Sam's video game collection essentials

Here’s a console-exclusive shoot ‘em up by an obscure developer called Sky Think Systems that only ever made two other video games.  Harmful Park is a type of shoot ‘em up commonly called a “cute ‘em up” due to its aesthetics and setting. Easily comparable to Parodius, Harmful Park definitely embraces silliness and that’s part of its charm. The setting of the game, as the title implies, is a theme park, and the story involves an evil scientist who has taken over the park and twisted it into something dangerous while the player characters, a pair of sisters with flying combat vehicles, set out to stop him. Story doesn’t matter much in shoot ‘em ups, but Harmful Park actually bothered to have cutscenes with voice acting for a more impressive presentation. The game takes place in the year 2017, which was 20 years into the future at the time of the game’s initial release but of course nowadays is falling further and further into the past. Harmful Park delivers very nicely in the gamepl...

I talked a little bit about Grandia before due to its original Japan-only Sega Saturn release. When Grandia came out for the Saturn in 1997 in Japan, it was clear that the console was doomed in Western markets and that going through the trouble of localizing and releasing it for the rest of the world didn’t make any sense. Luckily, a year and a half later the game got a port to the original PlayStation which was king of the market everywhere, and so the whole console gaming world was graced with Grandia at last. Grandia is a JRPG developed by GameArts, who are also known for making the Lunar games in the same genre, the original versions of which on Sega CD I covered already. Despite being in the same genre, you wouldn’t necessarily know that these games were made by the same people, since Grandia does plenty of things different from Lunar so it feels like its own thing. Grandia, like many RPGs, takes place in a fantasy world that appears to have some advanced technology but also doesn...

I’ve talked about Konami’s groundbreaking arcade shoot ‘em series Gradius before . Gradius Gaiden represents the first game in that series to be made specifically for home consoles and not arcades (which is why it’s not a numbered entry and instead has the title of “Gaiden” which means “side story”). Now, obviously I love arcades and the fact that they made games like Gradius possible, but considering how great Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius turned out and then this game, hot dang, I wish Konami had made way more of their shoot ‘em ups specifically for home console rather than arcades first.  The core gameplay is the same as in other Gradius games, so you can refer to a previous post of mine to read about that. The big and notable thing that Gaiden changes is the fact that you can freely rearrange your power-up bar before the game starts! This is a huge deal and something I’m surprised Konami didn’t do more often with these games. This is a big deal because in order to access power-ups ...

For the third mainline Final Fantasy game of the generation, Squaresoft made Final Fantasy IX as a sort of tribute to the roots of the series. Most obviously, it brings back the “medieval fantasy” setting used in the first five games. There are various references to older games in the series, though this is mostly as a little bonus to fans and none of them are important to the game’s story nor are they necessary to enjoy this game. The main character of Final Fantasy IX is a teenage boy named Zidane who is a thief. At the beginning of the game, under orders, he kidnaps a princess, but this princess doesn’t mind because she was already planning to run away from home. Her mother, the queen, recently started a war and the princess intends to help stop her. And thus the journey begins, and Zidane meets various quirky friends along the way who join up with him. The basics of gameplay are similar to what we’ve seen in the past several Final Fantasy games at this point, with the “active time ...

After the enormous success that was Final Fantasy VII, the following game would have high expectations with the whole world eagerly anticipating it. Did it live up to the hype? Well, the game received critical acclaim and sold very well, but in terms of impact and reputation, it didn’t manage to reach the lofty standard of its predecessor. Final Fantasy has generally been a series that very much tries to experiment and make each entry stand out quite a bit from the last. And that’s very apparent in Final Fantasy VIII, and Squaresoft did not try and simply rehash everything that made VII popular. You can tell right away that the look of the game is quite different from VII. This time the graphics are better and the character models were made more realistically. The game also takes place in a completely different world which, although not super different, feels distinct from VII’s. Final Fantasy VIII places you in control of Squall, who is a teenager at a military academy called Balamb G...

Here is one of the most notable of the many Final Fantasy spinoffs that exist. Final Fantasy Tactics retains some creatures, spells and items from the series it’s based on, but very much feels like its own thing. In fact, if anything it just as much feels like a spiritual successor to a tactical RPG called Tactics Ogre released by a different company a couple years earlier, and that’s because some of the staff that worked on that game were recruited by Squaresoft to make Final Fantasy Tactics. The game’s story is quite different from any Final Fantasy released previously, with a sort of fantasy medieval setting. You control Ramza Beoulve, someone born into nobility and living in a tumultuous time when various parties are warring for power. The story is quite complex and features things like class conflict and betrayal. Final Fantasy Tactics doesn’t involve freely moving your character around exploring the world like regular Final Fantasy games do. Outside of battle, you can choose to m...

And now for another biggie. Final Fantasy VII is arguably the most significant title ever released for the original PlayStation, and is the second-best-selling game on the system only slightly being racing sim Gran Turismo.  Squaresoft already had developed excellent Final Fantasy titles on the SNES which are still often considered among the best RPGs of all-time. The next generation, with full 3D graphics, clearly brought a lot of new potential for the genre. Squaresoft had originally planned to develop the next Final Fantasy on Nintendo’s next console, but after Nintendo chose to use cartridges once again instead of CDs, Squaresoft opted to develop for Sony’s PlayStation instead since discs were much more favorable for RPGs thanks to the ability to store more data (since these games are so big), high-quality audio and the ability to play full-motion videos (FMVs).  While the Sega Saturn flopped in Western markets, it was actually ahead of the PlayStation for a while in Japan...

Here’s an example of a bizarre little Japanese thing that absolutely never would have seen release outside in other regions back then. Engacho! is a game about a scared little boy whose father has decided that the right parenting choice is to throw the boy into the source of his fear so he can overcome it. A questionable choice, but at least we players got a fun game out of it. This is a puzzle game where the goal is to make it to the end of a stage in a certain number of steps. In his way will be monsters. Whenever the boy moves a space, the monsters will move also. What makes it a puzzle is the fact that the way the monsters move depends entirely on what the boy does. There are four types of monsters, and they each have a different pattern. For example, one will always move in the same direction as the boy, another moves in the opposite direction, and so on. The monsters are all gross in some way, such as one with a big snotty nose and another with hairy smelly armpits. When they “ge...

It’s been a while since I talked about a brand new genre. Introducing the first “rhythm game” that I’ll be covering (also known as a “music game”).  As if Konami didn’t already have an incredible pedigree by the late ‘90s, they had to bring it a notch higher by basically inventing a popular new genre. They did so at the end of 1998 in Japan with two major arcade releases, Pop’n Music and Dance Dance Revolution. The latter went on to be especially popular, and if you’ve been in an arcade at any time after the turn of the millennium there’s a very high chance you’re at least vaguely familiar with it. Rhythm games typically feature music from real-life artists. A player chooses the song they wish to play, and then they have to perform a specific series of inputs that correspond to the beat of the song. Rhythm games will almost always feature a few different difficulty levels, with higher difficulties often being infamous for being incredibly hard, and watching a rhythm game master cle...

Mario Kart became a hugely popular series as soon as the very first game released on the SNES. It basically invented an entire subgenre of racing games with many imitators. And today’s game is one of the most successful and notable of such imitators.  The basics of this game are very much like Mario Kart. The main feature in this type of racing game is items. In this particular case, Crash Team Racing has crates (as seen in every Crash game) that contain these items. The items can either give your character some kind of a power-up or try to mess with your opponents in some way. And similar to coins in the original Mario Kart, there are non-item crates that give Wumpa Fruit that can make the player a little faster, and with enough of them it’ll even upgrade the items you get. Crash Team Racing does a pretty good job with adding modes that set it apart from Mario Kart. Most notable for sure is the single-player adventure mode which comes complete with occasional cutscenes. The player...

And here we have Crash number 3, probably the most popular Crash game of all time. A cool thing about this game is that the story starts literally right after the end of the previous game. When Cortex’s space station crashes into earth, it happens to fall right in a spot to free the evil “Uka Uka”. One thing I neglected to mention in the previous posts is that Crash has an ally who is basically a floating, sentient Polynesian-style mask named Aku Aku. Uka Uka is his twin brother. The game’s villains hatch a plot to travel through time to collect a series of crystals to achieve world domination, and it’s up to Crash and friends to stop them. Due to the time travel theme, this game has the most varied aesthetic design of the three games as levels take place in a variety of different times and places and that’s pretty cool. The boss battles are definitely the best of the three Crash games too. There’s a lot of levels that mix up the gameplay, such as levels that have you riding a motorcyc...

Here’s a case of a sequel that I don’t have a whole lot to say about. Crash 2’s gameplay is very much like the first game in a lot of ways, and it comes with polish and improvements. The game has kind of a funny plot. The villain from the first game, Dr. Neo Cortex, captures Crash, but manages to convince the dumb bandicoot that he actually wants his help to save the world. And so Crash goes on a quest to gather crystals to supposedly save the world, only as you might guess Cortex doesn’t exactly have noble intentions.  You’ll notice right away that Crash 2 has better presentation than the first game, with full-on voiced cutscenes and everything. There’s also a hub area where you can select levels and not necessarily in a strict order, which is cool. The DualShock controller came out after the release of the first game, so in this game you can actually use an analog stick to control Crash rather than just the d-pad, which is great for a 3D platformer! Crash got a couple new moves i...