Gaming off the Beaten Path

  Growing up, a lot of the games we played regularly ended up with nicknames for one reason or the other. It was pretty common to call Goldeneye: 007 just "Goldeneye," but we eventually just started calling it "Bond." Sure, there were other James Bond games out there, but at the time, this was the only one that mattered. PS1 skating titles 2Xtreme and 3Xtreme were "2X" and "3X" respectively.   Vigilante 8 came to be known as "Tomato Juice," get it, because V8? Final Fantasy VII was so essential to us that it was simply "VII," though not too many console series had seventh entries at that point anyway. This week's game, simply called the Pokemon Trading Card game, also had a nickname, one of my good friends came up with it and it stuck like glue: "The addiction game." Yeah, that pretty well covers it. Even after playing it some 20+ years later, I can't put my finger on just what was so enticing about a digi

I have always found strategy RPGs to be among the most interesting subgenres in gaming. In some respects, they feel very different from their more traditional Japanese or Western counterparts in terms of presentation, pacing and structure. On the other, they offer similar party structures and require the same kinds of resource and character management the genre is known for. A lot of people love them, a lot of people don't but I've always been a fan, espec II ially of SRPGs from the 5th generation. The genre was relatively popular at that point, as developers attempted to ride the wave of what most of us consider to be its most commercially successful, mainstream title: Final Fantasy Tactics. There were SRPGs before Tactics (I've already reviewed Shining Force I and II ) and there have been SRPGs since, but FFT went a long way in bringing the genre to the mainstream. And why wouldn't it have? It was a great game in a highly visible series that offered something that wa

  When I started looking for games to review as part of TBS, I wasn't shocked to find that many of the candidates were either second or third games in their respective series'. I was, however, surprised to see how many of said candidates were first entries. Much as it was with Super Mario Bros. 2, developers would try and change it up for those entries before finally reverting to the style that put them on the map in the first place. That was common in the 3rd and even 4th generations. But it didn't always work out that way. There are several cases of developers starting a series with one type of game, only to completely pivot to something different and stay with it. Case in point, Shining in the Darkness. This is the very first game in the Shining series, known predominately for its turn-based strategy RPGs. I've already reviewed Shining Force 1 & 2 , both of which I liked quite a bit. I wanted to see where the series started, so I fired up SITD, expecting an ea

  I want to be the very best, like no one ever was... I've covered a lot of obscure games since I started GOTBP ore than three years ago. Even some of the "bigger" titles I've covered aren't really that popular in the grand scheme of things. Well, this time it's going to be a little different, because it's time to talk about the single largest merchandising brand in the world: Pokemon. But we aren't going to be discussing the new Arceus games, or Pokemon Go, or how people are literally fighting each other to get their hands on the cards right now. We are going back to the beginning: back to a little game, for a little console that made a big amount of people pay attention to what was, at the time, a relatively niche form of entertainment. I'd like to start by talking about Pokemon, the little Game Boy game that could, which came out of nowhere and changed the world of gaming. I'd like to do that, but it would be a gross exaggeration. While I do

  "War. War is hell. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it..." Yup, we're starting this one out with a historical quote. Fancy. I'm sure most of us have heard at least part of that quote, attributed to Union General Willam T. Sherman. It's fairly common and pretty precise. Media often glorifies war and video games are no exception. Call of Duty didn't become one of the most popular franchises in the world for no reason. But games have done their fair share of looking at the horrors of war as well, how it tears apart families, leads to untold destruction and pits brother against brother. In case it wasn't immediately apparent, Suikoden II is, at its core, a story about the personal and societal impact of war. The game puts us smack in the middle of the ongoing conflict between the City-State of Jowston and the Kingdom of Highland, a war that it appears may soon come to an end. You control a nameless pr

I don't want any more sad things to happen! I hate suffering! That means we need to destroy the mist, that will stop the suffering! Contrary to popular belief, there were RPGs developed by companies other than Square or Enix. Hey, remember when they were separate companies? Or when they weren't owned by EA? They really made some outstanding games back then. I'm going to cover quite a few of those games in the 10's, but this week we're going to take a look at another RPG, one of only a handful of games ever developed by Contrail and Prokion. The small, internal studio within Sony didn't last very long or produce very much. However, it was responsible for producing what I consider to be one of the most underrated, underappreciated, misunderstood games of all time: Legend of Legaia. Legend of Legaia received somewhat middling reviews in its day, and in some respects I can understand why. It has a relatively simplistic plot, at least on its surface, and some of the

I'm not sure if you've heard, but there are a lot of really good RPGs on the PS1. A lot of consoles have become known for specific genres over the years. The NES is filled with 2D platformers, the Genesis is known for its sports games, the modern consoles are known for FPS', on and on, etc. etc. But few systems are as synonymous with a specific genre as the original PlayStation is with RPGs. I kind of understand this and kind of don't. Sure, the PlayStation had tons of RPGs. It also had tons of literally every other kind of game because its library is so large. However, it was certainly more RPG focused than its contemporaries, the Saturn didn't have nearly as many (though a lot of the RPGs that did land on the console are excellent) and you could probably count the Nintendo 64 RPGs on one hand. A lot of it had to do with the fact that most of the "big name" RPG franchises made their home on the PS1, with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest being the most not