Geek Philosophy

I’ve been playing video games, primarily on consoles,  since I was 5 and got the Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas. I certainly haven’t owned every system, but I haven’t missed a generation since I started (although you could definitely make an argument that, GoldenEye and Mario64 aside, purchasing an Nintendo64 was missing a generation).

Although I’ve enjoyed most types of games, Role Playing Games (RPGs) have always been my favourite. From the very first Dragon Warrior – single person party! – to wonderful modern RPGs like Mass Effect on today’s consoles, I’ve played as many as I can get my hands on. Reading The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches (warning, TV Tropes time sink link), I can name two or three example games for almost every one. I’ve never counted how many of these games I’ve actually played, but it’s certainly been several dozen – hell, there’s a dozen Final Fantasy games!

Today’s games have great graphics, interesting plot twists, and usually decent voice acting, but I’ve always had a soft spot for 16-bit RPGs. From the first time I saw Final Fantasy II on the Super Nintendo, I was in love, and to this day that’s probably still my favourite game. I played through some decent ones, some great ones, and even some pretty bad ones. However I definitely didn’t play all of the SNES RPGs that existed, as many of them were Japanese-only, never released in North America.

Luckily, the combination of emulators and dedicated translators have made these games available to computer-owning, non-Japanese speaking players such as myself. Conveniently, I have a 1.5 hour commute on the bus every day, so I’ve been able to tear through several of these games in the past few months. As it turns out, I find that emulation is an ideal way to play these games – the presence of a “turbo” button (which runs the emulation as fast as your computer can handle it) makes random battles incredibly fast.

I hope to get around some day to listing the RPGs that I’ve played, and also reviewing some of the lesser known games I’ve found, but for now I’m off to solve some puzzles with Lufia.