Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland – Living the Arlandian Life

September 4, 2020 Pete Davison 3 Comments

This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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So far in our exploration of Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland, we’ve seen how the game features a return to the time-limited nature of early Atelier games, and how the alchemy system has an unprecedented level of depth.

Today, we continue our look at this important and influential installment in the series with a closer look at how the whole game is structured, and how this differs significantly from the previous five games.

Most notably, Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland kicks off a subseries of Atelier that, while seemingly providing more restrictions than in the past thanks to the time limit, actually provides a lot of freedom for you to approach your long-term goals as you see fit.

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Data East Collection 1, Evercade

Midnight Resistance: Under Lock and Key

September 3, 2020 Pete Davison 2 Comments

Throughout the 8- and 16-bit home computer and console eras, we saw numerous developers “paying homage” to one another’s work — and often developing their own interesting twists on the formula in the process.

One cannot look at Data East’s 1989 release Midnight Resistance and not think of Konami’s Contra from two years prior, for example, but in practice the two games play quite differently, developing their own distinct identities in the process.

These days, Contra is by far the better known game, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore Midnight Resistance for yourself. And, as luck would have it, Midnight Resistance can be found in its Mega Drive incarnation on the Data East Collection 1 cartridge for the Evercade retro gaming system — so let’s take a closer look!

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Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Winter Games

September 3, 2020 Pete Davison 1 Comment

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for multi-sport athletics games, and it’s a genre of game we don’t tend to see all that often any more. Hence, I often find myself looking back to retro games to get my fill.

One of the earliest games of this type I remember playing was Winter Games by Epyx — this may well have been the very first game I ever played on our Atari ST, in fact; it was certainly one of the first pieces of software we owned for the machine, anyway — and one of the first games my brother ever reviewed, kicking off a lifelong career in the games press and surrounding fields.

Enjoy my questionable wintry athleticism in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Tiffani Hildebrand

September 2, 2020 Pete Davison 5 Comments

One of the things the Atelier series has always done well is infuse its secondary characters who are of minimal importance to the main narrative with just as much personality as its leads.

A good example of this is Tiffani Hildebrand from the Atelier Arland series, who first appears in Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland and sticks around for its follow-up Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. In mechanical terms, she’s a shopkeeper. In personality terms, however, she’s so much more.

There’s also a disappointing lack of fanart of her online. Someone get to work, quick! In the meantime, though, let’s take our time to celebrate Atelier Tiffani: The Mom of Arland and her official art.

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short;Play, Videos

short;Play: Microsoft Flight Simulator

September 2, 2020 Pete Davison 3 Comments

Microsoft Flight Simulator is the new “can it run Crysis?” game in terms of the demand it places on one’s hardware, but aside from that it’s also one of the most impressive, ambitious, sprawling pieces of interactive entertainment ever created.

Providing you with literally the entire world to explore — and in a jaw-dropping level of detail, too — there’s the potential for limitless enjoyment here, whether you’re a seasoned virtual pilot or a newcomer to simulated civil aviation.

Sit back, fasten your seatbelt and let’s go on a flight, as I demonstrate some aspects of this massive simulation on a virtual flight from the village where I grew up to the city where I live now. And don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Magicami DX

Magicami DX: Magical Girls Go Punk

September 1, 2020 Pete Davison 5 Comments

Critics of popular Asian free-to-play games often joke that those who invest money into their hobbies are “paying money for JPEGs of their favourite characters”.

While obviously a somewhat mean-spirited exaggeration, the truth of the matter is that, barring a few notable exceptions, free-to-play mobile games do tend to eschew flashy technical prowess in favour of a constant barrage of new playable storylines, special events and collaborations with popular franchises. And their players don’t seem to mind this relative lack of “wow factor”; the immensely popular and long-running Granblue Fantasy, for example, is little more than a collection of sluggishly loading HTML pages playing some low bitrate audio in the background, but it shows no sign of slowing down.

With all this in mind, though, wouldn’t it be nice to find a free-to-play game that combined the things people enjoy about this sort of experience with rather higher production values than usual? Well, enter Magicami DX, a game which came out in 2019 back home in Japan, and which has now found itself localised for the browsers and mobile devices of English speakers thanks to adult gaming specialists Nutaku, who you may recall I had a nice chat with a little while back.

Let’s take a first look!

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Videos

Atari A to Z: Computer War

September 1, 2020 Pete Davison 2 Comments

Nuclear war is a scary prospect, but as a general rule we, the people of the world, don’t seem to be nearly as nervous about its possibility as we were back in the 1980s, for one reason or another.

The ’80s, as we’ve seen a few times on this series, played host to a variety of media that acknowledged and explored the strong degree of paranoia and fear that existed with regard to the United States’ Cold War with Russia in various ways. One of those pieces of media was the excellent movie WarGames, which in turn inspired several video game adaptations on various platforms.

One such video game was Thorn EMI’s Computer War for Atari 8-bit, a game I very much enjoyed when I was a kid — and still like firing up now and then today. Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

My Time With Dee Dee

My Time With Dee Dee, Vol. 4: First Look

August 31, 2020 Pete Davison 2 Comments

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll know that friend of the site and big bossman of DigitallyDownloaded.net Matt Sainsbury has been beavering away at a series of visual novels of late.

Collectively known as My Time With Dee Dee, each “volume” of the series focuses on a particular aspect of literature and explores it in depth from a practical perspective, both through the volume’s own narrative and a bonus academic-style explanation of the genre or school of thought.

To date, we’ve taken on the erotic thriller in the first volume, the concept of the male gaze in the second, and existentialism in the third. Now, with the upcoming fourth volume, Sainsbury has set himself a challenging goal: to explore, challenge and confront the ideas of the Marquis de Sade. To that end, he sent me an early version of the new game to take a look at and see what I thought. So let’s do just that!

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Announcements, Community

Around the Network

August 30, 2020 Pete Davison 1 Comment

Good evening everyone, and I hope those of you in the idiot-infested United Kingdom are looking forward to a bank holiday tomorrow.

As always, there’s been plenty going on around here, and I haven’t even had to leave the house to do any of it. Just the ticket during these difficult times, I’m sure you’ll agree — so I hope the things I’ve made bring you some entertainment if you, too, have been stuck in your home.

Hit the jump and let’s catch up on what you might have missed in the last week.

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Millipede

August 30, 2020 Pete Davison Leave a comment

You might wonder what the appeal of having several different versions of the same game in one compilation is. Indeed, dear viewer, I was right there with you until recently.

Then I played the Atari 5200 version of Millipede — an unreleased prototype that was essentially a port of the version for Atari home computers. And I was blown away by quite how enjoyable it was. For me, it’s ended up being an even more appealing way to play the game than the arcade original.

To be fair, any Millipede is good Millipede, but to see what makes this version special check out the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

MoeGamer