Final Fantasy Marathon: Barrier Shift – Final Fantasy III #8

We’ve almost reached the first big milestone in Final Fantasy III’s main scenario!

But before we descend to the “world below” and discover what’s really going on, we have a major challenge standing in our way. Can we free King Argus and his subjects from the evil Hein — who regularly shifts his weak point, if no-one told you — and return peace to the Floating Continent?

Only one way to find out. Enjoy the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

The Brainies: Furry Balls

As we’ve seen a number of times already at this point, Blaze’s Evercade retro gaming platform is home to a wide variety of obscure titles that many people probably haven’t played — and which certainly haven’t been rereleased many times over the years.

Some great examples can be found on the two Interplay Collection cartridges, which include not only games that are associated with Interplay themselves, but also titles hailing from developers that subsequently ended up under the Interplay umbrella.

Interplay Collection 2, for example, plays host to a rather entertaining puzzle game featuring small, round, furry creatures. Let’s take a closer look at The Brainies, also known in some territories as Tiny Skweeks or The Tinies.

Continue reading The Brainies: Furry Balls

Atari ST A to Z: Rana Rama

Rana Rama is one of those games that most ST owners probably played at some point, since it was distributed as part of the “Super Pack” bundle of software with new STs in 1988. And from there, the rampant piracy of the period meant that the disks of the Super Pack tended to find their way into other people’s hands, too!

It’s an interesting game, though, and had quite an influence on a number of subsequent developers. Notably, its use of “fog of war” to gradually reveal rooms as you enter them inspired Simon Phipps to adopt a similar approach when developing his exploration-centric platformer Switchblade for Core Design.

There’s also some very interesting mechanics going on under the hood. Watch me try and figure things out in the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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Steam’s Inconsistency is Hurting Visual Novels – How We Can Help

Update: 05/08/2020

Steam has reinstated Bokuten after investigation confirmed the issue with the missed (and inaccessible) CGs mentioned below. This article remains relevant, however, because Steam’s treatment of MangaGamer in this incident was totally unacceptable. Original article follows.


Steam is the largest, most well-established PC gaming platform out there. For many gamers, “PC gaming” and “Steam” are pretty much synonymous.

To put it another way, in much the same way that Grandma thinks that Facebook is “the Internet”, there are many people out there who don’t look beyond Steam as a place to buy new games. And while there are perfectly valid reasons to favour Steam — its social features are pretty good, its frequent sales make gaming very affordable and it’s where you’ll find the largest communities for many online games — there are certain parts of the industry that are being treated extremely poorly by the platform.

One of those is the localised Japanese visual novel sector, which frequently finds itself the victim of Valve’s seemingly amorphous content policies. So it’s time we looked at what we, as a community, can perhaps do a bit differently.

Continue reading Steam’s Inconsistency is Hurting Visual Novels – How We Can Help

short;Play: 51 Worldwide Games

Also known as Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, this title is an essential part of any Switch library.

It marks Switch-era Nintendo making a keen effort to attract the same “family-friendly” audience that they courted with the Touch Generations games on Wii and Nintendo DS. It’s also a great way to learn or brush up your skills on some classic games, whether you’re playing solo or with friends.

Check out the tabletop action in the video below, read some more words about this great game here on MoeGamer, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

Warpman: Another Lost Namco Treasure

Probably the best thing about Blaze’s Evercade retro gaming platform is the fact that the releases so far have specifically eschewed hugely well-known retro titles in favour of hidden gems, lost treasures and just plain previously unlocalised titles.

A great example of this can be seen on the Namco Museum Collection 2 cartridge. Have you ever heard of Warpman? Chances are, unless you collect Famicom games, probably not; it’s a 1985 Japan-only sequel to a fairly obscure 1981 Namco arcade game called Warp & Warp, also known as Warp Warp for its North American release.

Warpman (and, by extension, Warp & Warp, which it closely resembles in gameplay terms) is a particularly interesting game, because it introduces a specific mechanic that, today, is more commonly associated with a later game from a completely different company. But Namco did it first! So let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Warpman: Another Lost Namco Treasure

Atari A to Z: Xirius Defect XXL

In the mood for a good puzzle? Well, fire up the ol’ Atari 8-bit because I’ve got a right cracker for you today.

Xirius Defect XXL is, as the name suggests, an expanded version of Xirius Defect, a modern Atari 8-bit title developed for the ABBUC software competition. This newer version adds a bunch of new levels, tightens up the mechanics (and the explanations thereof) and is an altogether polished package for anyone to enjoy.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 41 – Inti Creates, We Play

Welcome back! With the recent release of Dragon Marked for Death on PS4, we thought we were long overdue for an Inti Creates love-in on the podcast. Joining me today, as always, is my regular partner in crime, Chris Caskie of MrGilderPixels.

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You can subscribe to my channel on YouTube to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos (including the Atari A to Z retro gaming series); you can follow on Soundcloud for the audio-only version of the podcast; you can subscribe via RSS to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you can subscribe via iTunes and listen on Spotify. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

Enjoy the podcast in video and audio formats below:

And hit the jump for show notes!

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 41 – Inti Creates, We Play

Around the Network

I forgot to do this again last week, didn’t I? Apologies! The whole “situation in the world right now”, as everyone keeps euphemistically referring to it, is not doing wonders for my sense of time.

Anyway, I’m here now, and I have lots to share. On top of that, there’s a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast coming your way tomorrow, so please look forward to that.

So pull up a chair, pour yourself a pleasant beverage, and let’s catch up on what you might have missed over the last couple of weeks!

Continue reading Around the Network

Atari A to Z Flashback: Human Cannonball

Are you a bad enough dude to fire a small black stick figure out of a cannon into a rough approximation of a water tower?

If so, Human Cannonball for Atari 2600 may be for you. It’s a game probably best described as an early example of a physics puzzle, and it has its roots in the usually competitive “artillery game” genre.

There may not seem like there’s much to this game, but there’s a surprisingly addictive challenge while it maintains your interest. Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.