Category Archives: Essentials

A collection of articles highlighting noteworthy or interesting games from the libraries of lesser-appreciated, rarer or retro systems, and in specific genres.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+: Falcom’s forgotten gem

Falcom make some absolutely fantastic games, but speak to a self-professed “Falcom fan” and they’ll almost certainly only want to talk about the Trails series — or, more likely, “Kiseki”, because as we all know, referring to something with its original Japanese title rather than a widely accepted localised version makes you a Better Fan Of The Thing.

That’s a real pity, because while Trails is an amazing series — and one I’m fully intending to binge at some point, right from Trails in the Sky through to Trails Through Daybreak and beyond — Falcom is far from a one-trick pony. There’s the Ys series, for starters, which we’ve already talked about at length on this here site, and then there’s “everything else”.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+, of course, falls into this latter category. It’s technically part of the Xanadu series, but Falcom’s intentions for this game mean that it might as well be considered as its own self-contained thing, and as such can be enjoyed completely on its own merits. So let’s take a closer look!

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Princess Peach Showtime: a short run on stage, destined to be forgotten

I finished Princess Peach Showtime last night, and I came away with a resounding feeling of “that was all right”.

It was decent. It was fine. It was okay. I enjoyed it well enough. But it didn’t set my world alight. At the same time, it wasn’t bad. I didn’t hate it. I don’t feel the need to rant and rave about things it may or may not do “wrong”. It was just… fine.

That’s a bit of a shame, though, given that this was the first time Peach had taken the starring role in a game since 2005’s Super Princess Peach on Nintendo DS. I’m not entirely surprised that Princess Peach Showtime ended up being how it is, particularly after playing the demo, but I do feel like there could have been a bit more to it. So let’s talk about that!

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Alone in the Dark 2024: a return to form for classic survival horror

Poor old Alone in the Dark has been through the wringer over the years.

First released on MS-DOS PC in 1992, it garnered critical acclaim for its innovative gameplay, presentation and wonderful atmosphere, and remains an essential play for anyone interested in the history of the survival horror genre. Without the original Alone in the Dark, we may not have had the Resident Evil series — at least not in the form it took in its early years.

Subsequent entries struggled to live up to the legacy of their predecessor, however… particularly when various companies attempted to “reboot” the franchise on several occasions in the intervening decades. But now Alone in the Dark is very much back on track, thanks to yet another reboot, this time developed by Pieces Interactive and published by THQ Nordic. Let’s take a closer look.

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The400 Mini: A great entry point to exploring a range of underappreciated computers

When The400 Mini was first announced, reactions could be divided into roughly two distinct camps: the “OMG finally the Atari 8-bit is getting the recognition it deserves” crew, and the “WTF is an Atari 400” brigade. Those of you who know me well will already know which camp I fall into.

For the sake of the latter group, the Atari 400 (and, by extension, the entire Atari 8-bit line) is well worth exploring, because although in the long term it lost out to platforms such as the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in terms of popularity, it was a pioneer in the home computing space and, in fact, the birthplace of a variety of widely beloved games.

The400 Mini is a great place to start exploring exactly where Atari home computers fit into the grand history of home computers and video games. There are a couple of things that, at launch, could do with a bit of tweaking — but there are also a few things you can do with it that you might not expect. So today we’re going to talk about all of those things!

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Gruds in Space: an early take on the graphic adventure

Back in the early days of adventure games, there was a hard divide between people who liked text-only adventures — today typically referred to as “interactive fiction”, though if we’re getting technical about it, there are some differences between interactive fiction and text adventures — and those who appreciated games with graphics.

There was a sort of unspoken (well, actually, sometimes spoken) assumption that text-only games were more “grown-up” and for more “intelligent” people, because they specifically required the use of your imagination, just like a good book. And there’s some merit to that argument.

But there were some interesting experiments going on concerning exactly what to do with the graphical capabilities of early ’80s home computers. And Gruds in Space from Sirius Software is a great example.

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Princess Peach: Showtime! – some impressions from the demo

I like Mario games, but I enjoy it more when Nintendo gives their other characters a bit of time to shine independently of the portly plumber. Which is why I’m so intrigued by Princess Peach: Showtime!, a game that seems to have been attempting to distance itself from the “platformer” designation in favour of… what?

Well, a demo came out for it yesterday, so I downloaded it today and gave it a play over lunchtime. The demo is pretty brief, consisting of just the game’s introductory sequence and two individual levels — one for Peach in her Swordfighter costume and another in her Patissiere outfit — but it was enough to intrigue me.

Let’s take a closer look, and ponder what I hope to see in the full game when it comes out later this month.

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Is Burnout Paradise still good?

It’s fair to say that Burnout Paradise was, on its original release, simultaneously very well received and rather controversial.

Few would deny that it is a quality game, and one packed with things to do both offline and online, but for some it also represented an early example of how open worlds were starting to make unwanted intrusions into all manner of different games.

That was in 2008. Ten years later, in 2018, Burnout Paradise Remastered was released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. And six years after that, I picked up a Switch copy for a tenner. Seems like a prime opportunity to see how well this game has stood the test of time, non? Read on, and let’s see.

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How Ace Attorney does so much with so little

We live in an age where, at the upper end of the market, video game budgets are spiralling out of control in a relentless pursuit of movie-like photorealism.

And yet, a series of games that first appeared just under 25 years ago (at the time of writing) has pretty consistently been doing such a great job of telling its stories with minimal tech that its publisher, Capcom, still regards it as one of its most valuable intellectual properties.

I am, of course, talking about the Ace Attorney series, and I thought it might be fun to look at some aspects of how these games present their stories to the audience — something that has remained fairly constant over its complete run, despite spanning several hardware generations. So let’s do just that!

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One Piece Mansion: the puzzle of stress management

One Piece Mansion is not a Capcom game I had any familiarity with whatsoever prior to receiving a surprise copy of it from a YouTube viewer a little while back.

I’ve spent a bit of time with it this evening, and there’s definitely some appeal there. It’s an exceedingly peculiar game, to be sure — and I’m all for exceedingly peculiar games at the best of times.

Thankfully One Piece Mansion backs its exceeding peculiarity up with some solid gameplay and original ideas, making it a worthwhile addition to your PlayStation library. Let’s take a closer look!

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Ace Attorney: evolving the Japanese adventure game formula

Playing through the two Famicom Detective Club games got me well and truly in the mood for some more adventuring. And so it was that I finally booted up the Nintendo Switch version of the first Ace Attorney Trilogy that I’ve had on my shelf for quite some time.

I’ve previously played all the Ace Attorney games except for the sixth one (and The Great Ace Attorney, and Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney… and the unlocalised second Ace Attorney Investigations game) so I already know the series quite well, but it’s been a good few years since I sat down and gave them some proper attention.

Moreover, I’ve somehow gone this long without ever writing about them here on MoeGamer, so today’s the day we fix that. Perhaps not for the last time, either.

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