Not only is this the first blog post I’ve made in I-dunno-how-long, but it’s the follow-up to a post I made waaayyyy back in…*checks notes* July 2017?!
Continue reading “Final Fantasy V: FINISHED!”
The cooler autumn weather brings a different mood to every aspect of life, and to counteract the oncoming gloom of winter’s shorter days and my disappointment about having to actually put on pants to go outside, there are some good things about it, too. I get to bust out my trusty old leather jacket, myriad delicious Oktoberfest beers appear on store shelves (especially here in Wisconsin), and my dogs love running through the leaves and, eventually, the snow.
Along with all the bundling-up and hunkering-down comes a change in my gaming mood, too. Yes, ’tis the season of RPGs, when a nice, long quest to save some crystals or prevent the destruction of the world or some such nonsense is just what the doctor ordered to get us through the months that end in “-ber” and “-uary.”
Lately, after doing some thinking about it and with no new games catching my interest, I’ve wandered back to the Ys series.
Continue reading “Ys-y Like Sunday Mornin’”
Do you hear that? No, of course you don’t. It’s silence. Why is there silence, you may ask?
Because the kid behind the counter at Gamestop is no longer asking you if you want the strategy guide with your new game. Why not?
Because there isn’t one.
Continue reading “A Eulogy for the Strategy Guide (Updated 3/20/21)”
I’ve read a lot of books on video game history, and I’ve heard a lot of the same stories told several times. Therefore, rare is the story I haven’t heard yet; and here we have a book — the first of three massive volumes, no less — that is absolutely packed cover-to-cover with things I didn’t know, things I didn’t know that I didn’t know, and things I didn’t even know that I wanted to know, but it turns out I’m really glad I know them now.
Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age has finally been released in North America. For many of us, this is the first “proper” new Dragon Quest game we’ve gotten to play since the 2010 release of DQIX on the Nintendo DS, as the online installment, DQX on the Wii, wasn’t released over here. That’s eight years we’ve been waiting!
DQIX was a great game, but I absolutely loved DQVIII on the PS2, having sunk over 100 hours into it, and I’ve been waiting for another experience like that. I haven’t played enough of XI yet to determine if it lives up to my memories of VIII, but so far it’s headed that way.
The thing I really love about Dragon Quest, and the reason I’m writing about it here, is its solid connections to the past.
Since I have two semi-related topics I wanna talk about, I’m going to make this a split post, or two posts mashed together, like a punk rock split 7-inch (or should that be grindcore, given the topic?? HA! I’m funny.)
Continue reading “Super Mario RPG: FINISHED/When in Doubt, Grind it Out”
I seem to keep writing these posts where I stick up for things that other people seem to be down on, like Riding Hero or Castlevania II. I briefly thought about renaming these articles “Shut Up It’s Awesome” and making it a series, but nah.
Anyway, today I’m here to lavish praise upon another oft-maligned facet of this diamond that is the videogaming hobby, and that is the Sega CD! (Mega CD in Japan and Europe, where the Genesis was called the Mega Drive.) Although this expensive add-on for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive became mostly infamous for grainy FMV (full-motion video) games like that stinker Sewer Shark and the notorious Night Trap, and derided for crapping forth Marky Mark: Make My Video upon the world, one needn’t look too far past those turkeys to find some unique, important, and pretty damn hardcore titles that the serious gamer really shouldn’t miss. Continue reading “For the Love of Sega CD”
I picked up the physical edition of Ys Origin from Limited Run a few months ago, and now that I’ve finished Metroid: Samus Returns and Cuphead, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to return to Ys for the first time in over ten years. Continue reading “What are we playing? 12.04.17”
I’ve played my share of Final Fantasy games — I’ve played through the first, IV, VI, VII, IX, and X (with about six hours put into VIII before I decided my character was a d-bag and I didn’t wanna be him anymore) — but, like most American gamers, I didn’t play II, III, or V. Continue reading “What are we playing? 07.16.17”
If you have the Dragon Quest Blue Slime controller for PS2 by Hori, released in conjunction with Dragon Quest VIII in 2004, you may have noticed that after 13 years of collecting dust on your shelf, it’s become disgusting. Maybe it’s got a gross, sticky film on it? This is actually pretty common with PVC items such as action figures and other toys, and my DQ Slime controller was susceptible to it as well. So, I’m here to tell you how to clean it up and make it, you know, not totally revolting to touch! Continue reading “Is your Slime slimy?”
