I'll Mura your Masa

I've been hearing little bits of Muramasa for the past year and thought it looked great. It's no surprise really, it's the same team that did Odin Sphere for the PS2 a couple years back. When I bought Odin Sphere I pretty much found out that the game played like tar, so I was kinda bummed about my loss of $30 worth of fantastic looking bad game. Muramasa is supposed to play much better, but I don't know enough of the details to praise or poopoo the game.

As I'm now a poor college student, I think I'll probably be skipping this game, but I thought this cover painted for the September issue of Play Magazine was worth posting.

Just look at it man, that is freaking ridiculous.

The Backlog

Well, I've put Chrono Cross on the backburner after coming to the realization that I still have quite a few games built up that I'm nearly done with. Before going any further, I think that there are a few games that have a higher priority.

Shin Megami Tensei:Digital Devil Saga 2

I finished the first DDS game back in January and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The degree of customization that came along with the title really made me happy. Sure, it was pretty grindy, but it was essentially the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X with a much more calculated chart growth. It wasn't overly complicated and you could develop your characters in any way you wanted.

The big problems I had with the second game came down to the stripping away of your characters. I had gone through the entirety of the first game heavily developing only three characters and it worked fine. There was no reason to use any of the other characters if you didn't want to. In this one, I went through the same way, only to find out that I would be losing characters at times for story related purposes and I'd be left with the other characters. Just to sort of emphasize how much I had ignored the other two characters, they were both at LV.12 and only had their first elemental spells while I had everyone else at LV.34 with their 'dyne' level elements.

Some Megamans

Mega Man 2 was the first original series Mega Man game that I played. As I've mentioned before, this was back in emulations infancy when dinosaurs ruled the earth. The game itself was fun, but it left me wanting, not to mention that it was b****hard for me to play on a keyboard. My cousin told me to give the third entry a try and that one was the one that clicked with me.

Recently, I've come to think that I much prefer Mega Man 2 over 3 just because of the simplicity in it's presentation and how Wily's fortress was handled. The madman's lair started off strong with the entry and ascent of the outer building and the fight with the dragon. Later, the stages all used the same tiles, slowly getting darker and darker with little bits of surreality such as the phasable floors and the giant fish that would only be used in one area in the game.

I like Mega Man 2 and this is a waste of a post, hope you enjoyed it!

Policenauts in English plus Snatcher memoirs

As many of you may have heard on the other end of the internet, the Policenauts translation has finally been finished. Some of the lesser informed may wonder why exactly this seemingly average looking anime game is getting the attention that it has been. Well, Policenauts has two things going for it really. First and foremost, it's probably getting the most hype as it's the last Hideo Kojima gem that the west hasn't seen, more importantly however(atleast for me), it's the spiritual successor to Snatcher.

I'll be really honest here, I hadn't discovered Snatcher until last year when thanks to the wonders of emulation, I was able to play on my PSP. Normally, I wouldn't cave into piracy for disk based games, but as it's known to cost around forty-eight billion dollars on eBay and me being completely unwilling to deal with Sega's tower of power, I really had no other choice.

Snatcher is Sega CD adventure game based in a cyberpunk world where the world fears mechanical bioroids known as Snatchers. These beings are essentially Terminators who have a penchant for brutally murdering people and taking their places. Naturally, us humans don't like that too much and the government appoints a task force to deal with the problem. This group is known as JUNKER, or Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger for the finicky. You play as Gillian Seed, a new JUNKER who just so happens to be an amnesiac who can only remember the word Snatcher.


The game itself plays like most Adventure games, you're presented with several NPCs and puzzles which must all be worked out to progress through the story. Unlike other Adventure games of the time, you don't have a point an click interface to deal with, instead you get a streamlined list of choices. Personally, I prefer this to the clicky approach, you aren't faced with situations later on where you realized you can't progress due to not clicking on the magic Macguffin that you really should have known about. The list simplifies things quite a bit in that regard, but that isn't to say the puzzles aren't difficult. Being observant is required and basic world knowledge doesn't hurt either.

The plot is the main point of the game and believe me, it's a great one. It's hard to articulate exactly how I feel about it, but there's enough outlets for you to get more information. HardcoreGaming 101 has a great article on the game and it's odd MSX2 RPG remake.

Well, I just got my copy of Policenauts in the mail, so I'm off the rip and patch.

The Shadow Complex

Is it just me, or is Shadow Complex missing something vital? Maybe it isn't as apparent to others as it is to me, but for a game that cribs a lot of old school sensibilities, it's missing one: Where in Hades is the soundtrack? Sure, during some of the more crucial scenes and boss fights, there's some orchestral noodling going on, but the soundtrack was a crucial part of what made the game's inspiration(Super Metroid for those who are oblivious) so unique. The worlds look pretty and all and some of the tech places feel properly sterile, but nothing really feels all that alive. Maybe it's because of how combat heavy the game is, or maybe it's because of this generations musical standards. All I know is that I really shouldn't be listening to other games' soundtracks while playing this.

The game is fun though, I'll give Chair that.

The Magic of Let's Play

A curious thing has come out of the blossoming of the internet. With high speed connection and advents of "Youtubes", gamers have gathered to basically just watch dudes play some video games. Sometimes these guys are informative, sometimes they're entertaining and once in a great while, you'll get those who do both. I'm going to just take a little bit of time and try and explain why I enjoy some of my favorite LP'ers and boy, it'[s not going to be pretty.

The first on my list is to no ones shock DeceasedCrab. His style goes more upon the comedic side of the spectrum and tends to play indie games and the occasional old game. He's probably best known for his Cave Story and La-mulana series, although he does have quite a few other gems. I'm quite fond of his Balloon Kid playthrough just based on how well he knew the game and how he still had trouble with it.

Second would probably Brickroadbrickroad who specializes in just plain being better at the games than you without being overly smug; Sure, there's some gloating, but it's in good spirits. His specialty lies in superspeed playthroughs of older games like Megaman 3 and Castlevania 4. Personally, I think he was at the top of his game when he did the Super Metroid playthrough. He was full of information that not only showed you how to play the game, but really gave a deeper, more thought out perspective on things. His Bionic Commando playthrough is another classic that you should definately check out. I would go into deeper detail, but come on, it's Bionic Commando at super speed, do I really need to try and justify that?

Kikoskia is the next on my list, and for good reason too. Maybe it's just me, but the combination of both his voice and his accent attuned with his personal game choices make it quite enjoyable. Kiko's forte lies in a few different fields, namely old PC games and Taiwanese Pirate Games. The pirate games are probably my favorite to watch, just to see how bad the games are and to hear his utter disgust while playing through them -- Mortal Combat 5, Megaman 8, and Super Mario World are pretty much THE reason to watch.

Now, I saved my absolute favorite LP'er for last and that would be HCBailly, whom I've linked once before. Bailly tends to stick to the classic jRPGs of yesteryear, when they were still viable. Stylistically, he has managed to combine comedy and information to a level that I personally don't think anyone else has reached yet. For the most part, his LP's are as clean as the games, so if he's playing something like the original Final Fantasy, you won't hear too many expletives, but say Final Fantasy VII, don't be to surprised if you hear language that wouldn't be suitable for infants. Chrono Trigger is probably the pinnacle of his LP's, though most are spectacular.

I myself have tried to get into LP's, but there is no possible way for me to compete with these guys. If anyone deserves your time, it's them. I'll end this post with this note; it's still odd to me that I have a fascination with watching other people play games when I could be playing them myself.

Chrono Cross Day 3

I think the highlight of this play session is that I think I actually figured the battle system out. EVERYONE ON THE BATTLEFIELD has the stamina gauge from -7 to 7. Whenever the enemies use an element, it takes them just as long to recover, giving me ample time to take them down. I still haven't figured out exactly why the enemies can break my combos, but I assume I'll probably be able to do the same shortly.

I've also pin-pointed exactly how the spell charges build up. As your character attacks, depending on how many hits, their little gauge will move up a bracket giving you access to higher and higher levels of elements. You can only use one of each element per battle with the exception of consumables, which themselves are limited to only five uses. Using a bracket 3 element will drain your spell charges all the way down while using a bracket 1 will still leave you with atleast some elements. Interestingly enough, it seems you can put low level elements in the higher brackets to gain some added power.

So far the only major thing in battle that I haven't been able to figure out is what exactly the element gauge in the upper left corner does. Depending on the last three elemental affinities used, the gauge will change colors showing what was used. I'm guessing that's just there to remind you, but then again, I think they're going to come into play later as I've noticed that each battle in the areas will start with the same elements everytime.

As far as storyline events go, Kid, Poshul and myself went on our merry way through the Bone Canyon and found a talking skull. Judging by the character portrait in his text boxes, I'm assuming this macabre artifact is going to at some point be a party member, but I really don't have any need for undead clowns in my party -- I think I'll stick to mutant dogs and scarecrows thank you. We also met up with Solt and Peppor of the Acacia Dragoons; wanting a rematch, we fought valiantly and gave them a reason to fear "ghosts".

We made our way through to Termina where we met the swordsman Glenn, blacksmiths Zippa and Zappa, a rambunctious youth with the bizarre need to put emphasis on the 'CHA' suffix in whatever crazy accent he's speaking in, and finally, we added a magician named Guile to the party.


I've heard that Guile himself was supposed to Magus from Chrono Trigger originally, but due to complications in the plot, the concept was never quite fluffed out. The connection truly is there from his long, flowing, silver hair to his floating prowess to his adept skills in magic. I'm curious to see if he's going to be important to the plot later on as I've gathered that most of the characters bear little to no weight on the plot itself.

Kid had decided that we needed to break into someone by the name of Lord Viper's mansion, which itself seems to be almost a parallel to going into Magus' castle in Trigger. The Acacia Dragoons seem to be working under Viper, so I suppose it makes some sense for Serge to want to find some answers. Despite that, I'm kind of gathering that Kid is mostly looking for treasure, but I suppose it's too early to tell

I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1

Since Micro$oft adopted the concept community games, I'd to say it's been a rough start. The market is filled with screen tests, drum machines, vibration massages and controllers used as vibrators themselves. For every game like Weapon of Choice, there's ten more like A Perfect Massage or Aquarium HD. Now, I realize that shovelware is an inevitability, but at the rate those games were being produced, any game worth any merit would get buried fast.

Fortunately enough, M$ implemented a new rating system to go along with the new price ranges for their indie games, giving us the option of playing the best of the best rather than dig and hope you find oil. While waiting for Shadow Complex to become available for download, I was recommended one such indie game entitled "I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1". I didn't have any idea what it was about and the name itself irked me in a way that only 1337 spelling can. After I got over that quirk, I decided to give it a whirl as it's on sale for the low low price of only a dollar.

The game itself was made by the Gentleman that made ZP2K9 and Dishwasher:Dead Samurai, a Mr. James Silva of Ska Studios. Z0MBIES is an arena shooter/swarm game somewhat similar to Geometry Wars with the addition of several weapon types ranging from shotguns to lasers and everything you can in between. As you might imagine, the primary goal of the game is to shoot zombies and other assorted enemies like asteroids and snakes without becoming a member of the living dead yourself. This is easier said than done though, when I say this is a swarm game, I really mean it. While the combat in Geometry wars is about avoiding enemies, Z0MBIES takes it in another direction where you're forced to try and fight your way out of the endless hordes with death coming closer and closer. You truly feel claustrophobic and uneasy as the waves get more and more immense.

Now, while all this is good and fun, where Z0MBIES thrives is really in the presentation department. While playing the game, rather than have a traditional soundtrack, the player's ears will be graced with a 15 minute indie/prog rock parody about the game itself and how it does indeed only cost a dollar. To go along with the music, the stage itself will evolve from being a simple room to being a light extravaganza that wouldn't look out of place at a rock concert. The transitions from motifs flow along with the song; the spacey parts involve a murky looking background with a hail of meteors homing to the player to the drum & bass part consisting of an electric light parade with evil slimes and digitalized demon faces. The game ends with the music rather than looping, but really, the song itself is what makes this game stand out, so why would you want to keep playing when it's done?

It's a fun game that you really can't wrong with. For only a dollar, you could do worse. Oh yeah, did I mention local 4 player co-op?

Chrono Cross Day 2

In my brief two hour experience with Chrono Cross, the one thing that I'd say i've taken away from it was how baffling I find the battle system. It's sort of a mix of simplicity in attacks, being big, medium and small and also complexity in how exactly the Elements work and how stamina comes into play. As far as I've figured out from the first boss fight, there's opposing elements like black elements are weak to white elements and vice verse, but it also seems that they go further than that like having the games equivalent to usable items. From what i've read in FAQs in my quest to better understand just what is going on, there's also a variety of different elements like combination attacks akin to Trigger, traps which do some sort of nullification of elements similar to say, having a Coral Shield will protect you from lightning in a Final Fantasy game.

I'm curious to see how everything in battle is going to play out with the whole mish-mashed cast. So far I've gotten Poshul, Kid and Mojo and honestly, I'm hoping there's some actual characters with some sort of weight in the story and battles coming up soon. I know Kid is important to the plot, but at the point I'm at, her strength is pretty pitiful. Poshul is a pretty hard hitter, but cannot stand the lisping and the whole "Sergiepoo" aspect in the talking dog's speech mannerisms. I understand that all the characters used different dialects in Japanese, but translating EVERYONE to have have different accents is disconcerting. Oh well, I'll get past it one of these days -- hopefully that day will be soon.

For now, I'm going to keep playing and see how it goes, I still have a few days before I start school to give it my attention.

Rescue Rangers

Remember being kids and having one game that you played with anyone and everyone? For me that game was Rescue Rangers. There's something magical about throwing an apple at your Hawaiian shirted friend when you should really be trying to avoid the mechanical bulldog running down the road. It's my opinion that Chip and Dale was the pinnacle of co-op platforming back on the NES for both it's brevity and it's simple learning curve. It was a game that could be beaten in 20 minutes and one that can be as easy or as difficult as you want it. One team could work together to bring down Fatcat's regime of evil or you could just be jerks to each other throwing crates at your buddy while they're trying to make a jump.

I think I know what I'm going to be doing tonight, provided I find someone who's up to it.

Oh Hells Yes! P3P

My deep undying love for Atlus has grown today. Somehow, they managed to make a game that I already own twice over appealing to me. If you haven't heard the news today, Atlus of Japan has announced that they're porting Persona 3 to the PSP. This is good news for those of us who loved the game and want a new reason to play it again.

While most gamers would be quite okay with getting the game again, but i've always had one big problem with the game, horrible party AI. I can't tell you how many times I needed Mitsuru to use Dia on the MC but she would heal herself instead. Persona 4 addressed this problem by making the AI optional, and let me tell you, I loved P4 ten times more than P3 just because of this factor. I suppose the option of having a female MC would make some of the Social Links a little more exciting. I'm interested in seeing how the dating situation goes, but no one really knows how any of this is going to work out.

On the unfortunate side, this also means that I'm going to have to buy a new PSP, as my analog nub stopped working a long time ago. That's not so bad I suppose, I can still use my old one for emulation and the new one for all the actual software. I'm probably going to try and skim one off of Craig's List for cheap rather than go for something like the PSPGo.

(thanks to Siliconera.com for the magazine shot and the good news. They're a great source for gaming news and you should really check them out.)

I Took the Plunge

Temptation got the best of me and I started some Chrono Cross. I don't have much to say other than that i'm enjoying myself and the music is fantastic. The Arni Village theme in Serge's world is particularly nice. Both world map themes are pretty fantastic, with the home version being a remix of the adventurous song from Trigger whilst the foreign one is very mysterious.

As for the battlesystem, I don't quite understand the mechanics at all. It seems to be somewhat like Xenogears with the different strength levels versus how much stamina they take. Then there's also the hit percentage thing that I can't seem to figure out how it factors into the stamina gauge. Even more confusing is the Elements, I can use them in the beginning of the turn or use them mid combo. Despite me not understanding combat yet, i'm still enjoying the fights.

Should I Cross Over?

Another game I acquired in the great video game binge of 2007 was Chrono Cross. I had originally played Chrono Trigger in Snes emulation's infancy and still found it to be an amazing experience despite garbled sound and flickering sprites. I only played about 3 hours of it before I decided to try and track down a real copy of it. I looked all over the place, unfortunately, my local Funcoland had turned into some lesser chain and finding the game became difficult. I had no way of finding the game up until it was released as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles boxset.

I wasn't upset about the Chronicles version's flaws, although I did notice them. Waiting for the battles was agonizing and I tried to avoid going into the menu screen at all costs. Looking back, I must have really had no patience what-so-ever. In hindsight, sound was pretty awful aswell now that I have a base to compare it to; Remember, when I had first played it, snes emulators couldn't make any appealing sounds to save it's life. In the end, I still enjoyed myself with it.

Despite me enjoying Chrono Trigger oodles, I never got around to finishing it despite playing through to the end about four separate times. Maybe I had a short attention span, but I would always seem to move onto a new game everytime. Part of the problem was the fact that I never liked to level grind, making a lot of things incredibly difficult for me. I remember the fight with Flea Plus, Super Slash and Ozzie the Great as the one that really turned me away from wanting to play anymore. It was just too damned hard and I didn't have the mental faculties to come up with a decent tactic to survive.


Flash forward to about a week ago, I had been watching HCBaily's Let's Plays and started watching Chrono Trigger. I just couldn't stop watching and it eventually gave me the itch to pull up an old save file at Magus' castle. Around 10 hours later, I had maxed everyone's techs and pummled Lavos not once, but twice. I beat the extraterrestrial, doomsday insect to the ground on the Black Omen and immediately went into the Newgame+ and smashed him up after Lucca's Teleporter. I've always loved the game, but this time, it really hit home for me.

Now you may find yourself asking "Why did he mention Chrono Cross in the beginning of this post?", it's simple really, I think I want to play through it, but I've heard nothing but mixed feelings from all the reviews i've read. Now normally I don't really think too much about reviews, but all of them seem to be on complete opposite poles of each other. I'm talking like 1/10's and 10/10's all across the board.

I'm about to start a new semester at college, so my time is going to be limited. Desperately, I need to find out whether the game is going to be worth it to me. One thing I do know though is that the music rocks. Dragon God has got to be one of the smartest pieces of music I've heard in a video game to date.

I just wish I had the ability to time travel and give myself an opportunity to find out for myself or inter dimensional travel and ask parallel BusterLogic if he enjoyed the game or not. But then again, if he was parallel, would him liking it mean I would hate it, or would his word be golden? Great, now I'm going to be up all night wondering.

I Love Atlus

I know I post a lot about the Final Fantasy series, but that's because they were my first jRPGs. Times have changed however, and a new love has stolen my heart. It really wasn't expected either, it seems like just yesterday I took the plunge.

Back about two years ago I went on a game buying spree, mostly for rarer PS2 games. I had been told good buys were Atlus games, as they tend to "disappear" after a few months only to be seen on eBay for two times market value. Naturally, I picked up both Digital Devil Saga games, Nocturne, the first Devil Summoner and Persona 3 for around $200. The one that caught my interest the most at the time was Persona 3, but I would soon quit due to the unwieldiness of your party's AI. I was really just sort of turned off and had decided that I would just shelf them and resell them in a few years.

Then, a couple months later, after I had triumphed over Mistwalker's Lost Odyssey, my hunger for jRPGs just couldn't be slaked. I needed something difficult, and fast. The first place I looked was Dragon Quest VIII, which I soon shelved about 4 hours later because it was neither difficult nor fast. It was at this moment that I had remembered that I had barely touched my Megaten collection. I wasn't really sure where to start as I hadn't heard much about any of them other than certain reviewers lauding over most of the series.


Nocturne was the first game from those that really hit the spot that I was looking to fill. The combat was strategic, yet simple and the bosses were mostly brutal, but in a way that if you used your head, you could defeat them without too many tears. There were a fe exceptions like the Matador of the Trumpeter, who in a way were a little out of the player's league at the point they're battled, but once I figure out the tactic that worked for me, they became some of my most fond victories in all of gaming.



The fusion system is what really drew me into the game though. Simple on the outside, combine two demons to get a stronger demon with some of the abilities of it's predecessor, certain combinations will always hold true to bring out your desired demons. At first glance, I assumed that everything was randomly determined by the demons levels and yours to decide on what you would get, but things like the two families play a huge role. There are also high level, secret fusions that you can get, my favorite involving fusing two greater Divine demons with a Tyrant to obtain the highest Divine demon. I think the fusion chart posted above will go a little deeper into how complex the whole process is.

Maybe once I can articulate on why I found the games so great, I'll go into further details, but that day isn't today. In the mean time, Peace Out!

Great Boxart; Horrible Game

Yes, this post is just about the Japanese Boxart to the abysmal 8 Eyes. Just look at it man, feast your eyes upon the lovely scene.

From the Lagoon to Interstellar Mythology, The Origins of Bahamut

No figure is more central to Final Fantasy lore than Bahamut, other than the crystals/ORBS perhaps. The dragon has appeared in nearly all the main numbered titles in several different roles; From the King of Dragons to the Eidolon God to a gigantic warship. Where did this figure even come from though?

The first place to check when doing any internet research is always going to be the fabled Wikipedia, home the biggest bulls**t factoid collection. Despite that, their entry on Bahamut seems fairly legit, according to them, Bahamut is originally a giant fish in pre-islamic Arabian mythology. Interestingly enough, the sheer size of the legendary fish is so vast that they say that if one would put all the oceans in the world in it's nose, they would only amount to the size of a mustard seed in the middle of a desert. Essentially, Bahamut would be a celestial fish the size of the Milky Way galaxy for the hyperbole to hold true. It gets a little more interesting after that, supposedly the fish is supposed to have a bull named Kujata(who would later appear himself as a summon in FFVII) on it's scaly head who himeself carries a mountain range made from ruby which houses an angel. I guess anything is possible in a world where space itself is a fish, so I won't go too much further into that. Anyways, over this angel lies the six hells, the Earth and seven heavens. It's safe to say that the fish Bahamut is an analogy for either space or god itself or maybe even some kind of crazy combination of the two.



While all that is good, it would make a whole lot more sense for our favorite Guardian Force to have it's origins in Dungeons and Dragons rather than the Arabian mythos. The original Final Fantasy was pretty much a blatant ripoff of the D&D world, most notably the four elemental fiends themselves were ripped right from the rulebooks of the roleplaying giant. Bahamut is a platinum dragon who lords over all the good dragons of the world. The dragon himself is the offspring of the Dragon God Io. Siding with Lawful Good, Bahamut is about as far as it gets on the good scale. During my minuscule research, I also found out that Bahamut has sort of a sibling rivalry with another Final Fantasy favorite, Tiamat. The multi headed Fiend plays as the antithesis to the Dragon Lord as the queen of all evil dragons.

Within the Final Fantasy games themselves, Bahamut has been seen mostly as a beckoned monster to help the heroes in their escapades. However, in the first game, Bahamut played a different role entirely. He wasn't some sort of special celestial monster, rather than he was just the leader of the dragons. Highly respected, all dragons and adventures would go to see him after facing some sort of peril and collecting the oddly valuable Rat's Tail. After handing him the tail, players were graced with what was pretty much coolest moment of the game, the class change. This granted the player to higher variety of magic, giving you spell charges to the 6th, 7th and 8th tier and even gave lucky Knights and Ninja's rudimentary white and black magic respectively. Now although all that is cool, this was the only purpose that Bahamut had in the game, and that in itself wasn't necessary to finish the game, as I'm sure many players completely skipped the whole sidequest without knowing anything about it.

Bahamut's next appearance would be in Final Fantasy III as both a boss, and one of the endgame summons. You first battle him in a unwinnable battle where you're forced to flee or risk being burned to cinders. Later, the player can make his way to the dragon's lair and challenge him to a rematch. The battle will be tough as he has 7500 HP and he'll bombard you with several Mega Flare attacks. It will easily be one of the more difficult battles in the game unless you use some interesting tactics. I myself have never played that far into the game, but supposedly having a Dragoon and a Devout is the way to go as the 'Jump' command and 'Aero' spell will do a lot more damage than anything else. Defeating the dragon will give you the 'Bahamur' summon which can either use 'Aura', 'Rend' or the almighty 'Mega Flare' depending on the class doing the summoning. Despite the difficulty of the boss and the usefulness of the spell, Bahamut doesn't have a great role in the story in this entry.

Final Fantasy IV is the first game in my opinion that gave Bahamut the role we've come to know him to play in subsequent titles. In this game, he plays as the god of all summoned monsters, or Eidolons in more recent translations. As a god, he lives in the only place that would make sense, the Moon. The battle with him is probably the toughest boss in the game aside from Zeromus unless you use my favorite strategy. Every time you battle him, he'll immediately start counting down from 5 to 1 giving you just a little while to prepare for the onslaught you're about to receive. The best thing to do really is to use the Lunar Curtain items you've been gaining throughout the game which will cast reflect on yourself. In theory, you could probably have Rosa get two or three reflect spells off before the blast and have Kain jump, but i find it a lot easier just to use the curtains and start pummeling. Once you defeat him, you'll get the summon as I'm sure you have guessed, and once again, you'll have the ability to use 'Mega Flare' at will.

This isn't the dragon's only appearance in the game however, in the Lunar Subterrane, after going through a few secret areas, you'll encounter a shrine for the Ragnarok sword. This mighty weapon is guarded by the dark version of Bahamut, or if you're playing an early translation, he'll be referred to as a generic Wyvern. He can also cast 'Mega Flare' but he isn't really nearly as tough, as he'll only cast the spell at the beginning of the battle and at random from there. Since his magic power is much lower than the regular Dragon Lord, you'll be able to survive the attacks fairly easily. I've also heard that the Gameboy Advance version also has the superfluously title Lunar Bahamut as a bonus boss, but I have to admit, the glitches in that version kept me from playing that far.


Bahamut wouldn't have another major role again until Final Fantasy VIII, but I'll briefly go over the next three games. In Final Fantasy V, Bahamut would awaken after getting the tablet in the Pyramid of Moore. Apparently in this game, he was condemned to live as the ground itself on a small peninsula on a northern continent. You'd later fight him on the Northern Mountain in a similar fashion as FFIV and obtain him as a summon after that.



In the next game, the Esper version of the dragon would be won from Doomgaze after defeating him in battle. Interestingly enough, if you try and do the "Vanish/Doom" trick on Doomgaze, you wouldn't trigger the magicite to drop, effectively screwing yourself out of the summon for the rest of the game. Once you netter Bahamut, you'd get some pretty sweet inherent bonuses. It teaches the equipped character 'Flare' at a rate of 2X AP and gave a mighty 50% HP gain upon each levelup.

With the advent of the Materia system, Square decided to give Bahamut a few more forms to increase his showtime. The first version you would find in the Temple of Ancients would summon the traditional Bahamut that we've come to know and love throughout the years. The next version we would find is Neo Bahamut. The animation for this form involves ripping out the ground that the enemy stands on and having Bahamut obliterate it with 'Giga Flare' which would crush the fiends with the force of the blast and the rubble itself. Bahamut ZERO is the final form that you get after gaining the other two and by far the most destructive. Once again, Bahamut resides in the outer depths of space and sends a 'Tera Flare' attack vaulting to Earth to decimate the baddies. As you would gain ability points in the game, you would get multiple summons per battle and this coupled with the 'Mime' ability could ensure you one Bahamutrific battle if you pleased.

It is heavily implied in VIII that Bahamut was one of the many Guardian Forces that was used to in experiments in the Deep Sea Research Center, which evidently met it's doom at the hands of either the Dragon itself or the mighty Ultima Weapon. When you finally find Bahamut there, he asks you a few questions;

"So you wish to challenge me?"
"It's not our will to fight"
"Begging me for mercy?"
"Damned imbeciles. Why do you wish to fight?"

Interestingly enough, the actual answer to the final question is hidden, making you go through the whole process over and over. I forgot to mention that every wrong answer equals a battle with the Ruby Dragon, one of the mightier enemies in the game.

When it comes down to the battle itself, Bahamut is very weak to blind, which will help negate at least some of the damage he'll inflict on the player. Using shell will help you lessen the impact of 'Mega Flare' as it actually ignores your Spirit stat. It also has a tendency to cast stop, so Esuna and Haste are going to be your good friends. Using Bahamut as a GF has quite a few benefits like auto protect and the 'Forbidden Magic' ability, which allows you to create things like Elixers.

I'm not going to go too much into the next four Bahamut appearances as I haven't played any of them in recent memory(in FFXI's case, not at all) but I figured it would be a appropriate to talk about his other appearances.




In 1996, Square released a new IP by the name of Bahamut Lagoon. This game was essentially a strategy game somewhat similar to Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre, but mixed in Final Fantasy style battles on contact with the enemy. This brought in a whole new layer of strategy that hadn't been seen yet at that point. In a way, it's kind of a greater, more refined version of the decisive battles from Final Fantasy VI.

As one could assume by the title, Bahamut would have a fairly strong role in this game along with many other dragons and variations of other Final Fantasy Eidolons and monsters. Bahamut himself resides as the holy dragon of the kingdom of Kahna who has been in a state of eternal slumber. Emperor Sauza, after crushing Kahna, decided that he needed all of the holy dragons to wake up Bahamut, and as such, went to go do what all emperors do best. The world was spun into conflict and our heroes went to save the day. Eventually the heroes free the holy dragons and more or less save the day.

To be honest, I haven't given the game the time it probably deserves, so I can't go too into detail here.

Bahamut also appears in the Chocobo side series as either a guiding figure, or in the case of Chocobo racing, a playable character. I haven't played any of these games, but to my knowledge, Chocobo Racing is more of a Mario Kart clone while the Chocobo Dungeon games are more like the Mystery Dungeon games. I do have that cute picture of Bahamut though.





The last Bahamut appearance that I think merits a brief mention is the boss, Bahamutt in Super Mario RPG. In Bowser's keep, a few different magic enemies will summon Bahamutt to help them out in battle. This dragon has a fairly hefty amount of HP for a generic foe at 1200. He also has the ability to strike you with fear from his 'Iron Maiden' attack. Amusngly, if the character Mallow uses his 'Psychopath' ability and reads Bahamutt's mind, he appears rather timid and unsure of himself. There was also another version of Bahamutt planned, but never used called Boshumutt, who himself resembled the Boshi character seen in the Yoshi sidequest.



That's about all I got and about all I want to write about Bahamut for right now, perhaps I'll have more once I hear more about the Blood of Bahamut game that was announced for the Nintendo DS earlier this year. Who knows, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I neglected to go over, but that's okay, someone else probably has a greater knowledge of these things than I.

(appologies to the D&D players about my incredibly limited knowledge, I'd love to play the game myself, but I've never met anyone willing to try it with me)

Pop'n some platforming; Twinbee

I was a little surprised to find out the existence of a platformer in the Twinbee series. It seems to me, that most Americans only seem to know Twinbee from the Parodius series, a shame really, the Twinbee games are some pretty solid vertical Shmups. Color me baffled to find Pop'n Twin Bee Rainbow Bell Adventures on Hardcore Gaming 101 not too long ago. The concept of little jet people jumping around and punching things rather than shooting bells in the skyline was almost too much for me to handle. I had to give this thing a try.

The game is actually pretty danged fun. Basically, the platforming amounts to running at Sonic the Hedgehog speeds and charging up your jet to fly around. The flying mechanic kind of reminded me of the cape from Super Mario World meets the Jetpack ability from Kirby Super Star; you can fly around in the sky for the entire stage without having to touch the ground, with the exception of finding the exits. You shouldn't just fly around though, bumping into a wall will bounce you around in ways you may or may not want to go, sometimes even over an instant death spike pit.



There's all kinds of bells unsurprisingly to collect, and some special bells that act as powerups. These powerup bells give you things from invulnerability, melee weapons and even a little robot buddy to help you out. Whenever you get hit by an enemy however, you drop your powers in a flurry of multicolored bells forcing you to pick up what you can or face losing them all. I actually liked that part of it a bit more than I normally would as it added some sort of priority to things, increasing the depth of the playstyle.

Stage design is a fairly high point in the game. Lots of areas require pinpoint aiming of your jets to get by. They all start out relatively simple but progress to become more and more difficult. Sometimes they can feel a little cheap however, as there are some places that a misplaced jet can send you to your doom via enemy or worse.

The enemies themselves are mostly harmless, most just walk towards you goomba style. You can easily dispatch them with a jump, a lofty punch to the head or if you're feeling especially saucy, you can jet your way through them. This can add a little bit more strategy to what is otherwise a simple game, forcing you to think about what would be easier versus why the easy way could potentially kill you.



Rainbow Bell Adventures takes place in a beautiful and jolly world filled with a wonderful pallet of pastel colored walls and harmonious music, which compliment the style of gameplay amazingly. You'll truly feel happy playing it.

Syntax Infinity

Recently, I found myself a nice little MSX and MSX2 emulator so I could finally play the first two Metal Gear games the way they're meant to be played. The emulator itself came with all kinds of tech demos, including one by the name of Syntax Infinity. This demo pushes the MSX to new directions I didn't even know possible. Since I couldn't think of anything better to write about, I present you with Syntax Infinity.

Slightly Obscure Games Pt.2

Due to a lack of Grade 'A' material, I decided to be lazy and do another S.O.G. feature today. I'm not too happy with the whole format I'm using, but until I rethink how I'm going to do this, we'll both just have to settle for mediocrity.



Holdover


Holdover is a bizarre mix of a Metroidvania platformer with an H-game. You play as a young girl named Marie, who after a ten year hibernation, finds herself in an abandoned underground lab teeming with booby traps. You after work your way out through several ridiculous platforming challenges and find out exactly what happened to you.

There's no combat in the game, but believe me there's plenty of challenge. Most of the Difficulty comes from instant death traps and several submerged rooms that you have to traverse before drowning. Luckily for you, there are several hearts that expand how long you can hold your breath and some suit upgrades to help you survive laser beams and spikes.

The echi part of the experience comes from how exactly your suit protects you; Whenever you take a hit, depending on whether it hits your top or bottom, that part of your swimsuit will get torn off leaving you vulnerable. While there is of course nudity, as seen in the picture above, nothing explicate is shown. Marie covers herself up in her portrait and the sprite is too boxy to be too detailed. Depending on who you are, this can be a good thing or a bad thing however. The nudity kind of adds to the feeling of vulnerability that it invokes, but at the same time, the game could have been easily done without it.

The difficulty is really out there later on in the game. There are some precise jumps that you need to make, but most of it just learning how your environment works and planning ahead through many failed attempts. The game is kind enough to permanently mark the world with your blood whenever you die, so you can know your shame while backtracking. Luckily, the author was kind enough to give you a quick save option to help make some of the more difficult jumps, a little easier.

Despite the creator of the game being Japanese, he translated it to English himself for us. Most, if not all the dialogue, is hilariously full of Engrish phrases like"I believe the future technology and leave you the message" or my favorite"Wait! Dad!! Please do not make me solitary!!". While all this is funny, most of the text makes the actual story indecipherable. Then again, you're playing an H-game, the story really isn't supposed to be the strong point.

Overall, it's a short and fun game, and if you can get over the nude factor, you'll enjoy yourself. And if the nudity is your thing, then atleast you get a fun game to feed your obsession.

Holdover Download


Yume Nikki


Yume Nikki has grown somewhat popular in the indie game scene, but overall, it is still relatively unknown. This game can be simply described as a wandering game. You play as Madotsuki, a young woman who is confined to her room with nothing but her balcony, a videogame system, a dream diary and her bed.

The purpose of the game is to explore Madotsuki's psyche through her dreams and traverse the odd and surreal landscape. You'll go through several areas filled with bright, neon creatures, walking lamps, 8-bit forests, fields of static, an icy fairy world and a Hellish labyrinth of massive proportions. Each area is accessed by one of twelve doors in the main hallway in the dreamworld. Each world holds a new idea and has several interlinking pathways to take you to several bizarre worlds.

There's a lot of customized sprite work, both good and bad, but oddly, I find that it actually adds to the whole dreamy world where things hardly ever make sense. Several areas can be incredibly simple looking, consisting of similar wall patterns, but there's also areas with such beautiful spritework, that you'll simple be flabbergasted. I can't help wonder if it's because of the mishmash of sprites or whether my opinion is actually valid and the sprites are impressive.

In the whole dream world, there are 24 "effects" that you can find to either use as tools like knives and stoplights, and there's also aesthetic effects like different colored hair. Once you've gathered all 24, you have to let them loose in the main hallway to get your ending. The ending itself is rather nice and really makes you think about the whole game in a slightly different way.

Getting it to work on your computer may or may not be easy depending on your computer itself. I've put it on several of my computers and found each one needing different tools. Sometimes the game will work right away, other times you'll need get your computer to recognize Japanese text before it'll run. If you can't get it going, check Google for instructions, I know you can do it.

Yume Nikki is a fantastic game for when you simply don't want to think about anything and just want to explore.

Yume Nikki Download




And there you have it, another lazy blog entry. This time I chose two freeware games to avoid any legal uncertainties. Give them a shot, I'm sure one of them will probably be an enjoyable experience for anyone.