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Summer 2001 was an interesting time for me. I had moved out of my home state to the East Coast and was trying something new in the work arena. Previous jobs had come and gone, and nothing really stuck, so rather than continue to flounder, I thought I would change my course. I quickly found out that my newly chosen path was a huge mistake, and within just a few short months, I would move back to my home state and get back on the career path I started on, albeit in a different direction. But for a few months in the middle of 2001, I lived about 45 minutes from the ocean, and had a fairly eye-opening experience learning about the differences between small town midwestern life and what life was like in the south.
During my stint on the coast, I spent a fair amount of time on my off days looking for entertainment. Whether it was browsing music shops, used video game stores, pawn shops, etc., I found ways to occupy my time when I wasn't working. And of course, there were also movie theaters. One of the more highly anticipated releases the summer of 2001 was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which was to be the debut film from Square Pictures. Having played and enjoyed Final Fantasy VII just a year or so prior, I was looking forward to the movie. I thought the idea of using full computer animation for everything was novel at the time and assumed the storytellers at Square had a good chance of coming up with a good story.
Continue reading In Defense Of...Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
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By now the Mana series is one of the longest running, actively developed series in video gaming. This series has a few threads that bind each game together, but for the most part each game is its own, separate entity from the rest of them. However, like most works of media the series has had its ups, and then mostly downs. The first three games in the series, Sword of Mana, Secret of Mana, and Trials of Mana, all pushed the series further upwards in both quality and scope with each game release, with Trials adding multiple character points of view for a nonlinear narrative. In 1999 Squaresoft released the fourth game in the Mana series for the Playstation, Legend of Mana. A North American release would come the following year. Its not immediately obvious, but Legend of Mana is easily a candidate for the best game in this series, and it tends to be woefully overlooked.
Continue reading Legend of Mana
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One aspect of criticizing artistic forms of media that is frequently brought up is the idea of recency bias. The main problem with recency bias is that when a work is new, the fresh coat of paint can sometimes successfully hide the pocks of rust hidden by the frame. This idea is true for all forms of media, books, movies, shows, and perhaps it's strongest for video games. Games are heavily reliant on the technology of the era, and as that technology advances, the inherent weaknesses of previous works comes to light even more powerfully than before. In other cases, it's simply a question of project scope.
Xenogears was once touted as one of the greatest Japanese role playing games ever created, but over time, that opinion has softened and any discussion about it inevitably leads to the game's biggest flaws. Pinpointing the source of this slowly decreasing opinion of this once highly touted classic relies on knowing what the game's major flaws truly are, an understanding of everything that happened during and after its development, and speculation on how the gaming public itself has shifted. Xenogears is over 20 years old by this point, having released on the first Playstation all the way back in 1998, so there has been plenty of time for reflection.
Continue reading Xenogears: A Tale of Two Discs
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Since buying a Retron 5 nearly two years ago, I have invested a great deal of time and money into acquiring many of the great Super Famicom exclusive titles that we were not fortunate enough to receive in North America. Thanks to the Retron's ability to apply translation patches to the games (assuming that someone has gone through the trouble of translating the text and creating the patch for said game), not being able to understand text-heavy games because they are in Japanese is no longer an issue for those of us who don't speak the language.
Unfortunately, despite my ambitions of playing through all of these newly added imports in my collection, I have only played through a couple of these titles so far. However, I plan on putting forth a more solid effort toward playing more of these games in the future, starting with what will hopefully be the first of many Japan exclusive titles that I will be reviewing for this site: Alcahest!
Continue reading Alcahest
Kenichiro Fukui is a composer that few likely know off the top of their head. He began his career as a member of the Konami Kukeiha Club in 1990 under the moniker "Funiki Fukui". The first game he worked on was Sunset Riders in 1991, but he only did the sound effects for the game. His first full composition job was Konami's light gun arcade game Lethal Enforcers. He worked on a few more arcade games at Konami, including 1992's GI Joe with Tsutomi Ogura and 1993's Violent Storm with Seiichi Fukami.
Continue reading Composer Compendium: Kenichiro Fukui
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Many longtime fans of the Final Fantasy series have lamented the direction Square has taken with their beloved franchise, forgoing the classic turn-based battle system (or rather the active-time battle system) in favor of a more action-oriented approach featuring real-time combat. While this rapid evolution of the series is no doubt an attempt by Square to garner new fans and compete with other AAA titles currently on the market, it has left some diehard fans feeling alienated and disinterested with the series. Enter World of Final Fantasy, a new title in the Final Fantasy series that harkens back to the games of old, featuring a slew of familiar characters and mechanics that should make any old-school fan of the series feel right at home.
Continue reading World of Final Fantasy
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