RPG Classics

Although the Role-Playing-Game genre has been around for a long time, I didn't care about it till the mid 1990's. Before this era I was very hooked of the 1-on-1 Beat-em-up's like Streetfighter II (Turbo), Fatal Fury and the KoF series.
The following RPG-timeline describes the developments from 1992 till today, with spotlights on the classics on the SNES.
In the fall of 1996, it was like I stood up on a day and must have thought there must be more than no-thinking games like SF etc.
So I bought Secret of Mana, which I also purchased a few years earlier, but swapped it for another game due to not understanding the RPG genre.
I was hooked again and the RPG virus never left me since. Because it was also fall in the lifespan of the best gameconsole ever, the SNES, my brother and I were hunting for all the greatest RPG's on this system for about two years.
The result was a very impressive list of great RPG's. Most of them were in new condition.
A unique feature at the time for Secret of Mana (16-Meg) was the real time action where most of the rivals were menu-driven or turn based. The latter method was because of the limited processing power to realise real time action. There was also a 3-player mode which gave the players more fun. My brothers and I are still playing it nowadays!
Father of the SNES RPG is without a doubt 'The legend of Zelda III - A Link to the past' (8-Meg). In those days - and still- a fantastic in-depth story with lots of action released by Nintendo itself.
Squaresoft (Good old times without Enix) was already a specialist in RPG's and had released Final Fantasies 1 -3 for the NES. Though the story of FF IV (8-Meg) was very good and today's classic, the graphics were reminding of a pimped NES. Till winter 1994, Square releases her Golden Egg - Final Fantasy VI (FF III in the US) with rendered graphics, great music and a epic story stored in - at the time huge cart - a 24-Meg cart. Since then Square's star has rised to heaven and the following succes were even greater. This time, there was besides the turn based, the introduction of active time battle, better known as real-time battling menu-driven. In 1994, just after finishing FF VI, Hironobu Sakaguchi put together the so called dream team consisting Yuji Horii (Dragon's Quest), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball) and Sakaguchi himself to work on a project which turned out to be the best RPG ever - Chrono Trigger (32-Meg!). Aside of them, there was the debut for music composer Yasunori Mitsuda. It was a gamble, but it turned out fantastic. Mitsuda asked too much from himself and suffered from exhaustion. Nobuo Uematsu finished his soundtrack with a few tracks, but Uematsu states that the credits goes to Mitsuda.
This game was special because it didn't had to change the field screen to action/fight screen. A few extra menu's appeared when confronting the enemy and there was a smooth transition in the music. The unique style for the Chrono Series was also the Tech-ability. Depending on which character you were using, you could spread a great arsenal of magic and fighting combo's, just fenomenal! Of course the active time battle system was featured here.
Besides of all, there were multiple endings, depending on what kind of decisions you had made in the past. Now this is Chrono (time) Triggering at highest level!
The new game+ feature boosts up the replay value. You can replay the game without searching all the valuable items/ techs once again.
Later in 1999 Sony would also release a 'sequel' named Chrono Cross. This is not a really sequel, because it has no direct connection to the events of Chrono Trigger, but takes place in the same universe about 20 years later. The extra dimension of CC was that it also junps to parallel universes, which explaines the title Chrono Cross.
Due to the arrogance of Nintendo to keep the support of cartridges, Squaresoft switched and gave the licenses to Sony to release titles for the Playstation. This is because the CD-rom (and later DVD-rom) could store much more data, which gave more opportunities and possibilities.
The results are known, FF VII till FF IX were cashcows for Sony. Many people claim that FF VII is one of the best episode that has been made. It was a high quality title with a good in-depth story. For me, FF VI is still the one above all, nothing beats the 16-bit era. FF VII & FF VIII was a little change in tactics and technical choices. The party you were playing consist 3 characters. Why Squaresoft made this choice is unknown. In FF IX was a return to the roots.
The characters were more animated like and the music is familiar with the pre-32 bit era. The party you're travelling with consists 4 characters, like before.
The summons are mostly the same as in FF VI.
In the early 2000's Squaresoft merged with Enix, it's rival company, to the biggest console RPG developper. The merger is comparable with that of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas in the aviation-world.
Critisism said it hasn't brought that good to the development of the products, I agree. The saga continued on the PS2 with FF X to FF XII. Now in March 2010 the 13th episode awaits for the PS3.

Do you look forward to Final Fantasy XIII?

A few titles (brandnew) acquired during our hunt late 1990's:
Chrono Trigger, FF III (US), Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Super Mario RPG, Breath of Fire 1 & 2, Lufia 2, Terranigma, Illusion of Time, Seiken Den Setsu 3 (Secret of Mana 2), Treasure Hunter G, Romancing Saga 3.

New additions

It has been quite a while since my last post. So it's about time to present my newest additions to my Home Theatre & Home Entertainment. This time it is a mix of modern computergaming and old school retro gaming.
At the end of October I bought the new PS3 Slim with a 120 GB HDD. I already know the possibilities and a few systempushers like Metal Gear Solid 4, CoD 4 Modern Warfare and the newly released CoD MW2 have convinced me. The PS3 slim has more HDD space and a renewed OS. A few features didn't come anymore with this version, but it's worth it. PS2 support is not available, which is a downside, since the PS2 is still the cashcow after 9 years of life. Directly after release I purchased the Hardened Edition of CoD MW2. This version includes besides the game disc, a steelbook case, plastic overall sleeve, a booklet with concepts & art-work and a voucher to download the first CoD, known as CoD Classic.

Furthermore, there is a new handheld. The Nintendo DSi black is a lovely gadget to play present games, but also timeless classics as Chrono Trigger DS.
I love this game and also got the original brandly new SNES cart title from 1995 (purchased in 1998).

Speaking about the SNES, i already own an PAL version and share a US SNES with my brother. But if this one dies, it will be difficult to play US games. And I got a good library of fantastic SNES RPG's. So'I purchased a spare US SNES on E-bay.
It took me € 55,00 shipping from US included, but hey......this brick is gold! The US controller, RF-switch and AC-power adaptor are rubbish, but I got a tons of PAL controllers and accessoiries. Ow...a Super Mario World game pack was also a freebee.... Nice!
But aside from it's uncool design (known as the Brick) the US SNES has a few points over the PAL version. It supports RGB-signals which was comparable with HDMI nowadays. The colors of the US SNES were far more brighter, colorful and thus superior to it's PAL nephew. Another good thing is that the Brick is running on 60 Hz due to NTSC, which is 17 % faster than the European counterpart and the black boxes on the top and bottom of the screens will not be shown.
Later this year I will spent an article about the classic SNES RPG's.
For now, i present a few screenshots which are upscaled by my superb Onkyo beast and full blown all channel stereo (There wasn't any Dolby Prologic II or DTS HD yet in 1995). The shot of CoD MW 1 & MW 2 is a little blur. Apologies for that.
(All pictures are taken with Sony-DSC P8)

Which type of gaming do you like? Retro, Modern gaming or both?

City trip Hong Kong SAR - 4 (Last Part)

Asians are quite electronic-addicts. So are they here. This computer centre was in the district Sham Shui Po. The Mekka for electronic-madmen.
All sort of hardware and software for PC and console gaming are available here. I have thought about purchasing a Nintendo DSi here, but on a second thought....it would be better to buy one back in The Netherlands due to the region restrictions. (which weren't an issue in the past).

A few days later we went to Lantau Island to visit the Tian Tan Buddha. It's worlds tallest buddha seated statue outside and has a excellent view. If the weatherconditions are good - and we were lucky - you can see Macau SAR from the top of the statue.
At Wong Tai Sin Temple we were witnessing some of many ceremonial buddhism activities.
We have also visited Hong Kong Park at the district Admiralty. HK Park has a nice Greenhouse and an enormous aviary with a great variety of birds.

On the last day we have visited our grandmother who lives in a adult-day care resort. Because the H1N1 Influenza is an actual item, we had to wear a surgical mask. On the picture: 4 musketeers, my grandfather (left) was joking with us!

Later that night, after being confirmed we were able to jump on the jump-seats again, the PH-BFS 'City of Shanghai' flew us back to the Netherlands. A special note: The 747-400 captain was the same one as on my flight last year from HK to AMS, an unique coincidence.
Unfortunately the last picture isn't that sharp, but it was my best one at the time.
Well, this is it. I hope you enjoyed my mini-trip log.

Have you planned a vacation this summer?

Golden Age

Born at the end of the 70's means that I am one of the so-called (pre) Nintendo generation. Compared to the current Internet generation, claiming their agenda is full continously, a teenager in the 80's & 90's seems to be very blurry nowadays. But there are also some remarks.
The music back then was real music , written by real musicians who were also able to play instruments, had a fantastic live act and more importantly, had a content. Unfortunately, this kind of music isn't anymore today. Wacko Jacko didn't retreive his nickname yet. Today, the only ingedients consists: Be pretty, have a good voice, wrong manager and a Magic Music Maker 178.0 and let's get rich! (or fall very hard)Teenagers were more mature back then and didn't have to be cautious about capsizing when traveling by boat due to corpulence or obesity.
Besides, the time we spent outside was about 20.000 times more than today, because there wasn't anything to do at home. We hadn't that much of pocketmoney, neither we needed it, since we didn't get drunk every weekend. A cell phone was something no one had ever heard of and so we weren't bothered 24/7.
In 1990 we saw the NES as an upcoming home entertainment system. Of course, it was nowhere in comparison with the Neo Geo , but hey, who cares! We now have entertainment at home! At that time, Sega had a similar system called the Mastersystem (II). There were no other competitors at that time (Sony was still sleeping), so our (game)life was sooo good and so easy, because there was nothing else to choose, thus nothing else to overthink about. Every time when a game was released we bought it, whether it was good or not. Fortunately, we were clever enough to recognise quality and inferiority.
Then in 1992 the Super Nes appeared, known as the giant and winner of the 16-bit era in the Golden Age of videogames. This system didn't only wipe Sega's Mega Drive/ Genesis from the face of the earth, but was also killing for us, leading to spent more times with the SNES rather than boost up my school results (sounds familiar?) Super Mario Kart was one of the carts we played a billion times. It still amazes me that the cart has survived! At the end of the 90's we were (still are) also RPG mad and the SNES still posesses the finest RPG's ever like: Chrono Trigger, (+DS version), Final Fantasy VI , Secret of Mana (2) and so on.....without disqualifying today's videogame entertainment (They are good)..... I miss those days with this exceptional machine.
So I guess it wasn't all that blurry backdays.......It was a Golden Age...OUR Golden Age!

Do you cherish your teenage years?