It is October 1994. I am on my way back from the mall with a brand-new copy of Final Fantasy III for the SNES tucked safely in a bag next to me. I would love to be reading the manual on the way home like I usually do, but I am the one driving this time with my recently-acquired learner’s permit. When the arduous fifteen-minute drive ends, I rush into the house and head straight downstairs to the basement, where the SNES patiently waits for me. Tearing open the box, I settle in on the couch and begin to read the instruction booklet. Yes, I am one of those people. Once I’ve learned about how to set Espers and seen that I will be able to equip Relics with a multitude of effects, I am more ready than ever.

Running back upstairs to the kitchen, I grab a can of Coke and a box of Harvest Crisp crackers. Supplies in hand, I head back downstairs and pull my comfy, if somewhat threadbare, beanbag chair over in front of the 26″ CRT Panasonic TV and slide the cartridge into the SNES with a satisfying click.  Flipping the system on, I settle back into my beanbag and let the first strains of the opening theme wash over me. I have, of course, run the SNES sound through the stereo to take advantage of the bigger speakers.

I am hooked pretty much instantly. The moment those mechs come walking through the snow towards the lights in the distance, I know that this is where I’m going to be spending most of my time for the next few weeks.

Somewhere just outside the basement door, my father is splitting wood for the stove. Winter is coming soon.  The rhythmic thuds of his axe striking the logs punctuate the theme of Narshe.

I should be out helping him, but I’ve got a world to save.

Continue Reading…

If there is perhaps any greater compliment I can pay to a game beyond a willingness to pick it up and play it again immediately upon finishing it for the first time, I do not know what it is.  For some games, such as Civilization, this is only natural; every game is different, and each session presents an array of new factors to differentiate it from the last.  In Metroidvania type games, perhaps it is an urge to top my previous time and make my way through the game more efficiently.  In sports games, perhaps it is simply the desire to hear John Madden speak to me again.

RPGs, on the other hand, are usually a different story.  After sinking thirty or forty or more hours into a game, I generally don’t have much of a stomach to start it all over again.  Generally, there is very little need for me to ever do so; the story has been told, and telling it again is going to bring me little in the way increased enjoyment.  For my favorites, I will often pick them up again someday (I play through Chrono Trigger and FFVI every few years, simply for the joy of it), but almost never have I started one over immediately upon completion.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor has broken that trend.

Continue Reading…

Being born in 1979, I had the good fortune to be growing up during the heyday of Saturday Morning cartoons: The 1980s. Every Saturday brought with it the promise of exciting new adventures, from the early days of He-Man to the latter days of The Pirates of Dark Water.  Lion robots would assemble into giant fighting machines, weather satellites threatened the world, and pizza was consumed in mass quantities by reptilian lifeforms.

Continue Reading…

Destructoid reports that Square-Enix has issued the dread Cease & Desist order on the fan-made Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes.  The project, set to fill in the gaps between Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, seemed quite robust, and was due to be released for free at the end of the month.

Continue Reading…

This past weekend, my wife and I packed up all of our belongings into a series of increasingly heavy boxes, paid some dudes to carry it all down the four flights of stairs from our current apartment and load it into a truck, and unload it all into our new home.  As I sat on the floor of our new living room, surrounded by half-unpacked boxes, trying to figure out where to a particular lamp was, I looked around at the strange new walls that surrounded me and realized, “This is my home now.”

Continue Reading…