Imprisoned Again

My journey in Dragon Quest VIII has led me to being imprisoned. As I sat in the cell and talked to my party members who were trapped with me I began to think about how imprisonment is such a common video game plot line. Right off my head Dragon Quest V comes to mind, being enslaved for years, and I seem to recall also being kept imprisoned near the place where you changed job classes in Dragon Quest VII. Final Fantasy also loves imprisonment plot lines with the Via Purifico in Final Fantasy X and being locked inside the Shinra building in Final Fantasy VII. Thinking outside of the RPG genre, Metal Gear Solid comes to mind, with Solid Snake sitting as a duck waiting to either be tortured or to jail break from his cell.

I think the plot line works sometimes to add a bit of drama and change to games that you are used roaming free in. The game takes away your ability to roam and you find yourself trapped. The lack of power honestly makes me a little claustrophobic. Though I suppose in a 100+ hour quest, they are going to put whatever they can into a story. Although, It seems a little lazy to me for them to rehash the same old plot and leave me feeling deja vu from one game to the next.

スーパーマリオ64

What’s not to love about Super Mario 64?

I remember when I first got the Nintendo 64 during Christmas of 1996. I wanted Super Mario 64 with it, but was disappointed when my father could not snag it due to the holiday rush. We rented the game at Blockbuster the next week and I could not bring myself to separate from the game. My father eventually had to pay Blockbuster for the game after weeks and weeks of holding onto the game past due.

Armed with an Electronics Gaming Monthly guide, I dived into the 120-star quest that was Super Mario 64. From flying over sandy dunes and pyramids and diving into sunken ships, Super Mario 64 really took adventure to a new level that I had never experienced before. It was not the rush of speed that Sonic the Hedgehog had, but an explorer’s quest into massive levels, each unique in its own way. The interactivity of the 3D world was something I just could not experience during the NES and SNES age.

Mario saved the inhabitants of the castle all by himself. Though some allies made cameos in the game, he enters every level on his own and successfully trumps Bowser and all his minions without anything more than his plumber skills and some power-ups. His butt-burned on fire, but I pressed on. He was blown off cliffs, but I climbed back up. I could not get bored in the levels, with so many tasks and objectives. There was always mindlessly running around and flying in the sky when I really was not up to looking for a star or one of those eight red coins.

Many games would come after this to feature the same ideas and innovations, but Super Mario 64 will always leave its mark on me as the first time I entered the vast 3D world. The first time I did not just run through levels, but explored them instead.

Dragon Quest VIII: Will This Quest Ever End?

After renting the game dozens of times and always managing to ignore it and run out of time, I finally caved and bought Dragon Quest VIII at the cheap price of ten dollars. If I would have just bought it early on I might have saved myself the occasional eight dollars that I spent every few weeks renting from Hollywood Video. Now I really want to just sit through it and finally beat this game.

I currently am helping a snobby prince named Prince Charmles be admitted to the kingdom. It’s been a hassle, but I hope the rewards will be worth it once I have helped him go fight lizards.

McDonald’s Treasure Land Adventure

Who knew that Ronald McDonald could star in such a fun video game? So was the case back in the days of the Sega Genesis. Just hearing the soundtrack today reminds me of the times I spent sprinkling magic into enemies and looking for lost treasure map pieces, all while being surrounded by McDonald’s characters and images. Back then pretty much half the toys in my huge toy box at home were from Happy Meals as well.

The title screen makes you adventurous for a cheeseburger.

The story is basic enough:

The game is short, but fun while you play. It was important for games made during that era to not drag on too long because the save feature usually was not included. Ronald can run, shoot magic at enemies, use a mechanical claw to get into places high up, and jump pretty far. Each level is unique and has new properties to it, keeping the freshness alive. The game still remains a big favorite of mine even today.

Around the Internet: RadioSEGA

RadioSEGA is a music streaming site ran by a huge SEGA fan from the United Kingdom. The boards are quiet sometimes, but everyone on there is friendly and it’s comforting to know that you are not going to be flamed on their boards. SEGA fans can relax in the boards with a fairly group of mature fans and talk about any system’s games on their respective topics. The site has a huge arsenal of songs, but is quite cost for it’s owner, if you are interested in donating head over to this thread: http://www.radiosega.net/forum/showthread.php?t=956.

EGM’s End

I like, most of the people on 1up, am going to be really sad to see EGM die and disappear. All the issues I own, are like treasures to me, that I pick up and read anytime. Just looking to my right I can see Bioshock on the cover of a July 2007 issue that I have. In my closet, there’s about 100 something issues that I refuse to throw away despite my parents repeated complaints that they are just taking up space (in my room at that).

As you may have read on here before, I once wanted to be an EGM journalist. I’d read all about it in the issues and on Shoe’s 1up page. Even today, sometimes I think about it, though I am currently taking a completely different direction in my life pursuing the life of a businessman instead. Print media, may be as some are saying a dying form of media, but I think it’s a necessary medium. You don’t want to always read things online, sometimes things online are not reputable, and the chances of you successfully ever reading anything completely are highly unlikely online compared to taking a magazine with you on long rides to school, during class while you should be listening to your teacher, or on flights from Florida to California.

I hope one day EGM comes back, full and strong, I hope one day someone can do it right and that the market will be good again. Even though it will never be the same without the extremely talented journalists that I followed for quite some time. Journalists such as Shoe, Crispin, Jennifer Tsao, Seanbaby, Shane Bettenhausen, John Ricciardi, Bryan Intihar, Greg Ford, and many more. Those journalists have been slowly disappearing in the past few months or years, moving on to new places, maybe a sign that things were coming to an end.

I want to thank EGM and everyone involved for all the good times, for keeping me company on all those times as a kid and teenager. You’ll never be forgotten.

The only version I could find of the former staff.

Old School Gaming Pet Peeves

Here are some things that I absolutely despise about old school games, though sometimes you might even find these things in current generation games as well.

1. When you’re left without any clues of where to head next (especially in an RPG), and you’re forced to wander the world for hours not knowing where to go until you find some switch event that will trigger the next part of the game. It’s like developers expected gamers to have psychic powers and be able to figure out magically which place they need to go to next.
2. Insane difficulty levels, followed by few continues quickly turn-off casual gamers, leaving them hanging with a game they can’t use past level one or two.
3. One-hit K.O.’s: I have always hated this, even in later games such as Crash Bandicoot or The Getaway. I think it’s unnecessary to try and make a game so real that it becomes tedious and annoying just like real life. It might be a little interesting as a small challenge in a level, but once everything you touch kills you, it’s really time to tone it down.
4. Games with crappy manuals: Thanks for telling me about all the characters, now where’s the explanation on how to operate this game? I think one of the best manuals I may have seen (of course I haven’t read all manuals), was when I bought Metal Gear Solid 2. They really did a good job of explaining what you can do with the characters.
5. RPG’s with awful fonts to them. It’s bad enough that the whole game has a crap load of text, don’t make me stare an ugly font the whole time.
6. Lack of save points in RPGs. The world won’t ever care that I just beat one of the most difficult bosses and leveled up ten levels, if I can’t reach a save point to save my progress in time before enemies wipe me out. This mainly occurs in RPG games where you can’t save on a world map.

Final Fantasy V

I’ve played this game so many times and never reached the end, I’m hoping that this will be the time that I can successfully that I have conquered Final Fantasy V for good.

Let’s Play Sweet Home (Part II)

But you guys just got here. You should at least try it out.

Tomm is clearly leading the way.

Time to part into smaller parties…because that’s what people do in haunted houses.

Rei is the lucky chosen one.

How would we get around glass shards without him.

Tomm’s gamer sense is tipping us off.

Now Parish wants in.

Our very first fresco.

This time it’s not Tomm’s gamer sense talking to us…

Parish takes a picture so he can share it with his fellow Gamespite readers. And…

Meanwhile…

Brick and Nadia are still by themselves in the entrance of the mansion. We’ll have to fix that, won’t we?

Nadia walks into the first room of the mansion and find a locked door. How convenient that she has the exact key that matches it.

We enter the room and what do we find?

F-Zero Video Log I