Sam's video game collection essentials

I previously covered two Goemon games for the Famicom, and here’s the first one I’m doing on the Super Famicom. If you remember the last two I did, you may be confused as to the numbering of this sequel. The second Goemon game on the Famicom was called Ganbare Goemon 2, and this one is also Ganbare Goemon 2. Why? Well, first, I have to point out that I skipped over the first Ganbare Goemon game on SNES. That was actually the first Goemon game released outside Japan, which was under the name “The Legend of the Mystical Ninja”. Even though I have that game, I’m leaving it off this list. Many people like it, but when I played it for myself I found it very overrated and not that good. Anyways, for some reason Konami decided to reset the numbering when they started making the games on Super Famicom, so this second game on the system is called Ganbare Goemon 2 instead of Ganbare Goemon 4. I’m not sure if there’s any known reason as to why! This Ganbare Goemon 2 still has towns, but plays a l

I have covered one game that could be considered a “roguelike” so far, that being the first ToeJam & Earl. These games are inspired by the old computer game “Rogue”, and the premise is that you’re trying to get through a randomly-generated dungeon using whatever weapons and items you can find, and surviving to the end is usually quite difficult. Roguelikes have always been a bit of a niche genre, appealing to a certain type of gamer who wants a challenge and enjoys the variety that comes with randomness, though the style has gotten more popular thanks to indie games in the past decade. “Mystery Dungeon” has long been one of the biggest names in the world of roguelikes, with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon probably being the most popular, outside Japan at least. The first Mystery Dungeon game was on the Super Famicom and featured Torneko from the very popular Dragon Quest IV. After that game, the developers did what was perhaps a gutsy move in making the second mystery dungeon game ditch th

The fifth Fire Emblem game was one of the last Super Nintendo/Super Famicom titles released, near the end of the millennium, when Nintendo’s NEXT console was already more than halfway through its lifespan!  This game is a side story to Fire Emblem 4, and it takes place in between 4’s mid-game time skip. So it’s no surprise that some characters from this game are from 4, including the main character himself. This is no little afterthought side game, though, as they went all-out in making Thracia 776 a full-length full-featured Fire Emblem campaign. It actually plays closer to Fire Emblem 3 than 4, though it does retain some elements from the latter, such as the graphical style, skills, and of course the “weapon triangle” which I mentioned in yesterday’s post. FE5 isn’t as strikingly unique as 4 was, but there’s still plenty of new gameplay additions, some of which would be commonly seen going forward and some that were never done in quite the same way again. This is the first game where

This is the fourth Fire Emblem game. And it’s kind of remarkable that it’s on the same console as the third game, because it feels so much more advanced. The graphics and audio are far better, the size and depth of the game is absolutely enormous, and the story is much more complex.  Fire Emblem is a series that’s never been afraid of experimenting, and 4 is a prime example. There are a myriad of changes and additions since the third game. Some things went on to be important recurring elementals in the series. For example, this is the first game to have the famous “weapon triangle”; swords perform well against axes, while axes beat lances, and lances excel against swords. This adds a rock-paper-scissors sort of style to the gameplay that makes combat much different and more interesting, and it’s something the series is particularly known for, so much so that it can seem very odd when one discovers that the first three games didn’t have it. There are a lot of elements in 4 that were nev

This is the third Fire Emblem game in the series, which, as I’ve talked about before, invented the strategy RPG genre as we know it. This third game in the series stands out in the SNES crowd right off the bat, because you’ll see there are two entirely separate adventures here to play, labeled as “Book 1” and “Book 2”. The first is a full-on remake of the original game, with completely new graphics and sound, and many mechanics changed or reworked. The second is a full-fledged direct sequel to the original, which has a lot of the same graphics but different music. This was highly unusual for the time. It wasn’t very common to have more than one game on a single cartridge back then, and it was ESPECIALLY rare in the realm of RPGs and strategy games. Nintendo probably could have released either of these adventures individually and probably nobody would have had a problem with it. The fact that they went that extra mile to give two games in one is pretty remarkable and awesome. Sadly, Nin

And now for a REAL big one. This is another case where the numbering of the game was changed for the American release. This was the third mainline game in the series to be released in North America, so they decided to call it Final Fantasy III there even though it was actually the sixth game. All future rereleases are titled under the game’s original name, and all fan discourse refers to it that way too, so for the rest of this post I will be referring to this game as Final Fantasy VI. Square already had a good run with Final Fantasy on the Super Nintendo, with two quality entries that had helped push the genre forward and set the standard for what a quality JRPG could be. And then, in 1994 came this title, what could be considered the magnum opus of the 2D era, and some would even say the whole series. This game and Chrono Trigger, both produced by Square and a year apart from each other, are probably the most widely revered 2D Japanese RPGs of all time. Compared to previous series, F

The fourth Final Fantasy game had sacrificed the “job system” from the third game which had allowed for frequent customization of one’s party members. This was done in part so that the many characters of IV would be locked into a class which was part of their identity as a character, since IV had a much more developed story and cast than the previous games. Final Fantasy V goes back to having a job system, and tries to do so while implementing various improvements from IV while not compromising the identity of its characters. Did it succeed? You’d better be darn sure it did. Like the third game, FFV lets you freely switch the class (or “job”) of each character at a given time outside of battle. The more time a character spends in a job, the more they will master it. And the great innovation that this game makes is that, while in one job, a character may assign a set of skills from one of the OTHER jobs that they have a level of mastery in! The higher the level of mastery, the more/bett

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, RPGs were absolutely huge in Japan, possibly the most popular video game genre. But the same wasn’t quite true in other countries. I don’t really know why, and I’m not sure if there’s a clear answer. Squaresoft thought that difficulty and complexity may have been what turned off American gamers, a theory that did make sense, especially considering that most American gamers were children. And so, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was developed as a beginner’s RPG with overseas markets in mind. The game advertises itself as such right on the box. It was developed in Japan, but released in America first and not in Japan until nearly a year later. So as you’d expect from a beginner RPG, Mystic Quest is pretty simplified compared to other Final Fantasy games. There’s not much to the story, which mainly revolves around one character rather than a cast of developed characters. Combat is pretty simple too, and not very challenging. You can even retry as many times as

As I stated in a previous post, Final Fantasy I arrived in America rather late, not until after the third game had already been released in Japan. As a result, Square decided to skip the second and third games of the series and make Final Fantasy IV the second game to be localized in English. And they decided to change the title to “Final Fantasy II” in an attempt to not confuse people. As you can see, I have a Japanese cartridge in the photo with the proper numbering, though I don’t consider that a collection essential. For the rest of this post, I’ll be calling the game “IV” instead of “II”.  Final Fantasy IV was one of the very first RPGs on the Super Nintendo, and set a new standard for the genre. The new level of power provided by the console was very welcome, especially in the audio department. Great music is a staple of RPGs, and legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu started to show the world such possibilities wielding the powerful (for the time) Super Nintendo sound chip, with a wi

Here we have one of the few Super Nintendo launch titles, a game that served as a technical showcase to demonstrate what the powerful new hardware was capable of. F-Zero is a futuristic racing game which takes place several centuries from now. The Super Nintendo was capable of “Mode 7” graphics, which basically meant that it could freely rotate a background layer, and so this is how F-Zero’s tracks work. When you turn in F-Zero, you’ll see that the whole track under you rotates, and in a way that looks natural. That might seem kind of basic, but other consoles at the time couldn’t do that! Look up racing games on the NES and Genesis and you’ll find that none of them look quite like F-Zero. This does mean that F-Zero’s tracks are 100% flat with no hills of any kind, but that doesn’t ruin the game. Being a futuristic racing game, you can probably guess that F-Zero isn’t very realistic, and that’s a good thing. It’s a very fast game, with a lot of hazards to be wary of. You have an energy

Ooh boy, here’s one with a lot to write about. Gonna be hard to keep this brief. EarthBound is a turn-based JRPG, the second game in a series which is known as “Mother” in Japan (the creator says he was inspired by the John Lennon song of that name), and the first one to see a release outside Japan. Most RPGs, especially from this time period, take place in some kind of a high fantasy setting. Although the locations are fictional, the settings of these games are much more contemporary, resembling a more normal and modern world. They’re also quite humorous, being somewhat of a parody of the genre, but the games are not merely one huge joke, as they do tell stories with a coherent narrative as well. The main character of EarthBound is a silent protagonist, a boy who you may name whatever you want (though his official name is “Ness”). At the start of the game, he lives in a regular home with his parents and sister. The game begins with a meteorite crashing outside, and you as a curious bo

Dragon View is the sequel to an RPG from early in the SNES lifespan called Drakkhen, which I don’t own and frankly isn’t a very good game. But for this game they changed things up, in a good way. This game plays like a blend of an RPG and arcade-style beat ‘em ups like Final Fight or Streets of Rage. You control a character who gets stronger by leveling up, getting better gear and magic. There’s a linear storyline to follow, and a world to explore with towns, dungeons and a world map to get from place to place. However, when you actually get into an area with combat, battles play out in real-time much like one of those arcade games I mentioned.  Dragon View’s story isn’t very memorable, but what does stand out is how it presents its narrative. All dialogue in the game is presented from a perspective as if you’re reading a book, with a narration describing how the characters are acting and quoting the characters when they’re supposed to say something. You could argue that a video game l

After two smash hits, Nintendo and Rare didn’t want to stop making these games, so for the third year in a row the world got a Donkey Kong Country game. This would have to be the last one, as time was running out on the Super Nintendo; the next console generation was in full throttle now, with Nintendo having released their newest console earlier in the year. So it shouldn’t be too surprising that DKC3 was the least popular of the three games, but still quite successful in its own right, reaching the highest respectable position of 11th-best-selling Super Nintendo game of all time. The story this time around, is, well…uncreative. In the previous game, Donkey Kong got kidnapped, and the objective was to save him. This time, Donkey Kong AND Diddy Kong got kidnapped. I guess they just really wanted the excuse to make Dixie the main character this time. So who’s her partner? Well, it’s the brand new “Kiddy Kong”, who is clearly a toddler, but belongs to a big and strong species of ape so h

Donkey Kong Country 1 was such a huge hit, it’s no wonder that a sequel landed a year later. And boy, what a sequel it is. It pretty much doesn’t mess with any of the fundamentals that made the first game work, and it simply does just about everything a little bit better. A little note about this game: it’s notoriously easy to get the title wrong. For many years I thought it was “Diddy Kong’s Quest”, then it came to my attention that I was playing the apostrophe and the S in the wrong place, as it is a play on the word “conquest.” The correct title is “Diddy’s Kong Quest”. If you have always gotten this wrong and I just blew your mind, you’re welcome. The story this time is that, rather than steal Donkey Kong’s stash of bananas, King K. Rool has kidnapped Donkey Kong himself instead. And so Diddy Kong sets off with his girlfriend Dixie to save the day. This has some gameplay implications too. In the first game, Donkey Kong was the “power” character who had an easy time dispatching cert