Gaming off the Beaten Path

Looks Like Bowser is at it again! Nintendo was the unquestioned king of the home console video game world in the 80's, but by the time the 90's rolled around they found their castle was under siege. This siege, led by a super-fast, super hip hedgehog and his edgy compatriots, was going quite well for the Big N's latest rival. Their biggest weapon in all of this was a new, sleek, 16-bit gaming machine that has the aging NES on the ropes. Between the marketing blitz and blast processing and top-of-the-line graphics, Nintendo had their hands full. The NES had some great games, like Super Mario Bros. 3, but it just couldn't compete with the Genesis from a technical standpoint. However, Nintendo wasn't about to hand over the crown just yet. They were ready with some brand-new firepower of their own, kicking off the 90's with the new Super NES. Now they had their own 16-bit machine, a new console to help them defend their figurative crown. But a console alone wasn...

Back in the late 80's and early 90's, it seemed like every game with some level of fantasy elements was labeled an RPG. I guess I get it, most of the titles that popularized the genre in the West were rooted in elements of fantasy, borrowing heavily from Tolkien and others of his ilk. RPGs became closely connected to the genre and became almost synonymous with it. Hell, Final Fantasy has "fantasy" right there in the title. Of course, not every RPG fit this mold. You had Phantasy Star and Mother/Earthbound, and even Final Fantasy itself eventually branched out into more sci-fi territory. But those were outliers, at least they were at the time, and it seemed like whenever a game with an elf carrying a sword and casting magic came out, it got slapped with the RPG label whether it fit or not. Which brings us to Alundra, a title commonly lumped in with the golden era PS1 RPGs. It was developed by Matrix Software, but published in the U.S. by Working Design, a studio known ...

  So, I've been doing this blog for almost four years now and it's dawned on me I never really discussed what exactly I look for when playing and reviewing games. I probably should have started with this, but the cat is out of the bag now and I can't put it back in there without it trying to claw me up. So, I figure I will do this now, because why not? In all seriousness, I think it's important to understand a writer's mindset when reading their reviews. I have mentioned this before, but I think it's really important. Say someone accidentally stumbles upon my humble blog and sees that I highly recommend Suikoden II . Great! If that person is also a lover of RPGs, there's a good chance they are going to check the game out and come to the same conclusion. Maybe they won't like it as much as I did, maybe they will even like it more. Who knows? But if that person pretty much only plays Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, there's a good chance they won'...

  I think I did the Wii a disservice by focusing my first review of one of its titles on a shovelware game. The Wii had a bad, and in many ways deserved, reputation as a haven for shameless cash grabs and licensed junk. It's the kind of place where you would find, say, a game based on a reality TV show that was thrown together without any thought or effort...not like I'd know anything about that though. However, the Wii has some really good games as well, mostly stemming from Nintendo's big-name franchises. There were some excellent Mario and Zelda games for the console, it feels like there were excellent Mario and Zelda games for every console. In a way, the Wii was very similar to the Nintendo 64, with some essential first party games buoying a lineup dragged down by largely forgettable third-party titles. But unlike the N64, where many of those first party games are household names even among non-gamers, many of the Wii's better first party titles have been forgotten...