2 spoopy – Maniac Mansion (NES)

Happy 100th 2spoopy episode everyone!

2 spoopy – Sweet Home (NES)

Today we enter the world of survival horror…on the NES!

Final Fantasy

This is not so much a review as it is the start of a series of overviews of each Final Fantasy game I’ve played. While it would be very easy to simply do a Final Fantasy series article and just be done with it, it wouldn’t pay special attention to each FF and what they did for me individually. The Final Fantasy series is a series that has influenced me greatly, as I’ve said before, but exactly how and why?

Megami Tensei

Before I get started, this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but I have to warn you of two things. One, I am NOT the most widely versed individual in SMT. I’m a huge fan and have been for over a decade, but that’s not saying much considering how long the series has been running. And two, while I will be providing as much information as possible, it’s possible I may miss a few titles here and there or otherwise get stuff wrong as I’m mostly going to be referencing Wikipedia.

That said, again, I am a huge fan of SMT, MegaTen, Persona, and whatever. SMT is ever-changing, but one concept that usually remains the same is that of the occult. In many games you may communicate with demons, form demon contracts, recruit demons, fuse demons together, and all kinds of crazy stuff. At times it feels like Pokemon, but with demons, and other times it can operate more like Eye of the Beholder, but with demons.

Naturally, the key word is demons, but sometimes they’re referred to as persona, shadows, monsters, and whatever else, sometimes to get around the censors and other times because they’re not really demons within the SMT universe. Again, this will ATTEMPT to be a giant, canonical listing of all SMT titles, but it’s possible I may skip a few, so I implore you to investigate on your own time as well.

Before we get started, I will try to be as chronologically correct as possible. However, I will also try to present the original North American release date when possible as well. This may get confusing as games like Innocent Sin, originally released in 1999 on the PS1, but never released until the remake on the PSP far later in North America are always a possibility.

According to Wikipedia, the MegaTen series is the third most popular RPG series in Japan, just barely being inched out by Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Read on to find out why.

The Simpsons Games

In 2007, the unthinkable happened: a genuinely GOOD Simpsons game was made. Yes, for a cartoon series that has been around for decades they sure did produce a lot of crappy games. And we’ll get to the good Simpsons game in a minute, but for right now, I wanted to highlight the cacophony crapshoot that was an endless series of failures in the Simpsons megaverse.

The Fantastic World of Japanese Games – Episode 5

Sometimes the mere mentioning that a game had RPG elements was enough to shelf the idea to bring it over. You’re going to see me pulling this excuse a lot because for every Mega Man, Castlevania, TMNT, Mario, Zelda, and whatever title that came out, you’d have a dozen or so RPGs that didn’t quite make it. While this happened less with the SNES, it certainly happened a LOT with the NES. For example…

Why Zelda Is Not An RPG

About 7 years ago, I explained why Zelda was not an RPG on Project Wonderboy, the first site I ever wrote at. It was a fun article that only exists in the old Internet graveyard today, sadly. Even still, it’s a topic I toil and fuss over regularly because, wouldn’t you know, people still think it’s an RPG. These people are what I like to call WRONG. But don’t worry if you’re one of them! I’ll explain why you’re an idiot.

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things – Episode 4

You know what’s up. Let’s go.

Brawler of the Year – 1990

This time around I’m only going to highlight one game per year. While that may not seem very inclusive the fact is there are some years where there aren’t any officially licensed brawlers at all. Remember that the box pictures have vids embedded if you want to see them in action. The definition of a brawler has become somewhat vague, so as it stands, here’s my running definition, subject to change at any time:

Backloggiversary! What The Hell Is That?

3 years ago today, I came upon a site called Backloggery. It’s a site where you can post games you’re playing, that you’ve beaten, that you own, and so on. It’s meant as a place to help motivate you into finishing everything you have as well as brag about your own personal accolades. You can even put in comments, ratings for games, make note your achievement points, and so on.

In celebration of this, I’m going to kind of pimp out what I’ve been playing in order of most frequently updated to least. And don’t forget, as I usually do, there are youtube links embedded in the pics. Enjoy!