Of all the genres Capcom covered during their prolific days on the NES they had very rarely dabbled with RPGs. With the possible exceptions of Destiny of an Emperor (which is more of a strategy game) and Willow (action RPG) they seemed pretty content to more or less dominate the action category. As their first […]Breath of Fire
Of all the genres Capcom covered during their prolific days on the NES they had very rarely dabbled with RPGs. With the possible exceptions of Destiny of an Emperor (which is more of a strategy game) and Willow (action RPG) they seemed pretty content to more or less dominate the action category. As their first […]
Years before Sega would bless the world with Burning Rangers and Brave Firefighters the SNES was gifted with a pair of really awesome games about firefighting. The Ignition Factor is heavily underrated and worth tracking down but the true gem is Human Entertainment’s the Firemen. With its almost action RPG structure the Firemen is better […]
These days From Software are mostly known for the Dark Souls series of games as well as an endless parade of Armored Core sequels and expansions. However before they hit the mainstream they were a diverse developer and one of their most unique efforts was Lost Kingdoms, a game centered around card battling conveniently around […]
All good things must come to an end and it’s with this axiom in mind that the Phantasy Star team created possibly the series finest hour, Phantasy Star IV. Such was the damage caused by the third installment’s lack of quality that there for a while it looked as though that would be the series […]
And now we’ve come to the black sheep of the family. Many volumes of vitriol has been written about the missteps Sega took with Phantasy Star III, most of it true. Coming off the success of the seminal second installment one would think a sequel containing all of the elements that game got right would […]
I count myself truly blessed to have been able to play Phantasy Star not long after its original release and experience just how far above it was from its contemporaries, Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. In a fair world it would have received the recognition it deserved but alas. A year later Sega would deliver […]
If there were any justice in the world the Phantasy Star series would be held up in the same light as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. As the quintessential sci-fi RPGs of the era Phantasy Star was the opposite of its two main competitors, going for an anime infused brand of science fiction rather than […]
We’ll more than likely never know why Enix USA was so hell bent on keeping the SNES installments of Dragon Quest in Japan but in the interim they certainly released some very…..esoteric RPGs. Some were interesting takes on established tropes that were marred by balance issues (7th Saga) while others were just plain strange (Robotrek, […]
With two Kickstarter funded Shadowrun games in the works all I can say is “What took so long?” Of all the properties that have sat languishing in licensing hell why Shadowrun? While we’ve had a near endless procession of terrible Ben 10 and Spongebob games but to date there are only 4 Shadowrun games. With […]
I wasn’t always a fan of strategy games, I‘ll freely admit to that. I was raised in a simpler time where big dumb action movies starring Sly and Schwarzenegger were released practically every week. The games of the time reflected that leaving me with little reason to flex my brain muscles. But as I became […]
Have you ever played a Carpg? I just made up that term but it adequately describes Final Lap Twin. Long before Square Enix shit the bed with Racing Lagoon, a game we were mercifully spared, Namco graced the Turbo Grafx-16 with Final Lap Twin and its exclusive quest mode in a rare third party release […]
Of all the settings that I have experienced the Shadowrun universe ranks among my favorite. Something about the cyberpunk setting and mix of future technology captured my imagination like nothing else when I first became aware of it in 1993. This made it optimal for use in the videogame space and in the 90s Sega […]
This was certainly an odd one to port to a home platform. I realize when new consoles are launched its more or less anything goes in terms of what games are available but in 1991 a very “PC” RPG in terms of interface was not what everyone expected. Drakkhen was one of the first RPG’s […]
What makes Suikoden unique? On the surface is a game that could just as easily have been created for the SNES. Outside of the quality of the music and color depth, there was nothing about the game that screamed 32-bit on the still new Playstation. Loosely based on the Chinese novel Shui Hu Zuan, inspiration […]
I can’t count the number of times when I was younger that I imagined what it would be like if all of Nintendo’s characters starred in one game. Can you imagine? Link rubbing shoulders with Mario and Samus? Of course in my mind I was also there too but so what if it’s corny, I […]
Hironobu Sakaguchi. Yuji Hori. Akira Toriyama. Three names, each a giant in their respective field. Years before Square and Enix would merge they were at odds with one another with their respective franchises, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. So the thought of both companies pooling their resources to create what could almost be labeled as […]
In Japan the dating simulator genre has created some of the best selling franchises in the country, games such as Sakura Taisen and the Tokimeki Memorial series. While the US has received scant few games in the genre occasionally a few slip the cracks. The majority of these releases are relegated to the PC but […]
It isn’t everyday that a game comes along and completely shatters your perceptions of what an RPG can and should be. RPGs by nature have very set mechanics and story structure and while there have been a few that innovate by attempting something different for the most part the majority are comfortable sticking to the […]
For the longest time Square games were some of the best rpgs you could find on both sides of the Pacific. They released far fewer games in the US than Japan but the majority they did were of the highest quality. In Japan however they were extremely prolific, unfortunately some of their best output was […]
Culture Brain was always a strange publisher that no one knew what to make of. Most active during the NES & SNES era they never quite managed to create an intellectual property that people would associate them with. By that I mean a Mario Brothers, a Mega Man, a Castlevania, etc., a series that immediately […]
