I almost went all of September without writing a single Retronauts or Metroidvania entry. And that would have been crazy lame. Fortunately I’ve squeezed one in with about an hour to spare. Sadly, the topic is about two months past its freshness date… but I guess when you’re writing about 15-year-old stuff a month or two margin of error is OK. And thanks to the magic of hypertext, you can click this image to read it. Zounds!
21 thoughts on “Fwom the gwave”
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Hurrah for FFIII! Despite being awfully easy (Vanish+Doom/X-zone=lame), there is no game finer.
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My favorite is bugging the game with Relm’s Sketch and getting 99 Illuminas. Then pick up some Merit Awards… oh yeah.
U.N. Squadron!?
Mega Man X??!
STAR FOX!?!
First of all, your Chrono Trigger vs Job story is so much like mine, it’s creepy. The only difference is that it was Chrono Cross in my case.
Also…
“you have to admit the bit where the world pretty much ends and Celes tries to off herself in despair was pretty shocking…It was the most engrossing RPG I’d played to that point.”
I’d have seriously thought you’d have held this up for RIDICULE, instead. I mean, your hatred of angst in games is pretty well-documented, and short of religious imagery, FF3 hits all the big buttons: suicide, abortion, abandonment, and so on. Not that there’s anything wrong with liking FF3, but color me surprised.
Why? It wasn’t a stupid, hackneyed cliché back then — it was something new and surprising.
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Also I think people are sort of missing the part where this is only about the games that really kept my interest, not the best games for the system.
FFIII was my first encounter with angst, and that’s why it’s oh so sweet (and probably why I’m a slave to Evangelion and MGS, too). To quote my friend who watched as I played, “Whoa, sucks to be (insert FFIII party member).”
Wow Parish… you and I had our first jobs at (disturbingly enough) the same time. I’m not sure what that means, other than I’m the game industry’s first child-laborer, apparently. Good show.
I was super excited when I saw Atma Weapon pull a Meteo on me.
Pulling out an Sega Genesis Altered Beast quote for a nintendo system? Videogame illiterate! HURGHREGHLRHGLRHGLLHREGLRHG!!! BIAS MICROSOFT SLAVE SELLOUT!!! >:(
JuanFrugal: I’m at AtmaWeapon right now and I wasn’t excited when he pulled Meteo on me — I was dead.
Now consider how much more difficult it is to make such a comparably good list of games for Sega Genesis. I’ll try anyways: Sonic 2, Beyond Oasis, Phantasy Star II, Shining Force II, Phantasy Star IV, Virtual Pinball, Gunstar Heroes — actually that’s not a bad list at all.
Which reminds me — what happened to your Beggar Prince review? 1UP is dying for its Genesis section you know.
AtmaWeapon is one of the few battles in FFIII that can still baffle me. Often times I waltz right through him, but on occasion he’ll inexplicably get the best of me and slaughter my party.
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Chadarnook and Tentacle are the two bosses to watch out for, though. They can mess you up.
Man, Wrexsoul almost ruined FFIII for me. I stupidly didn’t keep an extra save outside Cyan’s dream, and I just couldn’t find a way to beat him. I ended up having to start all over again, and you’d better believe I didn’t go anywhere near Doma Castle that time.
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Also, that screenshot looks like it was taken in an emulator with a background layer turned off. Or did I just forget about that time when Kefka, Gestahl and the three statues hovered in mid-air?
Yeah, sometimes I like to toss crappy emulator screenshots into these things for a laugh. Leave me to my insignificant pleasures.
Way awesome list. The SNES was my first and favorite system, and I fondly remember playing all of those except for Soulblazer. I sort of have an idea of what that game must have been like, though, because I did play its sorta-sequel, Illusion of Gaia. Man, that game rocked. I think it’s time to go ROM hunting again.
i’m actually more interested in hearing about cotton cleaning. what the hell does that even entail?
Man, it’s hard to even believe SoM was 1993. I am freaking old.
I think Secret of Mana gets the award for “game I rented more times than any other.” It was so addictive. I just HAD to beat it. Many weekends did I spend playing that one. I wonder why I never bought it?
Oh yeah, I was 10 years old and broke. Nevermind.
I thought the ROM Hunting Range suffered a hit after Lavos landed.
Needs more Genesis.
Mana is also my most rented game. I did that thing where you hope you rent the same cartridge so’s to continue your game, only you never do.
I reckon I never loved a console as much as the snizzle. The DS may end up bein’ my favoritest game-playing thing, though.
If the SNES kept your intrest in games from flatlining, my lack of one had the opposite effect. Between the slow, agonizing death of the Genisis and the introduction of the Game Boy Color, games were pretty low on my radar Lara Croft enticed me to get a PSX in ’98, but three months later I was bored with the console. Until the day I saw a brand new copy of Super Metroid for ten bucks. I didn’t even know the game existed until that moment.
To this day when I think that I could have been playing Chrono Trigger instead of forcing myself through another round of Battle Arena Toshinden, I tear up a little.
I agree with everyone here who says the Genesis rocks. Gunstar Heroes looks like a SNES game? NO! It looks like a Genesis game, that means, kick ass.
Why don’t all the RPG makers rip Chrono Trigger off more often? It got everything right: Viewable enemies, simple-but-interesting battle system, story that didn’t take itself too seriously… heck even the length of CT was pretty reasonable. It only took me about 45 hours to find everything on the first play through, and a lot of stuff that was purely optional. Plus, there were all those bonus endings for actaul worthy replay value.
I wish my SNES power cord hadn’t been chewed up by the vacuum recently, or I think I’d leave work early and go play it right now. That or Yoshi’s Island or Super Metroid or…