First: I’ve spent the day putting together the biggest Retro Roundup since the very first one, back at Wii’s launch last November. This is the long-intended counterpart to that first update, in fact — a massive collection of all the Xbox 360 games that hit Live Arcade before the Wii’s launch. I’ve even atoned for the terrible sin of our misbegotten DOOM for XBLA review! It is good.
Nintendo fantards, of course, will want to seize this opportunity to note that I clearly hate Nintendo because I didn’t even put a single Virtual Console game on there. 1UP anti-Nintendo bias: logged and confirmed.
Today’s featured article is bobservo’s paean to Wild Arms 4. He likes it quite a bit more than I did! And actually, this review is making me reconsider my fairly lukewarm review… maybe I didn’t appreciate the game for what it really is. For shame. So please to enjoy this positive, uplifting piece of work. With luck it will soften your defenses so that when we go back to being our usual jerky, sarcastic selves it will strike you like a steel fist to the sternum. Pow.
Also, be sure to go respond to this post to assist with possible future Retronauts endeavors! Maybe.
I think I will like JRPGs when they realize they would be better if they realized their adventure game elements and minigames are the best parts in them. For example, if Final Fantasy VII didn’t have all the random battles but instead made them optional with a more “minigame” feel to them and the materia system had more to it than just finding rare materia and equipping it and stuff, and had more puzzles and storytelling (kinda like The Longest Journey or Syberia and Final Fantasy VII’s bastard child or something), then wow. I mean, it would be awesome.
It makes my heart glad whenever someone calls out Digital Eclipse on their crappy emulation quality. People have been letting them slide for way too long, and they’ve only gotten worse over time. You just don’t mess with Streets of Rage 2!
Yeah, thanks to DE, XBLA retro content quality is all over the place. With Virtual Console you know that as long as it’s not TG16 it’s going to be the best emulation possible, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to care if something is perfect or garbage… with XBLA it’s a crap shoot. Sega’s decision to go with Digital Eclipse is especially disappointing seeing as their VC content is handled by M2 (also responsible for the fantastic Sega Ages collections).
So THAT’S why you were playing all those games last night. Ben and I were laughing that you went from Halo 3 to Digdug, but I did not realize it was a paid endeavor.
Whatever, man. Dig Dug is rad.
(It also turned out to be an easy way to add 600 points to my gamerscore in the space of three hours.)
Damn, Konami didn’t do so hot in that roundup.
Parish anti-KDE bias confirmed
The Nintendo fanboys can hardly say it’s a 360-bias confirmed when you say right up the top that it’s a theme week catching up all the rest of the XBLA library and then give two thirds of them thumbs down.
See, you’re assuming they operate under the influence of logic and common sense. You shouldn’t do that.
It’s not bias to dislike that overly flashy, cluttered mess. Sure, it’s more customisable than Gnome, but it’ll give you a splitting headache after using it for more than a few minutes.
Also, friends don’t let friends use QT.
Hmmm… Apparently the blockquote tag doesn’t work here. I wish there’d be more consistency about these sorts of things across blogs.
KDE stands for Konami Digital Entertainment.
I was also joking.
WTF are you talking about?
Oh my God. KDE or Gnome. This website just got a case of the funnies.
Not that I have any experience with invoicing, but what if you bought Wii-point cards and used those receipts? Pardon my ignorance.
I don’t understand why I saw so many answers of “Final Fantasy Tactics” in that Retronauts post.
Ho! Another underappreciated game I like gets a nice sendup.
Thanks for the writeup, bobservo. Maybe some other folks
will give this little guy another look/chance.
It’s not a perfect game by any stretch, but I certainly don’t
think it deserves the reviling I’ve seen it receive in other quarters.
And the hex system *is* really cool ;)