Sam's video game collection essentials

The arcade rhythm game genre took off with a vengeance in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, thanks in large part to Konami and their variety of popular rhythm games which included the very popular Dance Dance Revolution. It’s no surprise that other prominent arcade developers threw their hat into the ring. Namco was one of them, and in 2001 they introduced what would become a popular long-running series called “Taiko no Tatsujin”.  These games are based on a type of Japanese drum called a taiko. Taiko no Tatsujin arcade machines are easily recognized by featuring two fairly large taiko drum controllers along with two drumsticks each for players to whack the drums with. Gameplay generally involves hitting the drum in correspondence to red and blue notes scrolling across the screen when they reach a certain point, which is done in some kind of rhythm with the song being played. For red notes, you have to hit the large center of the drum, while for blue notes the outer rim of the drum mu...

I’ve talked about Street Fighter before, as well as Street Fighter Collection specifically. This time we don’t merely have a Street Fighter Collection, we have a Street Fighter ANNIVERSARY Collection!! Well, unfortunately the names of these compilations don’t do a very good job at all of communicating what’s actually in the package. You can imagine that they contain multiple Street Fighter games, but there are quite a few of those. Do either of these have all the Street Fighter games that existed at the time of release? Heck no!  Okay, that’s a pretty negative way to start this write-up, but I don’t mean to say that I think Street Fighter Anniversary Collection is bad or anything. If I thought it was, it wouldn’t be here. What this collection DOES contain is two games, which doesn’t sound like much, but they are two very good games that were worth porting to this general of consoles. The first is called “Hyper Street Fighter II”, which is yet another version of the smash hit Stree...

“Mascot platformers” were quite a fad in the ‘90s, after the success of Mario and Sonic. The trend was still alive in the early 2000s, as the PlayStation 2 had its share of very popular 3D platformers. In fact, you might be surprised that I haven’t mentioned any of them yet. This includes games like “Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy”, which was a fairly standard 3D platformer that got sequels that were a little more mature and took some inspiration from other titles like Grand Theft Auto. Another popular series was “Ratchet & Clank” which featured a lot of different weapons to blow up the opposition with. And of course, there’s the Sly Cooper trilogy. These games were advertised all over when the PS2 was in its prime. I had interest in them, but by the time I actually got a PS2, there were other games that were a higher priority. The platformers just kept falling down on the to-play list, for years and years, so I never played any of them in their prime. When I finally sat do...

Persona 3 was a surprisingly successful late PS2 game. And even though the PS2 was already a little long in the tooth, Atlus decided that they had to follow up with another PS2 Persona, which would be one of the very last significant exclusive releases on the platform. Persona 4 follows pretty much the same gameplay structure as Persona 3, with a calendar-based progression where the player must decide on two actions per day to “pass the time” with. Not surprisingly, “social links” return in which the player can bond with certain characters which will allow them to fuse stronger personas. This game takes it a little further by adding certain extra benefits to certain other social links, making them even more enticing. The vibe of Persona 4 is quite different from 3’s, as this time they made it more upbeat, with the main featured color being a bright yellow as opposed to 3’s dark blue. The music is a big part of this difference too. Like 3, the game features many songs with vocals sung i...

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Megami Tensei series has seen a number of side games and spinoffs throughout the years. Some of those became their own sub-series, even. One of those, Persona, wound up becoming so popular that it exceeded the success of its parent series! I can’t think of too many other instances of that happening. Persona games are turn-based RPGs like regular Megami Tensei. What sets it apart is that the games always feature a team of high-school students who discover that they each have a being called a “persona” (supposedly a manifestation of their inner self) which they can summon to use special powers, usually in battle. The main characters of these games is always a “silent protagonist” and has the ability to obtain a very wide variety of personas rather than just one, and there is a special place they can go to “fuse” multiple personas together to make newer, stronger ones. As you can see, this is the third installment in the series (though it’s technica...

Now it’s time to talk about an RPG series I haven’t referenced yet in the blog: Megami Tensei. This series from Atlus started in Japan in the late ‘80s on the Famicom, and continues to this day, with many sequels and spinoffs. The cute creature "Jack Frost" from these games has at times served as one of the mascots for Atlus. The games are darker than your average JRPG, often with grim themes, and sometimes borrowing elements of real-world religions. That, along with the games’ generally-high difficulty, makes it no surprise that the series was entirely exclusive to Japan for many years.  The first mainline game in the series was Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne on the PS2, which came out in 2004 in North America. I own Nocturne, but it didn’t make my list, unfortunately. I did try it out many years ago and it intrigued me a lot, but the game’s difficulty was rather punishing in a way that turned me off. The following year, we would get these two Digital Devil Saga games, which a...