Sam's video game collection essentials

The third game in the “Tales of” JRPG series was originally called Tales of Eternia in Japan, with “Eternia” being the name of the world the game takes place in. For the English release, they changed the name to “Tales of Destiny II” to emphasize that the games are in the same series, even though the stories of the two games aren’t connected. This would become confusing later because Tales of Destiny went on to get an actual direct sequel. For that reason, fans like me almost always refer to this game by its original title. This game places you in control of a hunter named Reid who is friends with a farmer girl named Farah, and their simple rural lifestyle is interrupted when one day a mysterious ship crash lands nearby. As the two go to investigate, they meet Meredy, a mysterious young girl who speaks a foreign language and seems to be trying to warn them about something. Reid and Farah seek out their scholarly friend Reid as they try to figure out how to communicate with Meredy and h...

After the success of the second “Tales of” game, instead of planning the third entry right away, Namco saw fit to completely remake the original game on PlayStation hardware, with impressive results. Of course, I already covered the original release of Phantasia, so you can go check out that post for some basic info about the game. Practically everything in PlayStation Phantasia has been reworked, and the game borrowed and built on some elements from Destiny in this process too. The graphics have a different style, with the characters more resembling those from Destiny. The game also took the concept of frivolous conversations on the world map introduced by Destiny and brought it a step further, very close to what would become a Tales series staple. Now, when on the world map, you can hit the “select” button, and the portraits of one or more of your characters will appear and speak. So now you can see different characters have amusing conversations with each other, and their portraits...

This is the second game in Namco’s long-running “Tales of” series, and the first one to be released in America. I previously covered the first game, Tales of Phantasia , for Super Famicom. Tales is one of those series where the games generally are completely independent of each other, so Tales of Destiny takes place in a different world with different characters. Although two characters from Phantasia do make a cameo appearance for a quiz minigame. In this game you play as Stahn Aileron, a sword-wielder with big and long yellow hair. As the game begins, he’s seeking adventure and stows away on an airship. He is discovered and forced into manual labor, but then the ship is attacked by a bunch of monsters. In the chaos, Stahn goes around looking for a weapon (not sure why he didn’t bring one), and he stumbles across a sword…that talks!! He says his name is Dymlos and that talking swords like him are called “Swordians”. As Stahn and Dymlos escape, a new adventure begins as they quickly ru...

Here we have what is probably Konami’s most revered RPG. It’s a direct sequel to the first game, taking place a few years later, and you’ll see some familiar faces, but you play as a different main character and there are a lot of newcomers. You start out as a young member in the army of a kingdom called Highland. But turns out the prince of Highland is up to no good and wants to carry out a bloody invasion, so you and your best friend Jowy flee, and get involved with some mercenaries including a couple familiar faces from the first game, and the plot takes off.  Suikoden II has much in common with the previous game. There are again over 100 characters to recruit and a base for them to live in. The basics of battle are quite similar, with some tweaks such as being able to equip up to three runes simultaneously. There are also occasional grid-based strategy battles that more resemble a game like Fire Emblem.  You can really see an extra level of polish when compared to the firs...

I have talked so much about Konami already in this series. By the mid-’90s they had made quite a name for themselves, but one genre they hadn’t dabbled in very much was RPGs. They had made Madara 1 and 2 on the Famicom and Super Famicom, games based on a manga series, but that was it. Suikoden was to be their first RPG that would get a worldwide release, and it would be one of the early PlayStation RPGs before a huge tidal wave of them came crashing down. This RPG is an interpretation of the classic Chinese novel “Water Margin” which was written in the first half of the last millennium. In fact, that’s what the name “Suikoden” means, and I guess a foreign word made for a better title for an RPG than the lame-sounding “Water Margin”.  I want to comment for a moment on the game’s front cover, as this is one of those amusing examples of when publishers in the ‘90s felt the need to change a game’s box art to be more friendly to American gamers at the time. What you see on the instructi...

Like his fellow semi-mascot Crash, Spyro would have a third outing on the original PlayStation. The title, as you can imagine, is a reference to the fact that the game came out in 2000 during the “Year of the Dragon” on the Chinese calendar. Spyro YotD does not see the return of Ripto, the previous game’s antagonist. Instead, the big bad this time is a sorceress who for some reason does not have a name. She steals a bunch of dragon eggs during the “Year of the Dragon” celebration and has to get them back from her and her minions, including an apprentice named Bianca and a bunch of “Rhynoc” henchmen. Spyro must travel through different worlds in the “Forgotten Realms”, and he meets some new allies along the way. Gameplay, again, is basically the same as the first two games. The biggest difference with Year of the Dragon is that there are many other playable characters that you’ll be controlling for specific segments, and some minigames too. Other allies you’ll be playing as include a ka...

It should be no surprise that Spyro got a sequel. This game takes the same solid basics from Spyro 1, and does things just a little differently. One thing the first game lacked was a cast of colorful characters. Sure, Spyro had to free a whole bunch of dragons who would often deliver a voiced line of dialogue before disappearing, but none of them were especially memorable or important. And the villain, Gnasty Gnorc, really wasn’t memorable at all. And so, this is the most obvious thing Spyro 2 tries to improve upon, as this game features new allies of Spyro’s, a new villain who is more colorful and frequently seen, and levels actually inhabited by characters who Spyro can talk to. The plot of the game starts with Spyro wanting to take a vacation. But a couple good guys, Elora and Hunter, have need of Spyro and hijack him to their realm instead. They explain to Spyro that, with their portal device, they accidentally unleashed an evil dinosaur named Ripto (who is of short stature) who im...

And now we have another famous game which provided a mascot for the PlayStation.  As you can see from the images, you control the eponymous Spyro, who is a young dragon. The plot involves Gnasty Gnorc ( who is half gnome, half orc) turning every dragon except for Spyro into a statue and also scattering the dragons’ collection of gemstones throughout the worlds and even transforming some of them into living breathing bad guys. Being the only free dragon left, Spyro goes on a quest to free everybody and get the treasure back.  This game is a “collectathon” 3D platformer with rather open-ended level design. The game is divided into many levels, but they are pretty big and meant to be explored to rescue every dragon and find every gem hidden within.  Spyro has three very distinct moves which makes him stand out from your typical platformer hero. He can glide, spit fire, and do a headbutt charge. The game is well-designed around these abilities. Many enemies are immune to one ...

Here’s a game from Treasure, a great company I’ve talked about before originally composed of people from Konami, which made games on my list such as Radiant Silvergun, Gunstar Heroes and Dynamite Headdy. This one is pretty different from anything else they made, and it’s a real gem. “Rakugaki” in Japanese roughly translates to “doodle”. And you’ll notice that this game’s graphics have a sort of “colored pencil” theme to it, with the characters all looking like they were drawn with such utensils. It didn’t push the PlayStation hardware to its limits or anything, but it gives the game a certain style that helps its look age better than jagged 3D polygons. A simple way I would describe this game is if you combined a fighting game with dodgeball, though it’s more complicated to explain than just those two concepts mashed together. I’m not going to fully explain it in detail. But basically, like in a fighting game, you find yourself facing up to three opponents, and your goal is to get thei...

Because apparently everything has to be more fun in Japan, in the early ’90s the popular soda brand Pepsi came up with a silly superhero mascot to market their beverage. He (to my knowledge) made his video game debut as a secret character in Sega’s fighting game Fighting Vipers in 1994. Five years later, he’d get his own game here on the PlayStation. You’d often expect an advertisement game like that to be mediocre and unmemorable at best, but this one exceeds expectations. The game’s front cover is possibly my favorite in video game history. Rather than the game’s title, all we see is Pepsiman pointing at the viewer giving a simple command, “DRINK!” I love it. The game’s spine card (which I don’t have) has the name of the game on it so Japanese shoppers seeing it new on the shelf would have known what it was. The premise of this game is that Pepsiman needs to deliver Pepsi to certain people who are thirsty, and he has to run to their location and dodge all kinds of obstacles along the...

If you’ve been following this series for a while you probably know that I have a soft spot for light gun games. Well, the great arcade developer Namco (responsible for Pac-Man) made a series in the mid-’90s that provided us with some of the most creative and fun light gun games ever made. The games originated in arcades, and thankfully the games got ported to the PlayStation, compatible with Namco’s own “GunCon” accessory which is slightly annoying to plug in properly but is worth the effort. Point Blank games can be played with one or two players. Players select a difficulty and then choose from a variety of levels. These are all brief segments where you are given an objective and set of rules (time limit, number of bullets, etc) along with what is required to pass the level. If the player does not pass, they lose a heart, and losing all of them results in a game over.  The game is pretty cartoony and provides many creative and amusing challenges to be undertaken. You’ll have to s...

I previously talked about Dance Dance Revolution, the first rhythm game that I’ve covered in this series. Well, DDR might be the most successful and iconic game in the genre, but it wasn’t the first. It’s somewhat debatable what should or shouldn’t precisely be considered a rhythm game, but PaRappa the Rapper is often considered to be the first one that truly set the template for the genre as we know it today, releasing in 1996 in Japan and in the rest of the world the following year. The most immediately-striking thing about PaRappa the Rapper is its artstyle. The game is fully in 3D, but the characters are all portrayed as paper thin, as if someone had drawn them and cut them out with scissors only then to find that they had come to life. The game’s unique look no doubt helped it stand out and attract attention when it was first released. Although the game was developed in Japan, the artist tasked with creating PaRappa’s look, Rodney Alan Greenblat, lives (last time I checked) in the...

Here we have the first game developed by an American company called Oddworld Inhabitants, and it’s one of those “cinematic platformers” that has more realistic movement than what you’d see in something like Super Mario Bros. and controls that purposefully feel a little “stiff”.  The character Abe mentioned in the title, as you’d guess, is the rather ugly-looking alien (a race called Mudokons) right there on the box art. The game opens with a well-made cinematic sequence narrated by Abe telling the backstory of the game. He tells of how he was a slave working for a meat factory called Rupture Farms. Despite being a slave, he mentions that he thought he had a good job…until he eavesdrops on a company board meeting while working late one night and discovers the truth. The company’s big plan for their next hot product is…Mudokon meat products! Abe instantly recognizes that he has to escape and help his fellow Mudokons do the same, and so begins the game. Abe is able to do some basic ac...