A History of Shenanigans

That's the recently released Nintendo 3DS XL with a coming-soon-to-Japan XL version of the Circle Pad Pro. Makes me so mad just to look at that picture, and I hope the reasons why are obvious, because I'm far too exhausted by my own anger even to complain at length over Nintendo's shenanigans.

In other news, after about 6 years, my DS Lite looks to be facing the end of its life. Since yesterday, the touchscreen has taken to shaking quite violently. Sony and Microsoft get a bad rap; it's only ever the Nintendo systems that crap out on me. First it was an OG Game Boy, then a GameCube, now this.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Since completing Pokemon, I've mostly been playing Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for the DS.  I actually started playing it back when it came out last year, but it fell by the wayside because, frankly, the game is a chore.

I had a lot of fun with the major console Kingdom Hearts titles.  The original was a very refreshing new spin on the JRPG, crossing over Final Fantasy's menu commands with a 3-D action game.  Mixing Disney with Square may have been unexpected, but it was much more a Disney experience, with the world-hopping Sora character more a story contrivance to guide the player along a tour of all the classic movies.  Kingdom Hearts II then streamlined the gameplay experience, cutting out a lot of the horrendous platforming, while amping up the action with greater combat speed and the sort of gravity-defying battle cinematics that would henceforth become a signature of Tetsuya Nomura's works.  The Square-Disney crossover stuff really started to get weird at this point, however, as Nomura's team started to go nuts developing their original storyline into something incredibly convoluted that had practically nothing to do anymore with Disney.

Between those two major releases, I also played through the original GBA version of Chain of Memories.  Its card-based take on the part-menu, part-real-time combat made random battling more methodical in the most aggravating way, but the boss battles actually got pretty intense.  Honestly, I don't know if my fingers ever moved faster than during those deck shuffles against the final bosses of that game, and developer Jupiter would later experiment further with that idea of multitasking gameplay, doing great things with The World Ends With You.  But Chain of Memories had major story problems, and worse than being an odd fit, the Disney stuff had already grown stale.

The whole "tour of Disney" idea sounded like a great idea for a one-off, but a series is going to very quickly run out of Disney movies in which to viably set an action-oriented video game.  Even Kingdom Hearts II, although it managed to dig up a few random new and interesting worlds to explore, had to rehash a lot from the first game.  The staleness has been considerably worse, however, in the outsourced portable projects, which have thus far apparently not merited Square Enix's effort in producing new assets.  Birth by Sleep for the PSP looks like it will be a legitimate new experience, but Chain of Memories was rehashed art design, reused music, and tired story retreads.  358/2 Days spares us having to experience the plot of Aladdin for a fifth time, but it still forces players to return to Agrabah, which is otherwise the same as ever and overly familiar.  Because 358/2 Days is set before Kingdom Hearts II, players don't even get to visit any of the newer additions from that game.  Instead, it's nearly all stuff that was already in both the original game and Chain of Memories.

Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts problem is actually comparable to the Parasite Eve situation that I discussed in my last post.  The scope of Square Enix's game has clearly exceeded the original concept founded on its licensing agreement with Disney, to the extent that, by Kingdom Hearts II, not only did the Disney elements feel out-of-place within the original story that Nomura and company were going with, but the mad juxtapositions of Mickey Mouse with Nomura's menacing robed figures even began to detract from the experience.  Kingdom Hearts and Sora belong as much to Disney as to Square Enix, however, so there really is no divorcing the series from the Disney elements.  Perhaps Final Fantasy Versus XIII is to be the Kingdom Hearts team's own The 3rd Birthday, allowing deeper exploration of the action gameplay, intense cinematics, and dark story, away from the obligations to Disney.

So, besides the fact that I'm sick of revisiting these Disney worlds, what else is wrong with Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days?  Well, personally, I don't enjoy exploring 3-D space on handhelds.  On consoles, 3-D (polygons, not glasses) is supposed to draw the player into the TV screen, providing an extra dimension of immersion over old 2-D side-scrollers.  For me, that doesn't work with portable systems because the screen is too small, so I cannot help but notice the real world beyond and around it.  That has always been my biggest issue with the PSP.  But the DS is even worse for 3-D because it additionally suffers from a lack of an analog stick.  Playing Kingdom Hearts with the DS Lite's squishy D-pad is a thumb-blistering nightmare.  That said, I'm still excited for the Nintendo 3DS.  The analog slide pad looks promising, the specs seem powerful enough to make polygons look good on a handheld, and maybe the stereoscopic effect will provide a new level of immersion.  (As an aside, I also find it interesting to see that, with Kirby's Epic Yarn, yet another venerable Nintendo franchise is going 2-D for a major console release.  And with sales of New Super Mario Bros. Wii having shown that consumers don't so much care about 2-D vs. 3-D, maybe there no longer needs to be this generational divide between the two, and developers will just go with what is right on a case-by-case basis, without having to use either polygons or "old-school" as selling points.)

Moving on, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days simply isn't a fun game.  The mission-based structure is just poorly designed.  Like the PSP entries in the Metal Gear Solid series, this handheld take on a traditionally triple-A console game breaks up the story into "bite-sized" episodes for easier consumption on, I suppose, the short breaks or bus rides for which portable gaming is ideal.  You choose missions usually from a short list, then get a bit of story upon successful completion, before returning to the hub world to receive your next assignment.  The problem is that these missions, in my opinion, are not short.  For me, 5-10 minutes is short, but some missions in this game have taken me 30 minutes or more.  Maybe I'm slow, but it doesn't help that the vague mission objectives often leave me wandering and wasting a lot of time.

Because the missions do not proceed in a strictly linear sequence, they cannot involve a lot of plot, the story sequences instead taking place between missions.  Furthermore, instead of making progress through a world as in a more linear game, each world is actually fairly small, and the player is required to explore each fully multiple times, each time completing missions with very slightly different objectives.  Usually, you just have to kill everything until you find and kill the right thing, which is always just a thing, never a named villain with any kind of personality.  So the game offers slow combat with poor controls to fight repetitive waves of monsters in a limited number of environments, most of which were already old two games ago, and in which you must effectively replay the same mission over and over again.  And, boy, did they pad the length of this game with a ton of repetitive missions, some optional, most not.

Finally, there is the multiplayer, which could have saved this game, had it only been integrated better.  It's cooperative play for up to four players, and you actually get to play as characters other than Roxas.  Unfortunately, you cannot progress through the story in multiplayer, even though the multiplayer missions are just stripped-down versions of story mode missions.  Also, a player cannot join in on a multiplayer session unless they have already unlocked that mission through the story mode, so you can't realistically play this mode except with other hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans who would independently make steady progress through the story.

If you are one of those hardcore Kingdom Hearts fans, then 358/2 Days, like Chain of Memories, at least does fill in a few holes in a story that is full of them.  In fact, the story chronology actually overlaps slightly with Chain of Memories, and the two games can occasionally fit together in clever ways a la Resident Evil 2 and 3. But I'm about ten hours in, and there hasn't been a lot of story, or at least not much of interest.  And considering that I'm on Day 99 and the game is titled 358/2 Days, I'm guessing I've got a long way to go.  I don't know that I'll have the dedication to see it through this time, and the game so far hasn't made a very convincing argument that I should.

How It All Went Down

If the roughly 30-level difference seems quite high, it is because, as you might have gathered from previous posts, I do not like to level-grind.  I believe that it is a symptom of bad game design, and thankfully I have found that the Pokemon games are better than that, placing greater, or at least equal, emphasis on strategy and tactics as on the grind.  I have long been of the belief that these games can be won without engaging in any random battles at all, and I have put my belief to the test through my own playthroughs, where I level up Pokemon only through experience gained from battles with NPC trainers at fixed locations.  The only time I engage a random encounter is when I want to capture the wild Pokemon, in which case my Pokemon does not gain experience from the battle anyway.  All of my Pokemon above are the result of me picking out my teams early, then spreading out experience evenly so that no one falls behind.

That said, I obviously didn't train all of these Pokemon in my copy of HeartGold.  These were my six best Pokemon hand-picked from across four different Pokemon cartridges.  Swampert migrated over from Emerald, Venusaur and Jolteon from FireRed, and Lucario was traded over from my Platinum team.  My Skarmory was bred from one that I had had to trade for with a SoulSilver player.  Only Typhlosion was part of my original HeartGold team, which I took to the Johto championship and through most of Kanto.  I normally only use six Pokemon per game (because it's hard to raise more than six), which I assemble early on and then stick with, but because this was supposed to be "the final match," I thought it only fitting to look back at my previous campaigns and bring in representatives from each of my past lineups, in order to construct my own comprehensive all-star team to pit against Red's.

As for the move setups, the only TMs used were to teach Jolteon Thunderbolt and Flash, the latter for its field effect allowing me to navigate the pitch-black Cerulean Cave.  Typhlosion and Venusaur learned Blast Burn and Frenzy Plant via move tutors, and a Heart Scale was used to make Skarmory "remember" Night Slash.  Everything else was learned either through leveling up or via HMs acquired as part of the story.  I also didn't use any stat-enhancing vitamins.

Now, on with the play-by-play:

Red would of course start with his signature Pokemon and the franchise mascot, Pikachu.  Pikachu is not even a fully-evolved Pokemon, and although it is very quick, its attack and defense ratings are poor.  Red's is equipped with a rare Light Ball, doubling its Attack and Special Attack stats, making it a legitimate offensive threat.  It's not a big deal, however, because Pikachu's best attacks, Volt Tackle and Thunderbolt, are Electric-type moves, which are completely ineffective against my lead Pokemon, the part-Ground-type Swampert.  That leaves Pikachu only Quick Attack and Iron Tail.  Quick Attack is a weak Normal-type physical attack, only mildly useful because it is guaranteed to strike first even against an opponent with a higher Speed stat.  The AI would normally only use it to finish off an already nearly dead Pokemon, thereby robbing it of a potential last gasp maneuver.  I wasn't worried about that.  The only move left for me to watch out for was Iron Tail, a very strong physical attack.  It's a Steel-type attack, however, meaning its effectiveness is reduced by 50% against Water-type Pokemon such as my Swampert.  More importantly, its accuracy is only 75%, so if it didn't kill me outright, a protracted battle would probably see it missing a few times, allowing me a few turns of unanswered attacks.

I started off the fight by using Mud-Slap, a weak Ground-type attack.  Earthquake was the much more powerful option, but I'm not a hardcore numbers guy, so I wasn't sure if I could take Pikachu out in just one turn.  If Earthquake only brought it to the brink, Red would just use a Full Restore to fully heal Pikachu and completely undo my work before I could finish the job.  Having faced that exact frustration against previous trainers, I had learned that, against opponents that I could only almost KO in one turn, the more effective strategy was to lead with a weaker attack, then finish with the stronger move in the second turn.  Mud-Slap is particularly useful for leading because it also has the added effect of lowering the target's accuracy, so Pikachu's already risky Iron Tail would become even less accurate.

The round began and, as anticipated, Pikachu attacked first with Iron Tail.  It was a hit, nearly halving my Swampert's health.  My Mud-Slap did what I needed it to, lowering Pikachu's accuracy and even doing decent damage, thanks to Ground's supereffectiveness against Electric.  Confident that my Swampert would survive another hit, I queued up Earthquake for the next round, while Pikachu again went for Iron Tail.  I smiled with satisfaction as Iron Tail missed this time and Earthquake sent Pikachu packing.

Red summoned Venusaur next, probably hoping to capitalize on its 4x Grass-type advantage against my Water/Ground Swampert.  As is customary in single-player story battles, however, I am permitted to change my own Pokemon in response to his selection before the round begins.  Typhlosion, my Fire specialist, is the obvious choice, but I decide to go with Skarmory instead.  Skarmory was my weakest Pokemon, the only one that I had brought without any specific purpose in mind.  I had it in my party because it is a practical necessity to have a Pokemon with Fly at all times in case I need to retreat quickly back to town, and Skarmory, the physical tank among Pokemon, is also the best Flying Pokemon with whom I would actually be okay wasting a move slot on Fly.  Being a Steel/Flying-type, it did have the advantage, both offensively and defensively, against Venusaur.  With its poor attack stats and options, I didn't expect the type advantage to overcome the level difference in this case, but I wanted to give Skarmory at least a chance to contribute in some way beyond just being a shield for my other Pokemon (although it was technically serving that role as well here).

I select Fly, which, in battle, is a modestly powerful two-turn attack that may be compared to the Dragoon's Jump in Final Fantasy--the user takes flight in the first turn, then strikes on the second.  Venusaur attacks with Frenzy Plant, the ultimate Grass-type move, with a Special Attack power of 150.  Venusaur is faster than Skarmory, so I have to take the hit before taking off, but Skarmory endures it surprisingly well--it would take another two Frenzy Plants to KO Skarmory, and since Frenzy Plant is also a two-turn maneuver that leaves its user having to recharge on the second turn, the battle could go on for some time.  The persistent Hail effect of the snowy battlefield meanwhile would whittle away at the health of both Pokemon, which was what I wanted, because I never intended for Skarmory to win the battle, only for it to weaken Venusaur enough to guarantee that I could finish it with a single attack from Typhlosion.

Fly does decent damage, and Venusaur switches from Frenzy Plant to Giga Drain in an attempt to recoup some lost health.  Skarmory gets off one more Fly before expiring to a second Giga Drain, after which Typhlosion comes in to finish the job.  Typhlosion is also slower than Venusaur, so it still has to put up with losing some health to a third Giga Drain, but I won't need Typhlosion either after this round.  Flamethrower puts Red's Grass Pokemon away at last.

Red's third Pokemon is Blastoise, and I am again prompted to switch my own Pokemon.  Both Jolteon (Electric) and my own Venusaur have type advantage against the Water-type Blastoise.  Jolteon is the much safer choice, however, because I am almost certain that Blastoise will be packing an Ice-type attack, which would be supereffective against Venusaur.  Even so, poetry takes precedence over strategy in this case, and I am determined to take out each of Red's elemental starters with my own starter Pokemon.  Venusaur was my starter from back in Pokemon FireRed, where I actually technically played as Red.  But here I was ready to show him which of us was the true Venusaur master.  Besides, I had only bothered to scout Pikachu's moves, so I wasn't entirely certain that Blastoise would have any Ice attacks.

Blastoise leads with Blizzard, which one-hit-KOs my Venusaur before it can even act.  I'm feeling rather silly at this point, because I have wasted at least three turns with my foolishness.  First, I must now switch in Jolteon after all.  I have it use Thunder Wave to paralyze Blastoise.  Paralysis reduces a Pokemon's speed by 25% and also leaves it with a 25% chance of missing its turn due to inability to move.  I had relied heavily on Paralyze moves to get me through almost every major battle in every Pokemon game leading up to this.  Whereas the level and type mismatches I so often faced had regularly robbed even my best direct attacks of their punch, status afflictions did not discriminate, and a paralyzed Lv.75 Dragonite was just as likely to miss its turn as a much lower-level Pokemon.  I hadn't needed Thunder Wave against Red's first two Pokemon, but I expected it to again make the difference against Blastoise.

Blastoise uses Blizzard again, and it not only reduces Jolteon to near-death, but also induces the Freeze status, which is much rarer but even more debilitating than Paralyze.  I could use a Full Restore to get Jolteon back in condition to fight and maybe even win, but I still want to take out Blastoise with Venusaur.  The second turn I must waste is on reviving Venusaur.  I do so with the understanding that I will be sacrificing Jolteon on the front lines to another Blastoise attack.  The third turn I waste will be on reviving Jolteon.  To pull that off, I switch my weakened Typhlosion in for the unconscious Jolteon.  Typhlosion already did its job against Red's Venusaur, so I'm okay with sacrificing it to revive Jolteon.

When Typhlosion falls, it's finally time to bring in my Venusaur again.  With Blastoise paralyzed, Venusaur will be able to attack first this time.  I intend to finish it in one move with Frenzy Plant.  I'm gambling here, because I'm not certain that Frenzy Plant actually will finish it in one shot.  As I said, I haven't studied the math that deeply.  I know that Frenzy Plant has 150 Special Attack power and is supereffective against Water, but I don't know how exactly that translates into damage against whatever Blastoise's HP and Special Defense ratings are.  I only know that it will do a lot of damage.  With Blastoise having taken four rounds of Hail already, I take the risk that Frenzy Plant will be enough.  It is.

Red sends in Charizard next.  Again, I have a chance to swap out my Pokemon.  Typhlosion and Skarmory are dead, Jolteon and Swampert are at about 50%, and the Fighting/Steel Lucario would be at a severe disadvantage against the Fire/Flying Charizard.  I decide to leave Venusaur in, knowing that it will die immediately but intending to use that one turn to heal Swampert.  This proves to be an almost crucial error.

Remember that Frenzy Plant leaves its user unable to act in the next turn.  During the recharge period, you cannot attack, use items, or change Pokemon.  The one exception is that, in single-player battles, you can still shift your Pokemon out when prompted after defeating an opposing Pokemon.  Knowing this, I normally only use Frenzy Plant with the expectation that it will KO my opponent, so that I can then bypass the recharge period by switching out my Pokemon.  Somehow, I forgot to do so this time, and I was left to watch as Charizard toasted my Venusaur with a supereffective Flare Blitz, my turn completely wasted since I was not even able to heal Swampert.

I'm in a bad situation at this point.  I only have three Pokemon left, two of them in bad shape, the third out of the question for this match-up.  Even with the type advantage, I know Swampert will not be able to kill Charizard with just a single Waterfall.  Moreover, Charizard would be faster, and I don't know if my weakened Swampert would even be able to survive its first attack to get off a Waterfall.  I decide to send in Jolteon instead.  Jolteon is faster than any of Red's Pokemon, and it also has a type advantage against the part-Flying Charizard, but I go with Thunder Wave again instead of trying for damage with a supereffective Thunderbolt.  Thunderbolt would probably not one-hit-KO Charizard, whereas Thunder Wave's debilitating effects would give Swampert a chance in the event that Jolteon fell.

The Thunder Wave pays off immediately, as the paralyzed Charizard is unable to move for that turn.  I use the next turn to heal Swampert, and my Jolteon, not so fortunate this time, falls to a Dragon Pulse from Charizard.  I still don't think my Swampert can take out Charizard in one Waterfall, but with it now at full health against a paralyzed Charizard, I'm confident that it will win out in the end.  In fact, I'm so confident that, instead of attacking right away, I use Swampert's first turn to revive Jolteon, since I know I will need it later.  Luck is against me, as not only is Charizard able to move, but it gets a critical hit with an Air Slash, dismissing my Swampert unexpectedly in one move.  That's just rotten luck, as there's no way to really plan for these criticals, but it leaves me reeling.

I have to bring back Swampert, but a normal Revive only resurrects a Pokemon to 50% health.  That won't be enough if Charizard hits with Air Slash again, so I'll need a second turn to heal Swampert before I can send it out again.  That means I'll need two turns just to heal, and it's unlikely that Jolteon will survive longer than one.  Lucario's chances are only slightly better, but I have to go with that.  I send in Lucario and revive Swampert.  Fortunately, instead of using its Fire attacks, Charizard uses Air Slash.  Lucario survives to heal Swampert before falling in the next turn.

It's Swampert's second chance and, with the Hail having chipped away at Charizard, I'm ready to just go with the Waterfall.  To my dismay, it leaves Charizard with just a sliver of health, after which it strikes Swampert with Air Slash again to reduce its health by more than half.  I expect Red to use a Full Restore, both healing Charizard and curing its paralysis, thus leaving me in the worst possible condition, but before the round is up, the Hail, which takes effect at the end of every round, manages to finish Charizard off.  It wasn't all according to plan, but it worked out this time.

Red's signature Pokemon were all done.  Next up was Lapras.  A Water/Ice Pokemon, it was Red's only dual-type and also the one I knew least about among his team.  I left Swampert in so that I could revive Lucario.  Lapras took out Swampert with Blizzard, so I sent in Jolteon next.  Thunder Wave as usual, and then Lapras's Brine took out Jolteon.  A half-dead Lucario was my last Pokemon and I had no expectation of winning with just that, so I revived Jolteon again.  Blizzard took out Lucario, and now Jolteon was my last Pokemon.

It was not an ideal situation.  I had gathered now that Lapras could kill either Jolteon or Lucario at 50% health.  I doubted any of my other Pokemon would fare better.  Since a Revive only brought a Pokemon back at 50% health, I would again need two turns just to set up a Pokemon to take Lapras on.  With only one 50% Pokemon alive at a time, the only way I would be getting those two turns would be if Lapras missed a turn.  I would just have to keep switching between reviving Jolteon and Lucario until that opening came up.

Despite Paralyze's supposed 25% chance of stopping a Pokemon from acting, more than four turns went by without Lapras letting up one bit.  In fact, I think a full seven rounds went by, during which Jolteon and Lucario took turns dying.  At the end of that seventh round, I didn't even have any more Revives.  With a half-dead Lucario on point, I contemplated using one of my three Max Revives on Jolteon.  Max Revives are extremely rare and cannot be bought in stores, so they are only to be used in the most desperate circumstances.  Was this desperate enough?  I considered it, but then realized that, once Lucario died to resurrect Jolteon, I would just have to use another Max Revive on Lucario, because I needed Lucario to take on Red's final Pokemon.  No, I was going to have to make my final stand here, betting it all on Lucario.

I used a Hyper Potion to fully restore Lucario, then braced for the Blizzard, which I knew could do at least 50%, but which I could only hope would do less than 100%.  To my surprise, Lapras used Psychic instead.  And to my surprise, it did just less than 50%.  I wondered why it would resort to using a weaker attack, after having used Blizzard already to wipe out Lucario so many times.  The AI doesn't always make sense, but if there were an actual reason for this shift, it could be pivotal.  I tried to recall the last several rounds and count how many times Lapras had used Blizzard.  My guess was that Lapras had exhausted its uses of Blizzard, which left it with only attacks that would require three turns to take out a 100% Lucario.  If I was right, that was something I could work with.

I used another Hyper Potion and watched Lucario absorb another Psychic.  With my Lucario at just over half health again, I chose, instead of healing up or attacking, to use its Swords Dance move to sharply raise its Attack.  If Lapras used Psychic again, Lucario would survive and I would heal on the next turn.  If it used Blizzard, then Lucario might die and it would be game over.  But I was so sure I was right.

As it turned out, it didn't matter on that turn.  The Paralyze finally kicked in and stopped Lapras from attacking at all.  For the next turn, I had a few choices.  I still didn't feel a need to heal, but I could either attack with my boosted Close Combat or boost again with another Swords Dance.  Close Combat was a supereffective Fighting-type move with 120 Attack power, and the first Swords Dance would have raised its damage potential considerably.  But again, I didn't know exactly what "sharply raise" amounted to in practical terms, and I didn't know if I could KO Lapras yet.  As a part-Ice-type, Lapras was the only Pokemon on either team unaffected by Hail, so it was still at full health.

I took my chances and used Close Combat.  Lapras barely survived, and although it again could not move, I grimaced because I knew that Red would use a Full Restore on the next turn.  I used that same turn to use a second Swords Dance, guaranteeing that I would KO Lapras in the next hit.  The problem was that, if the now un-paralyzed Lapras attacked first, Lucario might die because the side effect of Close Combat is that it lowers its user's Defense and Special Defense.  So that Pyschic would hit a little harder the next time.

Ultimately, I had to bet on my Lucario being faster than Lapras.  If I healed and Lapras was faster hitting with Psychic for 50%, the fight was over anyway.  I would be forced to spend every turn healing just to survive the turn after, and a comeback would be impossible, unless I expected to outlast its uses of Psychic as well.  No, I went with Close Combat for the kill, and Lucario did not fail me.

Red's final Pokemon was Snorlax, an extremely durable Normal-type, which I had originally been saving Lucario for.  Again, I had to face the concerns of whether Lucario would be faster, whether it could one-hit-KO Snorlax, whether it could survive Snorlax's attack if either of the above was answered in the negative.  But I had come too far to have any more doubts.  Close Combat was the call, and that was it for the match.  Snorlax was out in one, and Red was done.

* * * * *

Was it the hardest Pokemon match of my life?  No, not by a long shot.  In fact, it was somewhat anticlimactic how easy it was.  I beat him on my first try.  I wasn't even forced to use any of my rare items.  Although I had used about 15 revives, most of that had been during the period when Jolteon and Lucario were taking turns dying against Lapras, which, in hindsight, may have been unnecessary.  Honestly, I had a much harder time against Lance at the end of the Johto campaign.  Now that was a truly hard-earned victory, one where I had had to rely heavily upon Paralyze, Leech Seed, Confuse, and accuracy-reducing moves and items, just to buy my Azumarill chances to take out Lance's overpowering dragons with Rollout, a normally weak Rock-type move that just happens to double in power over each of five consecutive hits, assuming its user can survive that long without missing, which was extremely unlikely against such opponents that could KO my best in one hit.  Up against that, I had had to perfectly plan every move in advance just to open up room enough for luck to enter in and win the day.

Although Red is supposed to be the ultimate trainer, in practice his team is highly flawed.  In terms of typing, it is more balanced than the typical Gym Leader's team, but most of his Pokemon are still only single-types with very common and exploitable weaknesses (i.e. no Dragons or Psychics to counter).  My team, on the other hand, although much lower in level than his, was by far the strongest team I had ever used.  It almost felt like cheating, even though my Pokemon were all legit and all my own, which I had raised from base forms and low levels over dozens of hours.  But the team I had used against Lance, consisting only of Pokemon I had caught in HeartGold, had included such Pokemon as Furret and Noctowl, both evolved from incredibly common Pokemon found within the first hour of play.  I would give them names and call them my own too, but any experienced player knows that these are garbage Pokemon.  It only made it that much more gratifying, however, when I managed to take them to the championship, winning it through a combination of effort and cunning.  A few key Thunder Waves notwithstanding, there was less of that cunning required in this fight against Red.

I suppose also, in general, the rules of the single-player game always favor the player.  Not only can you revive your Pokemon, unlike the AI, but that prompt to shift Pokemon after informing you of your opponent's next Pokemon is clearly unfair to the AI.  For obvious reasons, it's not a part of player-vs-player battles, and there's even an option to turn it off in single-player.  Were I to do so, I seriously doubt I would stand a chance against Red.  But that's not the default setting, not "regulation," as it were.  Leave it to masochistic players to challenge themselves with that.

As much as I wish Nintendo would take Pokemon somewhere new, I can't pretend that I won't be there when Pokemon Black/White comes out and is more of the same.  But for now, I'm satisfied knowing that, after training for six games in four regions over two generations, I finally beat Red and "won" Pokemon.

Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

I was fifteen when Pokemon Red/Blue arrived in the States in 1998. Too old to enjoy the cute monsters and perhaps too young to look past them, I sampled Red for about an hour before giving up. I denounced the concept as too reminiscent of dog fighting, but I was really more put off by the battle system that struck me as archaic. Some years later, I gained an appreciation for the finely tuned mechanics, thanks to the pure battling experience offered in Pokemon Stadium. Thus, as a nineteen-year-old college student, I decided to give the series another try when Ruby/Sapphire came out in 2003. Well, that endeavor ended prematurely much like my first attempt; as it turned out, having beaten Stadium with a team of "rental" Pokemon, I still had no patience for the main game routine of wandering around in tall grass and tossing out dozens of Poke Balls before a rare Pokemon agreed to go inside one.

It was not until 2006, when Nintendo partnered with Toys "R" Us to give out the legendary Mew for the Game Boy Advance editions, that I finally "got it." I was mostly familiar with the original 151 Pokemon (i.e. the ones in Stadium), so I still believed Mew the rarest of them all. Even though I had never been able to get more than an hour into any of the main games, the chance to acquire this Pokemon, impossible to catch within the game itself, ignited something within me. (Maybe it helped that I was now out of school and bored at work.) I dug out my copy of Ruby and waited three hours in line at Toys "R" Us to get that Mew. With that hardest one down, "catch 'em all" actually sounded feasible for once, and so I set myself to the game once more and this time promised myself that I would stick with it. Some forty hours later, I was not close to being a master, but I discovered that I actually did enjoy Pokemon after all, and I immediately followed up my playthrough of Ruby by taking on FireRed, Emerald, Colosseum, and the just-released Pearl, beating them all in turn in about a six-month span.

By the time Platinum came out last year, I considered myself quite the Pokemon adept, despite having gotten into it late. Perhaps the only gap in my experience was my not having played the second generation of Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, which many enthusiasts considered the series's high point. I was certainly not going to go back to play a Game Boy Color game that offered no cross-compatibility with my GBA and DS games, especially as I did not believe in the noteworthiness of being the best entry in a series of practically identical games. As they did with the GBA remakes of first generation, however, Nintendo and Game Freak have given late-comers like me a second chance to experience Gold/Silver. I don't know how exactly Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS compares to the vaunted GBC originals, but I will say that it is the best Pokemon game that I have played.

It's not likely to change anybody's mind about the series; it is still very much the same experience as you'll find in any of the other main installments since the original (which is why a straight-up "remake" for this series may sound like a silly idea). The pursuit of the complete Pokedex is still as sickeningly addictive as ever. Tossing Poke Balls at uncooperative wild Pokemon can be tedious and frustrating, but it can also be as habit-forming as any real-world collecting hobby. The other appeal for me remains the deceptively deep combat. I've always appreciated that the AI foes in these games all play by the same rules as the player, so that you feel like you have to tactically outmaneuver an actual person, instead of an unfairly overpowered behemoth with just a ton of HP to be whittled down by tapping A over and over again. Of course, Pokemon may be the only RPG with an active competitive scene, so the fighting engine has to be balanced for player-versus-player.

That said, after beating Pearl, I was ready for a hiatus from the formula. I thought it was burnout from having played too many games in too short a span without any break, but, playing Platinum alongside HeartGold, I now realize that Diamond/Pearl/Platinum specifically is just not that enjoyable. They tried to make that game a bigger, more expansive experience by making towns larger and dungeons much longer, to no one's benefit. With the typically repetitive mechanics and absent plot, it could become a real drag to get stuck spending too much time in any one area. HeartGold/SoulSilver is much breezier by comparison, and the journey moves along at about the perfect pace to continually introduce the player to new Pokemon and Pokemon trainers.

Even the story is vastly more interesting. In practice, the plot is not at all engaging, but, then again, neither is Beowulf anymore a stimulating read outside an academic environment, in my opinion. There is a certain poetry to HeartGold/SoulSilver's narrative construction in conjunction with FireRed/LeafGreen.

SPOILERS (Seriously?)

FireRed/LeafGreen (or Red/Blue) begins with just a boy setting out from home to explore the land of Kanto. Journeying from town to town with the Pokemon he catches along the way as his only companions, he makes friends and rivals and challenges himself by taking on gym leaders. He tangles with Team Rocket, ultimately defeating its leader and saving Kanto from the criminal organization's nefarious schemes. The boy and his Pokemon gain experience from these battles, eventually earning their way into the Pokemon League to challenge the champion. The silent protagonist proves himself the strongest trainer in Kanto, but, instead of taking on the mantle of champion, he continues on his journey. With his Pokemon ever at his side, he rides off on his bicycle and into legend.

HeartGold/SoulSilver (or Gold/Silver) picks up the story three years later in another land, where another young boy (or girl) sets out on a similar journey. He collects Pokemon, earns badges by defeating gym leaders, and contends with a bitter rival that may have some connection to Team Rocket, whose remnants have now relocated to the Johto region in a desperate bid to reach out to their missing leader. After this new protagonist becomes the strongest trainer in Johto, the story comes full circle as he makes his way to Kanto. There, the player gets to walk familiar routes and reunite with the Kanto gym leaders, who have grown stronger and more mature. You get to revisit all the old towns and see how they have developed free of Team Rocket's corrupting influences. Finally, you find the legendary Red himself standing at the summit, still very much the same boy that the player set out with on that first journey. In a silent duel of wandering champions, Red finally meets his match, only proving that the quest is truly never-ending. And thus the two boys part to continue along on their journeys.

Tsunekazu Ishiharu, producer of Pokemon Red/Blue and currently president of The Pokemon Company, recently revealed that Pokemon Gold and Silver were originally intended to be the "finish line" for the series (keep in mind that, while Gold/Silver was only the second generation, there had already been four first generation games released over the course of three years in Japan). Indeed, not only were they probably the best games in the series (maybe until their own remakes), but they were also the only legitimate sequels. Later games essentially retold the original's story, only changing the names and outfits, but Gold/Silver actually completed what Red/Blue began.

As in every subsequent release, the original game's world consisted of eight gyms, each championing one of the fifteen different Pokemon types. Gold/Silver then added two types and gave players another eight gyms to conquer, with no repeats from the first game, so that, between the two, every one of the seventeen Pokemon types was represented by a gym, with the exception of Dark, which happened to be the type favored by Team Rocket's interim leader in Gold/Silver, as well as the last and strongest member of the Johto League's Elite Four. Later games did not add any more Pokemon types and had to cut off access to the old regions and gyms, so that they could instead recycle old types in new gyms without it seeming redundant. That's a shame, because getting that ticket to ride to the original game world is the most exciting and rewarding moment in HeartGold/SoulSilver.

For players of Red/Blue (or FireRed/LeafGreen), returning to Kanto and battling the original gym leaders again can be a haunting experience in much the same way as revisiting Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, or exploring the mansion in Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition's "Lost in Nightmares" scenario. I imagine there would be yet another nostalgic dimension for players who actually traveled through Johto the first time around. Even if you've never played any version of Red/Blue or Gold/Silver before, the inclusion of almost the entire Kanto region makes for one of the best post-endgame "second quests" in gaming. It nearly doubles the length of the game, which effectively offers players twice as many meaningful battles as even the games that came after Gold/Silver. The remakes even go a little further toward making HeartGold/SoulSilver the definitive Pokemon experience by tossing in many rare Pokemon not originally found in Johto (some not even native to Kanto) and including cameos by some Ruby/Sapphire and Diamond/Pearl characters. And of course that battle with Red still makes for the perfect ending, such that I'm doubly disappointed that Black/White looks like it will be more of the same, because HeartGold/SoulSilver would have been the perfect sendoff to the classic formula.

As for the few brand new features in Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver, the Pokeathlon is a cool concept--who wouldn't love to see their little Pokemon sprites racing around a track?--but, even with multiplayer, the touchscreen-based mini-games are too clumsily executed to be anything but frustrating. The Pokewalker, on the other hand, I see as a fairly significant and positive advancement for the series. It is, in essence, just a more primitive version of a Tamagotchi crossed with a pedometer. In conjunction with the main game, however, it is much more attractive than that idea should be. It's embarrassing to say so, but being able to take your Pokemon around with you outside of the game makes your bond with them seem so much more real, while sending them into battle back on the DS is a lot more gratifying than raising a Tamagotchi ever could be. And the ability to level up a Pokemon just by taking it out for a walk has even encouraged me to get back on the treadmill, so I have to thank it for that.

If you have any interest in getting into (or back into) Pokemon, this is the game to play. It is the biggest, best, and most complete Pokemon experience yet. Even without trading, there are only about sixty Pokemon out of the current 493 that cannot be gotten through playing just either HeartGold or SoulSilver (I played HeartGold but recommend SoulSilver for Skarmory). I even kind of consider the lack of a compelling story as a point in the game's favor; since it doesn't require much attention, I can play the game while watching TV, and I have consequently sunk more hours into this than any other game (or other diversion, period) in the last two months. And I'm not even done yet.

Oh, the Pokemanity!

So, last time, I had to go through quite an ordeal to download an exclusive Pikachu-colored Pichu from GameStop. This time, again through GameStop, Nintendo was offering the legendary Jirachi. Thankfully, there were no unanticipated difficulties. Only the usual shame of being a grown man standing alone in a GameStop store and playing Pokemon on his Nintendo DS. Did I mention that I actually have to download these things four times to my four separate copies of Pokemon? Yes, thank you, I am hardcore. And yes, I have become painfully well-acquainted with the twenty-second start-up sequence for these games. The worst part is that I just found out that Nintendo is now making the Pichu download available over wi-fi for anybody who missed the GameStop event, so I need never have embarrassed myself (twice) for that thing. No word yet on whether Jirachi will be offered the same way, but I really do hope that this is the beginning of the end for my (Pokemon-related) public humiliations.

That Yellow Bastard

So Nintendo has been running the "Pikachu-Colored Pichu" event, wherein a shiny Pichu for use in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum has been made available for DS download exclusively at participating GameStop locations across the country. Naturally I was there on day one. Too bad Pichu wasn't.

Now, I want it clearly understood that this was not my first rodeo. Having attended every Toys"R"Us Pokemon event dating back to the Mew giveaway for 3rd-gen (back when we actually had to wait in line for hours to trade with a single sweaty employee packing a loaded GBA cartridge), I've been doing this for a while, so you can well imagine I've got the procedures down pat. Drive over at twilight, park in the back lot, duck my head low, turn on my DS and start downloading over wireless from the safety of my vehicle, all to the soothing ambiance of passing young children explaining Pokemon to their parents in the background.

As I drove over to that GameStop, the plan remained the same. I parked my car outside the store and readied my DS to download the Mystery Gift.

No signal.

I couldn't understand what the problem was. I was parked even closer to the presumed source than I had been with any of the Toys"R"Us events. I could only guess that maybe GameStop's Pichu-distributing server was not as dispersive as the ones at Toys"R"Us. That left me with only one option, off-putting as it might be.

I walked into the store, knowing full well that there would be almost no way to hide myself in that tiny establishment. Seeing customers waiting in line and browsing the shelves, I could only hope that clerks and patrons would keep each other occupied as I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, a lone adult male playing Nintendo DS while standing in the corner of a GameStop store.

Still nothing.

A less determined man might have given up at this point, but that's not me. I got in line behind two customers and waited for assistance with my Pokemon download. Some minutes later, my turn came up and, thankfully, there was no one else waiting behind me.

"Um, do you guys have this Pokemon thing?" I asked weakly.

"Oh, you mean the pre-order for Heart Gold and Soul Silver?" replied the young female clerk.

"Um, no, the poster on the door says there's a free download?"

She looked baffled. Clearly, I was dealing with an amateur here. Then I noticed that she had, sitting right in front of her, a stack of fliers advertising this very promotion.

"Uh, it's this thing," I said, pointing to the fliers.

She picked one up as if noticing it for the first time.

"Hey," she called over to the other clerk, also a young woman. "Do you know anything about this Pokemon download? It's a Pikachu-colored Pikachu? Pichu?"

"Oh, yeah, I think there was an e-mail about that. It might not be set up yet."

This second clerk was understandably distracted, however, with helping an older lady customer, who was there trading in games with her 6'4" thirty-year-old son. I guessed the games were his, though she had been the one doing all the talking. As their cashier processed the transactions, I noticed the mom looking at me. I smiled sheepishly in recognition before turning away.

"Um, can you set it up?" I asked the first clerk.

"Oh, they're supposed to send us a thing," answered the second clerk. "I don't know if we got it yet. (Boss) didn't mention anything about it, and I have no idea how this works."

"Sorry," apologized the first clerk.

And so I walked out of there bitter, ashamed, empty-handed. The Pichu would have to wait another day.

(Pichu Bros. perform the Fusion Dance to DNA Digivolve into Captain Planet. Probably.)

Bigger is Better

Well, it's not quite enough to get me trading up from my DS Lite just yet, but I definitely think Nintendo's announcement of the big boy DSi XL (or DSi LL) is a step in the right direction.

The pixel-stretching entailed by the new massive screens is of no great concern to me, but I have continually griped against the needlessly hand-cramping smallness of the DS Lite (and similarly sized DSi). I know that a smaller form allows for greater portability, but the truth is that I never carry my DS with me in my pocket. Merely making it smaller would not change that.

Two models later, the original DS (AKA "DS Phat") is still a vastly more comfortable play, despite its dim screens. The DSi XL looks more sharp-edged and less ergonomic--it's ostensibly just a bigger DSi, though it's not yet known if the buttons will be clicky (good) or squishy (bad)--but it actually weighs even more than the Phat.

It is perhaps surprising and a tad disingenuous to see Nintendo reverse course like this and try to sell big after the company itself convinced consumers that smaller was better with its years of aggressive campaigns for the ever-shrinking Game Boy.


But since Nintendo got us here in the first place, I don't suppose there is anyone else more capable of shifting the tides again in the other direction. Already Satoru and friends seem to have worked out some unintuitive marketing of this as a new sort of spectator handheld. I wonder how long it will take for Sony to copy this too and release its own "PS3 Plump" or "PSP Sit-your-fat-ass-down" for those who would live extra large.

Scribblenauts

The catchphrase for 5th Cell's Scribblenauts for the Nintendo DS is "Write Anything, Solve Everything." It drew a lot of attention at trade shows for its ambitious promise that players would be able to manifest almost any object just by spelling it out. Despite the praise, I remained highly skeptical. How could such a small development team possibly account for all the words a player might pose? Not only would it take a ridiculous amount of labor just to program in all the words and have them tied to objects, but it would be an even more impossible task to ensure that the practically infinite combinations (e.g. cat and dog, cop and robber, water and fire, etc.) played out in logical interactions. Having now played the retail release for myself, I am both impressed and disappointed.

I am genuinely impressed by how many words it is able to recognize. Yes, even working within the strict criteria--only physical objects, no proper names, no shapes, no places, no races or cultures, nothing copyrighted, nothing age inappropriate--you will come across some basic omissions. Sometimes a single object definition is stretched a tad loose to match multiple words. Nevertheless, it works better than I ever would have dreamed. I won't spoil things, but I'll say that it works more often than not, and my attempts to stump the game yielded some of the most pleasant surprises.

The object interaction is not as good, but again it's far better than I would have expected, considering how impossible the concept sounded. Friendly characters pretty much do nothing, while hostiles will destroy everything. Some virtuous characters will target evil ones, but it is somewhat random who will come out on top, making the game not a very good way to settle fantasy battles. Also, animals seem to be arbitrarily either friendly or hostile. That is largely the extent of interaction for lifeforms. Tools and vehicles may sound less exciting, but they are where the real fun is, especially when you get into the science fiction stuff.

Even though Scribblenauts includes no multiplayer modes, the experience is much enhanced when tossing ideas back and forth in real time with others. Actually, I grew mildly frustrated at my own evident lack of imagination. While others were staging Armageddon or somehow reenacting Star Wars, I could think only of copyrighted or obscene terms. I certainly can't blame the game, however, for my own failings.

Unfortunately, the game has more severe flaws that the developers must take credit for. Up to now, I've mostly been describing the interactive title screen, which is probably the best part of Scribblenauts. It's no wonder that the game demoed so well, if trade show attendees only experienced the title screen, where players are free to stage whatever scenarios they want with nothing at stake.

Once you actually get into the main, objective-driven modes, the mechanics fall apart. The game is borderline unplayable due to some horribly misguided design choices. The big problem is that almost everything is controlled via the touchscreen. That includes moving the player character, accessing and typing to the notepad, placing objects, and using or equipping objects with the player character. As has been the trouble with nearly every stylus-based action game, the burden of this many functions is simply too great for the imprecise touch recognition. The more elaborate the scenario, the greater the likelihood that something will go horribly wrong when the game misinterprets your intentions. Too often I would attempt to grab an object to the right of my character, only to end up tapping blank space and sending him sailing off in that direction to his doom. What makes it all so baffling is that the D-pad and face buttons both only control the camera, which is itself surprisingly dodgy in a 2-D game. It's such a shame that, after working so hard to bring the concept to fruition, 5th Cell completely flubbed the more basic platforming elements.

The thrill of Scribblenauts lasted a good hour for me. Those with greater imaginations or vocabularies could get more out of it, but it does fall apart once you try to actually play it as a game. Yet I still feel it is a noteworthy and important title. Broken though it is, it is still a remarkably ambitious design, which may yet be fixed for a future sequel. It is also a game that will have you days later at work suddenly and excitedly wondering what this or that word might yield. That alone makes it worth a try.

Why the PSPgo is trash

Yes, the $249.99 price tag is outrageous, and that alone should have rendered the PSPgo stillborn. For comparison, a PSP 3000 retails for $169.99 by itself, or in bundles, usually with a game and Memory Stick, for $199.99. What does the PSPgo offer for that $50-80 premium?

Well, to be fair, the PSPgo package does include everything needed to get a new owner going immediately. The price difference is perhaps attributable to the 16GB of internal flash memory. Weighed against the cost of 16GB worth of Memory Sticks, that's actually not bad, but only because Sony has always sold space at an inflated price by enslaving its devices to its proprietary card format.

Speaking of which, the PSPgo is not even compatible with the old, overpriced Memory Stick Duos used by all previous PSP models. No, now you need Sony's new, overpriced Memory Stick Micro. So any current PSP owners hoping to "upgrade" will have a hell of a time trying to transfer over their old data and downloadables. Never mind the fact that those Memory Stick Duos, which were pretty much only useful for the PSP, would become largely worthless.

Of course Sony made it clear that they were not targeting current owners when they decided, not only to remove the UMD drive, but also to offer consumers no program to transfer over their existing UMD libraries. So, yeah, those few loyal PSP fans who have been steadily building up their UMD collections really have no incentive whatsoever to support this new model, which is essentially a new platform with no backwards compatibility but which, unlike the DSi, also does not offer any new model-specific games.

But what about all those downloadable games, demos, and "Minis" for the PSPgo? Isn't the entire (selling) point of the PSPgo that it runs completely free of physical media? Certainly, most of the press surrounding it has highlighted its importance as the first dedicated gaming platform to operate strictly via digital distribution. I don't doubt that the future is one free of physical media, and I guess some are hoping that, if the PSPgo succeeds, it will bring that future about sooner.

But the thing is that, even if you think you're done with UMDs, you don't actually need a PSPgo to enjoy that digital future. Amid all the hype about the PSP catalog going downloadable on the PSN, what may not be so widely known is the fact that anything you can download to the PSPgo can also be downloaded to any of the old PSP models. So the PSPgo is only removing options, rather than adding any. It's actually closer to the useless Game Boy Micro than to the DSi in how it "improves" upon its predecessor.

In summary, the PSPgo does not support UMDs, does not support Memory Stick Duos, and costs $50-80 more while offering no exclusive content. It's also not compatible with any old-model cables and adapters, instead requiring brand new proprietary USB cable, TV OUT cable, etc. In other words, for current PSP owners, it would be like paying $249.99 to start from scratch. Moreover, combined with the egregious price tag, Sony's failure to offer any upgrader incentive program in the US basically amounts to a slap in the face to any PSP enthusiast who might just have been excited about trading up to the newest tech.

Even for new consumers looking to pick up their first PSP--and there are some good games out there and on the way--my honest recommendation would be to just get a PSP 2000 or 3000, or even consider waiting for a potential 4000, which I don't think is outside the realm of possibility. The PSPgo is smaller and sleeker, yes, and one admittedly cool addition is the Bluetooth connectivity, which allows players to play using their PS3 controllers. But I don't think the advantages come close to outweighing the lethal combination of high price and reduced feature set.

"Happiness Is a Warm Gun"

Speaking of Beatles: Rock Band, in the Game Informer cover story a few months back, there was a short interview with Yoko Ono, wherein she promoted the game while also briefly addressing the "games as art" question:

Well, I think it is definitely an art form, but also--like all art forms now, it's going toward a very violent direction, you know? So this venture, doing it all with the Beatles, is really beautiful, because it's not that direction at all; it's to just enjoy music, and to learn about music.

I certainly didn't need Yoko Ono to alert me to the violence that pervades gaming, but it's a good time anyway to bring it up again. The depressing reality is that, if, as a budding patron of the interactive art, you wish to explore the medium beyond the casual fare, you will come up against a "core" gaming library built predominantly on violent themes. Sports/racing is a distant second, and there is little else of quality out there to scratch any other emotional itches.

Like everyone else, I have ideas for filling that void. But I'm not a game designer, so I'll start for now by just pointing to a few examples of existing good, fulfilling titles that are neither violent nor casual experiences.

Along the same music game lines as Beatles: Rock Band, the first compelling non-violent video game that comes to mind is iNiS's Ouendan series for the Nintendo DS. The stylus-based gameplay is not radically different from other rhythm game titles. What sets Ouendan apart is the story that goes on behind the timed tapping.

The premise has the player commanding a Japanese cheer squad that responds to the cries for help of citizens facing challenging life situations. For example, one mission sees a restaurateur desperate to attract business, while another has a student struggling to get ready for exams, and yet another has a young man predictably trying to win the heart of the girl he adores. In each case, the Ouendan team arrives to encourage them through their difficulties, and as the player performs successfully, the short stories likewise develop to show the characters bearing down with increasing confidence to realize their goals. Some of the episodes involve conflict, but the others are no less rewarding. Thanks to the emphatic art and well-matched song selections, it's almost always inspiring to feel your cheers motivating these people to happy endings, no matter the obstacle.

Ouendan unfortunately remains Japan-exclusive, but iNiS also developed Elite Beat Agents, a version of Ouendan localized for American audiences. I don't like it quite as much because it strips out all the "Japanese-ness" that is so much of Ouendan's charm, but it's the same basic idea.

Actually, many of the Japanese music games (e.g. PaRappa the Rapper, Space Channel 5, Gitaroo Man) have tied the rhythm gameplay to light narratives, recognizing that the music-playing need not be an end unto itself. It's a shame that, between its twelve or so Guitar Hero releases a year, Activision can't find time to even try for anything of the sort, especially considering it was the fantastic ad for Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 that really opened my mind to these possibilities that the games themselves have failed to run with.

Moving on to something completely different now, it's about time somebody gave some props to Sony's series of NBA games featuring "The Life." Full disclosure: I worked on NBA 06 and 07 for the PS2. But I worked on them as a tester, playing them twelve hours a day for weeks straight, which should give me every reason to hate them more than the average consumer.

To be sure, these were some severely flawed basketball video games. The gameplay, fundamentally broken, made for neither a competent simulation nor a fun game besides. Seriously, my 16-bit NBA Live '96 was more playable AND more realistic. Hell, even NBA Jam adhered better to certain vital rules, such as the goaltending violation. NBA 06 didn't allow goaltending, but instead of actually programming in the call and penalty, the developers simply made it so that the game rendered intangible any hands that would try to get between the basket and the ball on its way down. That's some of the jankiest workaround BS I've ever seen. There were other blatant cheats too, like how the game would magically teleport your players back to your end after every basket you made, because it didn't know how else to keep you from stealing the brain-dead AI's inbound pass. So, yeah, it was a pretty awful basketball game. Yet it should not simply be dismissed, because it did include one mode that presented the sports video game in a whole new way.

"The Life" was a revolution that sadly nobody noticed. More critically acclaimed sports titles, such as MLB 07: The Show and NHL 09, have drawn praise recently for their "Road to the Show" and "Be a Pro" modes, which allow players to embark on personal virtual careers, starting as rookies and slowly working their way up the ranks eventually to land in the Hall of Fame. It can add a more personal level of investment to play as your own virtual self, instead of controlling an entire team as both talent and management. But these are still modes based around statistics rather than narrative, and they ultimately do not offer much different from the standard season and franchise modes. Whereas "Be a Pro" simulates the grind of a professional sports career, NBA 06's "The Life" treats players to the glamor of superstardom.

The mode is actually a scripted drama, casting players in the role of a thirsty young point guard nicknamed "The Kid." The story follows him through his first NBA season, from the life-changing draft out of junior college to the NBA Finals. Along the way, cut scenes depict his volatile relationships with his teammates, his coach, his rival, his agent, and the press. Licensing and marketing keep the plot from getting into the really dirty stuff that everybody knows exists in pro sports, but it's not entirely a fluff story for kids either. It's a mostly sober tale of a young star nearly overwhelmed by the too sudden transition from the streets to the show. There's even some enlightening discussion of the "Q score" that is so much the concern of agents.

On the gameplay side, "The Life" gives players a series of objectives besides just winning, but, instead of being randomly generated like in "Road to the Show," these too follow a script. Rather than play season after season, the player progresses through a linear series of episodes not unlike the traditional single-player modes of other genres. Instead of full regulation games, most stages are mid-game scenarios that require fulfilling certain conditions to pass (e.g. "Score the game-winning basket with your point guard"). These are usually tied to the story and meaningfully integrated with the narrative. For example, when The Kid wants to establish himself early on as the franchise player, the goals involve hogging the ball to score tons of baskets. Then, after he realizes that he cannot win by himself and must repair relations with his teammates, the objective becomes to dish more assists.

"The Life Vol.2" in NBA 07, a late PS2 release, was much shorter, and the title defense story is never as exciting as the rise up. But the sequel did add an interesting twist by having players alternating between the parallel seasons of The Kid and his nemesis from the first game, "Big W." The rivalry comes to a head in a scenario that pits the two protagonists against one another in a mid-season game. The player plays the first half as The Kid, then switches to Big W to finish things off. The actual execution is kind of disastrous, since players basically end up kicking their own asses, but I know of no other game in any genre that allows players to experience consecutive phases of a single contest from opposing angles.

The biggest problem with "The Life" was that it didn't really play to NBA 06's audience. The divide between those who play sports games and those who do not grows increasingly pronounced. The idea of a cut scene-heavy story mode centering around fictional characters would probably sound preposterous to a sports maniac in search of a simulation with solid mechanics and stat-tracking, while those not interested in sports games would likely still not care. To be honest, even I haven't personally pursued the series beyond the two installments that I got paid to play.

For those who did pick up a copy of 06 or 07, the frustratingly flawed basic gameplay and severe lack of polish probably kept "The Life" from being an altogether enjoyable experience, but the concept was good and fresh. It not only provided a new way to experience sports in gaming, but it featured a story that was roughly equal in length and depth to most action games. Admittedly, that isn't saying much, and, no, it definitely wasn't brilliant writing, but, at the very least, it showed the potential for interactive narratives to be fulfilling without relying on violence.

We as human beings are so much more than just destructive beasts. It shouldn't be that hard to construct a thoughtful and engaging interactive experience that appeals to any of those other aspects of who we are. In fact, in the cases of Ouendan and "The Life," these are both games that basically just add goals and context to existing genres and mechanics. Yet these are badly outnumbered by the Guitar Hero and Madden releases that, while perhaps fun, are decidedly not art. Truthfully, the problem, as I see it, is not so much that the violent games should be less violent, but that the non-violent games are usually even less ambitious.

* * * * *

But the issue becomes further complicated when you consider the recent story of the Karmapa Lama playing violent video games as a way to satiate aggressive feelings. It has often been the not altogether convincing defense of game violence that, by satisfying their violent impulses virtually, players are able to forgo having to express them in real life.

That's all well and good, but I think it indirectly raises concerns about what we get out of our non-violent gaming pursuits. Does playing Rock Band lessen one's ambition to play a real instrument? Does playing sports video games dampen our drive to become real athletes? The number of NFL players who grew up playing Madden would seem to indicate otherwise, but then where does that leave the Karmapa Lama's argument? Realistically, I'm sure that music, sports, and war are probably all different enough to preclude a universal answer.

But I wonder how a video game might capture the concept of "love." Then my mind turns to dating sims. Although prevalent in Japan, serious gamers in the West generally look down upon the genre as one of the lowest forms of gaming. Often nearly devoid of gameplay, these are basically interactive novels of wish fulfillment fantasy, and many veer into erotic territory. If people are playing these as a substitute for real love, then maybe it would be better for us all if gaming were to avoid trying to tackle certain aspects of life.

The Essentials #44: Resident Evil

Capcom's Resident Evil (AKA Biohazard in Japan) was not the first "survival horror" game, but it was undoubtedly the most influential in this very particular sub-genre of the adventure game. Creator Shinji Mikami's seminal title was originally released in 1996 for the Sony PlayStation, then completely remade in 2002 for the Nintendo GameCube. The latter was my late introduction to the series.

In the "video games as art" debate, it is oft argued that what invalidates games as art is the element of interactivity. While games may certainly contain art in the visual and audio components, the core experience is one that differs crucially from novels or films in that the audience is allowed and encouraged to affect the outcome, thereby potentially undermining and devaluing any authorial direction. The point is usually followed with further unending discussion on what exactly constitutes art, but Shinji Mikami, in creating Resident Evil, may have arrived at a design that broke down that perceived barrier between interactive media and artistic intent.

Whereas many other game designers would endeavor to push the medium forward by pursuing boundless freedoms for the player to do unimaginable things, Mikami perhaps realized that authorial intent could only be achieved by imposing limitations on the game experience. Only in that way could the artist retain control in the dynamic with the audience. With Resident Evil, he attempted to control, not only exactly how the player played and progressed through his game, but even how they felt at any given moment. He imposed his vision by encumbering players with highly restrictive controls, fixed cinematic camera angles, and exploration-based gameplay that was actually very forcefully directed.

Resident Evil's tank-like character-relative controls have remained a consistent hallmark of the series, and they have also been criticized since the very first game. Although the zombies that made up the bulk of the game's threats were themselves slow-moving, in tight quarters they became tricky to dodge, largely on account of the awkward and sluggish controls. The unintuitive movement was meant partially to induce the panic that one would actually feel when confronted by a zombie in a narrow corridor. But it also led to a lot of running into walls even when no enemies were present. I can't imagine that that sort of slapstick display was part of the artistic vision behind the design. Five installments later, it was second nature to me, but even I couldn't argue that it was perfect.

There was actually a more practical defense for the character-relative controls, however, as they allowed the player to preserve proper character orientation, even as the camera constantly and instantaneously cut to different angles. The other consistently controversial aspect of the original Resident Evil design, the fixed cameras were often positioned at the least helpful angles, leaving the player to fire at or flee enemies that would not even be visible in the frame. On a technical level, fixed angles were unavoidable due to the game's reliance on pre-rendered backgrounds. But it was also an artistic design choice to maintain control over the player's experience by forcing them to see exactly what the artists wanted them to see at any given spot. Since this was a horror game, the objective was to induce fear. One way to achieve this was via blind angles that left players dreading whatever lay beyond their vision. In a broader way, as with the unintuitive controls, it was meant to take the player out of their comfort zone, which would certainly have been the point. And because enemy placements were also fixed and finite, the designers could ensure that it was never more than the player could handle.


As Capcom's marketing term suggested, Resident Evil was as much about survival as horror, and limited resources encouraged the player to play as conservatively as possible. As series veterans would always warn, there was insufficient ammo in the game to kill every enemy. Indeed, that was why it was worth trying to dodge those zombies whenever possible, and why it became so terrifying when the controls made getting through those hallways that much more harrowing. Furthermore, the equally limited supply of healing items meant you could not afford to take hits needlessly. This was all part of the meticulous design, however, as these elements combined to force the player into these delicate close encounters with zombies that would otherwise have been nothing, had either ammo been more plentiful or character movement more effortless. Even the player's ability to save the game was restricted by a finite supply of ink ribbons that were needed to record data at the typewriter save points. Worse still, weapons, ammo, healing herbs, and ink ribbons all had to share very limited inventory space with necessary key items. You were to take only what was absolutely necessary, leaving the rest in the magically interconnected item boxes.

Since combat was clunky and best avoided if at all possible, much of the actual gameplay came down to puzzles. There were the real adventure-style logic puzzles that had to be solved by collecting and interpreting clues. Then there were the simple lock-and-key devices that were not puzzles at all, but thinly veiled routing mechanisms to impose a strict sequence to the exploration. Some critics deride these obstacles as infantile, but the point was not to test your brain in presenting you with a "shield emblem" that just so happened to seem like a perfect fit for that shield-shaped slot on the locked door that you passed by earlier. Rather like the Metroid games, in initially barring you entry there and forcing you to head elsewhere in search of the key, the game was controlling where you would be at any given point, even though the nonlinear 3-D environment presented the illusion of freedom.

Once you found the key, you were expected to know what to do with it, and that knowledge would guide you back to where you needed to be. Of course, the game knew as well where you would be heading, and it would take advantage of that to lay traps for you, occasionally even in places that you had already passed through uneventfully. Perhaps you would enter into a familiar corridor thinking it was safe, only to be surprised midway through, when zombie dogs would come crashing through the windows. Those are the moments that every Resident Evil player remembers, and just about every player remembers them the same way. Truly, that was the meticulous and manipulative Resident Evil design at its very best.


The narrative was a simple one of survival and escape, made extraordinarily effective because the experience immersed the player in the hopeless situation and left them helplessly empathizing with the characters. There was very little actual plot in the game, and what was there was on a par with a B-movie script. The real story was dispensed primarily through documents strewn all about the mansion. These provided context and explained what all went down that led to the nightmare. Included in just about every Resident Evil would be a researcher's diary, which invariably played out the same way. Some witless, conscienceless cog would start out complaining about his job or perhaps an annoying co-worker, then, as the player flipped through the entries, the text would become progressively more deranged as the infected writer descended into a state of cannibalistic undead.

As with all approaches, this sort of nontraditional storytelling had its advantages and disadvantages. Perhaps its effectiveness came through best with the Lisa Trevor subplot that was added for the GameCube remake. Even among all the other horrors that populated the mansion, Lisa was a uniquely hideous and undying monster that arrived with no exposition to suddenly stalk the player at a point midway into the game. In that instant, your only concern would be fleeing for your life. But given a moment's respite, you might have wondered what the hell that freak show's deal was. She could not tell you her story herself--that would have been truly horrible--and none of the other characters, for whom this was life-or-death and not just a game, had reason to care. But the information was there in the game, waiting as stray documents to be discovered by the player during moments of peaceful investigation, so as not to wreck the narrative sense. Learning these details would not alter the events of the story (why would it?), but they could inform and enhance the player's appreciation of the fiction. I would compare it against the various approaches tried by the Metal Gear Solid series to flesh out enemy characters. The Resident Evil way did not require characters to break out of the moment unnaturally to bug the player with sob stories that weren't truly pertinent.


No, Resident Evil was not entirely successful in all of its risky decisions. It could try to manipulate players into experiencing it a particular way, but it obviously couldn't force them to endure if they weren't having it. Although, as survival horror, it was supposed to be an uncomfortable experience, being that it was a game, which could still be won or lost, the seemingly deliberately poor gameplay could become overwhelming if the player struggled too long to adapt to the admittedly unintuitive design. It sat on the razor's edge between inducing fear and merely frustrating, and a player who too often fell on the wrong side of that might be justifiably encouraged to walk away. While I like to keep an open mind, I too have limits to what I can endure, and, believe me, I've come up against games that, though interesting, crossed that line and forced me to turn away.

But to complain about the very deliberate design choices of Resident Evil would be akin to criticizing a film over personal objections to a character's behavior, even though it may be perfectly consistent with that character's personality and history. The movie quite possibly even intended to elicit such a response, in which case it should be considered a success, insofar as it achieved what it set out to accomplish. Given how popular the series remains, the game obviously clicked with a good many players, but its detractors often miss the point in telling Mikami how his game is supposed to play, when he surely knows far better what he was going for. It comes back to the key difference with video games, in that, because of the interactivity, the player does expect to claim a creative role in the experience. In a way, it is perhaps the game fans themselves who refuse to take game creators as artists.


Additional Information

As everyone surely knows, the GameCube Resident Evil was a remake, the original having been released six years earlier for the Sony PlayStation. That release was followed a year later by Resident Evil: Director's Cut for the PS1. It added an "arranged" mode that apparently featured some different camera angles and also changed up item and enemy placements. In 1998, a yet newer edition, the DualShock Version, added support for Sony's DualShock controller, also replacing the in-game music in what was otherwise a reissue of the Director's Cut.

The Director's Cut editions also restored the auto-aiming that had always been a part of the Japanese release but had been foolishly removed from the first English edition. I couldn't imagine getting through the game without this feature. Playing the GameCube version, it had quickly become automatic for me, every time I turned a corner, to press the aim button to see if my character could lock on to something that I couldn't see.

Although I remain curious about the early editions, I haven't had the time yet to go back and try them. I did, however, play Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. The 2006 Nintendo DS title was a port of the original version of the PS1 game, although it restored the auto-aiming and also added the useful 180-degree turn. It also included a different optional arranged mode that made use of DS features like the microphone and touch controls.

Playing Deadly Silence, it struck me just how substantial the GameCube remake really had been. Far from being a side project assigned to a B-team, it was developed by Mikami and Capcom as the next major Resident Evil project. Puzzles were tinkered with, the plot was fleshed out a bit and given a more serious tone, and all the graphics were redone from the ground up to transform a very dated PS1 title into one of the best-looking games on the GameCube (or the Wii, for that matter). Truly, it set the gold standard for video game remakes.

Just as amazing, however, was the realization that the fundamental experience was already there in those primitive 32-bit graphics. The better production values made the GameCube version that much more immersive, but pretty much everything I've said applies equally to the original game.

The classic game also had unique charms, such as the laughably horrendous voice acting and dialogue, and even a no-budget live-action opening sequence to complete the B-movie feel.

The Essentials #42: Chrono Trigger

Nearly a decade before financial difficulties led to its stunning merger with Enix, Square fulfilled many a genre enthusiast's dream by bringing together the creative minds behind Japan's two biggest role-playing game series, its own Final Fantasy and Enix's Dragon Quest, for a one-shot super game. 1995's Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was conceived and supervised jointly by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy, and Yuji Horii, creator of Dragon Quest. It featured the character designs of DQ's Akira Toriyama and the music of FF's Nobuo Uematsu. But the "dream team" did not end with those four. Kazuhiko Aoki, a battle designer for FFIII and FFIV, and later the scenario writer for FFIX, would take the producer credit. The assemblage of talent he then brought together reads like a veritable who's who of figures in JRPG development, and, for many of them, Chrono Trigger was in fact the title that truly launched their careers.

Director credits were shared among Takashi Tokita (lead designer and scenario writer for FFIV), Yoshinori Kitase (director, writer, and producer who would essentially take the reins of the Final Fantasy series with FFVII), and Akihiko Matsui (a battle designer for FFIV). Tokita and Kitase also contributed to the script, which was outlined initially by Yuji Horii. The bulk of the writing was handled by scenario writer Masato Kato, who would later contribute scenes to FFVII (he takes credit for the "Cloud in a wheelchair" episode) and Xenogears, among other Square titles. More significantly, Kato would go on to become the main man behind the Chrono series, writing and directing semi-sequels Radical Dreamers and Chrono Cross, before leaving Square to become a freelance scenario writer. His friend and frequent collaborator, Yasunori Mitsuda, subsequently the second most recognized Japanese game music composer after Nobuo Uematsu, actually provided most of the music. Uematsu only came on board later in development to relieve Mitsuda's overwhelming workload by adding a few tracks. Even Noriko Matsueda (FFX-2) helped out with one jazzy piece. Also on the sound team, working on sound effects, was Yoshitaka Hirota, later the main composer for the Shadow Hearts series. Behind Akira Toriyama on the art team were graphic director Tetsuya Takahashi (creator of Xenogears and Xenosaga) and field graphic artists Tetsuya Nomura (Square's top character designer since FFVII, as well as the creator of the Kingdom Hearts series), Yusuke Naora (art director for FFVII, FFVIII, and FFX), and Yasuyuki Honne (director and art director on the Baten Kaitos games).

Deep list of Japanese names aside, the dream project delivered the perfect marriage of the artful narrative and aesthetic of Dragon Quest with the high concept appeal and playability of Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest (AKA Dragon Warrior) was never actually very popular in the West, and I personally only recently got into the series with DQVIII, so I missed out on the shifting perspective of DQIV and the multi-generational narrative of DQV. But playing through DQVIII did leave me with a finer appreciation for what Yuji Horii must have contributed to Chrono Trigger. More lighthearted and composed compared to the raw melodrama of the sprawling Final Fantasy epics, and considerably more coherent than subsequent Masato Kato scripts, everything in Chrono Trigger seemed so perfectly ordered and controlled. The tightly woven adventure experienced few lulls or lapses. Never would the player be left wondering why the characters were fighting some random monster in some random dungeon. With the exception of one glaring loose end that was almost assuredly deliberately left hanging by Kato, every twist seemed to fit sensibly in a plan that made for one of the most cleverly constructed time travel narratives of any medium, full of delightful paradoxes and closed circles.

Yet what made the story of Chrono Trigger so magical for me was not even the main plot of the heroes traveling across time on a selfless mission to unravel a chain of events that would result in the destruction of a far-off future. It was the stirring subplots, like Lucca traveling back in time to set right a tragedy in her own life. Or the robotic Robo taking on a mission that would last hundreds of years in solitary diligence for him, but mere seconds for his time-hopping human friends to bear the fruits of his labor. Yes, Robo and Lucca are probably my favorite video game characters of all time, but the game balanced a cast full of charming personalities, and the best part of the experience was getting to know them all.


One Dragon Quest tradition that I did not so much enjoy seeing carried over was the mute protagonist. Venturing far from proper "role-playing games," JRPGs are so heavily scripted and linear that I've never understood the argument in utilizing silent protagonists as a way to immerse the player. There is never anywhere near enough choice in these games to really allow players to identify themselves as the main character, so I would almost always say that a story would be better served to paint a protagonist that is independently interesting. The only semi-convincing point I've heard in defense of the device is that, while we may not insert ourselves as the protagonist, every player is free to project a personality of their pleasing on the mute character, rather than having to accept a hero only by the artist's strictly defined image. That's worked for me on occasion, though I think I may not be doing it right, because the personality that I seem to always project is that of a really quiet guy with no will of his own. Chrono Trigger certainly did not change my mind on the matter, and one of the things that most annoyed me was the perceived passivity of the unfortunately named Crono, in the face of other characters so bursting with charisma. But it did provide me one very special moment:

(HIGHLIGHT TO VIEW SPOILERS)

About halfway through the adventure, something amazing happens. With the party facing imminent annihilation at the hands of a world-destroying monster, Crono alone is able to stand and continue fighting. The player approaches the enemy, and Crono automatically assumes his battle stance. Then the unthinkable happens. Crono dies! Yet the player is somehow still in it, and the game goes on, driven by the other party members. Reflecting in the aftermath of that shock, I realized that, in that transformative moment severing the link between player and player character, the silent avatar had become his own person. For as he stood resolute against oblivion and died for his friends, it was not my doing, but his choice. And the only things more inspiring than his sacrifice would be the devotion of his friends and the lengths they would go to to bring him back.


It's also worth noting that, even after it became possible to swap characters freely in and out of the party, each party member still had something to say about every event. These were always simple observations--the characters could never have direct dialogue with one another--but they were actually distinct and context-sensitive lines, reflecting, not just their idiosyncratic speech patterns, but their different personalities.

While Horii may very well be one of the industry's superior storytellers, I've found that he makes some of the most stupidly unplayable JRPGs in the business. Whatever his stamp on the finished product, Chrono Trigger was undeniably and thankfully a Square game and not one of his sadistic Enix joints. One of the most accessible JRPGs released up to that point, it enjoyed a much more lenient difficulty curve than the grind-heavy Dragon Quest, or even Final Fantasy games of the time.

In a departure from the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest norm, Chrono Trigger did away with random encounters. I'm rather of two minds on this issue, but if I had to pick a side, I'd say that I favor random encounters in moderation over the common alternatives. Chrono Trigger was less needlessly stressful than, say, Persona 3 or certain recent Tales games, where enemies actually chase you and can initiate surprise attacks, but there was still a degree of anxiety in dungeon exploration. Although you could often see enemies on the field, rarely was it possible for the party to avoid the obvious ambushes. Worse yet, these foes would respawn every time you left and returned to a room, which happened frequently in this back-and-forth time traveling adventure. The actual fighting was never very difficult, but it became dreadful nonetheless, knowing every time when you were about to be attacked. I imagine it would be like knowing the exact date of your death in advance; you might be better able to plan out your life, but the living would be made less enjoyable, because the knowledge would cast a pall over every pleasure.

Once initiated, combat was handled with a barely modified revision of Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle system, originally designed by Hiroyuki Ito, who worked on Chrono Trigger as an event planner. One difference was that battles occurred directly on the field with no cut to a separate battle screen, and characters and enemies took positions roughly where they stood, introducing minor spacial considerations in the areas of effect of certain techniques. Party members' individual action menus were also now laid out separately, so that the player was not forced to assign commands exactly in order according to the characters' speed ratings. This was significant mainly in that the player could wait for multiple characters to ready up for orders at the same time, at which point the option for cooperative maneuvers would become available, allowing two or three party members to synchronize their signature moves. While cool to look at, I did not find them particularly useful, aside from a handful of early combos imbuing physical attacks with elemental attributes. Most were no more than the sums of the individual techniques that comprised them, with the additional downside being that, if one participating party member became incapacitated before a selected combo could be performed, all characters involved would end up missing that turn. It was usually wiser just to rely on characters' personal abilities.


Chrono Trigger's greatest innovation may have been the "New Game+" feature, allowing players to carry their endgame experience and equipment over into a breezy second playthrough. It was consequently one of the very few JRPGs that I played through more than once. Part of the incentive for replaying was that, in successive playthroughs, it was possible to warp directly to the final boss fight at any time during the adventure, and defeating it at different points would yield different endings. These were mostly short gag endings that saw the timeline becoming a comic mess because, in beating the game prematurely, the characters would fail to thoroughly cover the changes they wrought. They should not be mistaken for what comes to mind when game makers these days boast of offering multiple paths and endings. There was still only the one real ending with a few variations, but if the multiple endings were not a particularly meaningful innovation, they nevertheless provided some good fun.

Square Enix's shameless whoring out of the Final Fantasy name has turned segments of the gaming community against the company and franchise, to the extent that even the classics have lost a lot of their luster in the eyes of cynics. Chrono Trigger, however, despite a disappointing sequel and no shortage of ports, remains beloved by all. It still regularly contends for the titles of "greatest Square game," "greatest JRPG," "greatest SNES game," and even just "greatest video game of all time." I don't personally love it quite as much as the best Final Fantasy titles, mainly on account of its shallow combat and mute protagonist, but it is without a doubt one of the finest games ever made.


Additional Information

To coincide with the release of the long-awaited Chrono Cross, Square put out a 1999 port of Chrono Trigger for the Sony PlayStation. Released in North America in 2001 as one half of Final Fantasy Chronicles, it was the same game, only with lengthy load times and some brand new hand-drawn animated cut scenes, including one to set up the story of Chrono Cross.

Much as some of George Lucas's additions to the special editions of the original Star Wars trilogy may have done more harm than good, I am of the camp that firmly believes that these scenes ruin the game. Ironically, my personal complaint is that the animation injects Crono with a smirking personality that he never showed before as a voiceless 16-bit sprite, and it's one that conflicts with the image that I had formerly projected upon him. It basically upends my interpretations of his actions, and it makes all the more evident the trouble with the silent protagonist device.

With the Square Enix merger having brought Yuji Horii back to the house of Chrono, and with Masato Kato having returned to working regularly on Square Enix projects, there has been speculation that we might finally see some new movement in the series. So far, all we've gotten is another port of Chrono Trigger, this time for the Nintendo DS. The 2008 release includes the additions to the PS1 version, with none of that version's performance issues. There are also some new optional dungeons and modes that can easily be ignored. Of greatest interest to followers of the Chrono story are a new optional boss and an attached ending that inelegantly ties into the plot of Radical Dreamers, which itself was supposed to have been overwritten by Chrono Cross.