A turning point....

So, onward I have played in FFVI, and I've at long last come to an important way point. The same place I stopped playing every other time I've started this game. Kefka has just torn the world asunder, our heroes are scattered and despondent, and I'm left to gather them back and go whip me some sally clown ass. Now, this is noteworthy in and of itself, but then you find out that I got here SATURDAY. I haven't touched it since. It's exactly what has happened every f@(%!#& time I've started this game. I don't know what it is. You couldn't pull me away from it all Christmas, I'm still loving the story, and there's now literally an entire new world to explore, and I can't bring myself to sit down and beat it. I have no idea why. I just feel so unbelievably blasé, it's maddening.

But this is where this blog comes in. This entire experiment was created for the explicit purpose of helping us get through these doldrums so that we may take our rightful place amongst the other gaming elite of our generation. I'm going to give it a day or two, get through new years and then if I still don't feel the need to finish, I'm going to strap myself to a chair and power through it if it kills me. This does raise some interesting questions for debate though. Is there something in the game that keeps me from wanting to finish? Are there other games out there with the same phenomenon? I'd love to hear examples and ideas.

Shit.

So... It's probably for the best that I'm not playing my game on a Genesis right now. The Genesis has controllers, not a keyboard. I could throw a controller. Hard. And probably break stuff in the process. And if this was happening on a Genesis, I would probably do that.

I can't play right now. Not just because I'm pissed off, but because I literally CAN'T. I just got through a big long fight that took me like 4 tries, so I was really happy about that. So I headed up to the town I was supposed to go to, and what do I find?

Nothing.

A black screen. Nothing happens when I enter the town. The screen fades to black like it should, and then... nothing. It stays black. Music keeps playing, and nothing else works. I tried playing on a different emulator, and the same thing happened. I tried replacing the rom, and apparently it's different enough from the original one that it doesn't have my save file.

WOW am I pissed at this game right now. If I were to not finish this game and try something else, I wouldn't even feel like I gave up so much as the game screwed me into it. What the FUCK.

Finally

So. Eternal Sonata.

I've had this game for about a year (maybe more) now and until we started this thing I've yet to really touch it. Started the game and the story started out very intriguing but now that i'm 8 hours in and the story hasn't picked up AT ALL I'm more than a tad disappointed in agame I've heard nothing but good things about. The (seemingly) main villian has this scheme to control his country using a medicine that turns them in psychotic monsters that he can control (I think?) to dominate the world. This medicine also gives them the ability to use magic. The medicine in question, mineral powder, is a rather useful cure-all that also slowly but surely mutates people who use it, eventually killing them. Beyond that the game has been nothing but pointless cinematics and mostly boring combats. Which leads me to my largest gripe about the game.

Combat.

For some unknown reason, the stronger you get, the less time you have available to fight. To explain a bit, during combat you have Tactical Time (TT) and Real Time (RT). When you start the game you have infinite Tactical Time at the start of a battle. This means that the timer you have on the side of your screen doesn't count down at all until you move. It also stops counting down when you stop moving so as long as you aren't doing anything you aren;t using that characters turn. As you progress in the game not only do your characters gain levels, but you also gain party levels. Each party level changes how combat works in some way. Once you hit party level 2, you keep infinite TT but as soon as you move your RT depletes even if you stop moving. At party level 3 you gain some more ability slots (neat) but you are suddenly limited to 3 seconds of TT before your RT starts to deplete...you also mysteriously lose 1 second of RT. I almost don't want to see the higher party levels. The idea that getting stronger causes you to lose time lke that is more that a little stupid to me.

Other than my gripes about the game though, it is rather pretty and some of the characters are enjoyable (I could deal without another monologue from Frederic though)

But everyone else was doing it!

So in the spirit of getting things underway with everyone else, I busted out the old emu-later, and my well worn rom of FFVI. Ah nostalgia!

Now, I've had this argument too many times to count, so I'll state my position right now. This is without a doubt my favorite kind of RPG. You have a simple system, with intriguing stories, deep characters, varied game play, evil douche villains and over the top sprite animations to show simple emotion. There is arguably no "main" character to this game. Everyone gets screen time, and everyone has a measurable role in advancing the story. It takes almost no time to work out how to play the game, but provides hours and hours of play time.

I think this is why I've never actually finished. It takes a good solid 40-60 hours to beat this game I'm told. Spread that out over several weeks and some other thing steals my weak as a kitten attention span. I must have about 7 different save files on several different systems and computers. Now arguably I could just boot up one of those and save myself a lot of repeating, but it's been so long, I don't remember half of the puzzles and twists so it feels more fun to go back and be like "oh yeah! That octopus fucker ultrose! I hate that douche!"

And after 2 hours logged, I'm at that exact spot. Floating down the river, and BAM octopus douche. Now for those who don't know/remember, you have this guy Bannon with you, and if he dies, you lose. not a huge deal until you see that Ultrose can one shot the poor schlub, and there's really not a lot to be done, but restart and try again. Not the best example of the finer points of this game, but one of those things that strikes me as defining of the game. You feel accomplished when you roast the bastard and float on victorious, even if you do go over a waterfall 3 seconds later.

We'll see how that damn cephalopod likes a few dozen fire spells to his face tomorrow.

And since Sean rather stunningly failed at a FF haiku *ahem*:

Big purple squid thing.
likes to use his tentacles
fuck, what a douche bag

Chocobo riding,
really just a mini game
but such a great song

The Returners boss
heals like a doctor on speed
'till Ultros ate him.

How Many Quarters for This One?

So as of today, I have a laptop again, thanks to our new author, to whom I would like to extend welcome, Sara. Yay. As such, Laughing Mike has dropped a Genesis Emulator my way, and I've decided to get started on that. I will not be using any of the shiny things like save states and whatnot. Tonight I began my journey into my game.

I started it up and listened to a child ramble for a little while, which was weird. We started off in a pretty standard fantasy RPG fashion, with the young knight in training, the king asking for his help, and a simple mission which ends with his return being met with a destroyed town. I ran into a couple of stupid snags, though. After my entire party of strangers came to find me instead of the other way around, (CONVENIENT) I couldn't actually find my way out of town. I blame this on my assumption that I was supposed to talk to someone in the castle to go out, and not having seen the way before that when in town. But eventually I found it.

In said first fight, my main character went down like a little bitch. Apparently the computer is just smart enough to tell its baddies to gang up on the guy who ruins the whole thing by dying. They accomplished this TWICE. Shining Force indeed. Then I got my act together, and kicked some goblin ass.

Outside that spot, I then ended up in a fight with the various other bad guys on the overworld map, which was a very foreign idea to me. Having the fight right there, I mean. Odd, but no problem. After squeezing through this little choke point, I trashed those bad guys too. Once I was in my now ruined town, I picked up a new party member I had met at the bar earlier, and went to the king. Who promptly died, along with the main character's mentor. So I geared up, got ready to go, and headed out again. The map was full of bad guys this time, who I took care of without much fuss. Then, at Laughing Mike's gracious suggestion, I checked out this little hut and got another party member. He's this awesome monk guy who can fight AND heal. Nice.

Then I went to the other town. Now, let me just say that I am liking this game a lot, but I HATE the fucking inventory system. You have four item slots on each character, as opposed to a group bag, and only the main character can pick up new items. So, if he's full up, you have to drop or give other people his stuff so he can get anything else. Kinda lame. Also, the character's weapon still takes up one of those four slots, even when equipped. Apparently there's no armor, which is interesting. And speaking of items, this town had a weapon shop which only sold our starting items. Dammit. Then I got arrested when it turned out the King was a traitor. Of fucking course. I hate this damned town.

What was cool was, I kept hearing NPCs looking for this girl named Khris, who they said was always running off and wanted to be an adventurer. So I thought, awesome! New party member. She broke me out of jail and turned out to be ANOTHER healer. So I have three healers, one of whom can fight well. Nice.

After that, there was a huge fight in the town, which was pretty awesome. More ass was kicked. The evil archers and mage never even attacked me for some reason though. They just... stood there while I killed them. Haw.

So shortly after that, chapter 1 ended, so I figured this was a good time to take a break and post about it.

So far, having fun, have a few gripes, and I look forward to seeing where this goes. One thing I would like to mention is that I LOVE being allowed such a big party. When you have to choose between active party members, I feel like you're missing out on what all the characters can do, so I like that it's letting me use so many. It's enough that I can break easily into multiple teams in a fight and cover more ground if need be.

Now, since Sean has no idea what a Haiku is or how it works, I have composed two about my own game experience, to counter balance him.

Shining Force Haiku #1

"The evil Lord Kane
Loves him some monologueing
An evil cliche."

Shining Force Haiku #2

"My inventory
Is really quite minuscule.
Time to sell some junk."

I like that first one... Anyway. Keep gaming! Hopefully posts from Bren and Mike are forthcoming.

A challenger appears

Hello all you three viewers out there. A new blogger is joining the ranks and the challenge that is Zuul Arcade.

When Teague told me about this idea I was excited for him and the group. Then, after a little while, I realized I still had not finished some of my favorite old video games. Now, I should let you all know that oretty much all of my favorite video games are old. I grew up with an Atari, an NES, and an Apple II at my disposal. I adore old school games and have tried to instill this love in my gaming comrades. I think this blog and what it stands for is a great outlet for doing exactly that!

So, what game will I be playing? My all time favorite- Chrono Trigger. Years ago I got very far, but never finished! I recently acquired a copy for the DS and will be playing it through on that, mostly for portability.

I'll hopefully have an interesting update soon!

Quest into nostalgia

Sean here. Let me start with a couple of things. 1. I'm glad someone is taking the time to read this blog and give feedback. 2. Teague, great post. You definitely ironed out some of the finer points we've been trying to make. 3. If you need a copy of shining force, I still have mine. 4. Whoever your friend is that has beaten battletoads for the nes, be sure to give them props for me. That's DAMN impressive.

The other thing I'm posting about, is I finally started Final Fantasy 6. Because I'm playing the playstation iteration, cut cinema scenes have been added that I feel great add substance to the story. The snes may be what we NOW consider to be "graphically limited", but for the times, this game was a masterpiece visually and in storytelling, and the fact that I'm still enjoying it 15 years later is a great testament.

So, I've decided to describe my first journey back into ff6 through a Haiku poem.

"Magic's last child"
"Riding her metal beast"
"Destruction in her wake"

For all your critics out there, I have no idea if this is proper Haiku, and frankly I don't give a damn.

So I had totally forgotten about the giant snail you have to fight in the beginning of the game. I felt kinda bad for it. I had 3 people riding mecha, armed with seriously heavy magic and the only thing snail had was slime and apprently the word "gruu". I don't think this was evenly matched. Killing a mosquito with a cannon type shit.

It is nice to be playing a final fantasy game where nearly all the characters are awesome. More often than not, in the more recent final fantasy's there's at least one main character everyone despises.

So that's my first delve into FF6. More to follow. - Sean

Thoughts on Gaming

So a little while ago, a good friend of mine IMed me and said that she took some issue with the last post. The one Sean did about gaming, difficulty, and such and stuff. She told me she disagreed with it, or at least, some of it. And it wasn't so much the post itself that bothered her, I think, as it was the potential implications of it.

Now. People using cheats and chasing achievements more readily than actually PLAYING through a game, putting real effort into a game, and actually caring about the game, those points she all agreed wholeheartedly. The point on which she disagreed, however, might just not have come through all that well.

For one thing, she felt that what we were saying is that we hate newer games, which is most definitely not true. We love new games, and recognize that over time things change. Gaming changes, just as music, film, and literature change. This is a fact we have embraced wholeheartedly. Sean, for example, constantly tells the rest of us how epic Assassin's Creed 2 is. Big Mike has probably played Mass Effect more than anyone else I know. Laughing Mike is an avid WoW player, and really about anything else he can get his hands on. Brendan smashes zombie heads in Left 4 Dead 2 with a prejudice rarely matched. (Except perhaps by the rest of us.) Myself, well, I enjoy Batman: Arkham Asylum more than a person probably should.

The vastness of storytelling in video games has become an art form as surely as filmmaking has been for many years before it. And while we love shiny new graphics, and the impressive form of visual and interactive storytelling that video games have become, we do collectively feel that many times, these things have forced something very important to the back seat; gameplay.

For me, it's not even a difficulty thing, it's the gameplay. I don't care how pretty it is if the controls are cumbersome and the system is frustrating me. Earlier games were much simpler, gameplay-wise, of course. But their gameplay was spectacularly good. If it wasn't, then the game fell apart. If I simply wanted a game which was really a movie... why wouldn't I watch a movie? You play games because they are fun and interactive. You're supposed to be DOING something.

The other thing my friend brought up was that she felt that we were were imposing a standard on people. Generally, she games just for a bit of fun, and to relax. She felt that we were saying there's something wrong with casual gaming, which is definitely not the case. Playing video games is something that has many degrees of involvement, and those of us who play them casually are generally doing it for those same reasons: a bit of fun and to relax.

The problem from our angle is that we're not hearing things about cheats from casual gamers. We're not hearing stories about how much better than everyone else casual gamers are. We're hearing this from people who are more concerned with getting achievements and rushing through each game at break-neck speed. People who play games for recognition instead of just to play. People who think that how you cheat at a game is the measure of your skill.

Those people are our problems. They are a slightly younger generation of gamers who give up when a problem or a puzzle is too hard. They are people who grew up with 3D graphics, and care more about better appearances than substance. They are people who don't care about the industry, or challenging themselves, but still think it's alright to tell others that they are simply BETTER than they are.

Another point that came up was that most games have difficulty settings, which can go up or down. It ranges from what a 7-year old with some motor function can do to the EXTREMELY difficult, at times. Older games, it is true, did not offer this luxury most of the time. Many times, they were permanently set to hard mode. That's not for everyone, this is very true. And in turning up those settings, we are making it more difficult for ourselves and being more challenged. Our problem isn't that the games can't be MADE into challenges with a bit of tweaking. We appreciate games which came from a time when thinking your way through games and building real skills were required, rather than an option. Does that make us elitist? It's very possible.

But how is that any worse than those people I was talking about before who do speedruns of games not because they've memorized them and know all the right moves, but just turned down the knob, and still brag?

I guess it comes down to this. Beating older games is an achievement in and of itself. Beating newer games is simply something you do. If a kid goes to his friends and says, "I finished Modern Warfare," his friends answer, "I already did that. How'd you like it? It took you a while." If an oldschool gamer goes to his friends and says, "I just beat Kid Icarus," once the shock has gone from them, they will answer with things like, "WHAT? How did you do it? That's AMAZING!" It's even in the language. Now, most people say they "finished" a game. It used to always be that they "beat" a game.

This is the kind of gamers we are, and it's certainly not for everyone. The main point of this blog and this project is community and nostalgia. We want to accomplish things we haven't accomplished before, and have fun doing it together.

In other news, starting Shining Force is proving difficult. I found the Genesis, but now I can't find the game. My laptop is out of commission, so I can't even get going on an emulator right now. Damn it. Ah well. I won't be beaten so easily. I'll post back when I've finally gotten started.

(P.S.- The friend who talked to me about this mentioned that she's beaten Battletoads. I now know three people who have done that.)

The challenge bat. and other things.

Sean here. So this entire blog was an idea to create a community to help support each other to beat games that we just lose motivation to beat. So the main part of this blog is to document our misadventures in old time gaming, and to give support and advice when slogging through difficult parts of our favorite games.

And then there's the other reason.

During our conversation about setting up this blog, we became very pissed off with the state of gaming today. Back in the day, graphical and technological limitations forced developers to make games HARD, so that they would keep us entertained for long periods of time. Beating a game came with a sense of accomplishment because actual skills had to be developed to accomplish such a feat.

Now that graphical limitations are no longer an issue, games are now just as complex as most large budget films, telling stories while being much "easier" then their predecessors; We're talking games for the NES such as Battletoads, and Kid Icarus. Anyone who has played these games knows the countless hours of frustration one goes through, and the ultimate realization of defeat when they realize these games are nigh IMPOSSIBLE to beat. But people who call themselves "gamers" nowadays are more concerned with cheating their way through games, and "achievements," and cheating to GET those achievements through any means possible. Rather than building posterity and actually investing time into playing a game, they seem to be looking for a quick thrill before moving on to the next "big" thing.

In response to this paradigm shift, the authors of this blog are currently working on a set of old school gaming challenges known as "The Challenge Bat Challenges". We pass the challenge bat to each other to beat old school games WITHOUT CHEATING. It is our intention to document these trials and tribulations for posterity, as well as your viewing pleasure.

The basic idea is that a two person team will take on a game together, and for every day that they fail at completing the challenge, they are punished in someway, forcing us to develop our skills as old school gamers.

We are instituting a voting process to make sure a challenge is legitimate, as we are currently making a list of what we like to call "Bullshit challenges". An example of a Bullshit challenge would be the original Superman game for the NES or Battletoads. There's just no reasonable way to expect someone to skillfully play their way through these games without complete and total dumb luck.

Therefore "bullshit challenges" will not have a punishment attached to them if they are taken on.

All this being said, everyone game on! I will be starting my run through Final Fantasy 6 this weekend, using the playstation anthology iteration. Good luck to my other two Final Fantasy 6 playing mates, Big Mike and Brendan. Good luck in your trials, and be sure to document often. - Sean

Good idea! Here's the old american FFVI/III commercial as well:

Look what I found!

Yet another post just to share this. I haven't gotten to delve into my game yet, but I DID find something pretty amazing.

In the First Days...

I am making this a separate post, because I wanted the first to be an explanation. Or a reminder to us, anyway, because we're only able to remember so many things at a time.

Our first project here comes from the idea which spawned the whole silly thing. We will be starting and finishing some RPGs that have too long been left unfinished. For this challenge, we have (so far, anyway):

Teague (me): Shining Force - Sega Genesis

Laughing Mike: Eternal Sonata - X-Box 360 (Newer game, but he bought it like a year ago.)

Brendan: Final Fantasy VI - SNES

Sean: Final Fantasy VI - Also SNES

Big Mike: Final Fantasy VI - Still SNES

Seriously, none of them have finished Final Fantasy VI. Neither have I, though. But I'm playing the other one anyway, this time. Laughing Mike has already begun his plunge into Eternal Sonata.

A New Year

As you ought to know, the new year is coming. It is in this spirit that we, the writers of this blog, have decided to take on a little project.

Let me explain a little.

A late-night conversation at a Denny's led us to a very interesting conversation regarding video games, and specifically, RPGs. A thought occurred to me as we talked about them, and talked about just how many of them many of us have not actually finished playing on our own. We're talking about games for the Super Nintendo, here. We have no excuse. I got this idea in my head, thinking about all the great games which I have never played or never finished, that I would take a vote from the people around the table to suggest an RPG which I had not played before. I would play from start to finish, and then report back about my experience.

It was here that the brilliant group brainstorm began.

The idea is simple. This blog will be our support group. Our video game discussion spot. Our book club, but if instead of books, it was video games, and without any members above the age of 60. We will post short videos of us playing, and we will start and complete the games we always wanted to. We will challenge each other with the greatest of gaming tasks, and we will finally stop feeling like we suck because of things which are important to us, but apparently not enough to actually finish them. This is our arcade.

Let the games begin.