Hataraku Chocobo does something so incredible when you turn it on I'm almost reluctant to talk about it, because when typed out it sounds as if I've resorted to pathetic "My uncle at Nintendo said..." level lies. You see, Squaresoft's game was exclusively designed for and released on Bandai's WonderSwan - the original monochrome WonderSwan, the … Continue reading Feathered friends in new frontiers
Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest, also known in other regions as Mystic Quest Legend... but not that Mystic Quest, which would be the Game Boy title US Squaresoft fans will remember as Final Fantasy Adventure, which was actually Seiken Densetsu, better known as the prequ- [sigh] The game in the photo at the top. You know, that … Continue reading Hi-speed fantasy
You know when I started my latest playthrough of Vagrant Story the original plan was to use this refresher to discuss its masterful (and arguably unbeaten to this day) use of light, shadow, and colour to convey mood, time, and temperature, to wax lyrical about how it wields texture and sound to create a "real" abandoned place … Continue reading Love for the broken
This 1996 Super Famicom RPG may have been published by Squaresoft but it's actually the work of a certain Sting Entertainment, the same developers behind many unusual titles over the past thirty years including the Dept. Heaven series (Yggdra Union, Knights in the Nightmare, etc.) and a rather atmospheric dungeon crawler called Baroque... And that … Continue reading Two siblings, a mysterious girl, and a monkey go on an adventure…
You'd imagine throughout 1986, just one year before Final Fantasy debuted on Nintendo's Famicom and helped define an entire genre, the staff at Square would be busy making grand plans for their upcoming RPG - lots of tense faces and discarded cigarette stubs, their overworked bodies gathered around a table covered in draft designs and … Continue reading Adventures in closed space
I imagine my first time with Unlimited Saga will sound familiar to a lot of people: The nigh-impenetrable tangle of opaque gameplay systems busily working away behind the scenes of the title's unconventional area roaming and menu based towns made for an experience that seemed determined to keep me held at an uncomfortable distance, and … Continue reading A role playing game, but not an RPG
Squaresoft released a pretty big PlayStation RPG in 1997 that you may have heard of - Final Fantasy VII - and as expected Europe only managed to collectively get their hands on the game after everyone else on the planet had been given enough time to finish it and move on to the next big thing. I … Continue reading Squaresofting the circle
I tend to put game music on when I'm busy with dull household chores - sweeping floors and tediously dusting hard to reach corners to Alisia Dragoon's fantastic chiptunes or the epic choirs of Final Fantasy XIV's battle music makes for a mildly amusing contrast to the task at hand that helps to keep boredom … Continue reading And history repeats…
It's not all that unusual for those important first sequels in an older series to go off in strange and unexpected directions, unceremoniously dumping previously unshakeable core rules while simultaneously shifting their focus towards something else entirely without even considering what such a huge change would feel like to those who enjoyed the original outing: … Continue reading Give peace a chance (even in action games)
Let's kick this off by dealing with the obvious elephant in the room: It takes nothing more than a quick glance at iS: internal section's sharp lines, flat-shaded polygons, and abstract imagery all beautifully accompanied by a thumping techno soundtrack (courtesy of the incredibly talented Shinji Hosoe and Ayako Saso) and think of just one … Continue reading Welcome to the devil’s kaleidoscope
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster 