Being at only a few days from another Remake *slash* Enhanced Port in the name of Chrono Trigger on the NDS, and almost done with Star Ocean PSP, I was thinking back of several good games from former Square and Enix that probably will never get a remake/port, but were still alot of fun to play. So here's a small list of those I remember.
Soul Blazer trilogy
I call it a trilogy due to some similarities, themes and ties in the stories and characters, it's almost unmistakable that they were done by the same groups. The trilogy contains Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma. Sadly, Terranigma never reached US despite English localization due to Enix USA closing doors during the SNES/PS1 eras.
The main theme went around souls and rebirth. Soul Blazer had you visiting worlds and dreams to rebuild the towns and their inhabitants. The main character was the envoy of 'god', which amusingly also had similarities with Actraiser it seems. You received the help of souls for spells and various abilities like seeing invisible things, and could talk to plant and animals. The theme was around rebirth, as various dead people seemed to be reincarnated as animals in the worlds you visit.
Illusion of Gaia had you visiting the world to dispel the cloud of darkness over it. The main character had the ability to transform into the bodies of warriors he borrows the souls from along the story, which makes you use their different abilities as you progress. While the theme was similar, the main thing that seems to tie in with Soul Blazer is when you collect the 50 red gems around the world. The extra dungeon it unlocks has for boss the very first boss of Soul Blazer, in a similar killing strategy and stage.
Terranigma also dwelled in rebirth, but this time on a whole new level. This time it wasn't a fantasy world, it was OURS. Opening Pandora's box literally throws you into a quest to bring back the world as it was, which makes you speed through the entire evolution of the world and the upbringing of plants, animals and humans, down to helping some important history figures to make their contributions, such as voting on the next King of France, helping Wright create his airplane or Edison with electricity. It probably holds the most enigmatic and sad ending I've seen.
Each of these titles would be worth a remake or a port. In fact, I'd love to see them, but seeing their age and te relative obscurity and lack of huge sales or visibility like the mainstream series received, maybe bundle them together a single NDS cart would be wise.
Secret of Mana
This one is not a surprise at all. Considering they took lenghts to actually remake the very first game from the GameBoy to the Gameboy Advance (originally Final Fantasy Adventure) to Sword of Mana. And seeing they decided to get Chrono Trigger out, why not Secret of Mana now?
Sadly while the mana series is popular, not sure they will consider it for a full remake. Maybe an enhanced port, seeing that's all they gave Chrono Trigger. It would still be a welcomed re-addition to the gaming world, as Secret of Mana definitely was an epic quest to play, and even better it could handle 3 players!
Any other title you think would be worth another chance?
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Console Wars : A tale of fanboyism
The biggest reason for console wars is usually directly related to high costs of current consoles, combined with the fact that people don't always have the money to buy several consoles.
As a result, people tend to try to justify their hard-earned money spent by siding with that console. It's a bad thing in itself, it makes them blind to the qualities of the other consoles.
Not to say that I didn't do this before myself. When it was Nintendo vs Sega, NES vs Master System, SNES vs Genesis, I kept thinking that my console was the best, the SNES at the time. I still liked to play on my friend's Genesis though, but only because I love games in general. It helped me realize things later. But my tale of fanboyism happened when the PlayStation came about.
Nintendo was priming over for the N64, which was supposed to literally jump a whole console generation, going from 16 to 64 bits, jumping over the 32 bit consoles that Sega and Playstation developed. I didn't buy the N64 right off, but I will admit that I felt a pang of betrayal when I heard that Final Fantasy was moving to the PlayStation, when it was supposed to be Nintendo's property.
Of course, I was blind to the facts that Square owned Final Fantasy, not Nintendo. It just happened that Nintendo was the best platform for them to develop on at the time, and when Nintendo stubbornly clinged to cartridges instead of optical media, it was their undoing on the development of those titles. Square wanted to use the full size of discs, making the PlayStation a better platform for that purpose.
I bought a PlayStation, later a N64, but for different reasons. The PlayStation was to follow the Final Fantasy series, and at the same time game me the chance to play other quality games like Legend of Legaia, Xenogears and Suikoden. The N64 was for Zelda mostly, but I had fun with Paper Mario as well.
That ends my little backstory, so back on subject. It's when I was using my own money to buy games and consoles that I realized that the console wars and fanboy attitude was useless. And today it's even more pronounced. The consoles offer different games. The few multi-platform games are pretty much the same on each, so there's no reason to fight over it.
Basically, someone should buy a console because it has the games they want to play, not because it contains the higher polygon rate. Nowadays I'll admit that you can also buy consoles because of their multi-purpose abilities, like web browsing, BluRay reading, Virtual Console classic gaming-style, etc.
Buying a console because you think it's the end all be all is bad in that aspect. You close your eyes on the actual potential on the competing consoles.
Let's try to think objectively, looking at the previous generation of consoles, as an example :
Dreamcast - Playstation 2 - Xbox - Gamecube
These 4 were technically on this generation. I can't talk about the Dreamcast knowingly, so I'll avoid it. But the other 3 consoles were well known. Xbox arguably had the highest processing power. Yet it attracted mostly action games, first person shooters. Being american made it didn't get most of the Japanese made games, except for multi-platforms like Soul Calibur.
The PlayStation 2 continued in the steps of it's predecessor, and was helped by the fact it was a relatively cheap DVD player at the time. While not as powerful as the Xbox, japanese based and already well-known architecture made it keep most of the RPG series and games. It is the ultimate RPG console in my opinion.
Nintendo had some catching up to do with the GameCube, needing to be forgiven the N64 lack of 3rd party titles. Having the lowest processing power of the 3 consoles, it still had some good potential. It still didn't get alot of third party titles, but it showcased an extremely solid first-party line up, and pushed the 4-player aspect. Not much about action games per say, but alot of party games and pick'me'up games that were perfect for gatherings of all kinds.
So 3 consoles, very different definitions of gaming. Standing by a single console basically meant you closed your eyes to the other kind of games. This generation has a similar pattern showing up, the Wii keeping it's multi-player party games and adding a whole new row of games for more casual people. The Playstation 3 boasts the highest power (arguably) and the storage capacity of the BluRay. The Xbox360 started getting more attention from japanese developers due to being roughly the same as PC titles, and started to attract more varied genres of games.
Yet you still see people siding with their consoles and being enraged at news like Final Fantasy XIII going multi-platform. Can't you be glad that a game will be played by more people thanks to it? Sad that your console is losing an exclusive title?
It's a fact that people waiting passionately on a specific game probably own the console months before the release, the sales of a console are not affected solely by a single title of a single genre. People that are 'meh, maybe' are probably waiting until the last minute, and some of them will simply be glad they don't have to buy a new console for a single game.
But before you buy a new console, you should be thinking of a single thing : will it be worth the money I put on it, will it run the games I really want to play, right now? We can't say what the future will hold, FFXIII proves that things can change, a game can hop console or go multi-platform suddenly.
If you don't buy a console to play games right away, are you looking to only decorate your living room?
Enjoy your games, enjoy your console, but for the right reasons, not blindly like a merchandising sheep.
As a result, people tend to try to justify their hard-earned money spent by siding with that console. It's a bad thing in itself, it makes them blind to the qualities of the other consoles.
Not to say that I didn't do this before myself. When it was Nintendo vs Sega, NES vs Master System, SNES vs Genesis, I kept thinking that my console was the best, the SNES at the time. I still liked to play on my friend's Genesis though, but only because I love games in general. It helped me realize things later. But my tale of fanboyism happened when the PlayStation came about.
Nintendo was priming over for the N64, which was supposed to literally jump a whole console generation, going from 16 to 64 bits, jumping over the 32 bit consoles that Sega and Playstation developed. I didn't buy the N64 right off, but I will admit that I felt a pang of betrayal when I heard that Final Fantasy was moving to the PlayStation, when it was supposed to be Nintendo's property.
Of course, I was blind to the facts that Square owned Final Fantasy, not Nintendo. It just happened that Nintendo was the best platform for them to develop on at the time, and when Nintendo stubbornly clinged to cartridges instead of optical media, it was their undoing on the development of those titles. Square wanted to use the full size of discs, making the PlayStation a better platform for that purpose.
I bought a PlayStation, later a N64, but for different reasons. The PlayStation was to follow the Final Fantasy series, and at the same time game me the chance to play other quality games like Legend of Legaia, Xenogears and Suikoden. The N64 was for Zelda mostly, but I had fun with Paper Mario as well.
That ends my little backstory, so back on subject. It's when I was using my own money to buy games and consoles that I realized that the console wars and fanboy attitude was useless. And today it's even more pronounced. The consoles offer different games. The few multi-platform games are pretty much the same on each, so there's no reason to fight over it.
Basically, someone should buy a console because it has the games they want to play, not because it contains the higher polygon rate. Nowadays I'll admit that you can also buy consoles because of their multi-purpose abilities, like web browsing, BluRay reading, Virtual Console classic gaming-style, etc.
Buying a console because you think it's the end all be all is bad in that aspect. You close your eyes on the actual potential on the competing consoles.
Let's try to think objectively, looking at the previous generation of consoles, as an example :
Dreamcast - Playstation 2 - Xbox - Gamecube
These 4 were technically on this generation. I can't talk about the Dreamcast knowingly, so I'll avoid it. But the other 3 consoles were well known. Xbox arguably had the highest processing power. Yet it attracted mostly action games, first person shooters. Being american made it didn't get most of the Japanese made games, except for multi-platforms like Soul Calibur.
The PlayStation 2 continued in the steps of it's predecessor, and was helped by the fact it was a relatively cheap DVD player at the time. While not as powerful as the Xbox, japanese based and already well-known architecture made it keep most of the RPG series and games. It is the ultimate RPG console in my opinion.
Nintendo had some catching up to do with the GameCube, needing to be forgiven the N64 lack of 3rd party titles. Having the lowest processing power of the 3 consoles, it still had some good potential. It still didn't get alot of third party titles, but it showcased an extremely solid first-party line up, and pushed the 4-player aspect. Not much about action games per say, but alot of party games and pick'me'up games that were perfect for gatherings of all kinds.
So 3 consoles, very different definitions of gaming. Standing by a single console basically meant you closed your eyes to the other kind of games. This generation has a similar pattern showing up, the Wii keeping it's multi-player party games and adding a whole new row of games for more casual people. The Playstation 3 boasts the highest power (arguably) and the storage capacity of the BluRay. The Xbox360 started getting more attention from japanese developers due to being roughly the same as PC titles, and started to attract more varied genres of games.
Yet you still see people siding with their consoles and being enraged at news like Final Fantasy XIII going multi-platform. Can't you be glad that a game will be played by more people thanks to it? Sad that your console is losing an exclusive title?
It's a fact that people waiting passionately on a specific game probably own the console months before the release, the sales of a console are not affected solely by a single title of a single genre. People that are 'meh, maybe' are probably waiting until the last minute, and some of them will simply be glad they don't have to buy a new console for a single game.
But before you buy a new console, you should be thinking of a single thing : will it be worth the money I put on it, will it run the games I really want to play, right now? We can't say what the future will hold, FFXIII proves that things can change, a game can hop console or go multi-platform suddenly.
If you don't buy a console to play games right away, are you looking to only decorate your living room?
Enjoy your games, enjoy your console, but for the right reasons, not blindly like a merchandising sheep.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Link of the Day #2
I didn't have any inspiration, but here's a funny video. If they didn't do that scene on purpose, I have no idea what they were thinking!
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Link of the Day #1
On off days that I don't know what to write about, I'll put up a random link to things I liked or found funny. Alot of these may come from GameFAQs friends as well, if you think it's familiar.
So the first amusing link... The Assumption Song! Thank you Ayasu (FFXI) for this one.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/460854
So the first amusing link... The Assumption Song! Thank you Ayasu (FFXI) for this one.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/460854
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Games I play : Star Ocean First Departure
I kept pushing it off for a while since I wasn't very far into the game. Now I got the feeling I'm reaching in far enough to make it worth talking about.
As a little bit of background, this game was first released on the Super Nintendo, but sadly never reached US. ROM wise, it was also an oddity that required a special chip to be added that contained the graphical data, as apparently the game itself exceed the capacity that the SNES carts were able to hold data-wise. If SNES games were 4MB at most, this game reached 6MB due to that special data, which required some special patches from emulators just for this unique game.
It was also one of the few games that worked in any amount of voice acting on the SNES, although it wasn't that much either. A good part of the opening cutscenes had some voices in it, in English despite being a Japanese game (Star Trek influence?). Yet the SNES audio quality and the harsh compression imposed made the sound clips a bit hard to understand, but it was a step in that direction.
For the PSP, thanks to the capacities of this little machine, there are alot more than the opening that are voiced, and I must say the voice acting is pretty good too. I've played Star Ocean : Second Story, and many of the lines felt right off forced or out of line. Well, that was limited to battles only, but even if you limit yourself to battles in Star Ocean : First Departure, you'll notice that there was some polishing to the lines used, they feel tons more natural.
As for music, I can't remember if the songs are that much different than the original on the SNES, but they meet up with what I expected to hear from Second Story (PS1), so they are very good sounding. They are adequate for the cutscenes, upbeat for dungeons and fights, just the way I expect them to be.
Thanks to a better hardware, it also beneficiated from a graphic overhaul, bringing it on par with the Second Story. The overworld is a rotating 3D map with decent details. In towns and villages, one thing that I remember from Second Story was the detail put to lighting. Normally you'd expect a character to either be fully lighted or shaded. In this game, half-stepping into a shadow did make your character half-shaded too, a very intricate detail considering the amout of shadowy areas you may cross in a village.
From what I can see, this version also received that kind of attention, which is pleasing to see. Despite being sprites over pre-rendered backgrounds for villages and dungeons, the amount of frames of animations used for something as simple as walking is impressive, and you see the same amount of detail in fights as well.
The battles are also taken off from Second Story style, with a large area to roam. The original SNES was a little cramped due to the hardware limitations, but the following games retained the idea of having a real-time battle with positioning and chasing targets with better power at their disposal.
All in all, I found everything I liked of this series, better looking, better sounding. Even though I haven't played the SNES version more than an hour, I still have seen enough to compare and see that this was a great remake/port (whatever you want to call it all considered), and I'm happy of having it in my collection. If you have a PSP and like RPGs, this is a must have.
As a little bit of background, this game was first released on the Super Nintendo, but sadly never reached US. ROM wise, it was also an oddity that required a special chip to be added that contained the graphical data, as apparently the game itself exceed the capacity that the SNES carts were able to hold data-wise. If SNES games were 4MB at most, this game reached 6MB due to that special data, which required some special patches from emulators just for this unique game.
It was also one of the few games that worked in any amount of voice acting on the SNES, although it wasn't that much either. A good part of the opening cutscenes had some voices in it, in English despite being a Japanese game (Star Trek influence?). Yet the SNES audio quality and the harsh compression imposed made the sound clips a bit hard to understand, but it was a step in that direction.
For the PSP, thanks to the capacities of this little machine, there are alot more than the opening that are voiced, and I must say the voice acting is pretty good too. I've played Star Ocean : Second Story, and many of the lines felt right off forced or out of line. Well, that was limited to battles only, but even if you limit yourself to battles in Star Ocean : First Departure, you'll notice that there was some polishing to the lines used, they feel tons more natural.
As for music, I can't remember if the songs are that much different than the original on the SNES, but they meet up with what I expected to hear from Second Story (PS1), so they are very good sounding. They are adequate for the cutscenes, upbeat for dungeons and fights, just the way I expect them to be.
Thanks to a better hardware, it also beneficiated from a graphic overhaul, bringing it on par with the Second Story. The overworld is a rotating 3D map with decent details. In towns and villages, one thing that I remember from Second Story was the detail put to lighting. Normally you'd expect a character to either be fully lighted or shaded. In this game, half-stepping into a shadow did make your character half-shaded too, a very intricate detail considering the amout of shadowy areas you may cross in a village.
From what I can see, this version also received that kind of attention, which is pleasing to see. Despite being sprites over pre-rendered backgrounds for villages and dungeons, the amount of frames of animations used for something as simple as walking is impressive, and you see the same amount of detail in fights as well.
The battles are also taken off from Second Story style, with a large area to roam. The original SNES was a little cramped due to the hardware limitations, but the following games retained the idea of having a real-time battle with positioning and chasing targets with better power at their disposal.
All in all, I found everything I liked of this series, better looking, better sounding. Even though I haven't played the SNES version more than an hour, I still have seen enough to compare and see that this was a great remake/port (whatever you want to call it all considered), and I'm happy of having it in my collection. If you have a PSP and like RPGs, this is a must have.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Games I play : Dragon Quest 8
Actually, this should be at the past tense, but it still fits the theme I suppose.
Dragon Quest needs little introduction. In Japan it was banned from being sold on weekdays due to causing a high rate of absenteeism at work and school, due to the flood of people going to buy and play it. The strong bonds between the 3 main creators of the series made it flourish. I can't say if it was the first game of the RPG genre, but it definitely set the bar for the later games, and each game tried to improve upon it.
Dragon Quest 8 : The Journey of the Cursed King is the latest installment of the series. It graced the Playstation 2 in November 2004 for Japan. USA received a futher enhanced version a full year later, with added contents like voice acting and extra animations (the famous Super Sayian-like High Tension). It was also the first game of the series to grave Europe, which is kinda odd in itself, considering Enix had dropped the US side of ports but kept Europe open for most of the SNES+PS1 era. The only difference is that Dragon Quest is unnumbered in Europe, which led to subtitling all of the new releases.
The game itself, I'm not sure I can properly put it into words. In my opinion, this game was probably the best RPG for the lifetime of the Playstation 2. Sure, there was some great ones, like Final Fantasy X, XII, Kingdom Hearts and Xenosaga, all were pretty and fun. But I don't know, Dragon Quest had something else, which is really a matter of taste and opinion in the end.
First of all, the music. The Playstation 2's ability to play music is nothing short of superb. Thanks to the quality that a DVD can hold, the soundtrack was well done and fitting from the begining to the end. It places you in the ambience of the world, the dungeon or the city perfectly.
Secondly, the world map. As far as RPGs are concerned, I noticed that the PS2 had a very odd pattern. Where as the NES, SNES and even PS1 RPGs all had the roaming world map, most of the PS2 went for other kinds, such as Final Fantasy X and XII that have a traced route on a general map, teleport points to move around, otherwise walking between points. That style is not bad mind you, in fact it's more realistic in a way that you need to physically move around.
But other games completly gave up any kind of roaming, such as Kingdom Hearts or Suikoden III. What was a staple of a map with the ability to enter town was now a thing of the past. In that aspect, I admire Dragon Quest 8's method. Without going with the 'everything is on scale' of Final Fantasy XII, the world was huge and gorgeous, colorful and with plenty of nooks and crannies to peek into, wether it's around a tree or atop a small hill.
The villages looked 'on scale' from a distance, but still were in a different area per say, which required loading, which is closer to the original world map systems. The characters are are scale with the surrounding world, and it feels huge to move around on foot. The world map also scales down when using different methods of traveling, like on foot or flying, yet everything looks the same, just perfect. Plus you can see very far away in the distance while traveling, making it very realistic in that aspect.
Of course, being drawn by Akira Toriyama, the entire world and the characters have a distinct cartoony look. In fact the game was made in cell-shade, which from my understanding is a method of using 2D drawings on minimalistic skeletons, instead of being a fully 3D skeleton like Final Fantasy XII for example. The result is more cartoony, but somehow more detailed as well, which fits Akira's style perfectly in my opinion. And it fits Dragon Quest's style just as well.
Storywise, it was very interesting to follow. The generic 'save the world' quest, but not quite either. There's more involved as the quest starts with the only goal to uncurse the king and the princess. But obviously it won't be so easy, will it?
The battles are elegantly made, the first Dragon Quest to actually let you see your characters in battle in fact. All of the previous games used the 'first person view' of the fight where you'd see only the monsters. This time you can see your characters doing their attacks, spells and special abilities, and even lean over tiredly when low on HP. Monsters received the same attention with various animations for their attacks.
All in all, this was an extremely good addition to my collection, and one I would suggest to anyone that enjoys RPGs. It's not terribly hard, not terribly long (50-60 hours), pure Dragon Quest style with some very humorous scenes and dialogs. A good balance of everything that brings it to the top of my list of PS2 RPGs.
Dragon Quest needs little introduction. In Japan it was banned from being sold on weekdays due to causing a high rate of absenteeism at work and school, due to the flood of people going to buy and play it. The strong bonds between the 3 main creators of the series made it flourish. I can't say if it was the first game of the RPG genre, but it definitely set the bar for the later games, and each game tried to improve upon it.
Dragon Quest 8 : The Journey of the Cursed King is the latest installment of the series. It graced the Playstation 2 in November 2004 for Japan. USA received a futher enhanced version a full year later, with added contents like voice acting and extra animations (the famous Super Sayian-like High Tension). It was also the first game of the series to grave Europe, which is kinda odd in itself, considering Enix had dropped the US side of ports but kept Europe open for most of the SNES+PS1 era. The only difference is that Dragon Quest is unnumbered in Europe, which led to subtitling all of the new releases.
The game itself, I'm not sure I can properly put it into words. In my opinion, this game was probably the best RPG for the lifetime of the Playstation 2. Sure, there was some great ones, like Final Fantasy X, XII, Kingdom Hearts and Xenosaga, all were pretty and fun. But I don't know, Dragon Quest had something else, which is really a matter of taste and opinion in the end.
First of all, the music. The Playstation 2's ability to play music is nothing short of superb. Thanks to the quality that a DVD can hold, the soundtrack was well done and fitting from the begining to the end. It places you in the ambience of the world, the dungeon or the city perfectly.
Secondly, the world map. As far as RPGs are concerned, I noticed that the PS2 had a very odd pattern. Where as the NES, SNES and even PS1 RPGs all had the roaming world map, most of the PS2 went for other kinds, such as Final Fantasy X and XII that have a traced route on a general map, teleport points to move around, otherwise walking between points. That style is not bad mind you, in fact it's more realistic in a way that you need to physically move around.
But other games completly gave up any kind of roaming, such as Kingdom Hearts or Suikoden III. What was a staple of a map with the ability to enter town was now a thing of the past. In that aspect, I admire Dragon Quest 8's method. Without going with the 'everything is on scale' of Final Fantasy XII, the world was huge and gorgeous, colorful and with plenty of nooks and crannies to peek into, wether it's around a tree or atop a small hill.
The villages looked 'on scale' from a distance, but still were in a different area per say, which required loading, which is closer to the original world map systems. The characters are are scale with the surrounding world, and it feels huge to move around on foot. The world map also scales down when using different methods of traveling, like on foot or flying, yet everything looks the same, just perfect. Plus you can see very far away in the distance while traveling, making it very realistic in that aspect.
Of course, being drawn by Akira Toriyama, the entire world and the characters have a distinct cartoony look. In fact the game was made in cell-shade, which from my understanding is a method of using 2D drawings on minimalistic skeletons, instead of being a fully 3D skeleton like Final Fantasy XII for example. The result is more cartoony, but somehow more detailed as well, which fits Akira's style perfectly in my opinion. And it fits Dragon Quest's style just as well.
Storywise, it was very interesting to follow. The generic 'save the world' quest, but not quite either. There's more involved as the quest starts with the only goal to uncurse the king and the princess. But obviously it won't be so easy, will it?
The battles are elegantly made, the first Dragon Quest to actually let you see your characters in battle in fact. All of the previous games used the 'first person view' of the fight where you'd see only the monsters. This time you can see your characters doing their attacks, spells and special abilities, and even lean over tiredly when low on HP. Monsters received the same attention with various animations for their attacks.
All in all, this was an extremely good addition to my collection, and one I would suggest to anyone that enjoys RPGs. It's not terribly hard, not terribly long (50-60 hours), pure Dragon Quest style with some very humorous scenes and dialogs. A good balance of everything that brings it to the top of my list of PS2 RPGs.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Game intros
Not as much of a history lesson as a tribute to these.
By video game intro, I don't mean once you actually started a new game. Well, in some cases it may apply, like most Final Fantasy games. But in certain cases, it's when you don't touch anything at the title screen, you often get something extra. In certain games, it's the same intro as if you started a new game (like Final Fantasy X). In other cases, it's something completely different and often complimentary to the story.
The first game that used this out of memory would be the very first The Legend of Zelda on the NES. Waiting on the title screen not only let you hear the entire Zelda theme song, but also has a short version of the story up to now, and an extensive list of monsters and items you'll meet. It's not something amazing I suppose, but it's better than simply seeing the first few seconds of Super Mario Bros.' first level.
Zelda games got alot better starting with the SNES, where they added some cutscenes and text to explain the backstory in a better way. Many games used similar intros afterwards, including one of my all time favorites Lufia II : Rise of the Sinistrals.
With the PSX's increased memory storage and ability to play full motion videos, game intros got another push up. Final Fantasy VII had a cinemation introduction when the game is started, which has since then been remade into the PS3 demo that has fueled so many rumors of a full remake.
So what am I building to by saying all this? My personal favorites, the ones that I feel compelled to watch at least once before loading my game, every single time I turn the console on.
The first up is Wild ARMs. The first game had a very catchy song along with the animated sequences. I was pleased to hear it again for its PS2 remake, yet I'm not sure the animation was as good. Different style I guess.
Next up is its successory, Wild ARMs 2nd Ignition, which I didn't play to the very end, but I still loved the introduction, enough to find the japanese song. The US had cut out the lyrics from the music sadly. Even without the lyrics though it was a very pretty song and animation.
And since I'm on a roll, let's put up Wild ARMs 3, which had something even more interesting. As you played through the game, the opening animation actually changed! It changed to reflect certains events that either are about to happen or have happened already. It was an interesting touch that made you want to watch it every time to see what may have changed. To add to this, they also made this animation appear AFTER you start a new game or load a previous save, but you can skip it with Start button. Here's the first version of it, if not mistaken :
Next up is Suikoden. Now all of the games in this series alone could have gotten every mention here, but I saved it for one in particular. While it was not seen as the best nor the most popular one, Suikoden III had it's share of good points, and the anime intro and song is one of those. Its one of those intros I never skipped even ONCE when playing this game, it was that pretty.
And lastly, the very newest entry, that gave me the idea of this subject today : Star Ocean First Departure on the PSP. The song is catchy and the animation is great looking. I'm currently playing this game too!
This is all for today, cya around!
By video game intro, I don't mean once you actually started a new game. Well, in some cases it may apply, like most Final Fantasy games. But in certain cases, it's when you don't touch anything at the title screen, you often get something extra. In certain games, it's the same intro as if you started a new game (like Final Fantasy X). In other cases, it's something completely different and often complimentary to the story.
The first game that used this out of memory would be the very first The Legend of Zelda on the NES. Waiting on the title screen not only let you hear the entire Zelda theme song, but also has a short version of the story up to now, and an extensive list of monsters and items you'll meet. It's not something amazing I suppose, but it's better than simply seeing the first few seconds of Super Mario Bros.' first level.
Zelda games got alot better starting with the SNES, where they added some cutscenes and text to explain the backstory in a better way. Many games used similar intros afterwards, including one of my all time favorites Lufia II : Rise of the Sinistrals.
With the PSX's increased memory storage and ability to play full motion videos, game intros got another push up. Final Fantasy VII had a cinemation introduction when the game is started, which has since then been remade into the PS3 demo that has fueled so many rumors of a full remake.
So what am I building to by saying all this? My personal favorites, the ones that I feel compelled to watch at least once before loading my game, every single time I turn the console on.
The first up is Wild ARMs. The first game had a very catchy song along with the animated sequences. I was pleased to hear it again for its PS2 remake, yet I'm not sure the animation was as good. Different style I guess.
Next up is its successory, Wild ARMs 2nd Ignition, which I didn't play to the very end, but I still loved the introduction, enough to find the japanese song. The US had cut out the lyrics from the music sadly. Even without the lyrics though it was a very pretty song and animation.
And since I'm on a roll, let's put up Wild ARMs 3, which had something even more interesting. As you played through the game, the opening animation actually changed! It changed to reflect certains events that either are about to happen or have happened already. It was an interesting touch that made you want to watch it every time to see what may have changed. To add to this, they also made this animation appear AFTER you start a new game or load a previous save, but you can skip it with Start button. Here's the first version of it, if not mistaken :
Next up is Suikoden. Now all of the games in this series alone could have gotten every mention here, but I saved it for one in particular. While it was not seen as the best nor the most popular one, Suikoden III had it's share of good points, and the anime intro and song is one of those. Its one of those intros I never skipped even ONCE when playing this game, it was that pretty.
And lastly, the very newest entry, that gave me the idea of this subject today : Star Ocean First Departure on the PSP. The song is catchy and the animation is great looking. I'm currently playing this game too!
This is all for today, cya around!
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