Song of the Day (Volume 42): Chinese New Year

Brat, brat. Brat, brat. Cack ka cack cack. If only they'd left the guest verse out...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 45): The Legend of Dragoon

2017 was definitely the year of clearing off my neck of many gaming albatrosses, but none weighed quite so heavily upon my neck as did The Legend of Dragoon. At the start of this blog (September 2016) I posted a quick, poorly written, and not so thorough reTROview of this game after a few hours of play. The truth of the matter, however, is that my history with this game goes way back before the start of this blog. I started playing this game in high school, got stuck on a pretty tricky boss (Divine Dragon), and abandoned it to play Final Fantasy IX, on which I also got stuck and subsequently abandoned (I was too stupid to realize that virus was a curable condition and not a permanent condition of being unable to gain experience). I've since beaten FF VII, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, FFX-2, and FFXII, otherwise known as my high school gaming playlist, but never finished up The Legend of Dragoon, until last night!

Crushingly, I got up to one of the very last bosses in the game over the weekend, and my game kept freezing on me. As the game is pretty buggy, especially when played on a PS2, I thought it might just be a fixable bug, but alas, there were no reports on the internet to corroborate this suspicion. So I tried a hail mary and went to Family Video to get them to buff the disc, after which it worked, and I put in an hour and a half last night crushing the final boss. By the way, if you live near a Family Video and have scratched discs, they'll fix them for $2.99, and it worked at least in this situation, even on a black PS1 disc. But I digress, on to the reTROview!

The Legend of Dragoon is a PS1 JRPG made by Sony as a competitor to the Final Fantasy series, which had sold more copies than the Bible in 1997 (this is not, to my knowledge, a true fact, but I wouldn't actually be too surprised if it was true). Attempting to get in on this pile of money, The Legend of Dragoon attempts to keep the core elements of the Final Fantasy series in play, but make a few quality of life upgrades to create a separate and superior product.

First and foremost among these additions is the addition system, which replaces the basic active time battle based battle system used in Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy IV. In this system, each character can select one action per turn, and the character does it on autopilot. So selecting attack will result in a physical attack, while selecting a magic spell will result in your character using magic. In The Legend of Dragoon, however, selecting attack results in a timing based minigame wherein you need to press the "x" button at appropriate intervals to add extra strikes onto your attacks and increase the damage you deal.

In order to use magic in the game, you must undergo a transformation into a Dragoon (basically you just get wings and magic). In order to transform into the Dragoon, you must first gather SP by hitting your additions correctly until you have enough meter to transform. The more meter you have, the longer you can stay in Dragoon form, which increases your attack, defense, and obviously gives the ability to use magic.

There's also a bit of voice acting in the game, which is pretty remarkable for a JRPG of the era. I found it generally cheesy, but it's nice to see the attempt.

So how does it stand up to the legendary game series it is supposed to be imitating? Questionably. Every Final Fantasy game from IV to X is a 9.0 or better on my scale, and each take the formula and play with it just enough to keep it feeling familiar, while also feeling like a new and separate game. While my favorite is Final Fantasy VII, each of those game has beloved memories for me, and playing them again rekindles them despite some of their flaws as they have aged. The flaws in The Legend of Dragoon were far more powerful than my admittedly nostalgic memories of the game, resulting in a far less enjoyable experience for me.

On the positive side, the additions system is absolutely delightful, and was clearly the best part of the game for me. Learning the different combinations and getting better and better at them introduced your own skill into the game, whereas the Final Fantasy games are primarily about strategy. While strategy is wonderful, and I love the Final Fantasy battle system, this game does plenty in the additions system to create a separate experience that runs on a parallel to Final Fantasy. The system is well designed, being challenging enough to require plenty of practice to perfect your additions, while also not being so challenging that you can never master them.

I enjoyed the story despite its classic JRPG tropes that I won't spoil here. But if you've ever played one, you'll find little to fawn over, and plenty to tease in the way you might tease a member of your family for some of their shortcomings. Ultimately this was a positive for me, but it didn't have quite the pull that classics like Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, or Final Fantasy X did for me in terms of story.

The visuals are dated, but not much more so than its Final Fantasy peers on the PS1. It's definitely better looking in battle and without than Final Fantasy VII, but I think that Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX are both superior visually speaking, and I think the all three games in the Final Fantasy trilogy on PS1 have much better and more frequent FMV-style cutscenes that help to give a certain shine and polish on the game that The Legend of Dragoon lacks.

The music is challenging to assess fairly. We need to recognize that we have all been spoiled to a silly extent by the prodigious shadow which Uematsu has cast on the genre, and that precious few composers in this genre will be able to match his uncanny ability to write complex music using simple technology that simultaneously gets stuck in your head for a lifetime. With that being said, the music in this game is very good, but not quite up to the standard that I've been spoiled to expect in a PS1 JRPG. There are a number of standout tracks though, so it's hard to ding it too much on music, just like it's unfair to have asked Hakeem Olajuwon to win more titles with Jordan playing at the same time.

The dragoon mode feels clunky to me, as it walls off a huge part of the game's strategy behind incredibly long and frankly dull animations, as well as removes a number of capabilities from your characters. In normal mode, you can attack, defend, use items, or transform into a dragoon. In dragoon mode, you can only attack or use magic, which means you're more or less committed to all-out assault upon transformation. I wish they'd given you the ability to go back and forth quicker in this mode, as it would have opened up a wider world of strategies involving quickly hitting your opponent and returning to the basic form once you need to use items or defend.

My biggest gripe with the game was the leveling and character development system, which proceeds according to most JRPGs by getting enough experience points to level up, giving you increased stats to win in subsequent battles. The problem with this system is that you get a pittance of experience for winning regular battles, and outrageous amounts for winning boss battles. The result of this is that it's hugely difficult to level up between bosses, which means that it's really hard to get super strong and feel like a boss. Fortunately they curved the difficulty pretty well, so you never feel overshadowed by the bosses, but also rarely feel too strong, maintaining a nice level of difficulty throughout. But I always like the ability to take control of your characters and mold them into who you want them to be, and The Legend of Dragoon has basically 0 of that. There are no classes, and nothing you can do to shape your character other than simply picking which additions to equip. I will at least say that the additions system at least gives you a great sense of control over your character, so this papers over one of the games biggest weaknesses.

All in all, it's hard to say that The Legend of Dragoon is a great game, but it is a good one with a lot of good ideas, and some poorly executed ones. If you love JRPGs on the PS1, this is one of the better ones. But if you find the genre boring, stay far away, as you'll mostly get exactly what you expect out of this one. I'll give it an 8.0/10.

I'm still working on the game I teased last time, but during times in which my kids are using my HDTV to play Minecraft (ugh) I'll be working on this hidden gem on the ol' CRT.

Song of the Day (Volume 41): Black Sabbath

This track has just aged so well. It may be the best eponymous song on an eponymous album of all time.

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 6): Boogie Nights

The premise of this movie sounded, frankly dreadful. A movie about adult film stars in the 70s and 80s? It sounded less like a real movie and more like a Porky's style festival of breasts for teenagers (I have never seen Porky's so forgive me if I'm poorly characterizing it). But I had heard good reviews from several people I respect, it was on Netflix, and I had watched enough TV shows lately and was down for a good investment of 2 hours for a movie rather than 8 hours for a season of TV, so I watched it.

My general sense of the movie is that it is far better than the B movie for teenage boys I expected, but not quite the brilliant film that its proponents suggest. There is a lot to like about this movie, and perhaps the most impressive is the degree to which direct Paul Thomas Anderson and the cast are able to turn a peril filled story into a genuinely engaging character study with remarkable humanity. At any step along the way in terms of casting, performances, or directorial choices, this movie could have easily slid into the B movie category, but the dedication of cast, writing, and director keep this movie on the rail and remarkably entertaining.

Julianne Moore turns in an excellent performance as Amber Waves, an adult film starlet dealing with the ramifications of her career and the ghosts of her previous life. Her story arc is captivating and heartbreaking at the same time, and you find yourself ultimately rooting for her despite some of her questionable life choices. Burt Reynolds has a superb performance as the primary director/filmmaker of the fictional films produced in the story, and is genuinely hilarious and likeable in the role. While these previous two received many of the accolades for their performances (and rightly so) I think that the best performance comes from Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a supporting role, as he has one of the most tragic and memorable stories in the film, all while having precious little screentime or lines.

The directing was excellent, culminating in an intensely climatic (not in the adult film's sense of the word) scene which I won't spoil here, but will simply say that it involves firecrackers. It's one of those scenes during which you are positively horrified, yet can't turn away from the screen, much like the ending of Silence of the Lambs or The Shining.

I'll be candid and say that I know nothing about what it was like to be an adult film star in the 1970s and 80s, and have no idea whether or not the film presents an accurate picture of that life. Yet the film making, writing, and performances are so genuinely skilled that these characters clearly come to life in a world that seems completely real and believable, even with no exposure to what that world was like.

My primary complaint about the movie lies in its basic structure, in that it is the basic story arc of thousands of other movies, with a naturally gifted protagonist who gets too full of himself, suffers due to his hubris, is humbled, and finds reconciliation with those he's hurt along the way. While the basic structure makes sense, much more time in the film is spent in the suffering and giftedness portions of the story, and not enough time is given in the time between to develop the protagonist's believable turn. The middle of the movie, thus, feels a bit disjointed from the joyful beginning due to the relative lack of a progressive slide that you can follow on screen.

All in all, I thought Boogie Nights was a very good film that needed a bit more development in the middle act. I'll definitely give Paul Thomas Anderson's movies some more chances, as I've really enjoyed Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood. I'll give Boogie Nights a 8.8/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 40): Tooth and Claw

Uh oh. My song of the day count is close to surpassing my what I'm playing...with no plan of altering the current pace. Gotta mix in a few platformers after my months of clearing out some RPGs from the backlog.

But until then, the song of the day will continue to gain ground! This is a really excellent track from a really excellent band. It has a nice blend of good songwriting, superlative performances, excellent melody, and the most brutal guitar tone imaginable. Listen all the way to the end (around the 4:10 mark) for the boys to out-Meshuggah Meshuggah themselves. All without the slightest bit of alienation for non metal people!

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 39): Roundabout

Roundabout is definitely up there with my favorite opening tracks on any record. Delightfully self-indulgent in it's technical brilliance and weirdness, it's an excellent showcasing of new keyboardist Rick Wakeman and bassist Chris Squire, and encapsulates everything that made Yes one of the greatest progressive rock bands of all time. Enjoy!

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 5): The Punisher

I finally finished Marvel's The Punisher last week, and am going to move through the rest of Marvel's Netflix catalogue, next. I've already watched both seasons of Daredevil, and the first season of Jessica Jones, and really enjoyed the first part of Daredevil second season, which features Jon Bernthal's depiction of Frank Castle, the Punisher, so I was really looking forward to a full season of Punisher.

All in all, The Punisher was pretty good. While not a totally faithful of the comics version of the character (in the comics, Punisher is even more enthralled by violence and destruction than in the show), this is an interesting and more humanizing take on the character, which I appreciate as a separate exploration. The Punisher is a character who has his family killed, and then goes on a war of vengeance against all evildoers, ironically using essentially any method possible to punish them.

This is what makes the existence of Punisher great in Daredevil, in that Punisher provides a fascinating foil to Daredevil. Daredevil is so committed to law and justice that he has been known to apprehend suspects and then defend them in court by day as his attorney alter ego. Punisher, on the other hand, believes in results more than process, which gives him his anti-hero status.

While this element of the character plays superbly in Daredevil, in his own show Punisher's moral ties are often more muddled and confusing than simple in a clarifying way. They attempt to provide a foil to Punisher in a character who looks up to Punisher and wishes to emulate him, and when pressed about what makes them different, Frank feebly and almost ashamedly is forced to concede that the only difference is the targets they choose, and even more feebly, the fact that he chooses not to use bombs because they are cowardly, despite throwing about 20 grenades throughout the process of the show.

The acting performances are generally good, with Bernthal doing a really nice job with his more humanized version of Punisher. Excellent turns are also brought in by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who has excellent chemistry with Bernthal, by Deborah Ann Woll, reprising her Daredevil role as Karen Page, and Jason R. Moore, who plays a former military buddy of Frank's. As far as villains, I didn't really buy one of them (I won't spoil it here, as it's a bit of a twist), but Paul Shultze does turn in a good performance as Agent Orange that's not quite as compelling a villain as Vicent D'Onofrio's portrayal of Kingpin in Daredevil, but good enough to get the job done.

The show features excellent action and a good soundtrack, and is generally shot and directed pretty well. There's plenty of the over the top violence you'd expect from a show about Punisher, so I'd say on that front I was pretty satisfied.

All in all, I felt a little disappointed by The Punisher, but that may just be because I had pretty high expectations for the show. It succeeded quite a bit, but wasn't as great as I think it could have been, and indeed was during his run on Daredevil. I'd give it an 8.0/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 38): Behind Blue Eyes

I'm not above radio rock and roll. Long live rock!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 44): Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7

No, I still haven't finished The Legend of Dragoon, and it's quickly becoming my white whale. But I have been making progress, and think I'll be finishing it up this week, if everything goes as planned. But I've been playing League of Legends again (big trouble for my 50 games in 2018 quest), and got distracted by the game I'm reviewing here, so I've been trying to dedicate a mere 1/2 hour a day to The Legend of Dragoon, with mixed results. But I'm farther today than I was last Tuesday, and will likely be farther next Tuesday than I am today, so that's good.

The Lego games have always been a treat for me ever since I discovered them through the magnificent Lego Batman. I've since played through several of them with my son, and they really scratch an old itch for me, true couch coop that's engaging for people of a wide variety of ages. The basic premise of the Lego games, at least in the modern era of Lego games (post Lego Star Wars), is that you play as Lego-ized characters from different movie/comic book universes, and recreate scenes from the movies or experience new adventures in the universe from the perspective of little Legos. Each different type of character has a different set of skills, and you always play as at least two characters, switching between the two as you need. The missions are primarily about puzzle solving, though there is definitely an amusing combat system involved in between puzzles.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is the second of the Lego Harry Potter games, and I started with it for the most base, treacherous, and immature of reasons: trophies. I had recently begun playing through Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 with my wife, but her appetite for video games is less than mine, and I really wanted more Lego games. So I moved on to the second game, saving the first for our collective marital playthrough. I also selfishly refused to play with anyone else, as many of the trophies require having one player only, which is probably my biggest gripe with the game. I'm not quite done with 100% of the game, but finished the campaign and have gotten almost 95% of the stuff in the game, so I feel pretty confident about my ability to review it.

The game succeeds marvelously in the same way as all of the games from the run from Lego Batman to Lego Marvel Superheroes, in that it creates a hilarious, childlike, and reverent homage to the universe which it is mimicking. What's more, the actual gameplay makes it fun and rewarding to play with more than one person, and even simple enough for a child to pick up and play. Lego Batman and Lego Marvel Superheroes in particular were delights to play with my son, as they create simple enough puzzles that he can solve, while also having an adult there to help out with the more challenging parts of the game.

The humor of the game and it's delightful and obvious love of the source material was definitely the high point for me. For example, there is a scene featuring *spoiler alert* Harry trying to get Snape's memories while he's dying. In the book and movie, these memories are poetically depicted as silver tears coming from Snape's eyes as he recalls the pain and anguish of his greatest mistakes. In the more kid friendly Lego version, Harry tries to get the memories by putting onions under Snape's nose to make him cry! *end spoiler*

There's another point in the game that clearly shows the developers' love of the source material. In one mission, there's a little puppet show of Harry fighting Voldemort, a clear tip of the hat to the immensely popular Youtube series Potter Puppet Pals.

The game features tons of content and will definitely keep the Harry Potter fan busy for a long time. You have the whole of Hogwarts castle to explore, as well as lots of missions in various places from the books including the Burrow, the Ministry of Magic, Platform 9 3/4, 4 Privet Drive, and 12 Grimmauld Place. There are 24 missions to play, and boatloads of collectibles to get, with most of them being walled off for a second playthrough, once you've acquired more magic spells and characters with unique abilities. There are over 200 characters in the game, including some VERY deep cuts from the books.

The game has a delightful soundtrack taken from the movies, and has most of the best tracks from said movies, even the down soundtracks from 5 and 6.

The controls are good and gameplay is fun, although the hitbox mechanics in combat are pretty unclear. The system in which you duel is fantastic, though, and was a ton of fun.

The game, like all Lego games, is regrettably buggy. There are some times in which you will simply be stuck in a mission due to a bug, and need to restart. It's not the worst game in the series in this regard (that would go to Lego Batman 2, of the ones I've played), but it caught me several times.

The boss fights are also pretty disappointing, and a wide berth from the fantastic fights in Lego Batman and Lego Marvel Superheroes. Pretty much every fight comes down to fighting little minions, dodging flying debris from a boss, and throwing the last shot of debris back at him. It was fun once, but after you've done it 20 times it's quite dry.

My biggest complaint, as referenced earlier, was with the trophy system. There are probably 10 trophies in the game which require you to play a single player campaign, which completely moves the player away from the most delightful aspect of the game, true coop! Some single player requirements make sense, like making a trophy that requires you to throw 10 touchdowns in Madden, but making you play against AI, rather than against your friend intentionally letting you score. But I just can't see any practical justification for it in this game, as it just really ruins one of the best parts of the game. But if you don't care about trophies, it won't impact you at all.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is a delightful love letter to the Harry Potter series that can be enjoyed by fans of all ages. I'd highly recommend it, warts and all. I'll give it a 8.8/10.

My next game, after The Legend of Dragoon, or maybe concurrent with it when I get bored, is an all-time classic which I've never touched before...

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 37): Speak No Evil

You had me at Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, and Herbie Hancock. One of the great jazz records of the era, and this track is a true jazz standard in every sense of the term.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 36): Panama

What a great album cover, and what a great song. By the way, for someone who didn't consciously live through the 80s, "Jump" rules.

-TRO

Social Games for a Reclusive Gamer

An actual picture from a party at a friend's house in the early 2000s ;)

I am a pretty introverted person. I spend most of my day at my desk, talking to no one. It's not that I don't enjoy people's company, but the act is fairly draining to me. As a result, I have to save up my energies for my home life, where I have four kids and a wife who desperately need me on and engaging, and since my home life is important to me, the number of social visits throughout the day become minimal. 

I've always loved video games, and fit some of the stereotypes of the hardcore gamer, while avoiding others. I'm introverted, I know a lot about video games, I find the world of video games a lovely escape from the real world, and I love Mountain Dew. I constantly bemoan how much video games have shifted lately towards exclusively multiplayer experiences, with games like Street Fighter V and Star Wars Battlefront being big disappointments to me, despite their extremely polished mechanics and presentation, due to their lack of serious single player experiences. I've sunk countless hours into single player JRPGs, and cleared enormous amounts of classic single player games in the last year alone, to compensate for the perceived lack of new, single player games (I know that they exist, but tend to be big open world map checklist games that quickly bore me, with the exception of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto V). 

Yet as I was thinking about it the other day, I realized that my despair at the current trend towards modern gaming isn't that it's multiplayer, but that it's not very social, in the true sense of the word. Most of my absolute best gaming memories, and most of my favorite games involve playing with other people. Thus, Super Smash Bros. Melee will almost certainly always be my favorite video game of all time, not because it's flawlessly programmed (it isn't, but the flaws have been exploited charmingly in the meta game), but because I enjoyed it up late at night with friends. Goldeneye will always be one of my favorite first person shooters, not because it's a superb game, but because I enjoyed it with friends. My memories of the NES are predominantly of Super Mario Bros. and Bases Loaded. I would absolutely say that Super Mario Bros. 3 is better than Super Mario Bros., but I remember the first more because I used to play two players with my dad. I remember Bases Loaded not because it's the best baseball game on the NES, but because I can still remember getting mad at my dad for hitting my best player with the pitch, causing him to charge the mound every time, and get ejected. Even the JRPGs I love most I love because I was playing them at the same time as my friends, and we would talk about them all of the time.

The shallow social interaction of online play is predominantly about competition, not socialization, because the truest socialization almost always revolves around physical proximity, or at least it makes it much easier, especially for me. I've played more League of Legends than Diablo III, but my memories of Diablo III are sharper and more treasured simply because I played it on a couch with my family over Christmas time.

So I'm going to try this year to not sink so deeply into bemoaning the lack of single player content, and try to use games as a tool to connect in a fun way with friends and family. I've already finished the campaign of Diddy Kong Racing this year with my wife, a semi-regular tradition of ours (we trade races) and want to just spend time using the medium of video games to build new memories to add to my cherished hall of fame of video games. 

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 35): Toxic Garbage Island

I don't know if I've heard a band who has consistently been better produced than Gojira. And when their songwriting matches their production value (which is more often than not), it's something extremely special. This is the one song that gets stuck in my head more than any other, I'm pretty sure.

What I'm Playing (Volume 43): The Final Fantasy Legend

This is the very first role playing game on the Game Boy (that I can find), and is perhaps my very first role playing game experience. I still remember playing one of the Final Fantasy Legend games at a friend's house on his Game Boy, as I can distinctly remember eating the meat to transform my monster into a new one. I'm not sure if it was the first or not, but I did have most of my experience playing the first game in high school, after obtaining a copy. I never beat it, though, and am really trying my best to clear out my oldest backlog last and this year (you're up next, The Legend of Dragoon).

The next few weeks of playing this game was an absolutely delightful mess that one would expect while programming the very first portable RPG. Taking pieces of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II with a revolutionary new concept and making it handheld could not have been easy in the slightest, and was so different that in Japan this game has no ties to the Final Fantasy brand at all, but is actually the first game in the SaGa series, to which I have little exposure beyond this game.

The story revolves around a world dominated by a dictator, Ashura, whose four fiends are terrorizing the world. The world itself is a fascinating and original concept, with a tower that rises up into the sky, with worlds at certain levels of the tower. Thus the bottom floor is a world with three kings struggling to be the strongest, while another is a watery world, and a third is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi wasteland. The story and setting to the game are remarkably adept for a game as date as The Final Fantasy Legend, and are really a high point for the game.

The music is one of the best early Game Boy sound tracks, composed by none other than the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the music for all of the early Final Fantasy games. I feel like it's not quite as good as his work on the NES or Super NES, but for a first outing on the Game Boy with its very different sound hardware, it can be considered a standout among its peers.

You control a character who you can name, and can recruit other members to your team from three races, humans, mutants, and monsters. This is the most original and distinct element to the game, because it not only is the case that the capabilities of the races are different, but also that how they grow is dramatically different. Mutants grow in a manner similar to that in Final Fantasy II, that is to say, incrementally by taking certain actions. Getting hit by an attack, thus, might increase your max health or defense, while using a magic scroll will increase your magic power. Humans grow by the purchase of potions which can increase several of the stats, but they never get any sort of magic power, relying entirely on physical attack. Monsters don't grow at all, but rather can eat the meat of defeated monsters to turn into new ones. I didn't use them at all this run, and really wish that I had, because it's a very fun mechanic.

Battle functions most similarly to Dragon Quest in terms of its interface and controls, although there is a small wrinkle added in which each weapon has only a limited number of uses, making your grinding capabilities limited to the amount of remaining weapons you have, and makes supplying yourself before setting out on a new leg of your journey vitally important.

I really enjoyed this game, but it is remarkably messy in a lot of ways. Much of what I just told you about the way the game functions is stuff I had to figure out from internet research, as there is absolutely no way to figure out how the various character archetypes grow in game. It's possible it existed in the manual, but I don't have that, so prepare to do a bit of a deep dive into the mechanics of the game before you begin. For example, on my first run through in high school, I had a party of two mutants, a monster, and a human, but I never figured out that you needed to buy stat boosts for the human, making him pathetic by the end, and making killing the end boss nearly impossible with one useless character. This is why I never finished it, and needed a fresh run as an adult to finally knock it off my list.

The translation is frankly terrible. The dialogue is dreadful at times, but hilariously so. For example, if you get stuck running away in battle, but fail, it will tell you that your character "do nothing". There are probably 50 excellent moments of hilarious Engrish in the game, and while I wouldn't tolerate it now, in the context of burgeoning 80's scene of translating Japanese games to English, it's more amusing than distracting.

There's also definitely a sense that more care was given to the earlier worlds than the later ones, with far more detail being given and far fewer throwaway areas with nothing in them.

There are also a lot of clunky, old school kind of RPG elements that The Final Fantasy Legend adheres to simply out of a kind of path dependent default, just because no one had done them before. For example, the inventory space you get is painfully low, and in a game in which it is really important to carry backup weapons due to their limited uses, this can be extremely challenging. Also, it's got that old school annoyance that if you tell a party member to attack one character, but that character dies, they won't do anything that turn. These tiny irritations are numerous, but also easy to excuse for a game this groundbreaking and early.

The most important thing about the game is the groundwork that it laid, similar to my reviews for Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Land. If any of those three games came out today, I'd be a little upset. They'd need a lot more polish and there were too many risky choices made that didn't pan out in the long run. But for the time, they are absolute titans of their genres, setting up a foundation for greatness down the road. If Miyamoto learned from and built off Donkey Kong and perhaps Pitfall to make his masterpiece Super Mario Bros. that finally ensconced all of the established rules of the genre, then The Final Fantasy Legend can consider one of the games on the ground floor for later and better handheld RPGs like Pokemon. So warts and all, I'd highly recommend that you check out the granddaddy of one of my favorite genres, the handheld RPG. I'll give it a 8.6/10.

Next up for handhelds, I'll be playing the second game in the SaGa series (Final Fantasy Legend II), at least until my next Amazon package arrives, at which point I'll be switching to the following game, which I'll tease below.

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 4): OJ: Made in America

I recently finished OJ: Made in America, a 7 and a half hour long documentary! No, it's not produced by Ken Burns, but is actually a portion of the 30 for 30 documentary series on ESPN, although they documentaries are usually not quite as long. Director Ezra Edelman was unknown to me by name, but upon looking into his filmography a bit, I saw that he had also done the superb Requiem for the Big East for 30 for 30, and was naturally intrigued by the story.

I was 7 when all of the OJ drama was going on, and barely remember it at all. I knew that he was a football player, and remember the white Bronco on TV, and I knew that he was probably guilty, but that he got off due to his money and the skillful defense team the money was able to buy. I turned on the documentary intending to figure out how a self-respecting jury could have ruled the man innocent, given all the evidence against him, but what you actually receive in the film is so much more important and interesting than that relatively uninteresting tale of prosecutorial ineptitude.

The fascinating thing about OJ: Made in America is just how far back it goes, discussing the roots of racism in America and particularly in LA, paralleling it with OJ's own fascinating attempts to be seen as something other than a black man, and be judged entirely on his merit. This is the story you didn't intend to see, but in the skilled hands of Edelman, it's all tied together in a package that makes an enormous amount of sense.

Despite the gargantuan 7 and a half hours worth of content, Edelman manages to keep the narrative whole and intriguing throughout the vast majority of it, although like the Burns films after which this is almost certainly modeled, there are a few ho hum moments that likely could have been cut. But this is a remarkable accomplishment by a skilled director and his team, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about OJ and the roots that colored his dramatic rise and fall.

I'll give OJ: Made in America a 9.5/10. It's really an excellent documentary that will be interesting to a huge set of people, regardless of your race or interest in sports.

-TRO

A 2017 reTROview reTROspective!!!

I had such a silly amount of fun doing my 100 post reTROspective a few months ago that I thought I'd update it for an end of year recap. So what follows will be a review of all of the games I've completed and reviewed for 2017!

Here are all of the games which I completed properly, for the first time, without abusing emulation or save states in 2017, and the number (65!) surprises even me. I can thank this blog for keeping me focused on my goal of narrowing the backlog. I think I added more games to my collection than I beat this year, but most of that was just digital humble bundle/free game sales for PC than I'll likely ever touch. So I'll consider the backlog to be smaller, for sure.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Banjo-Kazooie
Castlevania
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot 2
Crash Bandicoot: Warped
Donkey Kong Country
Donkey Kong Country 2
Donkey Kong Country 3
Donkey Konga
DuckTales
Earthbound
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance A2: Grimoire of the Rift
Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light
Fire Emblem: Awakening
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
F-Zero
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Kirby's Dream Land 2
Mario Golf: Advance Tour
Mario Kart 8
Mario Tennis: Power Tour
Mega Man
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6
Mega Man 7
Mega Man 8
Mega Man 9
Mega Man X
Mega Man X2
Mega Man X3
Mega Man Zero 3
Mortal Kombat XL
Pokemon Sun
Pokemon Trading Card Game 2
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse
Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
Sky Force Anniversary
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Star Fox
Super Mario Bros. 2
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario Land
Super Mario Maker
Super Mario World 2
Super Metroid
Tales of PhantasiaThe Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

If I average out those 65 games over the 365 day calendar, that means I finished one game every 5.6 days, which is true but a bit misleading. I basically cleared out Mega Man 1-6 in a weekend, Super Mario Land in one sitting, and then other games took me a month to finish (I'm looking at you, Tales of Phantasia).

Below are some visualizations of the games I've been playing this year:

Figure 1: Games by Genre

2017 was certainly the year of the platformer, although I probably spent more time as a whole playing the 6 RPGs than I did with the 32 platformers, so this is a bit misleading. The number of hours is definitely tipped in favor of RPGs as I've spent the last few weeks slogging it out in a few lengthy JRPGs, but I didn't finish them in time for the new year.

Figure 2: Rating by Genre

The best genre of the year was for action games, buoyed up by several excellent Zelda titles. Racing games, rail shooters, and strategy games come up just behind in second, with the worst genre being the card game.

Figure 3: Games by System*

*This refers to the system the game was originally on, not necessarily the one on which I played it. If it was originally released on more than one, then I coded it based on the system on which I played it.

The SNES remained top dog, as I finished 15 games on the system. The NES was in second place, with several consoles tying for last place with 1 game completed a piece (N64, PSP, PS4, and XBox One).

Figure 4: Game Rating by System

My shining star for the year was the Wii U, which had two titles which I absolutely adored. Other consoles to rank on average above 9 were my beloved 3DS, the Genesis, with a strong trilogy of Sonic titles, and the NES, for which I hit the big time highlights this year to overcome my poor education on the console.

Figure 5: Games by Developer

My most played developer of the year was Capcom by a country mile, thanks to a ton of Mega Man games, and three Capcom developed Zelda games. Following up was Nintendo, with a bunch of companies pulling up the rear with 1 game a piece. Capcom stock will be nosing up after the publication of this, so buy early ;)

Figure 6: Game Rating by Developer

And Hal Laboratory is the reTROview developer of the year, thanks to the strong retroactive performance of classics Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Earthbound. Honorable mentions go to Yacht Club Games, Sega, and Nintendo, all of whom finished with an average rating above 9. Nintendo is probably the real developer of the year, because they accomplished their rating of 9.1 with 12 games, compared to Hal's 9.5 over 2 games. But the rules are ironclad and mercilessly unfair. Matrix Software takes home the prize of worst developer of the year, and no one else even approached their level of dreadfulness.

Figure 7: Handheld or Home?

Home gaming again surpassed handheld for me in terms of completion, but this is just due to the fact that I play more RPGs on my handhelds, where I can easily save at a moment's notice/put in sleep mode, making home RPG playing less attractive. I'd say I almost certainly game more on my handhelds than at home on net.

Figure 8: Ratings for Handheld and Home

 

 Home games were rated slightly better than handhelds this year, purely due to a handful of handheld stinkers in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light.

Figure 9: Games by Company

Nintendo again retains the crowd, and that will likely be the case until the day I die. Sony was in second place, with triple the games played of Sega in third.

Figure 10: Game Rating by Company

Sega retains the crown based on Sonic's superb Genesis trilogy as the best game company of 2017!

Awards:

Game of the (reTROview) year: Super Mario Bros 3

After all of these years, games have only become more visually polished, but I don't know if anything will ever beat the loving design of SMB 3.

Best New Game (to me) of the (reTROview) year: Super Mario Maker

 What a joy this game was to play. Great work, as usual, by Nintendo.

 Stinker of the (reTROview) year: Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Gross. I can essentially guarantee that I will never pick this one up again.

Median Game of the (reTROview) year: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

Somehow, even after adding in 30 more games, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is still the median game. How bizarre. If this keeps up after another year, we need an investigation into the peculiar mathematical properties of this game.

Newest Game reTROviewed: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment

This is the only 2017 game I played this year!

 
Oldest Game reTROviewed: Castlevania

The winner after 100 posts was 1988's Super Mario Bros. 2, so I successfully moved it back two years to 1986 with Castlevania. Go me.

The ReTROview Top 10

  

10. Fire Emblem: Awakening (9.5)

9. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (9.5)

8. Mega Man X (9.5)

7. Mega Man 3 (9.6)

6. Mario Kart 8 (9.7)

5. The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (9.8)

4. Mario Golf: Advance Tour (9.8)

3. Earthbound (9.8)

2. Super Mario Maker (9.9)

1. Super Mario Bros. 3 (10)

 The reTROview Bottom 10

10. Final Fantasy XIII (7.6)

9. Super Mario World 2 (7.5)

8. Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (7.5)

7. Mortal Kombat XL (7.5)

6. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (7)

5. Mega Man X3 (6.5)

4. Pokemon Trading Card Game 2 (6.5)

3. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose (6)

2. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (5)

1. Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (4)

Anyway, that's been my year in review! Play the top 10, avoid the bottom 10 unless you're big fans of the genre or series, although 10-6 were hardly "bad games". I just tend to only play things that I really want to play or are considered to be classics, which means the games I play are better than your average game, usually. But there are certainly better options out there for each of the genres and series listed in the bottom 10.

I'm again grateful for this blog, which has encouraged me to clear out the backlog, and hope 2018 sees similar progress. I think another 65 is unrealistic, so I'll shoot for clearing out 50 games this year, which seems reasonable. Stay tuned for more reTROview!

-TRO