Sam's video game collection essentials

In 1988, Intelligent Systems, close partners with Nintendo, released a turn-based strategy game called Famicom Wars for said Famicom. It received critical acclaim and spawned a series. Game Boy Wars would follow in 1990, and then Super Famicom Wars in 1998, both for the systems in the title. And Hudson Soft developed two sequels to Game Boy Wars as well. Sadly, none of these games were released anywhere outside of Japan, as it was probably assumed that turn-based strategy wouldn’t catch on with American kids due to complexity or what have you. But at the turn of the new millennium and with a hot new handheld, Intelligent Systems decided to give the series a fresh reboot and also bring it to the rest of the world at the same time. The tradition of naming the game after the system continued, as this new Game Boy Advance Entry would be called “Advance Wars”. In a game of Advance Wars, your goal is to either capture the enemy’s headquarters or wipe out all of their units to achieve victory...

The original Game Boy debuted in 1989. It was an 8-bit device, a little less powerful but relatively comparable to Nintendo’s home console at the time, the NES. Other handhelds quickly followed from other companies that were technologically more impressive than the Game Boy, but Nintendo’s little machine that could flat-out mopped the floor with all competition. And perhaps surprisingly, as Nintendo’s home consoles grew more and more powerful as the ‘90s progressed, the relatively simple Game Boy didn’t change all that much. There was a nicer version called the Game Boy Pocket which released in 1996. And then in 1998, the Game Boy Color hit the scene as somewhat of a successor and provided color graphics for the first time, but it was still an 8-bit machine that provided so little improvement that it’s still sort of ambiguous as to whether the Game Boy Color was even a new system or just another more-advanced hardware revision with its own exclusive games. But the turn of the millenniu...

Here’s the fifth of the five new Tales games released in the series’ most prolific period of 37 months. This time we get another fully-3D game, with not only graphics in 3D but combat taking place in a 3D area as well. (By the way, after that prolific period, there would even be ANOTHER Tales game released a year later, a full remake of Tales of Destiny made for the PS2…but that one won’t be making this list, as in my opinion it’s just not very good) The protagonist this time is a teenage boy named Luke, and he’s a little different than you might expect from a JRPG like this. Luke comes from a royal family, the nephew of the current king. He’s a sheltered and pampered kid, so he initially comes off as a real brat. At the start of the game, Luke is with his teacher who is embarking on a mission when a woman shows up who tries to kill the teacher. Her attempt is unsuccessful, and some mysterious power flings Luke and the woman into the distance. The two of them aim to venture back so Luk...

Even more Tales, huh? Yeah, and this isn’t even the last one. In an incredibly prolific stretch, within just three years and one month, Namco released FIVE completely new Tales games. Legendia released just eight months after the previous game, Rebirth. The development schedules for these games largely overlapped, and Namco was big enough that they were able to have slightly different teams working on each one. For Legendia in particular, some members of their fighting game division that made hits like Tekken and SoulCalibur were dedicated to Legendia. It’s really impressive that all five of these games in this stretch were all quite good. Legendia’s story feels pretty familiar. You play as Senel Coolidge, who is very protective of his sister Shirley. And of course, Shirley is viewed by other groups as some sort of “chosen one” and keeps getting kidnapped, giving Senel the drive to pursue her along with the friends he makes along the way. The world of Legendia is largely covered in wat...

Just because Tales of Symphonia was in full 3D and on the GameCube doesn’t necessarily mean that such trends would be the entire future of Tales. Indeed, the next entry would be another PS2 exclusive, and be another one with mostly 2D graphics. Tales of Rebirth tells a story that is largely about racism. This topic had been touched upon a bit in the previous entry, Symphonia, but they decided to take it to another level this time. The game features two primary races, the “Human” (which are basically normal humans) and the “Gajuma” (who are like humanoid anthropomorphized versions of various animals). Sometimes Huma and Gajuma get along, but there are various times and places where this has not been the case. The game starts with an anime cutscene portraying the death of a king, who in his final moments unleashes a power which causes various Huma in the world to gain the power of “Force”, which…actually, come to think of it, sort of does resemble “The Force” from Star Wars a little bit....

Switching platforms for a second, here we have the fifth main installment in Namco’s “Tales” series. There are various reasons why Symphonia is a highly notable entry. The fact that it’s a GameCube is one of them. For years, the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 had been absolutely dominant when it came to RPGs. A lack of support from third-party developers in general had haunted Nintendo since day one of the Nintendo 64, and while this trend did continue into the GameCube era, Nintendo certainly did make some effort to get more third-party exclusives on their platform. Tales of Symphonia represents one of their greatest successes in that regard, convincing Namco to release it exclusively for their console instead of Sony’s RPG juggernaut, and the game was a success on Nintendo’s platform garnering very respectable sales. (Eventually there was a PS2 version of Symphonia, but only in Japan, I would guess because of some kind of agreement between Namco and Nintendo of America) Another reason...