The Ys name, while notorious for its confusing pronunciation, carries a lot of weight in the JRPG world. Ys has been around since the 8-bit era, and new iterations are still being made today. Most games in the series are critically well-received, and the series as a whole has a large cult following. Despite all of this, I had never played a Ys game until very recently.
My first exposure to the series was the original Ys Books I & II. There are many different versions of the original Ys, sporting many ports and remakes across almost every console, but I played the TurboCD version, which is often considered the definitive release of the game. What I found was a unique "old-school" RPG adventure that I highly enjoyed despite being somewhat primitive and its sometimes awkward combat system. Ever since completing Ys Books I & II, I have wanted to dive into the rest of the series but have been confused about where to start next. Cue Ys: The Oath in Felghana.
Video game collectors, as a kind of purist rule, don't like emulators...that is unless Nintendo wants to sell us one, then we're cool with it. The recently announced NES Classic Edition will be here before you know it and I suspect that most Nintendo fans out there will do their best to pick one up. Let's take a look at some of the details.
Summer is a great time to get outside and play some sports. It's also a good time to stay inside and play some sports video games instead. For the past two years, I've taken the Summer as a queue to take a look at the landscape of sports games available on PC. In fact, I'm now going to call it a tradition around here. As a note, these outlines are not meant to be a thorough list of all sports games released in the year, but rather more of a guide to let you know about the best current options you can play for each sport. I've also intentionally left out the management sims like Out Of The Park Baseball, as those are really their own sort of sub-sub-genre. The 2016 edition of our survey actually has some pretty interesting entries that weren't around last year. But don't get your hopes up... there's still no Madden, and hockey and volleyball games are still nowhere to be found.
The vast sea of forgotten tales long buried in the sands of time can seem insurmountable to one looking for a place to dig. Sega's Saturn is a system that has been pushed to the wayside for the entirety of its existence in the West, while it enjoyed a brief success as the great black gaming box of the East. Some of its games made their way over to the West, but the overall ratio of those that came compared to those that never made it is sad to look at, especially if you put yourself in the mindset of a Western Saturn fan who sees the press talk about new Japanese games that only had a tiny chance of being brought over. Some of the ones brought over were excellent, like Dragon Force, GunGriffon and the arcade ports that I have previously discussed. Even the weaker titles brought over were at least something to whet the appetite. With all that in mind, which category of quality does Dark Savior manage to fall into, or is it just another futile voyage along a sea of the endless sands?
Last year I played through LucasArts' 2008 classic Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on the XBox 360. Like most people who played the game, I had quite a fun time blasting my way through the galaxy as Darth Vader's secret apprentice, Starkiller. That game also has one of my favorite opening levels of all time, where the player takes the role of Vader himself, slaughtering scores of Wookiees on their home planet of Kashyyyk. The Force Unleashed is a lot of fun, though I don't think it's perfect. There are a few frustrating platforming sections, a sometimes finicky camera and few aggrevating boss battles. In general though, I share in the overall positive critical consensus of this game.
[img width=640 height=400]http://image.dosgamesarchive.com/screenshots/rogue2.gif[/img] What is Rogue?
Recently, there has been a flood of games touting to be "Roguelikes" in both the Indie and AAA design spaces over the past few years. Even more perplexing, the titles claiming to be Roguelikes seemingly spanned all genres. With the new update of one of my favorite Roguelikes (more later), it seemed only fitting to really examine what a makes a game a Roguelike, and more importantly, what a "rogue" is.
For the full version, you could always Wikipedia it, but in brief, Rogue is a PC dungeon crawler with ASCII graphics. The premise is pretty simple: go from the top floor of a dungeon, get an item, and then escape. The game features turn based combat and movement; for every action you take, all the enemies get a turn, similar to a game of chess. Each level of the dungeon is semi-randomly generated, and populated with a myriad of enemies, items, and interactable objects to make each delve unique. Being simple in the graphics department, Rogue could also go much deeper in item interaction than most games, as not having to animate things saves considerable time. Other things that make Rogue different from most games is that items do not come identified, and the user usually needs to figure out what they have via trial and error. This generally leads to some hilarious situations, like drinking a potion of fire when you badly needed healing instead.
If you're as old as I am, go take a nap. Are you back yet? Sorry, I didn't want you falling asleep while reading, as folks our age tend to do. I may have yet to hit the big four-oh, but it feels like the world is a different place than in my youth, and it sure is spinning faster these days. Yeah, when you've been into video games this long, you see quite a few things change over time.
For example, it doesn't seem like too long ago that once a game was released, it was as simple as walking into any major retailer to nab a copy. Sure there have always been obscure titles with small print runs, but preordering felt like an extravagance, online retailers felt like they had unlimited inventory, and unless you were importing or looking for a game more than a few years old, most relatively modern games seemed pretty easy to get. Although I do remember the challenge of trying to ask for Katamari Damacy at a GameStop during the week of release (or just explaining what the game was.)
[img width=700 height=419]http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y359/necrom99/RFGen%20Blog/Eric_zpslekan5o0.jpg[/img] Eric and I hitting the sticks in the NanerCade during his recent visit
As game collectors, one of the things that crosses our minds on an almost daily basis is "value." Often, when out hunting for games, systems, toys, etc., we have to weight out the estimated monetary value of a game with amount the seller is asking for it and the amount we are willing to pay for said item. This is always quite the juggling act, and one in which we are always working toward being the primary beneficiary of the "good deal." However, when it comes to value, it doesn't mean that we maintain a spreadsheet of what we spent on games, determine what they are currently worth, and adjust monthly as the prices go up.....well....maybe some of you do. For most of us, games aren't merely a monetary investment, but an investment in something on a grander scale.
So far I've been sharing reviews of games I adore and have gushed over them accordingly. Today I thought I'd share a review of a game that evokes a lot of nostalgia, but very little love.
The original Prince of Persia is a game that was quite ubiquitous in the early 90's. Originally developed for the Apple II, it was soon ported to over a dozen other platforms. It's the NES version that made its way into my game library when I was a kid, and did it ever make me feel terrible at video games. Between the jerky movement, odd controls, and inexplicable 60 minute time limit, I never managed to get very far in this game back when I first played it. It rarely managed to stay in the console for more than a few minutes before I got frustrated by constantly dying and swapped it out for Star Tropics, Felix the Cat or solo games of Monopoly.
Give the video a watch to hear my thoughts on playing this game many years later.
[img width=600 height=425]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v136/cisco678/RF/intro_zpsmiwkpmps.jpg[/img] Part of the intro
If you ask anyone to come up with a list of Genesis beat'em ups, I'm sure they would choose the Streets of Rage trilogy, Golden Axe, and Altered Beast. These well-known titles helped define the the beat'em up genre, but there are several previously unknown Chinese titles that are just now coming to the West from publishers such as Super Fighter Team and Piko Interactive. Yang Jia Jianghas or Yang Warrior Family is an unlicensed beat'em up based on Chinese folklore that is about a family of warriors who defend China from invaders, only to be sold out by their peers. So is this import from the East worth adding to your collection? Let's find out.
Even though this piece won't post until a couple weeks after Father's Day, as I type it up, I'm on a plane with my father and my stepmother this holiday weekend, off to sunny Arizona for a vacation with them and some family we have there. It got me thinking a lot about how my dad has influenced my favorite hobby over the years, especially since only a few months prior I was able to share with him what may be the most surreal and personally moving gaming experience I've ever had.
I wasn't exactly surprised when the retro barcade opened up in my hometown about a year or so ago. In fact, I was surprised it had taken so long. In the last decade or so, with the explosion of geek culture and the proliferation of nerdy being the new cool, barcades seem to have sprung up all over the country ready to pander to both the crowd looking to reconnect with their youth, as well as the college crowd riding the wave of gaming as the next "in thing."
It was during my first trip to this barcade when I saw a machine that completely blew me away in a fit of unexpected nostalgia, even in the midst of so many arcade games I played growing up. Walking into the 16-Bit Bar+Arcade in Lakewood, OH, just west of Cleveland, most of what I saw there was welcome but unsurprising. Upon seeing a particular cabinet, however, everything else around me faded away like one of those flashback triggers in movies where the camera zooms in on the character and they get taken back to their childhood. In my case, I fell back to a memory of my dad, a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away.
It's time to dig through E3 again. We give our take on each of the major pressers, and all of the games included. How did our opinions stack up against yours? Let us know!
Last time, I discussed things like setting up the temporary venue, running events, and planning. This time, I'll just discuss how I had fun enjoying the convention!
To make sure I got a chance to enjoy the convention a bit this year, I made sure to load up on support at the event. We had five Game Quest staff there over the entire weekend and typically 5-6 volunteers. We made sure to have our area fully supported so that if any of the people involved wanted to take in a panel, grab a signature, or just shop the vendors, we would be able to accommodate them.
Too Many Games is a nice little Retro Video Game Expo held near Philadelphia every June. I just returned home yesterday from my 4th consecutive TMG and thought I would share my thoughts.
Vapor Trail is a vertically scrolling shooter originally developed by Data East for the arcade in 1989. Kuuga: Operation Code "Vapor Trail" is the game's full Japanese name, with the title being changed to Vapor Trail: Hyper Offense Formation overseas. Telenet Japan secured the rights to port the game to Sega's Mega Drive, publishing through its RiOT label for release in 1991. At the time, Telenet also had a North American subsidiary named Renovation Products, who handled the overseas Genesis release in the same year.
This original game spawned an arcade trilogy from Data East. The second game in the Kuuga series is Wolf Fang: Kuuga 2001, and the third is Skull Fang: Kuuga Gaiden. Both of these sequels were ported to the followup of the Genesis, the Saturn. Wolf Fang expanded to Sony's PlayStation, and even took a modern leap to the PlayStation Network, for a PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable release. Wolf Fang switched genre completely when it changed into a run and gun and platforming hybrid; however, Skull Fang returned to the scrolling shooter mechanics of the original.
We are a community of collectors, gamers and the likes, and some of us enjoy to let the world know what is on our mind. For those members, we have the community blogs, a place where they can publish their thoughts and feelings regarding life, universe, and everything. Some of those members might even choose to write about gaming and collecting! Whatever they write about, you can find it on their blog. You can either see the latest community blog entries in the feed you see to the left, or you can browse for your favorite blog using the menu above. Interested in having your own blog hosted on RF Generation? It's rather simple, first be a registered member, and then click the "My Blog" link that you see in the navigation above. Following those two steps will certainly get you on your way to blogging.
Sit back, relax, and enjoy our entries, rantings, and completely unrelated series of thoughts. We write for you to read, so we certainly hope that you enjoy our material.
