My First Eight Playstation Games, Part 4: the Platformers

(this is the last post of the series. The earlier ones are here, here, and here.)

7. Croc: Legend of the Gobbos

I’ve read people complain about Croc being one of the most poorly conceived characters of any videogame, and frankly I don’t understand the hate. Sure, he’s a uber-precious plushiebaiting rendition of an animal nobody would want in their backyards, but it makes sense to me for him to be like that. Check the youtube video and see how he was brought up.

Also, who exactly were they comparing him to when they ragged on how poorly designed he was? I prefer him to most of his contemporaries of animals/anthropomorphs with attitudes.

Crash Bandicoot has that pedophile grin:

The grin! 

Jersey Devil has that corny mad scientist dark motif (don’t be too hard on Jersey Devil though, because I love that game):

Yeah, I’m DAAAARK!

Gex the Gecko obnoxiously tries to be cool by throwing one-liners, wearing shades and starring alongside a Baywatch emeritus:

I’m like, totally rad, dude! 

Knuckles the Echidna has that fake dreadlocks and that sneer (no pictures. Sorry, I’m too lazy to search for Knuckle’s pics).

Bubsy just plain infuriates:

STATEMENT T-SHIRT!!! 

Spyro the Dragon has a voice so deadpan that President Arroyo sounds like a master of elocution in comparison:

See, his friends are in peril and all he does is say “looks like I’ve got things to do” like he’s a hard-boiled dragon. Show some emotions, jeez!

Anyway, in case we’ve forgotten, we’re talking about this game:

Croc is a crocodile trying to save his surrogate father while wearing a backpack. He’s minding his own business, and he’s the one getting the hate? Okay then let’s compare soundtracks. Hum me the songs of any games Crash, Jersey Devil, Gex, Knuckles (okay, at least some games with Knuckles have decent songs), Bubsy, or Spyro appeared in. Okay times up, didn’t think so. Now how about we listen to Croc’s?

Croc Theme (Justin Scharvona, Karin Griffin, Martin Gwynn Jones)

Croc is not a Mario 64 beater that it positions itself to be, but so aren’t Gex and Spyro etcetera etcetera. I like the titular character Croc because he does not look like relics of 90s cartoons, and that he has greater motives than all other Mario wannabes. When I first saw his opening movie I couldn’t help thinking, “I want to save his father NOW!”

And it isn’t easy to do so. The game plays a lot like Mario 64 but it is much harder. For most part the game plays smoothly, and collecting gems and saving Gobbos (creatures that look like balls of fur) have their charms, but there are times when I couldn’t see where to jump at because of bad camera angles. So even though I liked Croc I hoped for a sequel that would fix the camera and the difficulty. Part 2 eventually came, but along with pointless Jello endorsements it wasn’t as good as part 1 and it didn’t bother fixing old problems while bringing hosts of new ones, effectively killing all possible sequels.

8. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

Just when I’m getting tired of writing, I find out that I haven’t described Klonoa yet. At the beginning of the story Klonoa, a dog with big ears, finds a living magical ring named Huepow. They travel together throughout the game - Klonoa jumps and floats while Huepow fights. Huepow’s power is the highlight of the game, because he does not hurt anyone so much as turn them into a ball that Klonoa can either throw to other enemies or use as a spring to jump even higher. Really, this game is competent 2D platformer and it plays a lot like Super Mario Brothers. It’s near-flawless and its only drawback is its being too easy, but since it’s obviously aimed for younger audiences anyway, I was cool with that. Better they play this game than soulless movie-licensed games, right?

Sadly, those soulless movie-licensed games have sold more than this game, even if it has a very vibrant look and some catchy tunes. Sequels are made anyway, and with Klonoa’s most recent appearance in Namco X Capcom, it’s clear that Namco hasn’t forgotten about this dog.

Well, who can forget him? The story is minimal, as I’m mostly just watching Klonoa and Huepow becoming inseparable buddies. Yet, the game ends with one of the most powerful revelations I ever saw in any videogames. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve never been as heartbroken in any game as I have after watching Klonoa’s ending. Not in Final Fantasy VII or Metal Gear Solid or any of those games that belabors with tons of epic cinematic presentations, but in a game about a dog. And really, if a game of this simple nature is enough to make a few people cry, imagine what can happen in the future of videogame storytelling.

My First Eight Playstation Games, Part 3: the Capcom’s

(read the part 2 and part 1 too!)

5. Megaman Legends

I wanted to get Megaman X4 and Megaman 8 in my PS bundle, but both games were nowhere to be found (I suppose they’re so popular that they never went to the bargain bins). So I settled for Megaman Legends. When I first played this game I did not like it, and I detested the controls. By then I had already played Mario 64, and I just couldn’t get used to playing another 3D game that was not controlled by an analog stick. I had this game shoved aside for more than five years.

By year 2003 (when I was bored with Friendster), I pulled this game out of the shelf and started all over again. I still couldn’t get over how badly it controlled, but I grew to like it. Though it is part of Megaman universe, it is not like other Megaman games where I scale platforms and blast evil robots to acquire their weapons. Yeah, sure, sans the weapon acquisition, the blasting part is still intact, but this game plays more like a 3D Action-RPG (just like Ocarina of Time) with Megaman as the main character. It has the quirks of a normal RPG, since it has towns and dungeons, and I get to earn cash to buy equipments, weapons and armors.

Tron Bonne and a Servbot

This is also the Megaman with the best antagonist. Other Megaman games have enemies that look cool but have little personalities (e.g. Bass, Vile and Sigma). Megaman Legends has Tron Bonne, a bratty, mischievous, scheming and thieving villainess who commands Servbots, an army of super-adorable Lego-alikes. Unlike all other Megaman villains, she isn’t really bad in that she does not have any plans of ruling the world; sometimes she benevolently helps other people. She is merely greedy for treasures, just like Megaman and his friends (although her greed is less innocent), and I always feel bad about having to blast her robots to smithereens. She also has a big crush on Megaman even if they fight with each other all the time; it is funny seeing her simultaneously hating and liking him.

She has also appeared in Megaman Legends 2 (which fixes the control issues I have with the first part), has starred in her own game called the Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and is a playable character in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Namco X Capcom. She is very memorable and I regard her as one of videogames’ best female characters. I really want to see her in future Capcom games, especially those related to Megaman Legends, because she is from that one time when Capcom did not make an oversexed cleavage-exposing temptress.

6. Pocket Fighters

This plays like a standard Capcom fighting game, and it has characters from Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, and Red Earth. True to the title, the fighters here are shrunk and given chibi appearances, making everyone look like a kid. The game is odd because when I fight, gems get scattered over the screen. Collect enough gems and my fighter becomes stronger: for example, after leveling up in this way Ryu’s small Hadouken becomes a big flaming Hadouken. It’s really a fun game to watch because the animations are hilarious and all the characters, even the otherwise morose Akuma, have wacky taunts, costume-changes and role-plays. My only gripe here is that out of 12 characters, six are Shotokan fighters (in layman’s term, six characters play like Ryu).

My First Eight Playstation Games, Part 2: the RPG’s

(continued from here)

3. Granstream Saga

I have just recently learned that this game is the fourth of a series of games known as the Soul Blazer series. It’s strange because Granstream Saga has a publisher different from its 3 older brothers; it is not by Enix, but by THQ. The other three Soul Blazer games are Enix’s equivalent of Zelda, and unfortunately they have not sold well. Terranigma, third game of the series, has not even gotten a North American release - a pity since it is a great game and it has a story that rivals Squaresoft’s finest.

Like the previous three games, Granstream Saga is obscure; unlike them, however, this is not a Zelda clone, but more of a hybrid of a traditional RPG and a fighting game. While it has all the town and dungeon explorations prevalent in RPG’s, it plays like a fighting game whenever I battle. My character would engage in one-on-one combats with any enemy, and he slashes, defends, and does magic, all in real time and at precisely the moment I press their assigned buttons. I like Granstream Saga because it uses fighting game mechanics to help ease the tedium of RPG’s combats just by getting me more involved in the action. The dystopian story about floating continents that were gradually sinking is done very well, and it doesn’t hurt that the characters have left quite an impression to me.

This one has left an impression too:

4. Tactics Ogre

At this point anyone who has been playing videogames since the PS era has heard of Final Fantasy Tactics. What most of them don’t know is that FFT takes much of its ideas from Tactics Ogre. TO also has the class changes and the fantasy politico-plot that was quite the rage in the PS days. It was a major hit in Japan then and it ranked on number seven in Japanese Famitsu’s list of top 100 games of all time.

Sadly, I never got very far in this game. Not to sell it short or anything, but I wish there were an English translation of the game for the SNES (yes, it is originally for SNES. The PS version is a remake). The game is good, but it is hampered by long loading times, and since tactics games are never meant to be fast-paced, it just requires hefty time investments. I once heard that the game takes 80 hours to complete, and that’s for one ending, and this game has 8. If this came out on SNES I’d gladly play it on an emulator while abusing the fast-forward feature.

My First Eight Playstation Games, Part 1: the Racers

I just listened to the premiere episode of GameCritics’ podcast. It lasted for an hour, so I suggest that instead of listening to it while sitting in front of your computer (which is what I did), just download it and then use it while driving/commuting to work. It’s not short stuff, but I liked it because I liked how they talked about the state of videogame reviewing, and about how valid Roger Moore’s critique of Max Payne’s film adaptation was. If you don’t have my patience and would just like to listen to the best parts of it, though, go somewhere near the 40 minute mark, where the staffs disagree with Roger Moore’s scathing criticism of videogames as not being able to make people cry. They mentioned a few games that, though not making them shed tears, have been very emotionally affecting. One of such games happens to be among the first eight games that I got when I bought my first PlayStation, which was in 1998. Actually, this post is about those eight games. You can read about that one game they referred to on the number 8 of this list.

A family friend owns the store where I got my PS, which is why an additional controller, a memory card, and eight free games of my choice were comprised in my special, discounted bundle. The catch is that none of the free games were recognized big-named titles; they were more of bargain games that the store was hoping to clear from inventory. Still, I can’t say any of the games are bad; it’s quite the opposite. That I can name all of them even after 10 years is a testament of their quality (that have unfortunately not been acknowledged enough).

1. Porsche Challenge

Okay, so I may have exaggerated a bit: one of the eight games does not deserve to be remembered that well, and it’s this. Porsche Challenge is not really bad because I don’t recall it having any significant flaw; it just doesn’t add anything new to the racing genre. This game is primitive because it dates back to the era when it’s already a big deal to have one car manufacturer sponsor a videogame (Lamborghini also has a game in Super Nintendo, and I like that game more). Additionally, I believe that one of the major pitfalls of some genres of videogames – i.e. first person shooter, real time strategy, and in this case racing - is that after playing their most recent titles, their old games will feel antiquated. Gran Turismo is already out when I have played Porsche Challenge, and there exists a gulf between the scopes of each. The former is a racing simulator where I acquire licenses, win races, earn money, buy cars and custom parts; in the latter, well, I just race, and it isn’t even as fast and exciting as any Sega or Namco arcade racing games (like Ridge Racer and Sega Rally). I did not feel the Porsche-ness of these Porsche cars.

2. Road Rash 3D

Road Rash 3D is the 3D migration of an existing game, hence the title. The earlier Road Rash, which came out in Sega Genesis, is a sleeper hit, or at least that’s what I hear all the time since I’ve never played that game. I actually like Road Rash 3D a lot and it is in my list of ‘why aren’t there more games of this type’. It is essentially a motorcycle-racing game, or perhaps I should call it bikers game. The races are dirty because I can hit other bikers with batons just to slow them down. Definitely don’t do that in real life, but it’s cool to do so in this game because nobody in it suffers any serious injury from all the fighting anyway. And I can also jump over cars. How cool is that?