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The Fundamentals of Gaming
IGN has two great features up this week, looking back at two amazing gaming franchises. Their piece on the evolution of Final Fantasy takes in the changes and twists the iconic JRPG series has had over the years, while Castlevania: The Retrospective looks back on the last 20 years of vampire-hunting goodness. From the Castlevania piece: "Though Castlevania wasn't one of the original 18 launch titles for the NES, it was part of the unofficial second wave of games, and an integral part of the Nintendo Entertainment System's premiere years. From that point on, each Castlevania title (though still primarily a stand-alone adventure) was subsequently added into the overarching timeline, and while not every piece of the puzzle clicks from game to game, it remains to be one of the most prominent classic franchises still recognized today for its outstanding gameplay.
"
but does anybody remember this
A controversy ensued upon publication of the second issue of the magazine. Parents called in to complain to the magazine's office that the cover, featuring Castlevania II: Simon's Quest with an image of Simon holding the severed head of Dracula, frightened their children and had resulted in many of them having nightmares. For a long time following, Nintendo Power steered clear of cover artwork that features such graphic imagery and instead now place it inside the magazine. This trend may be ending, however, as on the milestone issue No. 200, a picture of a gruesome zombie from Resident Evil: Deadly Silence was shown on the cover.wiki
That won it worst cover of nintendo power ever.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
...that fails to mention its origin on the MSX (as vampire killer) is not worth reading.
Since when did Castlevania become the fundamentals of gaming? I know it is a good game and the sequels have been nice. But fundamental? Not really. Not any more than Ninja Gaiden or Metroid or Zelda or Super Mario or Kid Icarius. And that's just the Nintendo Universe. Gaming goes far beyond that (no matter how much I like the Wii and think it is the current best offering on the market).
There seems to be some... dissent about the quality and veracity of that article. I mean, parts of that article are horribly wrong. Should IGN hold themselves to some shred of a standard for quality? Or do they get a free pass because they write about video games?
They acknowledge Castlevania: Bloodlines as the last TRUE Castlevania. I, for one, regard Symphony of the Night as the beginning of a different series that simply happens to have the same title. (the N64 games and the unfinished Dreamcast game, however, belong in the first series)
Circumcision is child abuse.
The people who care certainly already know, and the people who don't know almost definitely don't care. Do we need even three paragraphs devoted to a retrospective on the menus of Final Fantasy or the whip mechanics in Castlevania? I could've written these article by reading GameFAQs for fifteen minutes.
back in the day.
He was so into Castlevania that he taped pieces of paper together, length-wise (because that's the way it scrolled) to map a significant portion of the game in pencil.
Little did he know that I would grow up and whip naughty vampires for a living!
There have been other titles that were great. Starting with Zork and arching over Ultima to titles like Quake and the whole Mario franchise. Titles and games that sold just 'cause they had a certain name. It usually works until the developers start relying solely on the name and stop investing time to add new tricks, gadgets and twists to it.
In every franchise, there comes a time when all that's added is new graphics and some eye candy while leaving the game essentially unchanged. And that's when the title becomes stale and starts to erode.
And this puzzles me to no end. You have a title that you only have to ANNOUNCE to sell it. You don't even have to advertise. The game is already selling because people remember the other titles, and remember them fondly. Why do studios simply throw away great names just for a quick buck? Yes, you can sell that crappy game, but after that the name is destroyed, a name with a value that is usually by magnitudes greater than the meager reward you can reap.
All for the allmighty quarter report.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've played a good chunk of rpgs ranging from the dragon quest series to some of the more modern ones like mass effect. My all time favorite have been Final Fantasy 4 for the excellent story, Final Fantasy 12 for the great system (possibly the best system used in the series). Star Ocean for the PS2 was excellent but VERY long, and the Wild Arms series is also very cool.
Of coarse, I am very retro and still play games like Breath of Fire 1 and 2. You couldn't pry my nes and snes from my cold dead fingers. Games have come an awefully long way since those days but the only real difference has been graphics and music compilation. I have played some SNES games that took longer for me to beat than some Playstation games, like Tales of Phantasia (SNES) and the original Star Ocean for the SNES.
Some of the old puzzle games are still great too, most noteably for me was the Adventures of Lolo series for the NES. The game was very basic and graphics were crap but the puzzles just kept getting more and more difficult each stage (the game was just evil) I have way too many video games and way way too much time on my hands. It seems to be all that I have been doing lately.
Anyone who never had an SNES or a old school Nintendo should really go out and get one or at least find a decent emulator and download a few roms. It's worth going back to the basics and seeing just where all the killer games today have come from and really helps add perspective to see where they are going too.
Can we please at least try to acknowledge there is gaming in the world other than video gaming?
I'm just gonna complain a bit, but the Final Fantasy article doesn't delve into anything as deep as the evolution of Final Fantasy. That would have required them to atleast mention what changed over the course of the series. this is more a "what's final fantasy XII's heritige" sort of piece... and not really a good one at that.
It's this sort articles that usualy makes me stay clear of IGN.
The article isn't really clear as who it's aiming for, gamers who has played previous titles and knows what "the Sphere Grid system in Final Fantasy X" is or the gamer that is unfamiliar with the history of the series who needs to learn what a Chocobo - "a large, traditionally (but not necessarily) yellow, flightless, bipedal mode of transport" is.
The Final Fantasy article was just rubbish. It was not much more than a preview of FFXII for the Australian market with a few fairly vague puffs about how it sometimes had complex menus, character classes aren't clearly defined etc. Totally vague rubbish, and particularly disappointing to anyone who might consider themselves even a passing FF fan. There are better articles written by 13 year old bloggers.
Maybe I am a little too old, but Super Mario happened already *after* the fundamentals were defined, let alone Castelvania!
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
I remember reading the article and not being phased at all, this kind of thing is everywhere. It is beyond the point where I am only surprised when I can find articles of *good* quality about video games. A small portion of my faith in humanity was restored by reading these comments.
Sometimes, authors of such articles need to remember that the global gaming community is a *lot* more than Japan and the USA. During the pre-PC years in Europe, the main focus was on home computers, not consoles, and by far the majority of good games that were produced for the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and ZX Spectrum (amongst others) were not "Officially Licensed" by the likes of Nintendo but happened because a few programmers in a bedroom somewhere came up with a good idea,
It could be argued that games like "Manic Miner" on the ZX Spectrum were a core influence for the Mario platformers and text adventures from the likes of Level 9 allowed graphical RPGs like Final Fantasy to come about.
Why no mention also of "Elite", "Dungeon Master", "Impossible Mission" or the Infocom adventures, all of which, in my opinion, had a much greater influence on modern gaming?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I find it interesting that while it touches on Dracula X: Rondo of Blood, it largely fails to look at the Japanese existence of the rest of the series. The naming convention (Vampire Killer/Dracula vs. Castlevania) isn't really addressed, and the author seems largely ignorant of anything but the U.S. incarnations of the games.
...what he fails to note is that this bad acting is a feature of the English version. The original Japanese version of the game has *excellent* voice acting by well-known veteran voice actors. I recommend anyone who hasn't to play a copy of the Japanese version of the game, complete with the original full set of familiars and lack of censorship (yes, Alucard is chugging alcohol, not tea).
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For instance, take Dracula X: Nocturne in the Moonlight, a.k.a. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. He talks about the comically bad voice acting...
A *way* better retrospective of the games is at http://castlevania.classicgaming.gamespy.com/game
Check it out. ^^
Have you ever actually played FFVII? Whilst you are free to explore the world map (once you've opened it up that is) it is almost completely linear. There is the date you go on and a couple of other minor things you can change, and that is controlled only within the dialog options. There are a few minor subquests and sub-characters that changes nothing within the story. It is an extremely linear game with only 1 goal at any one time and only that will progress you to the next goal. It is still a great game that you are correct in saying. But non-linear? Have you just heard that as a current gaming-press buzzword or do you actually understand what it means? Also be aware that being non-linear does not automatically make a game good, that is the way these god awful sites like IGN seem to think too. (as an aside there are no insanely hard puzzles in FFVII maybe if you actually payed attention to what was going on in the game you'd be able to solve them without cheating)
At the time of its release, Castlevania looked and felt a lot like Ghosts and Goblins. (Jump, slash, occasionally throw, hit things and items pop out.)
Final Fantasy was similar to games like Hylide and several games with "Dragon" in their name. (Wander around a big map, go into dungeon/town maps, fight turn based battles, etc.) I remember playing Final Fantasy on a Nintendo 8 for the first time after playing RPGs on my Apple II. At the time I thought gamers would never let RPG survive on consoles: I felt the trees of FF/otherRPG menus were way too time-consuming for someone used to keyboard shortcuts to click their way through.
More than anything, I think the lesson here is, "after you've established a brand with an above average game, flog the hell out of the brand name and try to learn to make a decent game along the way." (If you've played the original Warcraft I, you could argue that Blizzard followed a similar arc here too.)
In their article they say that Cid was in the Final Fantasy series since Final Fantasy 2. This is incorrect. He has actually been in every Final Fantasy. In Final Fantasy 1 he was the guy that used the TNT.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
If you want a retrospective of Castlevania in your magazine, you're far better off just publishing a link to the Wikipedia article. This is crap. At least on Wikipedia, people who post opinions as "well known facts" get yelled at, and their articles marked up with "needs to be sourced" or just straight up removed.
Really slow news day I reckon.
Attention big, mean, hostile slashdotters hovering overhead in an obvious attack posture: My favorite "non-linear" plot-based game had to be Star Control II. Since there was a pre-designed plot, it couldn't be truly nonlinear, but they left you with the illusion of non-linearity, with many dialog options, a huge world, many different ways you can advance the plot, and a flexible definition of "victory". That was a great game.
But yes... FF* games generally are quite linear, except for the "optional" minigames, items, and characters, which are typically "unlocked" at certain points in the linear plot.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
Meteo took two rounds to cast and double the MP. Nuke was better. :) Rydia could fire off one per round, and keep it up for a long time.
Yes, I've read a poem. Try not to faint.
The piece on Final Fantasy was almost entirely fluff. There was hardly any mention of the early games in the series at all.
Since deserting Nintendo and moving to the PlayStation, the Final Fantasy series has been largely a means of showing off the advanced rendering capabilities available on the hardware of the day. In earlier ages, we worried about how many angels might dance on the head of a pin. These days, we talk about how many individual hairs are rendered on head of the latest FF hero(ine)
Two things I wish the article had discussed, but didn't:
Right. Flame away.
I think that was the title that really made the whole series for me. It's not like I don't like the rest of them, but after SOTN I was just like "eeewwwww these are so blah compared to SOTN". I mean going back to using a whip just seemed so simple. I think if Konami chooses to try and resurrect the series it should be a sequel to SOTN. Alucard is way badder than any Belmont by far. Plus the soundtrack was killer. The paired the music so perfectly with the levels. That's just my nerdy two cents for what it's worth.
Dawn of Sorrows for the DS is pratically a port of SOTN, right down to using the same sprites for many enemies and the like. And Soma plays more or less the same as Alucard.
I just wanted to say, bleh, that article could have used less box art and more screenshot.
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