when a game has been talked about so much? Of course, with this game hyperbole is quite easy. The sky's the limit.

Sega Genesis #5: Quackshot Starring Donald Duck

Well I said that this time I was going to play something a little more derivative, and I've done just that with Quackshot. It's a classic side scroller just like 1000 other games. I'm back working again now, so I don't have as much time for blogging. I'll probably just phone this one in and get my 20 views already. I don't see the harm in that.

Quackshot is a pretty good licensed Genesis game. I don't know why the 16 bit era was so good for popular character based games, but there sure were many good ones. Quackshot reminds me a little bit of the original Duck Tales, but not enough to relive those past glories. What we have here instead is a classic map exploration platform game. All the levels appear on the map, and you have to go between them solving various puzzles until you can get to the end of them. It's sort of like Strider for the NES but actually a little bit better. It doesn't have the awkward story line or difficult wall jump to worry about. I don't care if that one is an anime styled sci-fi adventure and this one is a Donald Duck starring Indiana Jones rip off. A good game is a good game.

I also enjoyed how Donald only uses non-lethal plungers to attack, but it does actually require some precision shooting. I had to pull off a surprisingly large number of jump shots aimed at just the right spot to subdue my opponent. When you shoot them, the enemies are only stunned for a few seconds and them come back to life, so they will have to be shot multiple times if you want to get past them. I actually thought this was fun even though it sounds miserable. Actually everything works fairly well in this game. Nothing to get too excited about, but it certainly gets the job done. I suppose it could've used a password feature, but there is some charm in an old fashioned game that takes two hours to beat. It's certainly one for the weekend though. You'd hate to get started and not have enough time to finish.

Well that's my article on that game. Did you enjoy it?

Super Nintendo #3: Super Mario World

Well here's another one of those world altering games that I love writing about so much. Actually, I'm starting to get a little sick of writing about groundbreaking games. There's only so much I can say about them. I think I'll play some completely derivative games after this. At least those don't require so many positive adverbs.

But anyway here's Super Mario World, the game that defined the early 90s and ruined my childhood. Now don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful game in almost every regard, but it did help kill off the NES. I couldn't really see the big picture back then. This was before all the used game stores and tribute websites. These days it's hard to think of the NES as being gone. I can go to just about any town in the country and find some store that at least has a couple of dusty old games for it. In 1992 though it almost felt like the SNES was going to eat the old systems leaving nothing behind. At least it had some great new games to play.

Super Mario World took the overworld map system from SMB3 and greatly expanded it. This time, instead of eight distinct worlds you have one long world with plenty of branching paths. There are eight Koopas to fight, but the world isn't split up into eight distinct areas like the other games. It's closer to six with some mini areas between them. Considering how sacred the number eight has become in Mario lore I doubt Nintendo would ever do something like this again. I think it works very well though. It gives the game a more natural feel, and keeps you from knowing what the next level is going to be like.

This game is kind enough to have a save system this time around, but the developers still didn't get it quite right. To save your game you have to go through a special level such as a ghost house. This means you'll have to beat certain levels over and over again just so you can save your game. This is certainly better than starting the game over every time, but it still could've been refined a little.

I guess my biggest complaint with this game has to do with flying. Mario has a system of gliding which allows for continuous flight. This makes it entirely possible to fly through entire levels. Actually it's pretty easy to do. I think it ruins a game somewhat when you can practically skip levels without even having to cheat. If you're good you can skip just about everything. It's a shame too because the levels are brilliantly designed. They're good enough to use an adverb for anyway.

I did enjoy playing through it again, although I did mostly stay on the ground. I was surprised by how quick the game was. I didn't get to all 96 levels before writing this, but I got to over 70 of them. I'd say only took a couple of hours. I can't believe that this game took up so much of my time and energy when I was a kid. I must've been bad at games back then.

It's likely that you've already played Super Mario World before. In that case I'm probably telling you things you already know. Writing about popular games can be tricky because they will be read by more people but there is less to say about them. I imagine there are 100s of articles about this game on the internet alone. Even if you've never played it I bet you know a few things about it. Even with all this saturation though it is still a great experience. It seems to be in a constant state of rediscovery. In fact you should probably go out and play it today. Just make sure you don't fly through all the levels. This isn't cheating, but it sure is cheap.

Game Boy Color #1: Pokemon Gold Version

If you're in your mid 20s than you can probably guess how hard it is for me to write about Pokemon. When I became a teenager was almost the same time the Pokemon cartoon started playing in America, and Pokemania was born. To so many people, Pokemon was a kid's franchise with annoying characters that gave people seizures. I think it's still hard for people my age to look past this today. Of course, people who have been able to get over the kid factor probably already know that Pokemon is the perfect franchise for handheld gaming.

Pokemon is the type of game that lasts seemingly forever, but can be played in short bursts. This makes it ideal for both traveling and staying at home. In the early days of Game Boy, they figured the way to deal with gamers on the go was to make very short games. This way they could be completed during a short car ride. Of course, the smaller cart size didn't help either. This made for a very shallow gaming experience. Pokemon, however, figured out a way to make a very long quest while still making the game a perfect portable. One of the most important features is the ability to save anywhere. This allows you to quickly end your game if you have to stop abruptly. Also, the gameplay is fairly simple, so if you do have to stop it is easy to pick up again. The games can take 100s of hours if you chose, so it can be played on very long trips, or when you're just sitting around your house. I seriously can't think of a game that fits the Game Boy better.

Pokemon Gold is one of the three games that make up generation 2. There are always multiple versions of each Pokemon game with slight variations, so even though there are three Pokemon games before it Pokemon Gold is the second actual game in the series. If you've played Pokemon before than you already know how it works. You travel from town to town, you battle and catch Pokemon, you raise them up by fighting some more, you fight gym leaders and collect badges, you encounter your rival and other villains, and you collect a bunch of items that will quickly fill up your inventory screen. It is truly glorious.

It is also important to note that this game has a second quest. I didn't know this initially, so I actually thought I had beaten the game before it actually happened. This was actually a little infuriating to me because I had spent so much time with this game and was ready to move on. Luckily, it doesn't take too long. However, it is a bit anticlimactic. At least I finally got to go to Mt. Silver.

Oh yeah, and my one gripe about this game is how it's always making you get off your bicycle. Was this for realism? They do realize this is a game where a giant egg can fight a tree. Would having someone ride their bike indoors make the games too implausible? Why didn't it put you automatically back on your bike after you leave these places? It seems like if you're automatically taken off you can just as easily be put back on. Having to select the bike from the menu screen so many times really slows things down.

All griping aside though I love those Pokemon games. I don't think they're usually thought of as RPGs, but I think they're some of the best RPGs out there. At least the first two are. I'm still far behind and have never played any of the newer ones. Hopefully I can correct this the next time I have 100 extra hours or start taking a passenger plane to work.

Atari 2600 #1: Pitfall 2

For whatever reason I'm having a good amount of trouble writing about Pitfall 2. I don't know if it's because the game itself is so unusual, or that I don't know how to write about Atari games. It's not like most other Atari games though. Most console games back then were simply point grabbers. Your purpose would be to collect as many points as possible before you died. Pitfall 2 radically changed the formula. In this game you couldn't die, and you had a definite goal. The game still has you running around collecting points, but this time around things were much more complicated.

Pitfall 2 is one of the few Atari games I'm going to be able to write about in the standard format, so hopefully you enjoy this one. You won't get getting many like it. This game is the sequel to the wildly popular Pitfall, which is often the game given credit for creating the platform genre. I have no idea how true that is, but knowing games it probably isn't at all. Can anyone think of an older game which has you walking back and forth on a plane, collecting things, and jumping over pits? I guess Donkey Kong is older if that counts.

Actually now that I think about it, that's about all you do in Pitfall. The whole point of that one is to use the upper and lower parts of the screen to find the shortest routes between treasures. You have twenty minutes to find as much as you can without falling in any holes or getting eaten by crocodiles. Pitfall 2 has much more freedom. The clock is gone this time around, and also it lets you move every which way. You can jump in the water and swim, or find a balloon and float. The fact that it goes vertical as well as horizontal must've been amazing back in 1984. It also has specific goals. Pitfall Harry has to find a lost diamond, his niece, and his pet lion. After he does this he does a little jig and the game ends. It's a surprisingly satisfying experience for such and old game.

Probably the most unique thing about this game is that Pitfall Harry cannot die. There are certain checkpoints throughout the game, and when he gets hit by something he is simply spirited away to the last checkpoint. Instead of dying you lose points and have to do that section over again. It can get frustrating, especially in the final section with all the low flying birds and bats. It would make me want to pull my hair out if I had any.

The fact that collecting points is such a priority in this game puts it in a really interesting spot in gaming history. 1984 would be the year that Atari would essentially implode. It was also right around this time that we lost Colecovision, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and basically all the consoles of that generation. The video game marked seemed almost dead until late 1985 when the NES came along and saved the world. It featured a brand new type of game which emphasized exploration and goal completion over point collecting. Pitfall 2 exists as both an old fashioned point collector and a newer platform style game. It was one of the few times after 1981 that Atari put out a game that was truly innovative and fun. After that point they were usually one or the other, or even more often neither.

So as you can tell, I'm a big fan of Pitfall 2. I think it is much better than the first one, and overall one of the best games on the system. Even though there are no lives it's still a challenge. This game has both the satisfaction of finishing something and the excitement and replay value of a classic arcade game. When I was playing this game, I told my girlfriend that I was really going to gush about this game. Honestly I said even more nice things about it than I expected. It really is a classic.

NES #35: Adventures of Lolo

Adventures of Lolo was the last game I beat before I started this blog. I could've written about it back then, but since I'm a stickler for my own arbitrary and meaningless rules I decided to save it. I'm glad I did it, because I've been on a massive dry spell lately. I keep wandering from game to game without being able to focus on one long enough to finish. I get in moods like this, so it's nice to still have some NES games to fall back on. Hopefully this will help me build up momentum as my blog moves forward.

Lolo is a very good game, and it's one of the genres that I miss most from the 8-bit era. There used to be many of these one screen action/puzzle games. I used to love these for several reasons. First of all, they made me use my brain. Even as a little kid I was sort of a stuck up nerd. Secondly, I loved how many levels they had. This was back during a time when levels were everything, and in my opinion the more there were the better the game would be. I also loved how short the passwords in these games were. The whole concept of passwords made no since to me as a kid. I thought that people picked out any ol' random word they wanted for. I couldn't understand why some of them were so long. Now I understand that they were actually pieces of code, and it makes perfect since why a one screen puzzle game would have a shorter password than an epic rpg. Still, 4 letter passwords are certainly a plus.

Lolo has a fairly simple concept. You collect hearts and then open up a treasure chest before something kills you. You will also occasionally be able to turn some monsters into eggs. It's sort of like Bubble Bobble without all the jumping. Some of the puzzles are quite fiendish while others just require walking very fast or not being an idiot. I'm proud of myself for being able to get through this whole game without looking up any of the puzzles. At least that's what I did the first time through. The second time I was in a big hurry so I looked a couple of things up. I don't figure it's really cheating if I've done it all before.

This is a very good game, but there are a couple of things that really annoy me. The main complaint I have about this game is how exact it requires you to be. Now I understand that action/puzzle games are very much about the planning and need to be exact, but the problems in Lolo appear to be more control issues than design flaws. Imagine that you have just spend several minutes plotting out a level and have executed everything personally. Now it is time to go move the final block. But wait a second, the block was moved an inch closer to the wall, and now it is impossible to move. You can imagine my frustration as this happens over and over. This isn't from the design either. It's from the controls allowing Lolo to push things to quickly. I know that the game would be incredibly slow without the fast block moving action, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere. If you push your block even a hair in the wrong direction it will become impossible to move and that only leads to suicide. Poor Lolo had to commit suicide dozens of times while I was playing, and it's a game that was still fairly fresh on my mind. Would it have killed the gameplay if Lolo was able to pull as well as push? I suppose it would change that way the levels were designed, but I'm sure there would be a lot less broken controllers in the world from angry gamers.

So anyway I did have fun with Lolo. It's not so long and difficult that it becomes impossible. The levels aren't numbered so I don't know exactly how many there are, but I think it's around 60. As I said before, I miss these old one screen action/puzzle games. I can only think of a handful coming out after the NES went under. It's to the point now that if one did come out, it would only be a novelty and not proof that the genre still existed. And while this game isn't the strongest in the genre, it's still a lot of fun. It's also not as expensive as Bubble Bobble or Kickle Cubicle which knocks it up a couple of points on my list.

Nintendo 64 #1: Super Mario 64

Super Mario 64, the first 3D installment of the Mario series, was the game that changed everything. There had been 3D games before this one, but they were mostly on the fringe systems like the Jaguar, 3D0, and at the time Playstation. Sure you could play some 3D polygon games if you felt like spending 500 dollars and ordering all your games out of the back of magazines. Mario 64 was the first one us regular people got to play. When Nintendo got involved we knew that 3D games were for real.

Now before I get into the gameplay too much, I want to spend a little time talking about the early days of N64. I can never remember a console coming out with so much debate and controversy. It was right during the time everyone was switching over to discs. However, before the Playstation finally broke out there had never been a successful CD-Rom based system. Nintendo saw this and decided to go with good ol' cartridges. This caused no end to the gripes in the video game community. I still hear complaints about it to this day. It helps to have a little context though. Nintendo started developing the system in 1993 when cartridges were extremely successful. Even when it was released there were more people out there playing Genesis than Playstation. I'm sure if Nintendo had waited a couple of years than they would've made a cd based system. However, the N64 was still a rousing success even with the small library of games. There were complaints, but everyone I knew was playing it, and that has a lot to do with Mario 64.

After playing through it again I noticed that Mario 64 changed much more than just the perspective. Early Mario installments had been mostly action based. You went from point A to point B while fighting monsters along the way. Mario 64 changed this. Developers now could put in a greater variety of tasks to complete, and the series became much more puzzle based. You now had mysterious stars to find with each one being found in a different way. Half the fun was figuring out the new puzzle. In fact, all the old Mario conventions seem to be put in as afterthoughts. Is there really a reason to go around collecting extra lives? The only difference between a regular death and a game over is where you start on the map. Extra lives only save you a few seconds of your time. Then again, we did want to see what all of that looked like in 3D.

I also think it's interesting how deemphasized the monsters are. I'd say that each level has about a third the enemies that the previous games had. This is probably both because of the new focus on puzzles and the difficulty of getting all the monsters into the new 3D world. It seems like the main purpose for monsters is to help you get 100 coins. This actually makes killing them even more fun than on the older games. The one downside is that in the place of monsters they put in about a thousand of those orbs that shoot fire. Was it really necessary to put those near every ledge and precarious spot? I guess they wanted to make sure we kept moving even without koopa troopas to dodge.

I also noticed this time through how lonely the game is. Other games in the series take place in lively worlds. Even if you can't visit the people you feel like there is a lot going on. In Mario Sunshine you can't go ten feet without splashing a tourist in the face. This game takes place in a lonely castle with only a few Toads who appear out of nowhere to keep you company. I know that Mario goes to other worlds, but this feels more like a temporary trip out. The real world Mario inhabits is lonely and made of stone. This really makes it feel like it is Mario against the world, and I think it is an interesting stylistic choice.

So as usual I had a great time playing this one. It had been a few years since I had really sat down and played it, so it didn't feel that familiar to me. I did go ahead and get all 120 stars as a tribute to my youth. I remember when my brother, my dad, and myself were all competing to see who could get 120 stars first. I can't remember what order we finished in, but it sure was a lot of fun. For the record, the last star I got was 100 coins in Tick Tock Clock. That's a fun level, but it sure is easy to fall down dead.

So 15 years later it's easy to see the flaws in this game. It has all those fat polygons and awkward camera angles. I would actually say that it feels more dated than the older Mario games with maybe the exception of Super Mario Land. However, there is more of a reason to play this game that just nostalgia. In 1996 this game was all about the eye candy. Everybody wanted to get their hands on it just to see those rippling pools and fat goombas. When you play it now, though, you realize how much was put into making this game fun to play. Nintendo could've just put in a bunch of stunning visuals and not worried about the gameplay. I still think the games's biggest accomplishment is that with all the new technical achievements the gameplay still came first.