Final Fantasy – Obsolete Gamer

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII

Sometimes deaths feel cheap. The actual action-oriented combat works well; certainly better than I expected. My biggest complaint from this department though was the camera. Sometimes I just could not get it into a good position, especially in narrow spaces. Also, the combat was a bit predictable in terms of how it was triggered. In earlier games, most combat occurred at random while walking. In later Final Fantasy games you are on an active field with enemies you can engage or try to avoid. Here? It’s things like intersecting hallways that trigger the usually-random group of monsters you fight. You find yourself hugging the walls awkwardly, battling the camera angles if you’re in an area where you don’t want to fight. It’s not all bad though.

PlayStation

Luis Zena

Ehrgeiz

The graphics are very good and sharp. The game does deliver some of the best graphics for its day. Squaresoft did a good job making the characters look how they are supposed to. Just think about this, remember how the Final Fantasy VII characters looked in the game? Well, look at them in this game and tell me they don’t look better. Tifa’s boobs are yummier than ever!

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Chrono Trigger comes to Android

The classic RPG Chrono Trigger is available now for the Android on the Google Play store for $9.99. Originally created by Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama creators of Dragon Quest and Dragon Ball, this version will contain two additional areas found in the Nintendo DS version of the game.

Celebrity gamers

J.A. Laraque

Gamer Profile: Pamela Horton

I heard about it from my group of friends who had read articles on it back in 2009. The very first character I ever played was Janna. I was really good with her (or so I thought.) The second character I played was Teemo. It was love at first mushroom kill. He’s so cute! With Teemo I play AP hybrid, starting with boots and pots, building into a malady and a wits end. I always built Magic Resist because I was usually mid with Teemo. I was hard on banks top too. 🙂 I also play an AP support Soraka so my heals and skills do more than your typical support. It tricks the enemy team to blowin their ults and CDs thinking they are going to get a kill. Then they see their target full health and start focusing me. 😀

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Game of Thrones: 16-bit style

Our video of the day comes from the fantastically funny folks over at College Humor. This time they take the season one storyline from Game of Thrones and put it into a Final Fantasy style game. For those who played the SNES versions of FF you will notice the style right away. The video is especially funny if you watched all of season one of Game of Thrones, but is funny nonetheless.

Interviews

Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Ten Questions: Matt Barton

I don’t think Matt Chat is unique. There are many, many other YouTubers out there doing similar shows. For instance, ianwilson1978 does great work on the Sega Genesis and Marlin Lee covers a variety of games. I guess one thing that makes my show special is that I feature games from all platforms, especially covering PC and computer titles that the others miss. Most other shows are dedicated to consoles, especially Nintendo classics. I figure those games already get enough love, so I try to cover ground that is not covered by the other shows–such as Dungeons of Daggorath for the Tandy CoCo, Tunnels of Doom for the TI-99/4A, or even the PLATO platform. I also feature interviews with classic developers, such as John Romero and Al Lowe. I’ll soon release my interview with Chris Avellone.

Game Boy Handheld Games

Luis Zena

Sword of Mana

So here we go in a new grand adventure, you will probably feel at home with the beat em up style gameplay it brings as well as Mana cards you can use to summon your magical powers. Sadly, this game doesn’t bring a link cable gameplay option which would have made it an incredible experience(Some of you may remember Secret of Mana on the SNES, three players!). You can still connect two GBAs with the games but only for trading purposes, this isn’t Pokemon you know!

Game Reviews

Luis Zena

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

The game starts you off in a quest to become a knight. You play as Ceodore, son of Cecil who is accompanied by Biggs and Wedge to help you on your quest. As usual you should know that when characters are named Biggs and Wedge, they usually hit the bucket real quickly(Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy VI did this). The game plays like its 1991 counterpart and delivers remixed music from the same with great success. It’s such a blast from the past listening to the battle music of Final Fantasy IV once more.

PlayStation

Luis Zena

Saga Frontier

Square released a whole line up of RPGs including Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy Tactics, and others during the 1997-1998 era. It was an era where the RPGs flourished and were finally respected and known by everyone especially due to Final Fantasy 7, you couldn’t ask for anything better. This is where Saga Frontier came in with their traditional gameplay and big battle system. You can have up to 15 characters in your party although you can only use 5 at a time.

SNES

Luis Zena

Final Fantasy II

The game starts you off on a mission with Cecil, the dark knight and Kain, the dragoon. These two friends will soon find out they were tricked by the king on destroying a peaceful town and then separated against their own will. Don’t worry though, they’ll eventually meet up again but I don’t want to give away any more spoilers, that would be just awful. Nevertheless, the game is packed with a long enchanting adventure and a wonderful music score.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Dear Video Game Manuals, I’m Just Writing To Say I Miss You

Video game manuals. If you’re over the age of 19 you know what they are and what they used to be like. For those younglings who are reading this who have yet to have had their balls drop, video game manuals consisted of more than “THIS BUTTON SHOOTS AND THIS BUTTON JUMPS!” and the repetitive warnings of “Hey just to let you know, you could have a seizure playing this game.”

PlayStation

Luis Zena

Chrono Trigger

Another feature of the battle system is the combined attack combos where you can apply combos with your allies for higher damage. You’ll of course need both allies to have their battle gauge filled and for them to have enough points to complete the attack. If one player doesn’t have enough MP, then you are out of luck.

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Obsolete Intros: Final Fantasy Tactics

Your story takes place in Ivalice after a long standing war with its two neighboring nations. Not only are you dealing with rebuilding, but economic and political issues as well. After the death of the king a regent is put into place splitting the kingdoms allegiance in two which leads to the Lion War. Your main character is Ramza Beoulve a highborn cadet who finds himself in the middle of the war.

Editorials

Umar Khan

Free to Play. If You’re Going to Fail, Get Better At Failing.

It seems much more frequently nowadays that many MMORPG companies have been accepting their losses and got off their high horses to adopt the Free to Play model. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Does it really help them bring in a larger player base? It certainly seems to be working for many of these companies but will it be accepted wife spread for future games?

Blog

J.A. Laraque

Motivational Monday: Stereotype

I see the first issue now, why do they give all the black folks the horrible video games? We really should have a contest to see which was the worst Shaq; Shazam, Steel or Shaq Fu, all titles that start with S and were a piece of S. So Shaq is playing himself and while sightseeing before a charity basketball game he wonders into an old man’s store and is told to walk through some backdoor portal to a new land, I think this is how slavery happened.

Interviews

J.A. Laraque

The Interview: Steve Gray

Ha. The stories I have to share involve other Square employees, cute Japanese girls at various locations in Tokyo at night. They are not fit for public consumption… so I’ll let you guys imagine some of the trouble we got into.

The Music Hall

J.A. Laraque

Final Fantasy I: OST

The story goes that while working in a music rental shop Uematsu was approached by a woman working in the art department at Square. At the time Uematsu didn’t consider it a career move in fact he thought of it as a part time job, a place to make a little extra cash and in the end would not last long. When he took the job Uematsu met Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi who asked him to compose some much for his games. In the end there were only a few requirements which included adding “battle” and “town” music, but besides that Uematsu had free reign to create the music as he saw fit and we all experienced and enjoyed the results.