Category: Retro Gaming

Pew pew pews

Podcasts are not a thing I typically do. It’s hard for me to justify spending up to an hour and a half just listening to people ramble on about stuff, and it’s nearly impossible to really absorb the content of a podcast while doing something else. At least, that’s how it is for me. I have found that work is a great time to listen to podcasts, because my job is mostly numbers, and it’s easy to listen to what the people are saying in my ear while I muck around on my spreadsheets or whatever.

Obviously, the bus rides to and from work are a great time for this as well.

I have made a point to listen to the new Retronauts every week, because I really like the three regular hosts, and I think they do a very good job of covering a lot of video game-related topics that I’m already pretty interested in, or will interest me enough to hear people ramble about them for so long.

Last week’s episode was about fan translations, and while I’ve already played a few of the games that they highlighted on the show, I did take it upon myself to try out a few that I hadn’t already touched. I’m not trying to hock video games today, though. What was really important about this show was the guest stars: Chris Antista and Brett Elston

These dudes run another podcast called Laser Time (well, Brett guests on Laser Time, and hosts VGMpire), which I decided to look into for no real reason at all other than I was kinda interested in listening to another podcast. I hit the damn jackpot here too, because I ended up loving Laser Time.

Apparently a lot of people involved work in the video game industry, but the podcast isn’t about video games all the time. Or even most of the time maybe? I’ve listened to five episodes so far, and four of those have been about movies. In fact, I’d wager to say that it’s more about retro stuff and pop-culture in general than video games. This is the X-Entertainment podcast that never existed.

I should mention that it’s also pretty consistently funny. And when it’s not funny, it’s educational in a pop-culture sort of way. I love it, and I’m fairly sure that I’m going to have burned through all the back episodes by the end of the year if I keep listening to them at the rate I have been.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, maybe go check that out. I’ve already provided a link to the main podcast page, but if you poke around on the website a bit, you’ll notice that there are a few other podcasts hosted there. Maybe one of those will resonate with you if Laser Time doesn’t.

Tactical Disadvantage: Golgorand Execution Site

Over the last couple months, I’ve been slowly playing through Final Fantasy Tactics. The original PS1 version, at that. I’ve never managed to finish this version of the game, and working my way through it, it’s not overly difficult to see why.

What is overly difficult is getting past a few choice battles. The first is near the end of Chapter 2, and places you in a battle that can seem unwinnable for a new player. Up until now, you’ve been in mostly fair fights. You’ll have seen all of the basic classes, and had mostly fair fights. In this fight, you’re pitted against a squad of eight to your five characters, which features three knights, two archers, and two of a new enemy: time mages. There’s also a special “boss” character, but let’s look at the normal guys first.

The archers are going to be fairly benign. Or at least, they’ll seem that way compared to the danger the rest of the enemies pose. They don’t have much in the way of attack power yet, and arrows are generally easier to evade than physical attacks if you’re equipped properly. At least it seems that way to me. They can use some weaker charge attacks, but that charge time gives you an opening to close in on them and attack or prep a healing spell before they actually hit you. You can also cancel the charge attacks by knocking the archers with Dash or Throw Stone, making them even less threatening.

The knights are probably the biggest direct threat. They do huge damage, and have a lot of HP, which generally means that you’re going to have to use a few turns to knock each of them out. That is, assuming that they don’t block your attacks. I find that these knights are especially fond of trying to break your equipment, so be wary of that. Black magic is a decent way to both carve off huge chunks of their HP and circumvent those pesky shields, but if they get close to your mage, he/she is pretty boned.

Compounding this issue are the time mages. While not immediately dangerous, the two time mages here sling Haste and Slow like there’s no tomorrow. Haste is less of an issue, because it only affects one enemy, but when they start Slowing your guys, that means anyone affected will probably take twice as many hits before getting to act. At that rate, they might not even get a chance. The worst part is that the time mages are up on an archway, so you’ve got to climb up there if you’re not targeting them with magic, basically guaranteeing them time to inflict Slow on you. That and they aren’t nearly as squishy as they should be.

The biggest hurdle in this battle, however, is Gafgarion. A Dark Knight, he’s got a tidy bundle of HP and high attack power. More importantly, he’s got a special attack called Shadowblade that hits hard and actually heals him for as much damage as he caused. This is a huge problem, as it’s hard to deal enough damage to him to overcome the healing he gets from it each turn.

Taking out Gafgarion should always be first priority. The other units are numerous and troublesome, but none of them can heal themselves as efficiently as Gafgarion. My personal favourite strategy is to have a white mage with Regenerator as a reaction ability and Holy. Stick her under the arch, and right off the bat cast Holy on Gafgarion, which should be able to go off before anyone can hit her. Holy will take down Gafgarion in one hit, but the white mage’s MP will likely be drained, so I keep a Monk next to her to use Chakra and recover some MP ASAP.

Of course, FFT offers an endless variety of ways to tackle any battle, but that’s my favourite way to start this one off. Summons would probably have a similar effect, but who even uses summoners anyway?

The rest of the battle will be tricky, but not quite as difficult once the main damage-dealer is gone. I would recommend trying to take out the knights as quickly as possible. If you’re rocking a knight yourself, Weapon Break + Concentrate is a fairly good strategy, as breaking their swords will make them mostly useless. I think they can still use their Break skills with their swords broken, but at the very least, they won’t be doing much in the way of damage anymore. They might even decide to retreat instead of engaging your troops with their bare hands.

The archers should probably be your next priority, but you can ignore them until the end, because they’re dumb and weak. I generally save the time mages for last, despite their buffs being one of the biggest threats in the fight. Really, if they’ve got no teammates to Haste, they aren’t going to be much danger to your well-being.

Agrias is a great teammate to bring into this battle, having just recruited her as a full party member after the previous battle. If you take a little time to earn her another Holy Sword skill or two before you enter this battle, all the better. Saving up the 500 JP for Crush Punch is the best bet, as it has an added benefit of possibly killing the target instantly, but her default Stasis Sword skill has a chance to inflict Stop. It’s not quite as good in the long run, but keeping even one enemy from doing anything for a couple turns amounts to a lot of breathing room in this particular fight. The bonus effects don’t stick often enough to be reliable, but all of her Holy Sword skills do pretty great damage for this point in the game.

It’s worth noting that since Agrias is not a real party member and Mustadio has gone off to do his own thing, this is the first battle where you don’t have a guest character to bump up your number of guys on the field. They’re not always very smart, but at least it’s nice to have that extra lump of HP eating hits, and without the threat of having him/her vanish forever if you take too long to revive them. You can really feel the lack of a guest here.

I also like having a geomancer for this fight. Elemental skills don’t do a ot of damage, but they still aren’t pathetically weak yet. There is a lot of stone here, and that gives you the Carve Model effect, which may petrify an opponent. It may be a little more efficient to just bring an oracle instead and cast the Petrify spell, but oracle is one of those classes that I never really bother to use.

I also always try to have Ramza unlock the ninja class by this point, as the speed boost and innate Two Swords ability are super handy tricks to have up your sleeve. You won’t be able to buy any actual ninja swords yet, which kind of undermines its usefulness, but it’s always a good idea to earn ninja for one or two units ASAP.

Again, FFT lets you play pretty much any way you want, but I always stick to the same patterns when I play it, and the above thoughts describe the way I always try to tackle this fight. Some people have fun doing it in different ways each time, but I’m a creature of habit.

I’ll post some thoughts on other tough battles in the future. Think of Tactical Disadvantage as my own sort of rip-off of Parish’s Anatomy of a Game series, just not quite as in-depth.

(Remember, this is written with the original FFT in mind! There may be some things that don’t align properly if you’re applying it to The War of The Lions port on PSP or iOS!)

Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: September 2013

Welcome, good reader, to a new thing that I want to be doing each month. I’m calling it Monthend Video Game Wrap-up, and it’s basically just going to be a snapshot of what I’ve been up to in the world of video games over the course of each month. Why? I dunno. Same reason that I put anything on this blog, I guess: to keep a cheap record of stuff I do and think.

Okay fine, I’ll admit it. This is all just a big excuse for me to make a banner. It’s one of those odd little things that I really love doing, and I can’t really be bothered to make them for common blog posts. Also I guess since it’s going to be a big thing I’ll make a section for it on the Features page.

~ Now Playing ~

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD (Wii U) – I played through WW only twice on Gamecube, but it’s still one of my favourite Zeldas. People seem to be pretty split on the graphical changes, and I am firmly in the “I love them” camp. The swift sail changes the pace of the game from “pretty slow” to “not as slow” which is nice, but what really I appreciate is the improved Picto Box. It’s making completing the Nintendo Gallery seem less like the most horrible, tedious task ever and more like something that’s actually pretty fun! I’m about halfway through the game, just entering the Earth Temple.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-up: September 2013

What is life like, if not a hurricane?

If you’re into video games at all, it’s very important that you go and buy yourself some DuckTales Remastered as soon as possible. It’s currently available on something you own (Wii U, PC, PS3), so you’ve got no excuses. Do it.

Okay, so you need a little more convincing? Let’s start with the first thing you’ll notice: the spectacular soundtrack. I’m not even exaggerating here; the DuckTales R soundtrack needs to be on iTunes yesterday so that I can be listening to it at all time. Made up mostly of remixes of the original game’s soundtrack, DuckTales R’s music puts pretty much every other retro release’s tunes to shame. It certainly helps that the original soundtrack was pretty damn amazing to begin with, but the arrangements take it to a whole new level.

The title screen music, an instrumental arrangement of the DuckTales theme, is so good that I left the game sitting on the title screen, plugged my headphones into the Wii U gamepad, and just listened to it over and over while I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf for a while. Sound crazy? You won’t think so once you’ve listened to it. Don’t even get me started on the Moon remix. Ducktales R’s soundtrack goes all the way past “memorable” into “infectious.”

The visual style is interesting, and the best thing I can say about it is that it features Wayforward’s beautiful spritework galore. Unfortunately, those sprites live in a 3D world, which is a mish-mash that I’ve never really cared for. I’d much prefer 2D stages as well, but whatever. It looks good, and that’s all that matters.

It’s probably important for me to note that the game is kinda tough. Like, not unbearably tough, but probably enough that you’re going to see the game over screen a few times. Of course, you could always just do like me and play on the Easy Mode For Babies difficulty, and just soak up all the goodness that the game has to offer. I’ll move up to tougher levels eventually, but on my first run, the goal was just to experience the game.

I also chose easy because I’ve never really played the original games on the NES, so I was going in more or less blind. I knew what the game would be like, because I’ve watched at least one video LP of the original, but that was ages ago and this is a pretty different game. The core mechanics of using Scrooge’s cane as a pogo-stick and golf club are the exact same and super fun, but I’m,fairly sure that the levels have been slightly reorganized, with new “modern video game” events speckled throughout each one. Like a fight atop a biplane, and a treasure hunt for a bunch of coins that function as an overcomplicated key. They’re all pretty well in the spirit of the game, so none of the additions feel clumsily shoehorned in. They’re integrated so well, in fact, that if I hadn’t done any research I wouldn’t know which parts are new.

Ducktales Remastered is not universally praised, however. It’s kind of a shame, but I think a lot of people were just expecting too much, or something completely different. There is a pretty vocal group of critics complaining that it’s too hard, but those people are just Stupid Whiny Babies. And then there are the people who are complaining about the cutscenes.

Yes, Ducktales Remastered has cutscenes. And they are glorious. They are fully-voiced by the original actors from DuckTales, and they are pretty darn funny. They make each level of the game seem more like an episode of the cartoon. Yet people are dercying them, and how hard it is to skip them. Wait, what? Yeah. You need to press two buttons to skip cutscenes, and this is a real thing that real people are complaining about. I love the interent as a tool for information and communication, but damn has it made people into whiny, entitled… well, tools. Or maybe they were like that before and you just didn’t ahve to hear ’em.

Anyway, DuckTales Remastered = Good Times, and is totally worth the slightly-higher-than-I-had-expected price tag. Honestly though, $15 is pretty good. If they’d put this in a box you know it’d be double that at least. I’d call that a bargain. Maybe not the best I ever had though.

The more things change

Show of hands, who remembers Video & Arcade Top 10? Hm?

Yeah, so there’s exactly two YouTube channels dedicated to uploading episodes of the old game show, with 15 and 9 episodes available. The second one seems to be a copy though, as it’s only got one episode that the other doesn’t. But that’s besides the point.

I’ve been watching these episodes because reliving my childhood is what I do best. It’s kind of funny the sense of wonder and excitement that I feel while watching the show. It’s like I can recall how the world used to seem so amazing, and how I’d get so excited just to watch a game show with maby a minute worth of clips from a video game I’d like to play. Now I’m a grumpy old man, and nothing is quite as wonderful as it used to be, but man oh man, is there a lot to love about V&A Top 10.

If for some reason you don’t know what V&A Top 10 is, it’s a game show that ran back in the nineties (fom ’91 to… 2006! Holy crap!) that featured a quartet of kids playing video games in hopes of winning said video games. Of course, only the first place kid would win a copy of the game (as well as some other swag, like a watch). Places two to four would get comparatively crappy consolation prizes, like the Donkey Kong shampoo and bubble bath pictured above.

The stakes had never been higher.

One of the most entertaining parts of the show is watching the kids’ faces as they pay the games. Sure, you can get that same picture-in-picture feature on youTube let’s play videos, but it’s so different on V&A. These kids are focused. They are driven. This is the most important thing they will ever do with their lives, and if they fail, they will forever be shamed. They just look so serious when they’re playing; it’s totally adorbs. And then when one of ’em loses a life? You can feel the agony.

Winners are usually decided by how many points or items each player has, but one episode in particular caught my attention. In this episode, the kids were playing Donkey Kong Country 3, and the winning condition was to have the most bananas when time runs out. What? If you’re not familiar, bananas are to Donkey Kong Country as coins are to Super Mario: collecting 100 will give you an extra life and cycle the counter. So, the savvy player would collect 99 bananas and then just sit there until time runs out and he wins. Your average kid will go for that 100th banana, though, and his life will be thoroughly ruined when his counter cycles back to zero.

I guess maybe there are other factors playing into how the winner is decided, but you’ll notice that it’s unlikely if you’re paying attention. The hosts have little to no actual knowledge of the video games they’re going on about. All their story synopses and protips are coming right off of Nintendo-branded cue cards. Hell, the hosts make huge mistakes that no gamer worth his or her salt would ever make. Like calling ROB 64 (from Star Fox 64) R-O-8-6-4, or pronouncing the “chaos” in Chaos Emerald as “kay-oh.” Aceptable pronounciation errors to the common man, but “Oh my God what a poseur” moments for gamer nerds like me.

On that same episode, a new group of kids were wrangled in to play some Kirby Super Star, and maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, but I didn’t hear any winning conditions announced at all. Doesn’t help that A) KSS has no point system, and B) the kids were playing different games; there was at least one playing The Great Cave Offensive while the rest were on Spring Breeze or possibly Dyna Blade.

Of course I didn’t give two craps about all that back when I was a kid. No, I was content just to watch a TV show about Nintendo games. And that was probably the real intent of the show. Back in the pre-internet era, it was the only way to see any game footage outside of actually playing a video game. I know that it sold at leat a couple games to me that I wouldn’t have been overly interested in otherwise. So good on you, Video & Arcade Top 10.

I really have no idea what the whole “Top 10” bit was all about, as there was never a Top 10 anything on the show. They did do a few countdowns, but the Top 5 was for what the most popular laserdiscs (!) were at the time, and then a Top 3 of video games. And I have no idea how the games were selected either. Who would rank Turok: Dinosaur Hunter second on any list? And how in God’s name did it beat out A Link to the Past? Man, the nineties were strange times indeed.

And that about concludes everything I wanted to say about that. I was considering padding this out and calling it a full article, but then decided against it. Why? I’m lazy. That’s literally it.

My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One of my most favoritest games, and indeed the Super Nintendo game I’ve gone back to the most often (with Super Mario World coming in close second), is Kirby Super Star. If you aren’t from North America, you may know it as “Kirby’s Fun Pak” or maybe even “Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe”, but it’s always been Kirby Super Star to me.

Released in 1996, I absorbed as much of the game as possible through Nintendo Power, and made damn sure that my parents knew that I had to own this game. It was featured in the August ’96 issue (#87), and I’m pretty sure that was the most excruciating month of my parents’ lives, because I was nothing short of obsessed with the game and the idea of getting it for my birthday. Unfortunately, being nine years old, I probably didn’t understand the concept of release dates, and it actually released almost two weeks after my birthday. I don’t recall exactly how or when I finally obtained it, but I’ll assume that I saved all the birthday money I got that year for it.

Anyway, I have a frothing love for this game that will never be quelled, and even though I have the updated DS port, Kirby Super Star Ultra, I’ve only ever played through it once and always go back to the SNES original to get my fix. Why? I don’t know. The remake is absolutely better, and even more jam-packed with Kirby goodness, but the original has a strange, nostalgic appeal that I simply cannot deny.

The greatest tragedy of this website here is that in the 10+ years I’ve been running it, I’ve never played proper tribute to the game. So that’s what I intend to do. I could simply go the modern route and do a video Let’s Play of it, but I’m kind of tired of doing those at the moment. Also I’ve lent my PS2 controller to a friend and would have to play with the keyboard. And you don’t want to hear me bangin’ on the keys throughout a whole video series, now do you? (I’ll probably do it one day but that day is not today.)

Continue reading My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One Hit Knock Out

It’s been a while since I uploaded any Let’s Play videos, and there are good reasons for that, but they’re not happy things so let’s skip to the point. During my hiatus, I decided to start up a new format. It’s not terribly original, but I’m going to do entire runs of smaller games in one video, and I’ve titled the project OHKO because it’s the most topical thing I could come up with that’s even sort of clever.

The first game in this series is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, which is embedded below. So if you’ve got half an hour to kill and want to see me crawl my way to the end of the most pathetic Turtles game, it’s there for you. I’m really hoping the sequel is at least a little better.

How long will this project last? Who knows? Some things I start last for years, and some explode horrifically before they’ve even left the launch pad. But there’s one entry, and I’ve got another recorded and ready to go in the near future some time. And it’s not TMNT: Back From the Sewers. But that’s probably on the way at some point. What I’ve got ready to go is much more… ROM hacky.

Home Again

Talking Time regular Loki started up an Earthbound Let’s Play back in January. I was very excited about it because Earthbound (yes, that’s a reason), and because I couldn’t stand to wait the months between updates, I decided to take things into my own hands and just play the damn game myself.

It’s been some time since I last played Earthbound, and it’s one of those games that gets better every time I go back to it. This time around, it’s mostly because I’ve figured the game out. In all my previous runs, I always had a ton of trouble making any progress. It would always end with me grinding for levels because the enemies were too strong. Only now do I realize that it was only so hard because I was playing the wrong way; I never used to make good use of my character’s non-physical attacks.

The way I used to play, I would simply horde all my PP for bosses, which made the areas leading up to those bosses super-tough. The secret is apparently that if you just play through the game making liberal use of magic psychic powers, you’ll pretty much always be at the level you need to be, and while it can still be tough, it’s so much easier than trying to get by with just the Bash/Shoot command. Buying bottle rockets and bombs for Jeff is also a great strategy, and a perfect use for all the extra money that will pile up when you’re not constantly staying at hotels to heal up.

There’s another thing that’s really struck me about Earthbound this time around though, and it something a lot more subtle: Ness’ homesickness. If you spend too much time in-game without returning to Ness’ house or calling his mom, he will contract an invisible status effect which will cause him to waste turns in battle. It’s not something that’s ever announced at all; there’s no message and Ness’ sprite doesn’t change. You won’t know until Ness starts spending his turns in battle reminiscing about home.

Now, this might sound like a horrible thing to put in a video game. And you know, there was a time when I might have agreed with you. But now I can truly understand that it’s another essential thread woven into the beautiful tapestry celebrating life, love, and humanity that is Earthbound. See, I’ve been a little down over the past month, and I’ve really had no idea why. Life has had its ups and downs, but I like to think that I’m a pretty well-adjusted person and I’ve long since learned how to cope with the hardships that life can throw your way. Growing up and moving out hasn’t been easy, but I’m managing and I’m happy to be starting my own life. So when I spend a whole weekend laying on the couch feeling down and not doing any of the things I like, I kinda start to wonder what’s getting to me.

When Ness gets homesick in Earthbound, the quick fix is to use a chick (the baby bird kind) on him. Now, a chick is not an item you’re likely to have in your inventory. It’s one of the few time-sensitive items in the game, and if you carry one around for too long it will grow up into a fairly useless chicken. The chick will only stave off homesickness for a while though; to fully cure the condition, Ness has to talk to his mom. Whether by calling her on the phone or traveling all the way back home, talking to Ness’ mom will remove the homesickness, or reset the counter if Ness hasn’t actually become homesick yet.

I’ll be the first one to stand up and say that I don’t talk to my parents enough. There have been stretches since I moved out where I haven’t even talked to them on the phone for roughly two weeks. My mom talks to her mother almost every single day. When I lived at home, I thought that was crazy, and I knew that wasn’t a thing I was going to do. But I kinda get it now. Because I have been homesick. I never thought a video game status condition could imitate real life so closely, but when I was in the darkest of my days, just calling my mom immediately made me feel better. Spending the day at my parents’ house was even more comforting.

Of course, in real life homesickness doesn’t just have an =false state, so it’s been an ongoing battle for a while now. I’d never been homesick before I moved out, so it wasn’t something I’d ever considered that I could be, mostly because it just seems like something made up to write songs about and simulate humanity in fictional characters. But it’s real, and it’s a lot more affecting than I ever would have thought. In Earthbound, if you talk to a doctor when Ness is homesick, he says “What a sad look in your eyes… you, the boy in a red cap. You must be homesick. That’s nothing you need to be ashamed of. Anybody who is on a long trip will miss home. In this case, the best thing to do is to call home and hear your mom’s voice.” It’s advice that I never thought much of when I was nine years old, but I find it especially poignant now.

In the end, I think it’s good that I’ve had this experience though. The most obvious benefit is that it has taught me to make sure to keep my family close. It’s also nice to know that Earthbound has helped me to learn a little bit about myself, and that I’ve been able to forge an even deeper connection with one of my favourite video games. Maybe that sounds weird, but Earthbound is more than just a game. It’s an experience. It’s a whirlwind of emotion and nostalgia. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most important thing in the world can be the sound of your mother’s voice.