UpDownLeftRight

This is one of those games with a cult following, but in this case I’m not sure why. Over the years I’ve taken a few shots at it but each time failed to get past the first town. In the past two weeks I settled down to make an honest effort of it to see just why the game’s so highly acclaimed.

I got to the last boss and just… stopped. I figured I’d just take a break and concentrate on something else for a while, but a brief inspection shows that I have no desire to complete the game. Everything up to that point was disappointing or just annoying.

The battle system is first person. Why? I don’t know. There’s a static sprite of a monster and some goofy-looking patterns waving around in the background. On top of this bland mess lies the menu system, which is passable. One interesting note is the ‘autofight’ option which throws every character into a frenzy, attacking seemingly at random and curing every status ailment, however trivial. No items are used (there goes any chance Jeff could be useful), and no skills beyond life and heal (and there goes Paula). With Ness alone this might be useful. As for Poo, I don’t know how to use him. He’s too weak to attack, and he’s got too small an amount of MP to go more than a few battles without filling his inventory with MP restorers, and there are precious few decent MP restorers, too.

I would put a ‘read more’ button here, but I can’t find it. I might edit it in later. I found it! (more…)

Ok, this game was pretty cool. It’s a game I discovered quite by accident in a bundle of games that just sort of appeared. Someone, somewhere, decided that this game was pretty cool, and because of that I think so too.

The game is one of giant robots fighting, but in a good way. The designers must have made some epic effort to ignore every other game or anime series or comic or movie with the same theme because I tell you, this game is enjoyable.
Well, ok. FLCL is good too.

Perhaps Metal Warrior’s saving grace was that it was not a fighting game. It’s a side-scrolling platform shooter that also included giant robots. All the fighting that happened was done in a coherent plot and within the range of the entire level. Oh, and the cutscenes were awesome.

The main feature of the game was that you could jump out of your giant suit at any time and fly around as the pilot with only a gun and a jetpack. The benefits were that you can fit in tiny places or, and this was the cool bit, jump into a different giant killer robot. Oh, and piloting giant dropships. That’s pretty cool. (more…)

I’m really digging deep here. This game sits mounted on a plaque in the inner caverns of my mind.
Final Fantasy Legend II was my first rpg, and it is against this that I compare every such game I have played since and will play in the future.
There’s something you should know about videogames back in the day. They weren’t always easy to play. They weren’t always fun. When you back up and think about it, all you’re really doing is investing many hours to accomplish some task from which there is little reward and after which there is no continuation. No, these games were all about the story.
Well, and rewarding and encouraging obsessive compulsive disorders.
So what was the story? The story went like this:
Some guy in a hat had to hide a piece in a set of extremely powerful magic gems which were being snapped up for use in some fiend’s evil plan to take over the world, so he gives it to his son before vanishing. (more…)

Red always came first, in my mind. There’s Red, and then blue. Blue was the extra, the spare. Blue was the complement, not a replacement, not even a supplement. It goes both ways though, I guess.
How did I get Pokemon Red? I don’t remember ever buying it. I just vaguely remember spending hours squinting into a tiny monochrome screen. Attached to these faint memories however are a vast amount of emotions.
Ah! A whole world to explore and subjugate. No people, though. No, there was no character depth anywhere in Kanto, just sluggishly moving signs bearing fragments of almost-useful information. Even the main rival (I always named him Gary) was just a series of challenges.
No, the real joy was in defeating and capturing bits of information. (more…)