newtmonkey

Tales of Phantasia I am really getting into this now! Even the combat is quite interesting, once you get used to it (and actually read the manual). Even though it's real-time action, it feels a bit more tactical than the button mashing of Star Ocean. You have three basic attacks: A for slash, Down+A for stab, and A twice to do a jumping attack. Your character automatically runs into range when you attack, and then runs back once the attack is done. I thought this was annoying at first, but it actually gives the combat a bit of a turn-based feel. You can also move freely left and right, switch your party order in combat (in case you get ambushed from behind), and chance the tactics of the other characters. So far, I'm pleased with it. It's a technically impressive game in many ways. It's one of the largest games ever officially released for the system, and it has a ton of voice clips and even one song with full vocals. There's also lots of variety in the backgrounds, and the battle scenes have a cool line scrolling effect to give the ground a 3D feel. However, the graphics are strangely washed out with dull colors. Maybe it will get more colorful later. One unique mechanic that I believe was eliminated in other games is the series (even the remake of this game) is the food sack. You can buy/find food all over the place, and have the option of placing it in your food sack. Doing this adds a certain number of "food" units to the sack (the amount varies by type of food), and this is used to heal your party as you walk around in dangerous areas. I like it.

I played some SFC last night... it's been a while! Tales of Phantasia I only played this for a bit, but so far I like it a lot more than Star Ocean, a broken mess of a game that I've read was developed by ex-Phantasia people. It's similarly technically impressive, but is a bit more traditional in comparison... with the exception being the real-time action game combat that's so far pretty basic and dull. At least you can easily move your character around, unlike in SO. Light Fantasy I'd never even heard of this game before, but I was going through the Japanese roms on my cart to look for hidden gems, and the name caught my eye. Maybe some kind of Final Fantasy ripoff? Anyway, it turns out it is indeed a somewhat traditional JRPG, but has some twists. You have an "invite" command you can use on any character in the game, and certain characters will actually join your party when invited; that includes just regular townsfolk as well a "story" characters. Combat takes place on a single-screen grid, similar to Ultima III-VI. I have a feeling that a lot of this stuff will end up being more annoying than interesting, but the game seems worth continuing so far. Cho Makai Taisen! Dorabotchan This was released outside of Japan under the bizarre (but charming) title of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang. It's alright so far, but it definitely feels like bargain basement Zelda or whatever.

I love replacing optical drives with ODEs. Of course, it takes knowledge, pride in your work... for example, a disconnected optical drive can continue to see for approximately twenty seconds. So when I have one that's gawking, I always hold it up so that it can see the console it came out of. It's a little extra I throw in for no added charge. I must admit it makes me chuckle every time. Life is fun.

Some random thoughts on mags as I read through them... Computer Gaming World I finished reading through the '89 issues, and I have mixed feeling on this mag. When it's good, it's really good. Unfortunately, you still get some reviews that just tell you what's on the screen and what each button does, without really telling you what it's like to actually play or whether the game is any good or not! Scorpia's reviews are still perplexing... she focuses on RPGs, and in the middle of her reviews she'll just start giving you a complete walkthrough, or in some cases will just spring a paragraph on you telling you the final part of the game and the ending. You have to be really careful reading her reviews, if you want to actually play the game yourself! They are still doing their awesome Rumor Bag column, where each column is written like a little story with the writer adopting some persona or another. These are a lot of fun! There was even a narrative running across several issues. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that the mag started summarizing articles from Chris Crawford's newsletter aimed at industry professionals. You'd think that this would be fascinating, but I found it to be really wishy washy pie in the sky game design stuff. It was probably amazing stuff for a game designer back in 1989, but I don't think it's of much interest for your typical computer game player at the time. Electronic Games I'm about halfway through the '93 issues so far, and not much has changed with this one. It's VG&CE 2.0, which means a nice clean layout, writing aimed at a slightly more mature audience, and some of the worst reviews ever written. Each game gets a full page review, but as much as a third of the text is usually devoted to telling you the story of the game or complete nonsense (for example, the X-Men [Genesis] review spends five precious paragraphs on telling you what a great idea it is to make an X-Men game, since X-Men are so hot right now, etc.). The reviewer will then basically just summarize the instruction booklet for you, then end with a "if you like this kind of game, think of picking this one up!" paragraph. I seriously doubt that many of the reviewers even played the games, never mind completed them! I do want to mention the layout again, which is text heavy, but basically perfect. This is a seriously good looking mag (though the cover art is often horrible).

I don't have any physical copies of any magazines, sadly. I had nearly complete runs of Nintendo Power, EGM, and Game Player's up through the mid 90s, but they became a hassle to move around so I ended up selling them on Ebay long ago. It would be cool to have them still, just to flip through on a rainy weekend or something, but I make do with scans. This is something I've noticed for many of the mags... as time goes on, they lose a lot of what made them unique, and they all start to resemble one another in layout and content. It's fun to read most of the mags, though, at least up until that point.

I actually got this confused a bit with VG&CE on this point! The Oct '91 issue of Game Player's was the final issue of the mag, but the mag was resurrected nearly two years later in '93 under the title Game Players. It has a somewhat similar layout/design as the older mag (much more modern, though), and has some familiar names on the editorial team... so it does seem to be the legit successor to Game Player's. It's very strange that they took so long to relaunch the mag, though (and a shame that they completely dropped computer game coverage).

Game Player's I finished reading the last couple of issues of this mag, and was sad to see it go... and especially sad to see how it went! The magazine continued beyond its October '91 issue, but changed completely (and for the worse), eliminating its computer coverage and adding lots of 90s 'tude. The final issue is sort of a transition issue, actually, and was quite a letdown. They added scores to the reviews, which doesn't bother me at all, but the quality of the reviews really dropped this issue. They tried to give the mag a "better" layout with more screens, but they did a really poor job of it, so you often just get a few short paragraphs of text each review with (poor) screenshots all over the place, and then this giant score number in the middle the page. For me, the "real" final issue is the September '91 issue with Final Fight SNES on the cover. Tom Halfhill is still the editor, and the mag still uses the classic format/layout. --- It was a lot of fun revisiting this mag! I've mentioned earlier that this was a nostalgic favorite of mine from back in the day, and I was glad to see that it held up. It's definitely written for kids (especially the console reviews), but less like some "hello fellow kids" guy and more like your cool uncle got you into computer games... which makes it pretty fun to read even as an adult. I also must mention the excellent screenshot captions, which were really mini works of art; enough to describe the screenshot but leave you intrigued about the game, in just a few words. Of course, the magazine was not perfect. The quality of the console game reviews ranged from unbelievably poor to okay -- some of the individual reviewers were horrible, and would just summarize the story for a few paragraphs and then leave you with the typical "if you like this type of game you'll like it" final paragraph (imo a clear sign that the reviewer barely even played the game). The computer game reviews were usually much better, and the magazine benefited greatly from having William Trotter on staff, who was among the greatest video game critics of all time imo.

@Tanooki I'm just reading it as is in Japanese, but NE146 above seemed to have decent luck with Google Translate getting the basic point across, if you're interested in skimming through some issues or particular articles.

@JPF997 The MD/Genesis is beloved here and elsewhere. I really don't get what you're talking about with regard to GameFAQs, as the forums dedicated to MD/Genesis games (especially RPGs) there are some of the best resources available when it comes to in-depth discussion of those games. I'd recommend avoiding deliberately seeking out negative stuff. A better option is to play some MD/Genesis games and talk about them with other MD/Genesis fans... here on this very forum! How about posting here to talk about what you've been playing lately on your Genesis:

Over the past couple of years I've been reading a bunch of mags (mostly) cover-to-cover, starting from issue one. I'm mostly up to 1993, though I have some older mags I've yet to catch up on (Computer Gaming World [1989], Game Players PC Entertainment [1992], and Gekkan PC Engine [1988]). I've been focusing a lot lately on these stragglers, so here are some thoughts and comments: Computer Gaming World There's a lot I like about this mag, but it's not perfect. It's got a wonderful rumor column that's a joy to read, and the reviews are very respectable. It's clear that the reviewers completed the games, or at least played them extensively. I guess my only complaint at this point is that many of the reviews spend many paragraphs describing the screen to you, or summarizing the controls. I understand that this was probably necessary back in 1989, but it's still a chore to read. I have mixed feelings on the resident RPG reviewer/columnist, Scorpia. On the one hand, she knows her stuff and very clearly completes every game she reviews. On the other hand, she tends to just outright spoil the game in her review without any notice! She'll be discussing the combat system in one paragraph, and in the next she will start giving you basically a walkthrough until the ending screen. Why would anyone want to read this in a review? Game Players PC Entertainment I already like this mag, but it got even better in '92. It's still got the same excellent reviews, but the previously boring layout has been improved somewhat. My only complaint about this mag is the "Alternate Lives" column, which seems completely random. Sometimes it covers a flight sim, one time that Battletech virtual reality game, but mostly RPGs. The thing is, the writer doesn't seem to get or even like computer RPGs, so it really makes no sense. I just don't get the point of the column. Gekkan PC Engine This is still a lot of fun to read through, though the writing style is off-putting. It's your typical "kids" writing you'd see in manga or anime, and while I'm sure if you were a 13 year old Japanese kid or whatever reading this back in '88 you'd think it was awesome, reading it now is annoying. Having said all that, the screenshots are unbelievable good, and each issue includes some seriously in-depth strategy articles. I'm talking multiple pages per game with complete maps, hints for tough sections, and boss strategies. One issue had nearly 10 pages devoted to the ins and outs of some baseball game, with breakdowns of each player on each team. Insane stuff.

I'm very picky when it comes to controllers, though I like most of the stock controllers that came with the systems back in the day. I would rate the SFC controller, MD (6-button) controller, and Saturn (JP) controller as basically the best of the best overall. I also like the N64 controller (it even has a decent dpad). For more modern controllers, I think Sony finally got it right with the Dual Shock 4, which feels great to hold, has decent analog sticks, and has an excellent dpad (much better than their previous controllers). The XBOX Series X/S controller is alright; it's definitely the best controller from MS, with a surprisingly pretty decent dpad, but I would prefer if the dpad was level with the buttons, like with the Sony controllers. For after-market controllers, there isn't much I like. I found most of 8bitdo's controller to be unusable for anything requiring accurate dpad control, with the only exception being the M30, which is among my favorite controllers of all time. Having said that, the M30 does suffer when playing fighting games, with "charge" moves being extremely frustrating to pull off. Krikzz's Joyzz controller is excellent, nearly equal to the original MD 6-button controller, but you're limited to using it with a Genesis or Mega Drive console, only.

Ken no Machi no Ihoujin (aka Stranger of Sword City) This is a dungeon crawler that's much like good old Wizardry, though it plays quite differently. For example, you have spell points instead of spell slots, and can level up on the spot instead of having to return to town. It's minor stuff to most people, but to a diehard Wizardry fan, it's different enough to require some adjustment. You get to create your entire party after a short tutorial, and in fact the game goes beyond even that and allows you to create a full roster of backup characters if you want. When you create a character you can set his age; a higher age gives you a chance of higher bonus points to allocate to stats, but less "life points." If a character dies, he loses one life point and needs to recover for a day at the infirmary... if he loses his last life point, he is permanently dead and cannot be raised. You can recover lost life points by resting at the infirmary for a week. This isn't measured in real-time, thankfully, but based on the number of battles you fight. One of the best things about this game is that you unlock multiple dungeons to explore once you get maybe an hour in to the game. This means you never get frustrated with a difficult area or boss, since you can just go explore another dungeon. You also have tons of abilities to play cautiously, including a special ability that lets you escape 100% from any battle immediately (other than bosses). It's extremely fair for a dungeon crawler. Also nice is the sheer freedom you have in building your party. There are a ton of classes, and they are all pretty unique. You can also switch classes at any time, and you really don't lose anything from doing so... although a lot of stuff actually includes your level in the calculation, so you don't want to switch too often. If there is anything I don't like about the game, it's the story and dialog. There's a TON of it, and it's absolutely boring. It's made worse by the fact that only two lines of text can be displayed in the text box at a time, and there are also these ridiculous dramatic pauses in between text boxes for some reason. Very tedious.

Nice setup! Very cozy. The PS1 emulation on the PS3 is solid, but not ideal. It adds 40ms of input lag and does not scale the image up very cleanly, even if you turn the filter off. I think your current setup, with actual consoles over SCART to the Retrotink is definitely the way to go. If you want to save some space, I'd just put the PS1 in storage. The PS2 plays PS1 games just fine as you know, with no added lag and a perfectly clear picture!

@Tanooki I haven't played PS4 yet, so I can't rate the whole series... but so far: PS1 > PS2 > PS3 As for the story and time loop, when you look at the in-game world map you see this (don't worry, no spoilers yet): Each "land" is self-contained, flat, and bordered on all sides by mountains. You get from one land to another through tunnels made suspiciously from glass and metal. It's pretty strange, but you eventually figure out: I thought this was a pretty cool twist, and I really didn't expect PS3 to tie it all together like this.

Phantasy Star III (Mega Drive) I recently completed Phantasy Star II, so I decided to go ahead and play through its sequel. I knew of its reputation, and was expecting a mediocre experience... but still ended up completely disappointed with the game. It's graphically a step down from PSII (and even the first game), with an ugly drab color palette, monsters that are barely animated and often look completely ridiculous, and a serious lack of environment variety. The combat screen is ugly and surreal, with the ground continuously scrolling horizontally for some reason. It makes it looks like you're watching the battle from the side door window of a moving car, with the enemies hovering menacingly beside your car. It looks bizarre, and they wisely removed this from the US version! The game world is tiny and barren. The "generations" system, where at the end of each chapter you choose one of two women for your character to marry, and then play the next chapter as the son, is cool in theory but actually just makes it even more obvious how small yet empty the world is, since you're forced to trek slowly over these barren lands over and over each chapter. There's nothing to explore or find, and the game is extremely linear. What's even worse is that the way the scenario unfolds is mostly nonsensical, with the plot advanced mostly by stumbling upon some guy in a cave who gives you a rock or something to open some other cave. The balance is all out of whack. It starts out somewhat difficult since you have a tiny party and few resources, but gets easier and easier by the minute after the first few hours. The difficulty also drops down significantly each chapter, since you keep your android party members (with all their stats and equipment). By the final chapter, your party is full of lethal killing machines that cannot be stopped. The game is also simply joyless to play. They seemingly designed it to be as annoying as possible. Many enemies early on will 100% poison you if they hit. If you're poisoned, you cannot be healed and the game also hides your current HP. You can cure poison with a cheap item, or with a spell... but the spell has a significant failure rate. At one point the cure spell failed five times in a row, using up all of my spell points and still leaving me with poisoned character. The towns all look alike (several even have the same exact layout), but of course all the shops are spread all over the place. It does have good music though.

Phantasy Star III Finished! Although the game got slightly better each generation, it never really got "good" and ended up being quite a disappointment compared with the previous games in the series. It starts out a bit difficult, but then becomes easier and easier with every passing minute, with each generation also being a huge step down in difficulty. Battles in the final area also give out a TON of experience and meseta, suggesting that they ended up cutting out a ton of stuff, and then had to make up for it by leveling you up half a dozen times on the way to the last boss. The last boss was also ridiculously easy, but that's fine since the series places much less of a focus on tough boss fights than other RPGs. It was cool finding out the truth behind the world, and the ending suggested a fun time loop with Phantasy Star II.

I'd been using the 8BitDo Pro 2 as a replacement for the standard Joy-Cons. The feel of the controller is great, and the analog sticks are fine... but after playing some games using the dpad, I ended up very disappointed with the controller! It might be fine with your typical side-scroller, but for anything relying on the diagonals, it's a disaster. Just to make sure, I tried using the controller with my PC... and arrived at the same conclusion. Typical for 8BitDo, the dpad feels fine at first, but is actually extremely poor when it comes to actually playing games, with very inaccurate diagonals. You don't want to play a shmup with this controller, that's for sure! I eventually settled on just using the standard Joy-Cons for modern games, and an 8BitDo M30 (which has an atypically awesome dpad) for "retro" games. BTW, the M30 is just awesome, and I highly recommend it if for playing side-scrollers and shmups alike, whether on the Mega Drive (2.4ghz version), or on modern platforms (Bluetooth). It's not only the best controller ever put out by 8BitDo, but arguably the best modern retro-styled gamepad out there.

Yes.

Phantasy Star III I think I'm basically at the end of the third/final chapter, so my next post will likely be once I've completed the game. The game does get a bit better this chapter. You have access to the entire world, and navigating from one world to the next is (finally) not annoying, since you can fly around within each world (very limited where you can land, though), and can warp between worlds instantly from the temples. It's also cool when you find out why the "monitor" item shows such a bizarre world map. Finally, it's cool that the final chapter is basically a treasure hunt involving going around the various worlds tracking down the ultimate weapons. Even so, it still feels like a bit of a letdown. It would have been cool if the final chapter was a big open world full of optional stuff to do (a bit like the World of Ruin in Final Fantasy VI), but gathering the ultimate weapons is mandatory and linear. Because of this, it just feels a bit like drudgery, as you cross over all the worlds back and forth following instructions to get one weapon after the next. A missed opportunity to salvage this rushed game, imo. Even worse, the game is just ridiculously easy by this point. I suppose it depends on which character you ended up with, but I started the third chapter with four characters that were already quite lethal in combat, with an additional lethal character not far away. On top of that, four of the characters are capable of casting powerful healing spells, so I'm never in any danger whatsoever. Maybe the game becomes unbelievably difficult in the last stretch, but I doubt it.

I agree! AV Famicom composite looks extremely clean, whether on a CRT or upscaled properly.

@neogeo1982 Yeah, it seems like a missed opportunity having only two save slots. Ideally, the game should have just given you a menu to select which generation to play, unlocking future generations as you finish the game.

@Wayler This was an interesting comparison. I think the logo itself was probably enough for the US, since the paper RPG was quite popular there. It sort of reminds me of the box for Ultima VII on PC or the ads for Mortal Kombat, where just seeing the logo was enough for fans to flip out. The artwork for the Japanese version of Shadowrun is awesome, and I think it needed to be added to the cover here to sell the game, though iirc the paper RPG was actually translated into Japanese back in the day.

Phantasy Star III I completed the second generation (Layne aka Nial). This was must less tedious than the first chapter (most enemies do not poison you, and there isn't quite as much backtracking), but it was also extremely easy. You start out with your cyborgs from the first chapter, and they retain all their equipment and levels/stats. This makes the start much easier... but then the game just gets easier and easier every passing minute. By the end of the chapter, all five of your characters are lethal killing machines, and two of them are also powerful healers. You basically cannot lose. I guess one good thing about this game is you don't need to grind at all... it's usually pretty clear where you need to go next, so I just zoomed from place to place, could barely afford any of the equipment in the last couple of areas, but still wiped the floor with the boss with all characters at nearly full health when the battle was over. I chose to marry Ruise (aka Alair), so it's off to Chapter 3!

Akumajo Dracula: Circle of the Moon It's hard to rate this one. I like that you're pretty weak throughout the game, and that you really can't grind, so you have to learn how to fight the bosses like in the traditional games in the series. However, the boss battles are really bullshit. They simply were not designed for the screen, or at least how the screen moves with respect to your character. The screen basically follows you at all times, with you in the middle... which is fine when you are exploring. But the boss battles take place in arenas that often have a vertical element, and they are designed with that in mind. Meanwhile, as you jump all over the place to avoid the boss and his bullets, the camera follows you, and the boss is no longer on the screen! You can figure it out, but it ultimately feels like you are just playing blind, relying on its pattern, which you've learned through trial and error.

I've (mostly) been reading through my collection of scanned mags in chronological order, and I've finally reached 1993 for the major mags. Some thoughts early into '93: Electronic Games Sendai (EGM) scooped up the core staff from VG&CE and released this mag as the "mature" version of EGM, more or less. I didn't love VG&CE, but it was interesting to see how the mag would fare after the transition. I don't know which issue exactly it was, but one issue starts with an absolutely insane editorial from Arnie Katz, where he brags about his massive apartment, and home office full of video game garbage. I kept reading it, thinking there must be some point, maybe he intends to editorialize about all the trash publishers are handing out in the hopes of getting good reviews? But he ends it by talking about his absolute favorite knickknack received by some video game publisher. I could not believe what I was reading; it comes off as totally unhinged -- especially for a mag meant for a more mature audience, presumably most of whom have real jobs and careers, and don't give a shit about Arnie's cheap trinkets sent to him to ensure a good review. Anyway, EG is basically more of the same, but they did stop using two of the absolute worst reviewers from VG&CE (Josh Mandel and Howard Wen), so the overall quality is a bit better. The PC game reviews are just as good as always, mostly thanks to Ed Dille, who was probably the best reviewer from VG&CE. This mag is still going on and on about full motion video. This seems nuts to me. By this point, even EGM in its caveman language was calling out FMV for what garbage it was. Meanwhile Electronic Games is still going on and on about how cool it is to watch a video on your TV, and then press a button and watch another video. They really seem to have been completely hoodhinked by the industry, and also completely ignorant of the technology, because they keep thinking that, somehow, the next system (CD/I or 3DO) is gonna bend space and time and make FMV interactive. It blows my mind that these guys, who have been in the industry from the very beginning, don't understand anything at all.