Game: Final Fantasy
System: NES
Year: 1990
Some perspective: Edmonton Oilers win their fifth Stanley Cup
Other games released that year: Bonk’s Adventure, Dr. Mario
Compare to: Final Fantasy XII, Shadow Hearts, KOTOR

The first time I played Final Fantasy was at my friend Tim’s house. It was completely different from anything I’d seen before. I was used to fast action and button mashing, but here was a game that allowed you to explore a vast world at your own pace. You could choose your own group of warriors, decide when you wanted to fight the bosses and decide what weapons and armor you wanted to equip. The closest thing to this I had ever experienced in a game was deciding whether or not to use a warp zone in Super Mario Bros.

It wasn’t long before I rented the game myself, and then bought it with my allowance money. I would pour over the strategy guide I received from Nintendo Power, looking for any hints that would give my party an edge. I remember the joy and sense of freedom I felt when I finally acquired first the boat and then the airship. On weekends I would stay up late into the night trying to get past one last dungeon, cast one more spell and defeat one more monster. When I finally destroyed Chaos, I bragged about it at school and felt like I had truly accomplished something extraordinary.

Now, almost two decades later, how would I feel about the game? Over the past years, I had often started a game of Final Fantasy just to relive the nostalgia, each time promising myself that I would finish it again this time. Now, however, I was more dedicated. I knew to truly review Final Fantasy, I couldn’t just plug my way around for an hour one lazy afternoon. I had to complete the game, from Garland to Chaos.

I chose a party of two Fighters, a Black Mage and a White Mage. The first few missions in the game were relatively easy. I killed a few imps, gained a few levels then went off to defeat Garland and rescue a princess. Nothing to it. As I progressed further into the game, though, I found that I once again needed a strategy guide. Not having access to Nintendo Power, I turned to the internet. This is when I discovered that there are still active forums dedicated to this game.

This led to two interesting finds. First, several people have set up a competition to determine the lowest level at which your party can complete the game (I believe it was decided level 8 is the lowest, as there are enough forced encounters that you can not run from to keep you from reaching the end at a lower level than this). Second, I was completely lost while reading the forums because most of the people playing the game were playing re-released versions on consoles I never owned. There were enough minor differences between the versions that I found it difficult to understand what they were saying. Most of these people never experienced the game on the NES. This made me feel old.

Nevertheless, I found the maps and guides I needed to continue to progress through the game. This is when one of the game’s biggest weaknesses reared its ugly head. To make your party strong enough to safely travel the world, they needed to gain levels. And to gain levels, they needed to fight monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. I found that a majority of my time was spent wandering aimlessly, hoping for a chance encounter with a high-experience-point-yielding enemy. I had forgotten how time consuming this could be.

I also forgot how frustrating it could be when you encountered waves of easily-defeated monsters when you were not seeking experience points. And how slow and repetitive the fights could be. And how long it could take to walk through a dungeon or a desert. And how it was impossible to buy more than one heal potion at a time. And how you couldn’t save your game inside a cave.

It seemed that there were plenty of ways this game was disappointing me, but I was determined to stick it out until the end. Besides, it wasn’t all bad. I still thought the graphics were interesting and the music was catchy. I liked being able to tackle the four fiends in the order I saw fit. I still felt the tension when I knew Warmech was afoot.

In the end, I brought my party before Chaos and slew him, using a combination of Nuke and my Knights’ best swords. My White Wizard kept Chaos at bay with Cure spells. All four of my party members survived the encounter.

As I looked back on replaying a game I considered one of my favorites of all time, I wondered what happened. Yes, I enjoyed playing it, but I knew I could no longer keep it in my top five. Those days of staying up late and killing monsters when I was 11 years old still rank among my favorite gaming experiences, but upon playing the game again, I knew that it was only those experiences I loved now, not the game itself. Maybe it is that we’ve come to expect so much more from an RPG than Final Fantasy could possibly have given in those days, or maybe it’s that I simply no longer have the time and patience to sink myself properly into a world of wizards and ogres. Maybe it’s both. And maybe I can still love the game for what it gave me then, but recognize that I do not have to love it for what it is now. But I’ll always have the memories.

Nostalgia fun: ********** (10/10)
Actual fun: ******~~~~ (6/10)

(originally published August 30, 2006)

Run right. Jump. Slide. Climb. Shoot. Stomp. Score. Win. Repeat.

If this sounds familiar to you, then chances are you grew up playing video games in the golden age of the Side Scroller. This was back before Real Time Strategy games became huge and when 3D gaming involved wearing ridiculous glasses and playing Rad Racer until you got a headache. From the early 80’s until the mid 90’s, the Side Scroller was truly king of all video game genres. And I say that it is time to bring them back.

While certainly there were many variations, the basic setup of the classic Side Scroller was simple: you start the game with some sort of avatar on the left side of the screen and then move towards a goal on the right. Along the way you may encounter any number of different enemies blocking your path, from the living (turtles) to the almost living (robots) to the undead (zombies). And if this isn’t enough to keep your hero from achieving the greatness that awaits him (or her) on the right side of the world, there are also environmental obstacles with which you must contend. There are bottomless pits, fireballs, crushing weights and pointy metal things, all of which could lead to instant death for your intrepid adventurer. The key, of course, was to use your hero’s special talents to maneuver through his linear world, always pressing forward, forever moving to the right.

The best examples of classic Side Scrollers also seem to be some of the very best games of their era: Super Mario Bros., Contra, Castlevania, Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog and Bonk’s Adventure. These games all managed to work within the general constraints of the genre, while each adding something unique. Super Mario Bros. represented a quantum leap over anything that had been seen on a home system before. Sonic amazed us with speed and graphics that showed just what the new class of consoles could do. And Bonk’s Adventure gave us some sort of caveman.

For years the Side Scrollers ruled the video game landscape. As with nearly every gaming genre, however, this time on the top was not going to last forever. Role Playing Games had always been popular among hardcore gamers, and with hit series like Final Fantasy, they were starting to gain an audience among casual gamers as well. PC gaming was being dominated by RTS games like WarCraft and adventure games like Myst and The 7th Guest. First Person Shooters were also starting to make a mark for themselves with hits like Doom and Duke Nukem.

Despite the rise in new genres, Side Scrollers still clung to relevancy. The death knell for Side Scrollers, though, was to be announced with three words from the same mustachioed plumber who helped usher in the era: “It’sa me, Mario.” And things would never be the same again.

In 1996, the N64 hit the store shelves, and it was the first Nintendo console to not have a Side Scroller available at launch (because remember, the Virtual Boy never happened, ok?). Suddenly Mario was ripped from his 2D, straight-lined world and thrust into a new world of 3D and endless possibilities. Not only could you jump over your enemies, but now you could go around them as well. Your world just got a lot bigger, and a lot more complicated.

Mario 64 became a huge hit with critics and consumers alike, and a new genre was born: the 3D Platformer. Soon if a game wasn’t in 3D, then it seemed like a relic from the past. New, more powerful, hardware was allowing games to go where they had not gone before. Moving from one side of the screen to the other no longer seemed like enough. Linear game play, in the most literal sense of the term, was dying. Gamers wanted to explore worlds far more vast than the ones they been seeing for years. It wasn’t long before the Side Scroller was but a distant memory. 3D Platformers, First Person Shooters and the occasional Adventure game became the mainstays of the home console.

Then a funny thing happened. Us old gamers began to feel a hint of nostalgia for the games of our youth. We realized that rich, 3D environments were not what made a game great. It was about game play and fun. Combine this with the fact that old games are now easily accessible to anyone who wants them, and you have the beginning of a retro-gaming revolution. And of course many of the games that were given new life in this revolution were the classic Side Scrollers.

Then another funny thing happened. On the heels of the retro-gaming revolution, new Side Scrollers began to show up. In 2003, Viewtiful Joe was released and became a smash hit. Combining new advancements in graphics and game play, with the classic format of a Side Scroller, Viewtiful Joe proved that the genre once thought dead, was still alive and kicking.

And things didn’t stop there. Portable systems, less powerful than their home console cousins, also found Side Scrollers to be a perfect fit. New Super Mario Bros., only recently released for the Nintendo DS, has been flying off store shelves. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is another example of a Side Scroller receiving a facelift and then proving to be as much fun as any 3D game on the market. And as if all of this didn’t prove that there is still life left in the genre, Nintendo is developing the promising title Super Paper Mario as a final hurrah for the Gamecube.

We stand on the cusp of a new era in gaming. While the next generation of consoles is arriving, old games are being rediscovered. While gaming technology is becoming even more advanced, old ideas about game play are being resurrected. The genres that have been popular for the past five years are starting to grow stale. The landscape suggests that it is time for a change.

As we look for the next big thing, we can look to the past, to the Side Scroller, for inspiration. The simple elegance in game play, of taking control of our avatar and thrusting him heedlessly towards the right side of the screen, of running and jumping and shooting and stomping our way to our goal. This is the beauty of the genre. Many gamers say they are looking for something new. What they may not know, however, is that they are really looking for something old.

(originally published July 17, 2009)

With the recent release of Punch Out!! for the Wii, I became nostalgic and, after blowing off the dust, I popped in my old Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! cartridge.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! was probably the fourth Nintendo game I ever played, after Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros. and Contra. It was one of the games that all the kids had back then. That was kind of the beauty of owning a NES around 1988. There were only so many games to be had. Every once in a while you’d run into the kid whose parents would buy him a new game every weekend, but mostly everybody had the same core collection. It was a great way to bond with other 8 year olds. You could just say “You got Contra?” and a lifelong friendship was born. Gaming is so fractured today that this is unlikely to be the case any longer.

There are two things that I remember very clearly about Punch Out!! The first is how excited I was when I finally figured out how to beat King Hippo. This was a pretty monumental triumph for me. I was in our living room one summer afternoon and lunch was ready. I begged my mom to let me play just a few minutes longer. Then, somehow, I solved the puzzle. It was so easy. I played until I beat King Hippo and then I ate my grilled cheese.

The second thing I remember about the game is the code to get to Mike Tyson. I think everybody who owned this game probably still knows the code. Sometimes I wish it could be my phone number. When I was a kid, I was never able to get to Mike Tyson on my own, much less defeat him using the code. It took me until after I graduated from college to finally take down Tyson. By that time the feat left me feeling satisfied but a little sad that I had no real reason to pick up the game again.

Until this week. The game is as good as I remember it being and it has held up very well to the test of time (the same can’t be said about Ring King). I started to wonder why this game was so good. Part of it is the graphics, yes. But a bigger part is that, despite the outward appearance, it is not really a game about boxing.

Sports games are notoriously difficult to get right. There’s a careful balance that must be struck between realism and what will actually be fun to play. The problem is that, as gamers, we all want different things. Some of us would forgo all realism to make what we feel is a game that is more fun (Baseball Simulator 1000, for example). On the other hand, some people find that realism is the fun. This is less of a problem in other genres such as First Person Shooters. The truth can be stretched a little more here because few gamers have actually fought in WWII. But with sports games, there’s a good chance the player has, in fact, picked up a bat and glove.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! cleverly avoids this problem by only pretending to be a boxing game. In reality, it’s better to compare Punch Out!! to Guitar Hero than to Ring King. Punch Out!! is all about reflexes and reacting to stimuli. There is little strategy involved beyond learning what signal your opponent is going to give you, then knowing the one absolute right move to execute. In the Madden games (or for an earlier comparison, Tecmo Bowl), what strategy you choose is very important, but how you execute is just as critical. Multiple strategies can lead to victory, and each one requires different degrees of executional perfection (meaning that there are certainly better strategies, but in the end a well-executed bad strategy can still win the day if the level of execution is high enough). In Punch Out!! there is no room to choose a strategy. In most cases, there is one right way to go about fighting your opponent, and the entire outcome is determined by the execution of this strategy.

For a specific example of this, look at Tecmo Bowl. If you are the Raiders, giving the ball to Bo Jackson to run is the best play. You can still win by passing, but why would you want to? Even though passing is an option, the easiest way to win is to have Bo rush the ball every play. Punch Out!! rarely gives you such a choice. There are not two ways to beat King Hippo, there is only one. Your success or failure is determined by how well you execute this single, inflexible strategy.

So all of this being said, why is this game so good? For me, part of it is the big, bright characters. But mostly it is what a tense, nerve-wracking game it can be. You have to carefully look for signals of what is about to happen and reflexively, with perfect timing, react. Beating Mike Tyson is not really about figuring out where his weaknesses lie, or being smarter, or your hand eye coordination. It’s all about reaction. It’s easy to know that you have to get out of the way, and it’s easy to see the punches coming, but it’s hard to actually hit that left button, followed by up and B. It’s very much like Guitar Hero.

Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! was destined to go down as one of those games that became part of the shared heritage of males born between 1977 and 1982. We can spout the code. We still know the moves. Now, with its release on the Wii, I hope a whole new generation will get the chance to know the joy of finally knocking down King Hippo, then eating a grilled cheese sandwich.

Game: Super Mario Bros
System: NES
Year: 1986
Some perspective: Chicago Bears win a Super Bowl
Other games released that year: The Legend of Zelda, Gauntlet II, Painterboy, King’s Quest III
Compare to: New Super Mario Bros, Viewtiful Joe

Everybody knows the story behind Super Mario Bros. It represented a huge leap in what a home console could do. It was bright and imaginative. Before the Nintendo DS and Wii brought around New Super Mario Bros, this was the original side-scroller. And everybody owned it.

But was it any good?

This game seemed like a great place to launch my quest to revisit 100 classic video games to see if they are really any good and hold up well today, or if our nostalgia has gotten the best of us.

Super Mario Bros is a basic platformer. You control a plumber named Mario (or Luigi if your childhood included friends) in his mission to save the princess. In the process you jump over and on top of turtles, bullets, pipes and coins. Power-ups can be obtained by catching a mushroom and are taken away by running into an enemy. Pretty straightforward.

I played through Super Mario Bros struggling to balance the fond memories I had of this game with what I was actually experiencing. Those memories include sneaking out of my bedroom at night and watching my parents play in the family room until they caught me and sent me back to bed. I also remember the first time I ever reached what my sister and I called a “lava level.” I had no idea there were eight of them throughout the game. I remember that I didn’t actually beat the game until years after I got it. Finally, I remember loving it.

But now. Now I’m not so sure. Playing the game again a few things popped out at me. First, the controls are a little soft. I found myself leaning to the side, urging Mario to land where I wanted him to. Second, the levels are incredibly short. There were several times when I couldn’t believe I’d just beaten an entire level – it felt like I had just started. Finally, the game is very easy. To beat this game you really just had to keep moving. If you just kept going to the right, your momentum keeps your leaps and bounds out of harm’s way.

And yet. And yet. There is still something infectiously enjoyable about the game. Something so simple and so pure. It’s like a game that has been boiled down to its basic elements so there’s no fluff.

So what is the final verdict? Is this game still any good? Does it hold up? Are we blinded by our past?

Nostalgia fun: ********** (10/10)
Actual fun: *******~~~ (7/10)