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Posted on Nov 24th 2013 at 03:04:35 AM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under Total War, shogun total war, medieval total war, total war, shogun, medieval, sengoku jidai, sengoku, middle ages, picts, kilts, aw |
Part 1: The Board Games
Shogun: Total War
[img width=256 height=309]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Shogun_Total_War.jpg[/img]
Have you ever wanted to play something that was a unique creation based on turn based strategy ideas pioneered by series like Civilization, Master of Orion, Fire Emblem, Liberty or Death, and countless other classics? What if it had a system to allow real time strategy fans to enjoy like Age of Empires on an even more epic scale?
Well my friends, you need some Total War in your life.
The first game in the series was developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Electronic Arts. Prior to this endeavor The Creative Assembly was known for porting sports games to various PC systems, such as porting Amiga games to DOS. Their history with EA goes back to the early 1990's, where they began porting FIFA games to DOS systems. EA allowed them to expand their porting efforts into full blown developed titles such as a couple of Rugby World Cup games, 1999's Cricket World Cup, and Australian Football League games.
In the late 90's work began on an entirely different project, this one being a mishmash of turn based and real time strategy set in Japan in the middle of the 16th century.
Shogun: Total War released for PC in June 2000 to critical acclaim. The game allows battles where over 1,000 sprites appear onscreen at one time. Many people in the PC market had been moving to 3D Accelerated cards by this time, but the sheer number of objects onscreen was a technical achievement for the day.
On top of the battles involving the real armies the game offered a plethora of other options to deal with opposing forces. You could use a spy to gather information on them, an emissary can forge alliances and create ciesefires, Portuguese Jesuits act as emissaries while also converting populations from Buddhism to Catholicism, ninja act as basic assassins, and shinobi are more powerful spies, geisha are legendary assassins who rarely fail.
The battles declare that proper tactics and deployments are used to inflict maximum damage on your enemies. Sun Tzu's philosophy in The Art of War was highly integral to Japanese tactics, and knowing the basics will help you win. Or you can just outmuscle with numbers, but you can take heavy losses and win a Phyrric victory, or lose and bring dishonor to your clan. Will you commit seppuku to regain your honor?
[img width=640 height=480]http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g436/gpro83/Shogunbridgebattle_zpsc1f69667.png[/img]
The campaign map is set up much like a game of Risk mixed with Diplomacy. Armies can move from one province to another no matter how large their first province is. At the start of each game the player can pick a time period to begin, with the earlier ones having the major clans holding fewer lands, and the later ones starting with larger holdings.
Shogun received an expansion pack based on the Mongol invasions of Kublai Khan. The game doesn't change much but just adds another campaign to play. However, the Mongol invasions occurred about 300 years before the main campaign, and the technology and units are mostly the same. Despite being budgeted and treated as a B-Title Shogun: Total War sold rather well, enough to warrant a sequel at least.
Medieval: Total War
[img width=256 height=339]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/Medieval_Total_War.jpg/256px-Medieval_Total_War.jpg[/img]
The sequel to Shogun is much larger in scale, has many more factions each with unique units instead of bonuses to units everybody can get, and focuses so much more on the religious politics that it is a much more satisfying gaming experience than Shogun. That said, the gameplay engine is largely the same. Battle graphics and UI is unchanged, the campaign map is in the same board game style. Medieval was the first game to include seige battles, something that would become a mainstay for the entire series. There's just so much more to the game that it makes for a breathtaking advancement, the proper evolution of a sequel! It released in August of 2002 to even more critical fanfare and higher sales than Shogun. The Creative Assembly had moved away from Electronic Arts and as a result, Medieval: Total War was published by Activision (nowadays that's like courting the axis of evil, wait until Sega enters the ring!)
This game did start a meme among the fans of the series though, and that meme is the rule that the Pope is a massive dillhole. He'll excommunicate you for some stupid reason and then forget about it if you just give him some money, wait for your king to die, or kill him. Being excommunicated was the best time for expanding, because who cares about the Pope?
Medieval also gives some more immersive and strategic choices. You get the ability to assign a governor to your newly conquered province, if you're interested I have a few hints. In highly economic provinces use a guy with high acumen, in a province with naturally low public order or with a different majority religion, use a guy with high dread, and always use somebody with high loyalty. These random provincial governors never die though. You could be 200 years into the campaign, with the Mongols invading, and that guy you made governor in turn two is still alive. It was nice for something to do, but it wasn't fully realized.
Medieval continued the tradition of having an expansion that was based on an invasion. This time it was the Viking Invasion, as the Mongol invasion was included as part of the base game. The Viking Invasion takes place during the petty kingdoms period of the history of the British Isles, even letting you control a personal favorite of mine, the Picts! Those sneaky bastards resisted the Romans and invented the kilt! Many modern differences between the Gaels of Ireland and Scots can be traced to the independently minded Picts.
[img width=700 height=525]http://news.softpedia.com/images/reviews/large/MTWVI_001-large.jpg[/img]
I personally believe that the music in Medieval is the most immersive and beautiful of the series. It really feels like it belongs to the period in question, and is completely non-intrusive, using sound effects such as the chirping of birds to break up the songs so they do not feel monotonous. The Muslim factions even have a different overall score than the Christian ones. Jeff van Dyck was the composer of the soundtracks for both of The Board Games.
Next time we see Total War make the jump to full 3D!
Greetings Ghouls 'n Ghosts! I am back and bringing you a spooktacular with a game that at first glance, should not be an experience that delivers goosebumps and stiff hairs. So, why does a game remembered as a stealth/action game have such a creepy atmosphere?
[img width=553 height=550]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-016/ms/U-016-S-11430-A.jpg[/img]
Thief: The Dark Project is a game that spent such a long time in development that it is rather surprising it came out to be such a great game and experience. Other games which spent so long in development include such well remembered classics like Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, and Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Thief stars who else than a master thief by the name of Garrett in an unnamed medieval/magical/steampunk metropolis simply called 'The City.' Garrett is a former Keeper, masters of stealth and the keepers of ancient tomes and knowledge. But, now he's a freelance thief who finds himself caught up in a supernatural plot.
So, what makes this game spooky? As a result of its long development it went through many early builds and re-writes before the game was really built. The Dark Project was its final working title, and at times could have become a first person swords and sorcery action RPG involving communist zombies. The developers added stealth elements and realized that sneaking by the enemies was more fun than trying to fight everybody.
[img width=550 height=778]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-027/bf/U-027-S-05740-A.jpg[/img]
True story: the design team was inspired towards the stealth model by everybody's favorite submarine simulation, Silent Service. In the final game Garrett is an unstoppable force of sticky fingers while hidden or in the shadows, when exposed you must be a master of the combat system or face certain death.
Some of the inspiration from the early zombie idea was left in the final product, these are known as the Monster Levels. The game goes through a cycle every two or three levels, one type of level being a human based level, the other being one of the monster levels. The monster levels include useless zombies and quite a few more original monster designs.
Most of the creepy feelings and moments come not from the actual encounter of the monsters though, but the suspense built up by Eric Brosius' sound design and music compositions.
Sadly, Thief's sequels broke away from the horror inspired monster levels, being all but non-existent in Thief II: The Metal Age. There is a throwback towards The Dark Project's horror levels in the third Thief game, Deadly Shadows. It may just be one of the single greatest levels in the history of level based gaming. The Shalebridge Cradle...
So, the next time you're itching for a midnight gaming experience to enjoy in the dark, fire up Thief Gold, the total expanded version of the main game, turn out the lights, put your headphones on and immerse yourself in The City.
[img width=300 height=425]http://www.rfgeneration.com/images/games/U-075/bf/U-075-S-06780-A.jpg[/img]
I could consider my freshman year of high school the time in which I really blossomed socially. I lost over 70 pounds which swelled my confidence and lead to my first, real, fun girlfriend. It was also a time where it was easy to go to anybody's house to play any of the 3 big systems of that time. Ah yes, I remember fondly my experiences with my own Playstation 2, and I had a few Xbox friends, and a couple of Gamecube friends.
One gaming experience that dates back to this time of my life is our game today. One of my football and wrestling teammates had this game for his Xbox and bought it when it was still fairly new. I was at his house when he opened the game and we both got to experience it for the first time with each other. Mainly because this game has split screen, hell yes! It does not make full use of the Xbox though and only allows 2 players at maximum. For my current playthrough I'm flying solo, I started on Normal difficulty but it was too easy for me, so I bumped it up to Tough (Hard).
This is one of the few examples of a game that is almost entirely unique and should be experienced by anybody looking to have a diverse gaming resume. About the only things that are not completely new and awesome in Stubbs is the literal Halo 1 ripoff driving, and loading screens. It says right on the box art that the game was built with the Halo engine. Stubbs changes the perspective from first person to third person, letting you watch our main zombie hero shuffle along his way. Stubbs does move fairly slow being a zombie and all, but compared to the zombie horde that he can control Stubbs has the ability to do a sort of sprint after shuffling in a direction long enough for a speed boost.
I can't even complain about the loading screens.
This game's title is no lie, this game takes the normal idea of the zombie game, that of being a survivor trying to escape having your brains munched on by the living dead, and instead lets you be the living dead and build zombie hordes by gorging on warm, delicious human brains. Stubbs also has quite a few nasty, gory, but effective weapons at his disposal. In the order that they are introduced to the player these weapons are Unholy Flatulence, Gut Grenades, Hand Possession, and Sputum Head. So you get an area of effect stun fart, a lethal grenade from Stubbs' giant shotgun wound, the ability to control an enemy, and can use Stubbs' head as an exploding bowling ball.
They may be undead, but they're still Americans dammit!
For style and plot, as you can see from the clip above this game runs with tongue in cheek B-horror movie inspired parodies, along with witty writing and dialogue that you'll hear coming from those pesky not undead people of the fine, futuristic city of Punchbowl, Pennsylvania circa 1959. Punchbowl is made in the style of those old 50's "City of the Future" specials that are infamous for their insane optimism and wild technology speculation.
Like robots and Star Trek technobabble.
In terms of enemies in the game there is a wonderful variety. There are 6 basic enemy types, 5 of these types have 3-5 specific enemies. The unvaried enemy type is just the easy, usually unarmed, but still delicious common citizen. These enemy types are scattered intelligently throughout the game, so you are constantly adapting to new enemies not only at the beginning of a new level, but throughout the level, and later in the game as well.
For my current playthrough of the game I'm able to experience it through an official Xbox component box and through my TV's component jack, and despite its age it looks fantastic in 1080i. The sound design is also stellar for this game. There is not much music that plays in the game outside of vehicles and areas where there are radios or TV screens in sight, or the mall. What really stands out is the quality of the sound effects, and since there is a general lack of music these needed to be high quality. The sound effects more than deliver, you'll come to love some of the pleas of Punchbowl's citizens and defenders while listening to Stubbs or one of the horde crunch down through a fresh skull and chew the softer, delicate brains.
Being asleep underground for so long leads to the most epic leak taking of all time.
Overall Stubbs is an incredibly well designed game and it is obvious to see why this game has become a cult classic, even if the game is quite short. If you have an Xbox still laying around you owe it to the system to hunt this game down and give it a nice playthrough. I got mine complete for $3 at one of my thrift stores, current online prices hover between $20 and $30 for the Xbox version. The PC and MAC versions are considerably cheaper, but the Xbox version is plentiful enough that you should hopefully not have too much trouble finding a copy for a decent price.
Noriyuki Iwadare: Chapter 2
When we last left off with Iwadare's career we just stopped at Der Langrisser, and covered the big Lunar games and one remake, now its time for a new series to rise, and Lunar to continue with its remake train.
In 1996 Iwadare and Pack-In-Video worked together to make Monstania, a short tactical RPG for the Super Famicom that you guessed it, was never localized anywhere. It was quite late in the Super's lifecycle by then and Japan already had the Nintendo 64 to play with. Also, Pack-In-Video almost never localized their games anyway.
In the same year Iwadare and Game Arts released the Playstation remake of the first Lunar, adding Story to the end of the title for some reason. Anyway, this is more than just a simple remake, since the Playstation has more power than a Sega CD the developers were able to upgrade graphics, sound, music, everything, and with the upgrades came new songs.
A year later saw the Japanese exclusive release of Langrisser IV for the Sega Saturn, Iwadare worked with a couple of others to produce the music for the game. The aforementioned remake of Lunar Walking School, Magic School Lunar, also released for the Saturn and only for Japan in 1997.
What the rest of us got from the wonderful year of 1997 is another work from Iwadare and Game Arts, a new project, one that's not Lunar. Grandia. Grandia originally came out in 1997 for the Sega Saturn (for Japan only of course), but it was ported to the Playstation and released internationally in 1999 (2000 for the Euros out there). Because of its similarity to Xenogears in appearance and camera control it is the cause for some finger pointing ire amongst RPG fanboys, or did back when people cared.
1998 would see a couple more big projects from Iwadare. Langrisser V would release for the Saturn and Playstation (what geographical area do you think it was released in?) This is currently the latest game of the Langrisser series until Schwarz releases. Iwadare is credited as the composer for this upcoming game as well. But, the big news, at least internationally, was the remake of Lunar 2, getting the full Playstation treatment just like the first game got.
The next year was fairly quiet for the international Iwadare fan. None of the games would release outside of Japan but one did start a brand new series. Well, it is a new game in a way. Growlanser released in Japan only in 1999, but we would get some of the later games in the series.
In 2000 the world of role playing would be shaken to its core, or it should have been if it didn't, because Game Arts and Iwadare came out with an all new Grandia for the new at the time Sega Dreamcast! I consider this game to be in the Holy Trinity of Dreamcast RPGs alongside Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star Online. Just ignore the PS2 port and get the DC version!
Let us start the 21st century by saying that the next couple games had no chance of releasing outside of Japan. Mercurius Pretty is a remake of an old Japanese PC-98 game, there was no exposure when it was originally released and most likely not going to attract even a niche fanbase at the time. True Love Story 3 is a dating sim, that's about it for that one.
So the next music the international crowd was introduced to is a Grandia spin off, Grandia Xtreme. I have not played this game yet as I have never owned it and did not rent it back in the day, it is on my hunting list though as I have been digging the music.
Another True Love Story would come out along with an... 'adult' visual novel called Wind: A Breath of Heart. All the good stuff is in the PC version as it was cut for the console market. 2003 would see Iwadare work on that timeless PS2 classic Mega Man X7 with an entire music crew. Counting him, there are 9 credited composers for that game. Yikes!
Anyway I'll skip the Mega Man X7 for now and move onto something else completely awesome. Lawyers. Namely, Capcom's resident lawyer Nick Wright and crew. Yes, Iwadare started in the Ace Attorney series with the 3rd game, which we know as Trials and Tribulations. These games originally released as Game Boy Advance games. They were later remade for the Nintendo DS and released internationally a few years later, when I got in on the series.
Iwadare finally got to work for the big name in console RPGs, Square Enix, to compose the soundtrack to Radiata Stories before going back to compose the music for the Grandia I wish I could forget, Grandia III. After this he went back to making music for some Japanese exclusive sims primarily he made a return to the Ace Attorney series with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth in 2009, and its UNLOCALIZED sequel Gyakuten Kenji 2 in 2011.
Alongside the new Ace Attorney spin off Game Arts and Iwadare made ANOTHER Lunar remake for the Playstation Portable. Lunar: Silver Star Harmony came out in 2009. The awesome Limited Edition has some sexy Lunar girl cards and a sweet CD soundtrack of all the music in the game! This is more of a slight enhancement to the PS1 remake than a different overhaul of the Sega CD original.
Grandia Online released in 2010 with Iwadare composing the entire soundtrack. Yes, this MMO is exclusive to Japan. I think its getting quite clear why Noriyuki Iwadare might not be as well known as he should be. Half his music never made it across any body of water!
The most recent games that Iwadare has worked on are the aforementioned Grandia Online, Gyakuten Kenji 2, and Kid Icarus: Uprising. Upcoming games with his music are the newest Ace Attorney game and Nick's return; Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, as well as Langrisser Schwarz.
Composer Compendium LP - Stewart Copeland
Introducing the Composer Compendium Limited Play, or LP for short. The idea behind the LP is to highlight a short career in video games. Perhaps a life was tragically cut short, or an artist made music for a handful of games and moved on, or, and this is the most common one, they exist as a popular entity outside of video games already. They have a made name with clout behind it, whether the person was in a famous band, does Broadway music, movie and TV soundtracks, whatever else they were doing beforehand does not matter.
As an extra to the conclusion of Noriyuki Iwadare here is the Limited Play of The Police's drummer Stewart Copeland's work in the video game industry.
Sadly, he only worked on one series of games and one other random game, but the best games in that series. Mr. Copeland composed the music for the first four Spyro games. He started work on the very first one for the Playstation, and finished with Enter the Dragonfly on PS2.
This time coincided with many musicians outside of the realm of video games entering the medium in the West. They no longer needed in depth knowledge of a system's sound capabilities with the rise of CD gaming. The CD brought incredibly high quality music with it since NEC first introduced the Turbo CD as an add-on to the Turbografx-16. You did not need to be Yuzo Koshiro and create your own music coding language just to create high quality music. This brought many new audio styles to the world of mid-late 90's gaming.
I love me some Insomniac, and part of that reason is that I grew up with the PS1 trilogy of games and this music. I still like to try and play through them every other summer for some fun and nostalgia. Even back then I thought the music was much different from anything I had played on the Super Nintendo and PS1 beforehand. This may have to do with Copeland's lack of experience with the overall gaming market. He wasn't listening to the soundtracks of other games to get a style of what a game should sound like, he just made great music to fit the style of the one game he was working on at the time.
The one non-Spyro game soundtrack Copeland did is Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. I have not played this game so I don't know how it holds up, but I know its supposed to at least be creepy and mildly scary at times. I'll leave you with this nice, pleasant, limited little Spyro sample and this interview footage of the man himself.
Playing Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms, the Brittania campaign. I have primarily Welsh ancestry so decided to see what I can do since you can control them vying for continued independence against England's sword. You can also play as Scotland (and get a badass free army when William Wallace enters the history books).
Chapter 1: Llywelyn The Great
With Wales you start off with Llywelyn the Great, basically the Welsh cultural equivalent to William Wallace. He is an insane general in the early game, and his heir Prince Dafydd is not far behind. Beating the English with Llywelyn early on gives the Welsh immense pride and you get small free armies that pop up around the countryside. I built 2 extra big armies with these initial free troops. One was lead by Prince Dafydd, and the other a young 2 star general I wanted to give some experience to named Ieuan of Clynnog Fawr. Llywelyn's veteran troops continued their march South, Dafydd began conquering to the East, then turned to the North, and Ieuan marched Eastward to Oxford.
More men rose to the cause of war in the countryside, and English resistance was weak to the overwhelming rise of Welsh pride and might. These new men were used as the basis of the garrisons for the conquered English towns, being some of the best early Welsh units.
Llywelyn conquered Cornwall and raised his banner in the region before passing on due to a mysterious illness.
Chapter 2: King Dafydd's Rule Begins
Dafydd was crowned new King of Wales, and Welsh expansion soon began to halt temporarily. Dafydd, showing that he was more than a conqueror, began a nationwide focus on building up the infrastructure of the vast lands he now ruled. Everything from Cornwall in the South, to Oxford in the East, to Cumberland in the North was under Welsh dominion. Prince Edward of England soon departed for the Ninth Crusade, giving King Dafydd time to accomplish his goal of building defenses and expanding the economies of his new lands.
Wales and Scotland announce an alliance. William Wallace emerges and induces fright in the remaining English and Norwegian lords of the North. King Dafydd feels his position continue to strengthen, and turns his attention to building up a navy. Welsh fleets soon dominate the Irish sea and blockade the remaining English ports in Ireland. However, Edward returned from his Crusade and is crowned King Edward I. The new king begins planning to retake lands that are now in King Dafydd's hands, and has a big army of Knights Templar at his back.
Chapter 3: The Battle of Kingsroad
The inevitable battle happens on the road between Chester and Lancaster. King Dafydd surprises King Edward, and has extra reinforcements from the North. The Welsh and English army stare each other down while Dafydd places his reinforcements on his right flank, angling them towards Edward's forces. Edward finally moves, English longbowmen and Templar crossbows running in range of the Welsh archers. The Welsh advantage in arrows created some chaos in the English army, and most of the longbows and half the crossbows were lost in the first large skirmish.
King Dafydd then executes the second part of his skirmish plan, marching his two units of javelin skirmishers towards Edward's weakened front line. With the added javelins the archers march forward, getting in range of the rest of the English army now. Both flanks begin to cave in for Edward. Dafydd realizes he is outnumbered on horse, and the heavy armor on the rest of Edward's Templar forces shows him that his arrows will be less effective. So he begins the charge.
Most of the Welsh infantry is lightly armored, and Dafydd knew that many would die to defend their new lands. He uses his weaker melee units to do as much damage to King Edward's line as possible, keeping his own heavy infantry back for the moment. The rangers used the rest of their ammo during the melee, but most of the Welsh melee was cut down and routed. It looked like Edward could still come out on top, but he was still outnumbered, and the English cavalry superiority was now evened out.
The final Welsh charge began. The rangers pulling out their melee weapons now. Dafydd used his numbers to run his remaining infantry around the remaining English, surrounding Edward's forces, using his remaining heavy infantry as the anchor of the final charge. Edward keeps his final guards outside of the Welsh circle, and charges into the rear of a Welsh archer. Edward soon found Dafydd's own cavalry smashing into his rear flank. King Dafydd then slew King Edward in a one on one melee. The very few remaining English soldiers instantly surrendered. The battle had largely been even. 700 Welsh fell in the Battle of Kings. But they took an equal number of English with them, more importantly, powerful Templar units. The largest victory that day was felling King Edward, which left King Dafydd of Wales the undisputed power of the region.
Chapter 4: The Sack of York
After the dust settled from the Battle of Kingsroad Lord Ieuan began to mobilize once more. In a rather memorable battle against the English Lord Edward Dangerfyld, Lord Ieuan ordered his catapult to open fire on the English line. The first stone that the catapult fired smashed into Lord Edward, killing him instantly. Lord Edward was the first casualty of this skirmish for Oxford. Lord Ieuan emerged victorious and kept the fortified center under Welsh control.
After Lord Ieuan's victory King Dafydd began to mobilize for a force of his own and marched on the English stronghold of York. With Edward out of the way and his defensive lines holding it was time to strike! The Welsh king's forces broke through the border defenses and took York with little trouble, sacking the rich haven in the process.
Chapter 5: The English Marches
Even with King Edward dead the English did not give up on their goal to take back control and conquer the Welsh. Small strike teams penetrated into Welsh territory, being beaten away from Oxford continually by Lord Ieuan. A young English Lord Alan Hayway almost made it to ancestral Welsh borders, from before the marches of Llywelyn. Lord Alan was stopped by a young Welsh Lord Meilir Idwal, and a battle occurred near Shrewsbury Castle. Lord Alan fought valiantly but the Welsh lines held and the English noble fell in battle.
Every Lord the English sent to take back their cities from the Welsh fell in battle, it was a true slaughter. More men fell to King Dafydd's sword as they tried to retake York. Another English Lord, Walter of Glastonbury, began a siege of the Welsh garrison at Gloucester. The Welsh Lord in charge of the defenses was Tiernan of Bangor. Both lords fell in battle, and Gloucester remained under Welsh dominion.
Chapter 6: Ieuan the Honorable
While King Dafydd recovered from the Siege and Sacking of York, Lord Ieuan finally managed to march South and take Winchester from English control. The two pronged assault of English land from King Dafydd and his loyal vassal Lord Ieuan the Honourable of Clynnog Fawr, was resoundingly successful, and English domination of the British Isles was slowly slipping away from the English crown.
Before Lord Ieuan could fully recover from his conquest of Winchester he found himself besieged by an English army. Despite the battle Ieuan still had the larger overall force and managed a successful defense, keeping Winchester under the rule of Wales.
Lord Ieuan's defense was considered a piece of tactical genius and risk. Ieuan charged his own cavalry out and took out England's catapult men to open the battle. He then used England's own battering ram to protect his skirmishers. By the time England's melee units made it to the Welsh line they were under arrow and javelin fire, and would retreat quickly.
Chapter 7: Politics of The British Isles
King Dafydd managed to strengthen his alliance to the northern Scots by marrying off his daughter and gaining the devotion of the young Scottish Lord Cormac Bell. Bell's trip to Wales has been delayed due to Scottish military movement towards the South.
[img width=700 height=388]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cormac-the-unfortunate.png[/img]
Cormac the Unfortunate
The English King William was in a precarious position since the fall of York. King Dafydd's conquest of York left him trapped just to the North at Newcastle, with almost no backup. Surrounded by Scots to the North and the army of King Dafydd to his South, and the garrison of Cumberland to his West, the King of England was forced to wait for reinforcements.
The Irish tribes were knocking on the doors of English control of Ireland as well, having an army just outside of Dublin, where English trade was blocked by the dominant Welsh fleets of the area. A complete Celtic pincer was pushing the Norman nobility of England aside, and re-establishing dominance.
[img width=700 height=393]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/rhys-the-spy-lands-in-ireland.png[/img]
Rhys the Spy lands in Ireland
A rebellion of English lords was also spotted by King Dafydd's agents just outside Dublin as well, making both the Irish and rebel armies direct threats to the English stronghold.
Chapter 8: A King Deserted
King Dafydd left his post at York to chase down William's reinforcements, lead by the English Lord Aston Courtnay. Now Dafydd's army was much more balanced, having a large cavalry presence, as well as plenty of melee and his typical collection of archers and skirmishers.
Lord Aston stood little chance, his own bodyguard was ravaged early in the battle. Dafydd's cavalry sealed the battle by charging into the rear of the English infantry during the melee. King Dafydd broke away from the cavalry battle to take out the men using Lord Aston's catapults. The left flank of the King of Wales had almost collapsed by the time the cavalry fighting was over, but the crash of Welsh cavalry in their rear flank broke them instantly.
King William was now alone, with little to protect him, and the mighty Welsh King on his doorstep.
Chapter 9: The Siege of Newcastle
After the battle King Dafydd took an abandoned English fort near the border to Newcastle, resting before marching towards Newcastle Upon Tyne, where King William was trapped. The Welsh king quickly opened siege to the final English stronghold in the North.
[img width=700 height=393]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/the-celtic-alliance.png[/img]
The Celtic Alliance ft. Cormac the Unfortunate
There was an English garrison to the North of Newcastle in a fort on the border to Scotland, which was besieged by a large Scottish force. King Dafydd took this opportunity to begin his assault on the King of England. With the Scots to the North Dafydd was confident in his position.
Chapter 10: Newcastle Falls
King Dafydd opened the battle by pushing his siege ram and tower to the walls, knocking the gate down and storming the walls. The battle of Newcastle's walls did not last long, with the veteran Welsh force triumphant. Many of the Welsh men with ladders were Dafydd's rangers, so he held them back until his melee was on the walls, then charged them forward and let them take positions to open fire once on the walls.
All of these movements were successful, and Dafydd looked to be well on his way to easily capturing Newcastle and killing his second King of England. However, once on the walls Dafydd felt the ground begin to shake. William's siege weapons had opened fire, but were hitting the buildings of Newcastle at first. The poor church would lose its tower and catch flame.
King William fell in battle while fleeing, being claimed by Welsh arrows. However, King Dafydd fell just after watching the King of England fall, to a flaming boulder launched by one of William's catapults, dying instantly along with a few of his men.
The Welsh forces proceeded to victory, then began to mourn their fallen King.
About a week or so ago my main TV that I've been gaming on since the early days of the PS2 finally bit the dust, kind of. I could have fixed it with ease but I would have needed to buy a new socket set as my smallest socket was still too big for the hex nuts my old CRT had.
Enter Goodwill. Well, I entered Goodwill and finally decided to really check out the CRT collection they've been building. My dream CRT, a Sony Trinitron with a nice stand and glass shelves attached to it, popped up at another thrift store, it was not for sale at all. Sad times.
That said I found a nice JVC CRT that has ports that are a massive upgrade compared to the S-video peak of my old TV. This one, as you can see in the pictures below, has all the ports we as collectors want, component, s-video, 2 composite inputs, and even an RF input.
Here are some pictures and fun facts for the old TV.
[img width=700 height=418]http://i.imgur.com/aorg2Zd.jpg[/img]
The last game it played was Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. This was the first game the JVC played.
[img width=700 height=418]http://i.imgur.com/yGBwoJD.jpg[/img]
Such beautiful picture quality. Even composite looks better on the JVC than the Sanyo before it passed.
[img width=700 height=418]http://i.imgur.com/kvudInM.jpg[/img]
The Sanyo's ports, as you can see the best option on this TV was S-video.
[img width=700 height=418]http://i.imgur.com/LaJkjAe.jpg[/img]
Dat component. Mmm. I can't wait to get a converter box now!
[img width=700 height=777]http://i.imgur.com/gFcMq1N.jpg?2[/img]
The best part for this upgrade was the price tag. $3.
To put this in the simplest of terms, the way the title of this article can happen is if either or both of these hardware manufacturers do one thing, charge the gaming public to activate used games. The news releases of EA ending their online pass program is just the first reason why trying to extort extra money just for buying a game that's already been played will not work. For those of you that have not yet read about EA ending a much maligned policy of theirs their reasoning is as follows "Many players didnt respond to the format. We've listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward." This translates from business speak to layman's English as 'We were not making a profit.'
Take heed Sony and/or Microsoft. If the 2nd largest 3rd party publisher has already tried and abandoned the tactics that you may well be on the cusp of unveiling to the public then your system is doomed from the start. It is one thing to have individual games lock content up behind a pay wall, but an entire system? The incredible poostorm that has surrounded EA and other companies using online passes to access their multiplayer components after a copy has moved from the 'new' to 'used' bin will be incredibly miniscule compared to having a paywall thrown up blocking me and other gamers from playing a single player game, let alone multiplayer.
[img width=200 height=187]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/200px-cmot_dibbler.jpg[/img]
Please be smarter than the Discworld Dibblers.
I know I'm only one person and this is anecdotal evidence but I spend almost 90% of my purchasing power on used games and almost never buy a game at launch. When I do it is something I have eagerly been waiting for months to come out and hone in on my targets with the precision of a falcon. I do not pre-order something if I have any shred of doubt that the game might not be good, hence I tend to stick with only a few series which see sporadic releases. Most of the used games I buy are in the $5-10 region and I'm perfectly fine waiting 1 or 2 years for the price to get there. So if either Sony or MS want to charge me an extra $5 to activate a used game and essentially double my investment, they will lose 100% of my business.
No hardware, no pre-orders, no software, no collector's editions, no used games, nothing, nada, zilch.
I will say this once, do not forget it. Your customers are your backbone, defy them and you lose them. Your publishers are greedy snobs, listen to them and you defy your consumers. If these rumors end up being confirmed I will happily go out and buy a brand new Wii U and 4-5 brand new games just to support more level headed and less obvious cash grabby, greedy business tactics. I don't care how weak the hardware is compared to the PS4 or possible NextBox specs, and I know Nintendo is far from perfect. That said, they will have 100% of my gaming budget if Sony and/or Microsoft is really this stupid.
[img width=550 height=274]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ready-asshole.jpg[/img]
Now here's another scenario, only one of the two unlaunched systems will have a used game activation fee and 'feature'. Given how close the sales are between 360 and PS3, this is just asking to get completely reamed in the backside through marketing techniques. What was once a close race turns into a landslide victory. I can see it now, "No fees just to play," "We don't charge a disc insertion fee," etc. etc. Millions of potential system sales are at stake here, and those millions of systems can support hundreds of millions of software sales. We're talking billions and billions of dollars at stake here, trillions of yen, you will not Cut-Your-Own-Throat will you?
What follows is one of the greatest video game related stories I've ever had relayed to me. I am not a primary source but this story still sticks out perfectly in my head. This happened at a large, international video game retail chain, which as I'm sure most of us can imagine or are experienced in seeing how quickly these stores can fill with parents or people that pay pretty much no attention to the industry outside of what the clerk says is coming soon and what has commercials on TV.
The store manager was on duty on this day, momentarily alone as his co-worker was on a break. Some country cowboy looking guy comes walking inside the store. Those that are familiar with the unpredictable, loose cannon redneck looking cowboy hat, cowboy boots, giant belt buckle, and white pocket t-shirt fanatic and what sort of random stuff can spew from their throats know that something completely awesome is heading our way.
This guy asks for a cockfighting game that was "Supposed to be out or coming out soon by EA." The manager on duty is completely stumped by what he's heard and asks for the request to be repeated, hoping his ears misheard. When his fears had manifested themselves as reality he turns to the computer he was already working. What followed was a few minutes of fake typing and fake google searching, this game would never exist outside of a random flash game that made the cockfighters caricatures of actual boxing stars.
So what proceeded this exchange involved the guy wondering why they did not make a cockfighting game and how well it would sell where he comes from. Trailer trash would buy many things that the rest of the public would consider completely outrageous, the country life is inherently different than being surrounded by buildings, annoying neighbors, sirens, and highway sounds. Its much more laid back and from experience, you see things that would make many urban dwellers vomit or break down weeping in a split second, so the idea of cockfighting is not as 'inhumane' or violent as it is in urban areas.
Still, keeping a straight face through this entire exchange takes some iron clad nerves that my experience with retail shows can pop up instantly from being put on the spot and yelled at. You tune out and turn into an apathetic policy spewer as it is your only tool to get rid of said angry or perturbed patrons. This exchange was much more friendly and it the mechanism for laughter was put down so the customer would not be offended by his completely ill informed request.
When said patron finally leaves the store the store manager drafts up an email relating this story to his fellow store managers throughout the district. The story ended up being eventually relayed to corporate headquarters where hopefully the 'Tale of EA Sports Cockfighting 2008' persists and gets yearly roster updates.
Have you ever started a career that can be said to have started with a bang? Most of us have not, you show up at work, go through training, and the employer unleashes you amongst the wilds to fend for yourself in most cases. Music is a career path that one does not go down unless you already know what you're doing, its hard to get paid to learn how to make music. Thankfully, Noriyuki Iwadare is one of those that had a career that practically exploded as soon as it began, so let's dive on in!
1988 was the first year Noriyuki Iwadare made music for video games, and it was a bit of doozy, or rather, a cult classic video game with a powerful soundtrack. Alien Crush for the Turbo Grafx-16 is this game, if only the developers made it scroll vertically instead of having seperate screens.
A couple years later would mark the transition to a new decade and the next step of Mr. Iwadare's career. Here's the list of games that the man did music for, first off, the sequel to Alien Crush, Devil's Crush, After Burner 2 (Genesis), Space Invaders '91, and Granada (Genesis). Where did all this time come from? Logic would say, the 2 year hiatus. Nevertheless there is some awesome music in those 4 games, but I'll tease you with some Devil's Crush.
Did you really think a man like Noriyuki Iwadare would slow down though? Logic might be wrong in finding the time to make that much music in 2 years since the list of games he worked on from 1991-1996 is immense! 1991 was largely quiet. Now you know that Noriyuki Iwadare had a hand in the creation of one of the internet's oldest and undying memes. All your base. Yes, Noriyuki Iwadare worked on Zero Wing for the Sega Mega Drive (no Genesis release), but there are a few games he worked on where it is unclear what he specifically did, whether it was actual composition, arrangement, or a straight conversion (making the music for a game on one system friendly to another) for some games, this is one where he probably did the conversion for the Genesis release. It was fairly common for newer music workers to be assigned to conversions and arrangement instead of making their own compositions.
We've all probably heard that remixed version, what about the original song?
The other games he worked on in 1991 included another conversion to the Genesis, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys, compositions from Wings of Wor, Warsong, Blue Almanac, and Head Buster. Again, it seems like Mr. Iwadare does not sleep and constantly makes music. When you get paid to create passionate music then why stop?
The next year, 1992, could be said to be the breakout year for Mr. Iwadare, mainly because of his involvement with Game Arts that would lead to some of the best, yet criminally underrated RPG soundtracks. He won an award, Best Game Music for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis for Lunar: The Silver Star. That really put him on the map and pretty much put an end to his conversion and arrangement days outside of prior commitments. Now, he was a full fledged composer. Lunar's soundtrack would go on to probably be the most re-released and remastered RPG ever made, with competition from Ys I & II, and Final Fantasy. The rest of the year was cool too, with games like Steel Empire and Gley Lancer receiving some more Iwadare music.
The success of Lunar's soundtrack lead to a few other RPG soundtracks outside of Game Arts, like Maten no Sometsu that never released outside of Japan, the last few non-composer related jobs fizzled out by 1995 so all Noriyuki Iwadare could do is make more music. He returned to the world we know as Warsong, but is really Langrisser everywhere else with who could be called his sidekick, Isao Mizoguchi, the two having worked together on most of the composition jobs since the first Langrisser (Warsong). The game was Langrisser II, which has still never been released outside of Japan.
Finally, after two long years of waiting, Japanese gamers were blessed with another Game Arts and Iwadare meeting. The long awaited Lunar sequel, this one titled Lunar: Eternal Blue, released very late in the Sega CD's lifecycle. Japanese gamers got to play this game in the holiday season of 1994, while us Americans did not get the game until the tail end of summer in 1995. Was anybody even paying much attention to new Sega CD games by that point in time? Somebody somewhere was.
1995 saw the release of a little known Lunar game, Lunar: Walking School released in Japan (where it would remain forever) on the Game Gear. Like all early Lunar games this one recieved the remake treatment, getting new graphics, anime cutscenes, remastered music and such for the Sega Saturn in 1997. The remake is known as Magic School Lunar in its anglicized name and is a prized import for hardcore Lunar fans. Basically, this game is a super prequel that outlines the shenanigans surrounding the founding of the Magic School. Now have some Der Langrisser music, this came out in 1995 as well.
Since I'm going into much more detail than I was before I have decided to split this entry into 2 chapters. Chapter 2 will cover 1996-2013. We made it 8 years in the first chapter, but did you see how many games there were?
5. Id (Xenogears)
Those that are familiar with Freudian psychology already know what Id is, even if they've never played Xenogears. Well, he's a bit different than the textbook Freudian definition, replacing the libido with say, instinctual bloodlust would make the Id of Xenogears more accurate.
[img width=500 height=441]http://projectcrystallis.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/id.jpg[/img]
The ladies can't resist him either.
He pops up seemingly out of nowhere, for no reason. Its unclear when Id first starts showing up which side he is on, but the characters quickly learn that he's more just out for a nice stroll with a side of wanton destruction. I do not want to spoil the truth behind Id though, but knowing Freudian psychology, or playing Xenogears can let you figure that one out. This 'twist' is one of the reasons why Id scores so highly on my list.
""That was interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!" - Id
4. The Godwins (Suikoden V)
Motive. I cannot stress how important it is for a villain to have a good, believable motive. There needs to be purpose behind actions, words are empty, especially in the highly politicized Game of Thrones which happens in every installment of Suikoden.
Unlike most villains the Godwins have a very clear motive for the coup d'tat of the Queendom of Falena, personal power, wealth, glory, and the ability to declare war on their neighbors whenever they desire. That said, Marscal and Gizel Godwin are much deeper than their motives. Marscal is the grizzled veteran, no stranger to the game of nobles, I would compare him to Tywin Lannister as he's not afraid to deeply scold his son in private.
Dress for the job you want they told Lord Marscal.
Gizel however, just seems to shrug everything off of himself. In public he oozes charm and watches his tongue and body language carefully. In private Gizel schemes and hatches various little plots, usually just putting them in motion and watching as the story unfolds before him.
Gizel is just so sneaky and snakelike, an absolute joy to watch scheme. The Godwins, Gizel in particular, are just so interesting. You always want to know what they're up to and the game indulges your curiosity. This family is the pinnacle of the idea of loving to hate something. I hate them because of their actions, they killed the Prince's family and took his little sister and her throne and now want you dead. They're so well written, casual, and laid back that watching them brings a big smile to my face.
[img width=192 height=256]http://thumbnail.myheritageimages.com/548/721/52548721/000/000035_1210969b3f8894inotef14_R_192x256.jpg[/img]
But enough talk, have at you!
"When you get involved in intrigue, do it decisively." - Marscal Godwin
"What if my master plan was murdering you... in front of your beloved brother?" - Gizel Godwin
3. The Transcendant One (Planescape: Torment)
The greatest enemy one can conquer is oneself. The Nameless One is the main character of this cult classic, but that immortal bag of bones is only half the equation. The real power lies with The Transcendant One, the mortality of The Nameless One personified and he fortifies himself in The Fortress of Regrets. This is one antagonist that makes their appearance known quickly and is just completely imposing.
[img width=480 height=360]http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120904025360/torment/images/2/24/T1.png[/img]
Imposing might be putting it lightly...
The Transcendant One does not have much screentime. The Nameless One does not even know he exists until you are inside the Fortress, but his sheer force of will is maddening. What makes this villain score so highly for me is the fact that you can just talk him into committing suicide by recombining with The Nameless One and fighting in the eternal battle of the lower planes, finally blessed with the death that breaks The Nameless One's prison of eternal life.
2. President Dick Richardson (Fallout 2)
Eugenics. How often does this subject come up in gaming? If you ask me, on the whole, whether I prefer Eastern, or Western villains, I'll usually say Western. Most of the Western ones I've experienced have been great villains that were well written, had a clear motive, and were devious enough to really rustle your jimmies.
[img width=700 height=360]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101030213354/fallout/images/d/de/FO02_NPC_Richardson_N.png[/img]
Its time for my Nintendo Power nap!
President Richardson is one of the few examples of a reluctant villain. He just happens to be the President of the Enclave while all these plans for purification and recolonization of mainland North America are coming to fruition. Their main weapon for 'purification' is a modified strain of FEV, Forced Evolution Virus (why Super Mutants exist), which will supposedly eliminate all life on the mainland.
In the end, President Richardson is just another frail politician hiding behind a wall of muscle. Literally.
[img width=700 height=360]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100811232533/fallout/images/1/1a/FO02_NPC_Frank_Horrigan.png[/img]
His name is Frank.
"The only way for true humans, and democracy, to be safe is to cleanse the mutants from the globe. We humans will take back that which is rightfully ours." - President Richardson
1. Luca Blight (Suikoden II, Genso Suikogaiden Volume 1)
[img width=212 height=407]http://www.creativeuncut.com/gallery-01/art/s2-luca-blight.gif[/img]
The White Wolf of Highland. The Mad Prince Luca Blight.
There have been deep, excellent villains on this list but none of them match the sheer raw ferocity of Luca Blight. Most antagonists usually have some sort of political power and use it to hide in their castle while they bark orders. Well, Luca Blight is a prince, he is known as the Mad Prince and is not afraid to be on the front lines, leading his soldiers during their killing. You see this happen right from the start.
The moment that really solidifies Luca Blight as a more sinister villain than the others on this list is that he is the only one that actually raises his sword and slashes it downwards towards a defenseless little girl. A small child! Pilika is like 5 years old! Even then, it takes four people to save little Pilika from her early death. Even before all this there's the systematic slaughter of the Unicorn Brigade, which is where Highland's young, up and coming recruits train during their teenage years until they're ready to wield a sword, all just so he will have the support of the Highland population to go to war.
[img width=640 height=480]http://lparchive.org/Suikoden-II-(by-The-White-Dragon)/Update%2009/74-PSOGL383.jpg[/img]
Viktor you magnificent bastard, never stop drinking!
Every time Luca is on screen the entire tone of the game shifts, even though he only speaks in text boxes the man is so charismatic that he commands the attention of the room he's in, even if he's not talking! The fear that others feel when they are around him is quite evident as even his own generals start plotting a way to kill him.
Also, since when does an incredibly powerful madman become challenged by a small handful of teenagers? No, Luca's better than that and you better have three full parties of six decked out characters when it comes down to the final rumble. He even takes a dozen or so arrows to the chest by the time the final duel happens between the deadly White Wolf Luca Blight and Little Riou.
Great villains are always shown being rather villainous.
Remember when I said that Kefka is the best uber super destruction wanton killinator? Yeah, totally taking it back now. Well, Luca Blight has some reasons for his mental state, but that would ruin the experience of playing this masterpiece would it not?
"It took hundreds to kill me but I killed humans by the thousands. I am sublime!!! I am the true face of evil!!!!" - Luca Blight's dying words
I am not a panderer, I do not make lists to drum up views, I look to get fans by trying to write strong content and support my opinions with better reasons than 'Its popular.' I do not like generic 'evil-to-be-evil' villains, they are overdone, tired, and rarely executed competently, let alone excellently. So, expect my list to be quite different from others that you have run across over the years.
10. The Turks (Final Fantasy VII)
Calling this group "villains" is a bit of a stretch. Not all of them have truly villainous acts and blood on their hands, but they are also not the ones in power. The Turks are just a special forces type of group whose job is to take orders and execute them. This doesn't excuse any action but it does provide context, which is all important in narrative.
What I like about them is that they are the most human of the antagonists of FF7. You don't always fight them when you run into them, hell you can even run into them in a bar and pretend to drink with them if that's how you like it, and go on a side quest within a side quest. You even start off sharing the same goal, chase down the generic genocidal maniac and get in each other's way.
[img width=300 height=240]http://www.finalfantasykingdom.net/7/w10.png[/img]
That means a lot Reno.
9. Joker (Persona 2)
Persona 2 is an odd game, it is separated into two distinct parts. The first part, Persona 2: Innocent Sin was only released outside of Japan for the very first time on the PSP, its original release being on PS1. The second part of the game, Eternal Punishment, was released in North America (sorry Europe) back in the PS1 days.
[img width=480 height=272]http://thewiredfish.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/persona-2-joker.jpg[/img]
Innocent Sin Joker
Persona has always dealt with some supernatural phenomenon taking hold in some city in Japan, and in this tale rumors become true. Joker is also the only villain here who has two distinct personalities and methods. Innocent Sin has Joker being a clown of sorts who listens to people's inner most desires over the phone, if they tell him something they get it, no matter what it is. If they do not have a true desire, their energy is sucked out from them and they become invisible to all but the party members.
[img width=640 height=480]http://lparchive.org/Persona-2-Eternal-Punishment/Update%2005/79-Persona2-4-108.jpg[/img]
Eternal Punishment Joker
Eternal Punishment is a different beast though, it takes place in a parallel world where only Tatsuya, the main character from Innocent Sin, remembers the events of IS. Like I said, this game is strange and confusing. EP's version of JOKER has him as a more straightforward serial killer who does a sort of body jumping, consciousness stealing maneuvers with those afflicted by the JOKER Curse.
If only rumors really did come true we'd have all men with footlongs in their pants, incredibly super rich, huge collection of kick ass cars, and a mansion filled with a beautiful harem.
8. Kefka (Final Fantasy VI)
Speaking of clowns here's Kefka. Now, I'm not the biggest Kefka fan, unlike Joker above Kefka is probably video gaming's closest version of Batman's Joker (outside of Batman games of course) and is one of the few villains I can enjoy despite being 'evil-because-evil'. There is a lot of underlying insanity and even some dark comedy in some of his acts. The reason for his insanity though is never once brought up, ever. Kefka is the definition of the super evil nihilistic destroyer, but he's the best at it.
[img width=425 height=345]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/08/425_img_insanity_kefka.jpg[/img]
Batshit crazy is not analogous to literary potency.
Despite that, Kefka is not original, at least, some of the obviously evil actions that he is lauded for performing were in fact mostly based on a villain from an even older FF game...
7. Emperor of Palamecia (Final Fantasy II)
I dislike playing FFII quite a bit. I hate the leveling system, combat is pre-ATB turn based combat and not bad, the keywords system is fairly nice and gives deeper conversations and is obviously based on the keyword systems of contemporary Western PC RPGs. But, leveling is so atrocious that it completely ruins the experience for me and many potential fans. This is the definitive NES Final Fantasy story though, I put it up there with Dragon Quest IV for the best RPG story of the system.
[img width=340 height=293]http://chrysaliswiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/people:mateus-palamecia/mateuspalamecia_ff2.jpg[/img]
The Epic of Gilgamesh is painted on those huge nails.
Most of this is the result of the Emperor of Palamecia. This Emperor is one of the main reasons we see the overdone Evil Empire story in RPGs. Well, him and the Sith Empire. You remember when Kefka poisoned an entire town's water supply? Emperor did it first. Cyclones destroying towns, entire nations slaughtered, princesses kidnapped, and Leon, a close ally is converted to his evil cause *cough* Kain *cough*. The reason why this guy ranks higher than Kefka is because some reason is given behind his sudden insanity, he is basically an avatar of Diablo, Beelzebub, Angra Mainyu, Satan, Astaroth, Hades, whoever your Lord of the Underworld happens to be.
[img width=241 height=205]http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111014000427/finalfantasy/images/6/68/EmperorPalamecia.png[/img]
Know now the wrath of the fallen!
6. Mother Brain (Phantasy Star II)
How is it possible that a villain with no personality, no motive, no life, no emotion, happens to be better than most who try and do all of that? Well, the idea of a rogue AI as a great villain is hardly new. Rogue AI's have been prevalent in science fiction in general since the early 20th century. Just go search for 'System Shock' and try to find any mention of the games without somebody mentioning how amazing SHODAN is as a villain. The first System Shock came out 5 years after Phantasy Star II for a bit of context.
[img width=700 height=340]http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110226163743/phantasystar/images/8/83/Mother_Brain.jpg[/img]
The lifegiver, and lifestealer.
Mother Brain is on the flipside of the coin though, it is a system that exists to provide a comfortable ecology to the residents of the Algo star system with green, lush, thriving, easy to live on land, along with fresh, clean, sparkling water. However, the AI had been planning to destroy the people of the Algo system from the onset of her programming once the population is completely dependent on the ecological systems and infrastructure control of Mother Brain, she even halts all space traffic.
[img width=600 height=420]http://whydidiplaythis.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/522155-phantasy_star_ii_2_super.png[/img]
At last, the final stage of her plan comes to fruition!
What's strange about Mother Brain is that, in destroying her, the main party of Phantasy Star II kind of fulfilled Mother Brain's wish for destruction, as the Great Collapse that followed killed most of the population, rendered most of the once fertile land useless, and ended the high tech societies of the Algo system.
Compendium Entry: Miki Higashino
When you ask an old school or enthusiast gamer what some excellent companies were in the 8 bit era for music and sound effects they will toss out a few names, Nintendo, Capcom, Tecmo, Square, Rare, Sega but I'm going to look at a composer from my personal favorite 8 bit soundtrack powerhouse, Konami.
Miki Higashino is another female composer with her background in piano compositions as was Yoko Shimomura. In her early video game career she got the chance to collaborate with the Konami Kukeiha Club, which is the awesome name of Konami's sound team. Basically she started straight at the top for classic arcade games.
The first game that Miki Higashino worked on is a wonderful and classic horizontal shooter known as Gradius from 1985.
The same year saw the release of Yie Ar Kung-Fu to the arcades and more Miki music. Higashino got the chance to continue her influence on the Gradius series a year later with the release of Salamander in the arcade.
She also got the chance to make her first non-arcade soundtrack, doing the music for Knightmare for the MSX home computer. She used this experience in the next year helping with the port of Salamander to the MSX.
Higashino and the Konami Kukeiha club just could not be stopped, but they did take two years separated after the MSX port of Salamander before they all met back up and decided to make some music for the original arcade release of Gradius III.
Miki Higashino and Mutsuhiko Izumi worked on both Gradius III (as well as others) and the arcade release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the year of 1989. The arcade release of TMNT remember, not the original NES game.
Izumi went on to do the soundtrack for Konami's arcade TMNT follow up, the amazing Turtles in Time, by himself.
Miki started the 1990s by being on the music team for the interesting arcade game Surprise Attack. In 1992 she came back to work on the team for Contra III: Alien Wars. This was her first foray outside of the arcade since the MSX ports.
1993 saw another busy year for Miki. She did the limited soundtrack for the arcade game Premier Soccer, lead the composing team for manga licensed RPG Moryo Senki MADARA 2 for the Super Famicom (same team as Contra III). Finally, she also lead the team for the Mega Drive/Genesis port of TMNT: Tournament Fighters.
The following year sees her branching out even more as she composes the music for another sports game, Double Dribble: The Playoff Edition for the MD/Genesis by herself and works on the team that creates the soundtrack for the PC Engine dating sim Tokimeki Memorial.
The very middle of the 1990s, 1995 that is, was filled with only one soundtrack with work by Miki. Konami wanted a team to make a soundtrack for their take on the classic console based RPG. So Miki, along with a team of others composed the music for Suikoden.
She also took on the mighty role of the soundtrack for Suikoden's sequel largely on her own, only 8 of the 105 songs on Suikoden II's massive sequel were not completely made by her alone or at all.
Between the Suikodens she was a member of the teams behind the music for Vandal Hearts and her first work outside Konami, Moon: Remix RPG Adventure.
The 21st century began with Miki and Keiko Fukami continuing their work after Suikoden II and releasing the soundtracks for the visual novels Genso Suikogaiden Vol. 1 and 2 in and 2000 and 2001 respectively.
She left Konami and the industry completely for maternity leave after being a major force in the first four released games in Konami's Suikoden world, building the musical love from Gradius, having a major hand in the TMNT arcade experiences, among many other influences. Many of Konami's biggest arcade successes and cult console classics have seen Miki Higashino working some musical magic up behind the scenes along with a team just as dedicated as her.
Since returning from her maternity leave Miki has only been able to collaborate with Yasunori Mitsuda on the soundtrack for 10,000 Bullets, and on Pop'n Music: Adventure in 2007.
Mark Morgan is one of the more recent composers, he's been around for awhile now but most of the Japanese legends were already going strong by the late 80's or early 90's. Mark Morgan did not get his first video game project until 1995.
Dark Seed II was the first game released that had Morgan's signature dark musical tones. His style is known for creating an immersive, chilling, and crushing atmosphere within unique worlds. The Dark Seed games did have art design by H.R. Giger after all, seems like the perfect fit! This is quite his strong suit, but he is quite capable of more lighthearted and upbeat scores.
Zork: Nemesis was the next game that released with him at the helm of the music and was a major departure of the series' roots, but he got to stay around and do the music for the more lighthearted follow up Zork: Grand Inquisitor.
In between the two Zork games Mark began the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship with Interplay, a well loved and respected developer and publisher that has long since lost its magic. But, Morgan entered when the company entered a new Golden Age, sadly one that could not save the company from itself.
BioWare's very first video game, Shattered Steel was the first project between Zorks, the game is basically a MechWarrior rip off. Depending on your experience with the games that is either awesome or kinda blah.
The second project between Zorks was the sequel to one of the best first person shooters of the mid 90's, Descent II. For those like me that have played Descent you know much the music rocks, and Descent II is no exception!
1997 was a busy year for Mark Morgan and included one of his biggest successes, and a game that completely failed. On top of Zork: Grand Inquisitor he did the music for NetStorm: Islands at War. NetStorm sold badly as it was completely overshadowed by Ensemble's classic RTS Age of Empires, and Activision's marketing budget was effectively zilch.
Now for the big success, that partnership with Interplay was about to pay off with one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Mark Morgan and Interplay released Fallout onto the world in 1997, and RPGs were never the same afterwards!
I will use any excuse ever to pull this video out.
Morgan and Black Isle Studios went together like corn meal and milk as the two came back for Fallout 2, a sequel which may just be better than the original!
Black Isle and Morgan continued their string of home runs with the incredibly unique, critically lauded, and the absolute definition of a cult classic, Planescape: Torment. This classic RPG came out in 1999 and completely failed on the sales charts.
The same year, 1999 saw Morgan and other longtime partner Activision part ways, as the last Activision published game he worked on, Civilization: Call to Power released. This was much more successful on the sales charts and was not instantly relegated to the bargain bin. He did not work on the sequel however.
The following year saw Morgan's last work for the ailing Interplay, the entire company would be mostly dead in less than 3 years after this. 2000's Giants: Citizen Kabuto would be Morgan's last work in the entire video game industry for almost a decade as he completely switched over to score television shows. For Giants Morgan got the chance to work alongside the current Elder Scrolls superstar Jeremy Soule, in a meeting that the Greek Titans couldn't replicate if they tried.
His list of TV credits during this period is quite short, One Tree Hill, Hawaii, Kojak, Killer Instinct, and Shark. Morgan worked on other shows throughout his composing career, and that shows how talented of a musician he really is!
In 2009 Morgan returned to the world of gaming, this time working for Electronic Arts to produce the original music for Need for Speed: Shift, his first racing game!
After a long time separated Morgan was finally reunited with long time employer Brian Fargo as he was brought on board as part of his famous Kickstarter campaigns, part of the stretch goals rather.
Upcoming games that will include Morgan's music include Wasteland 2, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and possible vaporware Prey 2.
When it comes to the world of video games some of the biggest and most influential names all come from the male gender. You got your Nolan Bushnells, Yu Suzukis, Shigeru Miyamoto, Nobuo Uematsu, Yuzo Koshiro, Warren Spector, the list goes on and on and seems nearly endless. So, I wanted to start putting the spotlight on video game music, something that most of us love and can quite easily make or break an interactive experience.
To start this series off I wanted to avoid the overdone artists, it does not take much time to find any information on Nobuo Uematsu or Koji Kondo for example, and what better way to start than with the rare female composer who has worked on many popular titles but still exists largely in the shadows?
Without further ado, the Compendium opens and begins reading an entry on Yoko Shimomura.
Yoko Shimomura graduated from Osaka College of Music in 1988 and quite quickly found herself working at Capcom during its Golden Years in the arcade. It would take her a year before she ended up working on music for an arcade game though. That game? Final Fight. She only did one song and was uncredited for the work however.
She went back to the Famicom World where she created the soundtrack for Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, and it turns out that she has quite the affinity for Disney! The next game that she did most of the songs on that the Western World saw was the NES game Code Name: Viper.
She would soon find herself back in the arcade realm where she composed the music for the beat'em up The King of Dragons and finally moving onto a little unheard of game called Street Fighter II. You have probably never heard any song in this strange, quirky, and stereotype ridden fighting game, but least of all this one.
Go home and be a family man!
For the rest of her years at Capcom she was mostly just a member of a large composing team for such games as Mega Man 5 and Breath of Fire before she left Capcom in 1994 and began working at a totally non-influential fringe developer Squaresoft.
When she first started at Square all of her work (like the entire company) was limited to the Super Famicom with the games Live A Live, Front Mission, and a game that no gamer could possibly dislike, least of all its music, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars.
That's right, in less than 10 years Yoko Shimomura found her music gracing arcade fighting tournaments worldwide and also the most beloved Mario games not made by Nintendo. Quite a resume is building up so far.
She would continue working at Squaresoft through the rest of the 1990s. Her list of games continue to build and her credentials grow higher and higher with games like Parasite Eve, which shows a more suspensful part of her writing range. She ended the decade composing the mixed PS1 release of the Mana series Legend of Mana.
And that foreshadowing I blatantly threw in your face back at the beginning of this text comes back to finally pay off! Yoko returned to the world of Disney to compose the soundtrack for Kingdom Hearts, every game in the series.
After the release of Kingdom Hearts she broke away from Squaresoft to work as a freelancer and was hardly alone at this time since the mighty RPG giant merged with Enix and bled talent for a few years. But, Square-Enix kept her on the staff for the Kingdom Hearts series where she enjoys success to this day.
Kingdom Hearts is not the only series that has been built up by her music. She returned to the Mushroom Kingdom to work on one of the spiritual successors to Super Mario RPG, the Mario & Luigi series. She has done the music on all of them so far, but no word that I can find if she returned to work on the upcoming Dream Team.
She also returned to the Mana series with Heroes of Mana, but we all forgot about that game.
In recent years she has worked to build musical scores for another new series, composing the music for the Wii classic Xenoblade Chronicles alongside her fellow Square alum Yasunori Mitsuda and returned to the world of Aya Brea in The 3rd Birthday alongside one piece of the talent that Square did not bleed, Tsuyoshi Sekito.
Gamers will also be treated to her music in her first foray in the Final Fantasy series with the soundtrack for Versus XIII whenever that decides to come out, until then we will probably play some more games that she had her hand in, hopefully a few more of us will be able to find out if Yoko Shimomura put her stamp on it.
For many systems you fire up the first experience you have with it involves the splash screen, intro screen, logos, sound effects, rocket ships, flying carpets, and belly dancers. Like many things the quality and effort put into these introductions can have a profound impact on the player, or potential player, of a video game console, so let's take a look at the good and the bad ones.
The Bad
Now, in order to be fair I will not include systems which completely lack a splash screen, this is only something that came to prominence in the late 80's for the most part (with exceptions of course). So, which ones just leave you screaming for mercy?
Amiga CD32
Well, that was pretty dull. If you're looking for uninspired intro screens nothing really beats this one, its a CD floating in space with a wordart logo above the disc with some flashy colors flying around. This looks like a $50 job that some video editing student did after discovering how awesome the Amiga is and how amazing a system based on Amiga software with CD support would be.
It would be a commercial failure of course.
FM Towns Marty
Well, my ears are bleeding now. For a CD based system the FM Towns Marty certainly has incredibly weak sound capabilities! It even released in 1993, the same year as the vastly superior 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and even the Amiga CD32 above, at least that one didn't have digital garbage flowing out of the speakers!
Atari Jaguar
The Jaguar just has this look, reputation, and history of being a low budget machine with shoddy engineering. It was Atari's last attempt at greatness (and killing off their fairly popular line of PCs to throw everything at the console probably did not help matters). Now to be fair this one isn't entirely bad, its just a bit boring. A spinning cube with a Jaguar on it is hardly menacing. But, if they had done something like the MGM lion intro it would probably have been the greatest thing ever made by Atari or any company ever! The legitimacy of the menacing roar of the Jaguar is lessened by the rather cartoony, and already by then retro, little jingle that accompanies the cat.
The Good
Sega CD
What happens when a system has not just one amazing startup screen, but two? We end up with the Sega CD! Or Mega CD if you're not a winning American. Oh, I'm not really counting the JVC X'eye, even though that intro is fairly enjoyable as well.
All I really have to say is one thing, I have never before been so entertained by dancing logos. This just shows how superior Sega's execution was in the early 90's, having some of the best hardware creators this side of Nintendo. Sega can just squeeze so much life out of hardware that could be considered inferior, giving their consoles so much passion and soul that no company has really ever been able to duplicate, not even Nintendo or Sony in my opinion.
Nintendo Gamecube
Nintendo, I love you to death. What cheeky bastards these guys were when designing the Gamecube and its startup screen. Everybody loves Easter Eggs, so let's hide not one, but two colorful eggs on the very first screen you see when playing a Gamecube, all of which are enjoyable in moderation. Absolutely brilliant!
Sony Playstation
There are few words to describe just how amazing the experience of firing up an original Playstation is. Once you turn it on its like you, the gamer, are being sent into a powerful wind tunnel during astronaut training. Then you finally get to launch up into space just as the PS logo comes up and leave the atmosphere into cool, serene calm. An absolute joy for the ears, this is the THX intro of the video game world, and it will never get old.
So what are your favorite system start up screens, least favorites?
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