The other day Pike and myself were looking back with fondness on a certain videogame company. It was quite stunning, once we actually sat and talked about it, just how many games they were responsible for, and not just games, but true classics, things that defined – even created – genres.
Which company am I talking about? Well, which one came to your mind when you read the above? In this case we were discussing MicroProse, but there are quite a few companies which could have been mentioned here and all would fit; Bullfrog, Rare (Of old), Codemasters (ditto), Psygnosis, etc. (And these ones are just examples from the UK!)
Tally ho, chaps!
Where are the equivalent companies today? Who are even candidates? You can point to people who have had huge impact – Bungie for instance – but one series of FPS games, however brilliant and however influential, does not put them in the same league as these giants who bestrode the 80s and 90s. Nobody that I can think of today has the ability to put out X-Com, Transport Tycoon, Master of Orion, Civilization, and Rollercoaster Tycoon. Now, okay, you look at any of these companies and they tend to have something of a narrow focus, at least in the games that really stand out, but still, nobody today seems to come close, regardless of focus. Maybe Blizzard and Valve, but the former seems to be determined to fall from grace, and the latter hasn’t released something that isn’t a hat since the Bally Astrocade was new. I’m not trying to say there are no good companies anymore or anything, but none seem to really have the scope and grandeur of some of these old-timers we so fondly remember.
Who is your favorite game company of yesteryear? Am I overlooking someone modern?
So recently, I’ve been playing through Breath of Fire III again. It’s not the best game ever made, it might not even be the best BoF (II is pretty damned great after all), but it really is simply, good old-fashioned fun that just emanates nostalgia from every orifice. I’m just going to copy-paste what Pike said in her SMRPG post:
a relic of a different time: a time when RPGs weren’t about who has the fanciest cutscenes or who has the most photorealistic hair or who has the most immersive fantasy world. Rather, they were about traveling from weird town to even weirder town, beating up random enemies for gear, and saving the world. No nonsense. Just beating the big bad guy at the end with all of the epic loot that you had to cross the universe to find.
It sums it up pretty well. One of my party members is an ambulatory onion mutant thing.
He's also the toughest sumbitch in the game
It’s all around just a solid, fun game that knows what it is, doesn’t try to hide it, but sometimes throws something subversive in that makes you stop and think “Wait a second…”. Like when you come across the disabled guy who has been placed in a chair by a window, the sun streaming in. He just mumbles, but if you talk to another person in the room you learn that he was injured in an attack by a dragon years earlier. That is to say, he was one of the first people in the game you fought, and he was just a guy doing his job, mining to make his living. Every so often it’ll hit you with something like that, something brutal or just a bit cruel, never hammering it into you too hard, just letting you think about it.
It’s every kid’s dream, isn’t it? Get a whole bunch of arcade machines, set them on freeplay, and put them in a dedicated room in your house? You know, alongside the vending machine that dispenses limitless candy and pop? You know you’ve had this fantasy.
I love arcade machines. I love how the way they look and how there’s art all over them. I love that they build a big fancy cabinet specific not just to playing games but to playing ONE GAME. These days it’s all the rage to make game consoles that double as Blu-ray players or internet browsers or whatever, but back in the day you had machines that played ONE GAME and there’s something great about that.
When I go to work, I pass a Chuck-E-Cheese’s that has these huge windows and you can see what’s inside. They have a ton of arcade games in there. None of the kids ever play them because they’re too busy climbing all over the slide/ball pit contraption they’ve got set up in there. Good for them, because ball pits are pretty great, but I feel kind of bad for the games. I’d give all the arcades a good home.
I know some people have actually made this dream come true and have a bunch of arcade games in their basement or whatever. I’m jealous. Have any of you guys actually done this?
I’ve dropped hints about this game before but never actually dedicated a post to it. I didn’t even do a Classic Video Game Monday about this over at Clockwork Hare because I wanted to wait until the time was right, and then I never got around to it.
Okay then. Here, I’m going to talk about my favorite RPG game of all time, my favorite Mario game of all time, my favorite Super Nintendo game of all time, and my favor– okay, do you see where I’m going with this?
The only game I like more than this is SMAC. And that’s saying a lot.
It’s hard to pin down what, exactly, makes this game special for me. I can give you an idea, though. Think of mid-to-late-90s Squaresoft. This game is the epitome of that. Now either you know what I’m talking about here, or you don’t, so here’s a quick rundown, in case you need a refresher:
Music that can be beautiful, haunting, or fun
Characters with real personalities, stories, and motivations
A long and convoluted storyline that takes you all over the world and has you visiting a variety of cultures
Minigames
Hundreds of random items that you may or may not need during the course of your game
Final bosses that have two or three different “forms”
Magical attacks that look like they should wipe out everything on the screen but actually only do seven hit points of damage to this one guy in the corner
And so on. But, above all, I think, you have that story. THAT STORY. This was the first RPG I ever played. Back then, I had never, ever, seen a story this deep before in a video game. And it left an immense impression on me.
A small sampling of the characters you will meet on your journey.
In other words, it was all that old-school Square quirky charm combined with a solid story and characters that really drew me in.
Okay, now I’m going to tell you about an optional boss in the game, called Culex. Culex is hard. Really hard. He’s like the equivalent of Mewtwo in Pokemon; he has nothing to do with beating the game, but you go after him as an extra challenge.
Culex has this whole mysterious presence going on that really has nothing to do with the rest of the game, and so he’s a bit of an anomaly. He’s a self professed Dark Knight with a a bunch of Elemental Crystal companions; he’s certainly nothing like we’ve seen in a Mario game before.
…that is, of course, the point. Culex gets a special boss battle theme that you don’t hear anywhere else in the game. It goes like this:
…sound familiar? No?
How about now?
Yup.
That’s not all Culex gets. You get a special victory fanfare when you beat him (three guesses as to what that fanfare is), and you get yet another special song after that. It is at that point that Culex breaks the fourth wall and says “Thank you, brave knight. I will treasure this memento of my journey here. Perhaps in another time, another game, we may have been mortal enemies… Let us part as comrades in arms.”
There are a lot of theories as to what Square was trying to say here, ranging from Culex being a reincarnated Final Fantasy enemy to simply being a mere fun homage. Well, I dunno about you guys, but the whole Culex thing and his conversation at the end always just gets to me. There’s something touching about it. It’s Square giving you this whole special enemy and boss fight because they know it’s what you want. It’s their one last huzzah before leaving Nintendo for years to come– this was the last game they produced for Nintendo before hitching up with PlayStation. It’s a genuine thank you from the game developers to the players, a respectful handshake between both– all done through the interface of the game itself.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Who knows? It still gets to me, though.
Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie proves that she would be the ultimate Final Boss
Now Super Mario RPG came out to largely rave reviews toward the end of the Super Nintendo’s lifespan and then promptly disappeared and no one heard from it again. There have been no sequels (beyond its spiritual successors in Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi), there have been no rereleases except for one on Virtual Console, and most of the original characters made for the game also have not been seen since. The typical explanation is that Square and Nintendo have some sort of weird copyright drama preventing either of them from really doing anything with it in the future.
Perhaps it’s better that way. Super Mario RPG is a relic of a different time: a time when RPGs weren’t about who has the fanciest cutscenes or who has the most photorealistic hair or who has the most immersive fantasy world. Rather, they were about traveling from weird town to even weirder town, beating up random enemies for gear, and saving the world. No nonsense. Just beating the big bad guy at the end with all of the epic loot that you had to cross the universe to find.
Oh, and Geno is the greatest character of all time.
I don’t remember my first video game. Not because it wasn’t memorable, but because I was, quite honestly, playing them since before I can remember. They were introduced to me very early on in my life. A story I am fond of telling about this involves a scrapbook my parents kept when I was a baby. There is a segment for “Baby’s Favorite Games” which supposedly is dedicated for stories about Peekaboo and Pat-a-cake. My section details Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Donkey Kong, and Pitstop.
Mister Adequate has a similar story– he doesn’t remember what his first game was, either!
We do have very early memories, though. A few of mine include:
Video games popping up suspiciously in dreams (and nightmares.)
Getting in trouble for saying a swear word during a particularly scary part of a game (I had no idea that it was a swear word! Also, that game was called Lunar Outpost, and it really did get scary after a while.)
My dad holding me up so I could reach the controls of a Super Mario Bros. arcade machine at a store somewhere.
Greatly enjoying a “game” about Christmas on a tiny monitor– I was very, very young for this, because we upgraded to a much bigger monitor in short order. I must have still been in diapers.
Staying indoors during recess of Kindergarden year so I could play Word Munchers on a green-screen IBM. I also merrily did this to occupy myself during a Parent-Teacher Conference, and I overheard my teacher remarking to my parents that I was the class’s “computer whiz”– the first time I’d ever heard the term.
These are some of my earliest memories. I remember more and more as I get a little older, but picking an earliest is hard to do.
Do you remember your first game? What are some of your memories?
On the one hand, I would LOVE to see an update of, say, SMAC, with an engine and graphics akin to Civ IV with all the stuff that made the original game great kept intact.
On the other hand, when we get a new X-Com that is more like Mass Effect with the X-Com name pasted on it, I’m not sure what to think. Sure, the game looks interesting and might even be pretty good, but I have a difficult time believing it’s really X-Com without all the turn-based-tactics-want-to-smash-your-head-into-the-wall-it’s-so-hard action.
"Hidden Movement" is arguably the most terrifying phrase in video gaming.
But then I wonder if I’m just either being a crotchety old gamer telling the kids about how games were HARD back in my day, or simply refusing to take off the nostalgia goggles. Or both. Can it be that my knee-jerk “do not want” reactions aren’t justified, and are purely emotional?
Well, sure. But as a wise individual in a classic film once said, “Whoever said the human race was logical?” We are emotional creatures who get emotionally attached to things we care about– and if you’re like me, you care about your games. We care about our memories of them, and we want others’ first experiences with our favorite games to be like our own.
So yeah, I want an X-Com reboot to be just as maddeningly difficult and involve just as much tactics as the first. I want everyone who hasn’t played the game to experience it like this. I want to see the keys flying off of your keyboard when you smash your face into it in frustration. I want you to lean forward when the “HIDDEN MOVEMENT” screen comes up because you actually have to listen to the game sounds as a part of the experience and I want you to jump in your chair when you do hear something. I want you to see how terribly genius this game was and why it managed to enthrall me some fifteen years after it was first released. That’s what I want from an X-Com reboot. That’s why I’m not so sure about this new one.
…oh, and yes, I am a crotchety old gamer wearing nostalgia goggles. I have no shame.
Yesterday I had a really weird, specific gaming urge. Namely, I suddenly felt the urge to gather up a party of stereotypical fantasy characters and go around and hit monsters in the face with swords and fireballs.
…you guys DO know what I’m talking about, right?
Aww jeah.
The original Final Fantasy is straightforward and to the point. You don’t pick up new party members as you go along, you get all of them before you even start. The “story”, as much as there is one, is pretty much laid out at your feet in the first three minutes. Oh, and there’s grinding. There’s a lot of grinding.
Playing the game yesterday went something like this:
“Oh hey, I can buy all this armor and magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
Spend about three minutes traveling to the next town.
“Oh hey, I can buy all this upgraded armor and new magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
And it was at that point that I’d filled my oldschool JRPG grinding quota for the day and I saved and quit for the time being.
Now, you’d think that a system like this wouldn’t have a whole lot of appeal. I mean, if you’re gonna spend the game grinding, you’d might as well pad it with some story and character development, right? That’s how most later RPGs work, right? I mean, if I was gonna play some classic FF, I should’ve picked IV or VI or something. Right?
Maybe.
But there’s something deliciously simple about forgetting all of that and, just, I dunno… throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around for no reason at all, other than to buy some Potions.
I actually made these, a long time ago.
And besides, who among us can listen to this song with dry eyes?
The other day I was derping around on Google and YouTube, and found this:
Gran Turismo this isn’t, but what impressed me about it is how video-game-esque it is, without actually being a video game. This is entirely mechanical. In fact, it uses the same basic principle as a toy I had as a kid, which was basically a plastic box with a steering wheel attached and a screen through which a printed paper racetrack would scroll, with a car-shaped silhouette projected onto it. Turning the steering wheel moved your car, and even though there was really no set goal to the “game”, I’d just sit there and play it forever because it LOOKED cool and I FELT in control of the action. Anyways, it’s a direct precursor to games like Pitstop and Pole Position.
Now, if that’s a bit underwhelming, try this on for size:
First, note that absolutely gorgeous cabinet. Then, check out that beautiful luminescent missile, which grabs your attention right off the bat. And those explosions when he hits a plane! I love this. And again, there’s nothing digital about this– it’s all electricity and mechanics. It was made by Sega in 1969, three years before Pong and certainly several more years before Missile Command or Space Invaders.
Now, speaking of Sega, I have one last thing to show you. This:
Aren’t those sound effects just haunting? And that whole blue saturation thing: it makes for some incredible atmosphere. And again, no “video” to this “game”. I haven’t the faintest clue how it works.
There is a true sense of wonder tied to these old games– there is to me, anyway. When a modern game does something amazing with graphics, it just tells me that computers and software have gotten better. When these games do something amazing with “graphics”, I don’t even KNOW what to think because I have no clue how they accomplished some of this stuff. I feel the same way about movies– these days when something awesome happens in a movie, you think “Oh yeah, computer graphics.” Thirty years ago, though, those effects guys worked some serious magic.
I’m not saying that the old games or movies are necessarily better, by any means– but I am saying that they leave me mystified and very impressed with what they accomplished. And as such, they’re pretty fun to explore.
Besides, you’ve got to have some serious respect for your roots, right?
What’s this? We’re back? Not raptured? Oh well. Maybe next time, eh?
Anyways, I’m here to tell you that Pokemon Gold/Silver is brilliant. And this is why:
You beat the game by beating the Elite Four. Typical Pokemon game, right? You beat the game, the credits roll, and you get the Game Over screen.
…that’s not the end of the game. In fact, you’re only about halfway through the content at that point.
“Now hold on a minute, Pike,” I can hear you saying. “I’ve played [insert game here] and there’s plenty of content after you beat the game. It’s got all sorts of replay value.”
You know what? You’re right. There’s a lot of games out there like that. But none that I have played so far have come close to pulling it off the Way Pokemon Gold/Silver did it.
You get the box art for Gold because that's the one I played. NOSTALGIA CENTRAL.
See, let’s go back in time a little. You’ve played the original Pokemon Red/Blue a million times. The sequel comes out, and you can’t contain your excitement. You load up the game, hoping for an adventure just like the first, but bigger and better. You’re greeted with a different world and different Pokemon, which feels just a little off to you somehow, but you play anyway and soon you love this new game as much as the last.
…but something still feels ever so very “off”. Namely, that initial desire you had to revisit the friends and places from the Pokemon games hasn’t quite faded away. You’re just a bit homesick.
Then you beat Pokemon Gold/Silver and guess what?
You actually get to go back to the world of the first game.
Your mind is blown to pieces by this revelation, and those pieces are blown into further pieces when you realize that you can go through and re-challenge all the gym leaders from the first game. You’re older and wiser now, and so are better prepared, and so are your rivals. You’re absolutely giddy at this notion and carefully go through and battle all of your old opponents.
But even that’s not the end, because then you go through a dungeon very similar to the ones you carefully crawled through back in the day and then you fight… yourself.
That’s right.
The climactic fight of this game is to battle the protagonist of the original, probably using a bunch of the Pokemon you, yourself, used back then. Oh, and they’re all, like, level 80.
I don’t think anything I type here can fully express the way you feel when you first stumble across this battle, so I’ll just leave these pictures right here:
I think it’s this whole second half of the game that cemented it as my firm favorite of the Pokemon generations and that still continues to blow my mind a decade later. I can’t think of another game that has done “post-credits content” so very well. If you can think of one that has, please direct me to it, because I must play it immediately.
We’ve all done it. Hooked a Game Shark up to your Game Boy to give yourself a Mew and a few hundred Master Balls and Rare Candies. Used Power Overwhelming, Operation CWAL and Show Me the Money in StarCraft. Typed “imacheat” a dozen times into SimCity 2000 to give yourself millions of dollars.
…well, I’ve done all of those, at least.
You KNOW you wanted him too.
I just finished a rather fun game of Civilization IV wherein I used the World Builder to give myself a massively unfair advantage. I gave myself several dozen Great People right from the start, resulting in a huge leg up on tech, building, and money. Once I had done so, I proceeded to play a mostly “normal” game, except that I had nukes and the Apollo Program by the mid-1700s, a full two centuries before I can usually snag them if I’m playing at my best. (Well, I also wasn’t afraid to drop a Globe Theatre on the heads of a city that showed any sign of unhappiness. Nor was I afraid to give myself a bunch of Factories early or rifle through other civilizations’ pockets for their unique buildings. BUT. OTHERWISE. NORMAL GAME. *shifty eyes*)
It was a lot of fun! However, a great deal of that fun came from the fact that I was already very familiar with the game and knew I could win normally, and it was amusing to speed up that process.
Which brings me to my next point: I don’t tend to use cheats when I can’t win. Rather, I use them when I can win but want to add some spice to the game. Once I beat Pokemon, it was fun to do it again but with that legendary Mew. Once I was already decent at Starcraft, but couldn’t be bothered to finish a particular game the “normal” way, it was fun to wreak some havoc. And as for SimCity 2000…
…
…okay, I used to have SERIOUS money problems with that game. So, maybe that’s my exception to the rule– I’d cheat just to make that one playable. I’ve learned a lot since then, though! I actually make money in SimCity 4! Legally! No, really!
It's true, but I really can't blame Twilight for being somewhat dubious.
So how about you guys? Do you cheat often? Did you have a Game-Sharked-Mew just like I did? (Because really, how many times did we try to use Strength on the truck behind the S.S. Anne? And how much Lemonade did we give to the thirsty girl on the Celadon Department Store roof? ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL SAID WE WOULD GET A MEW AND WE DIDN’T. You can’t blame us for branching out, now, can you?)
