Gaming off the Beaten Path

  As anyone who was around in the 90's could tell you, one on one fighting games were absolutely everywhere. I know I've talked about the mid to end of the decade being a golden era for RPGs, but it seems like the entire decade was a golden era for tournament fighters. These things were absolutely everywhere, largely due to the popularity of the two pillars of the genre, Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. Argue that other series' were better all you want, talk all you want about how Karate Champ or Pit Fighter came first, but the absolutely insane levels of success of those two games are what catapulted the fighting genre into the stratosphere. It became the most popular genre in arcades by far and was probably neck and neck with mascot platformers for the top spot on consoles, though it didn't quite take off as much on PC. Some developers tried to innovate, but far, far more tried to simply rip off the two titans. I could probably spend an entire half hour just listi...

  There's nothing special about being courageous in times of need The golden era of RPGs was in full swing in 1999, at least I would say it was. The PlayStation had officially pulled away from the pack and had become a haven for the genre, the Saturn had come to be appreciated by fans for its lesser-known RPGs and the Nintendo 64....had Ogre Battle and Quest? Of course, that also meant that some of these games started to feel a little bit formulaic. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it's always nice to see some level of innovation. Honestly, I think the best games tend to find a middle ground, they have just enough new stuff to feel fresh but they don't throw out mechanics that have proven to be enjoyable. As great as RPGs were in this era, I feel like 1999 to 2000 was when a lot of games started feeling similar. A lot of them were still awesome, but they just sort of felt like they were doing more of the same. I felt that w...

  After a slight delay, it's finally time to crown a 5th anniversary champion. These two RPG heavyweights are some of the genre's most renowned titles of all time, so this is going to be a knockdown, drag out slugfest. As it stands, they defeated some stiff competition to get here, and both titles are absolutely deserving. Both scored 9.75s and were strongly considered for 10s. Hey, one or both might get bumped up after this battle. I'm sure many people already consider them 10s, which is going to make said battle tough to decide. This isn't like the comparison I did with Chained Echoes and Sea of Stars, with all due respect to those two titles the ones we are comparing today have had time to marinate. The book on them is written, as written as the book on a game can be, and history has already decided them to be great. Of course, they are both RPGs, so we will be using the same categories as our last battle. Those are: Round 1: Graphics Round 2: Sound Round 3: Story Ro...

  It's time to talk about PS1 RPG number 3,252-5C. Okay, there aren't THAT many of them, though sometimes it feels like it. It really is amazing to think about how popular RPGs, especially JRPGs, were during the late 90's and early 00's. I miss those days, I really do. Of course, there was plenty of love for RPGs in other sub-genres as well, especially strategy RPGs. Final Fantasy Tactics was the catalyst for the genre's mainstream popularity in the west, but it was far from the only one. I've already reviewed a handful of strategy RPGs, including Shining Force, Front Mission 3 and Saiyuki: Journey West. It's not my favorite genre, but it's definitely up there and it may be the genre I like the most but know the least about. A lot of strategy RPGs never really left Japan until more recently, Fire Emblem comes to mind. I mean, when Super Smash Bros. Melee came out, a lot of gamers and even reviewers were legitimately confused as to who the hell Roy and...

Last week, we looked at one of my favorite, and one of the internet's least favorite, video games of all time, Final Fantasy VIII. I'm not going to say that all the criticism of the game is unfounded, but a lot of it is and I want to explore why, or at least why I think that's the case. Be prepared for some nerd rage, because I may get a little more testy than I usually. The hate spewed at this game is often very vitriolic, far more so than any other title I've ever seen, and I may end up paying some of that back in kind. First, let's go back to my post on unfairly hated games . Let's run down the list of common factors and see how many of them FFVIII checks: -It was released unfinished - actually, a little bit, though I don't think it was a major factor in all the hate. The game was released with support for the Pocket PlayStation, with some items and a Chocobo minigame exclusive to the peripheral. The problem here? The Pocket PlayStation was never release...