Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy Marathon, Videos

Final Fantasy Marathon: Soul of Rebirth – Final Fantasy II #19

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With Final Fantasy II down for the count, it’s time to move on… to Final Fantasy II’s postgame story, originally added in the Game Boy Advance version.

Soul of Rebirth, as it is called, casts you in the role of all the characters who died in the main narrative, and invites you to check out what they’re getting up to in the afterlife. And, indeed, to discover that one can still get one’s ass well and truly kicked even if one is already dead.

Soul of Rebirth is hard. But we’re not giving up, no siree — we’re seeing this thing through to its conclusion, however long it takes!

Mega Drive

Streets of Rage: Dawn of a Phenomenon

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The Streets of Rage series is an all-time great in gaming, and you could practically hear the collective sigh of relief from the entire community when the brand new fourth installment, released at the tail end of April 2020, turned out to be good.

How do the older installments hold up today, though? Having not played them for a few years, I figured “while I wait for my Limited Run copy of Streets of Rage 4 to arrive” would be the perfect time to revisit them all. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

We begin, of course, with the first game in the series, which first hit the streets in 1991 with releases for the Mega Drive, Master System and Game Gear. We’ll be concentrating on the 16-bit Mega Drive release for today, since that’s still the most readily available version for modern audiences. Let’s dive in.

Continue reading Streets of Rage: Dawn of a Phenomenon →

Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Final Legacy

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Final Legacy is a great game on Atari 8-bit, as we’ve previously seen. And, as we’ll see shortly, it could have been a great game on Atari 5200, too.

On the Atari ST, meanwhile… hmm. Not so hot. The problem in this case was the outfit doing the porting: Paradox Software, who were best known for putting out fairly mediocre fare at best, but who I can only assume were cheap to hire.

Final Legacy for Atari ST isn’t atrocious by any means… but if you have access to some means of playing either the 8-bit or 5200 version, there’s little reason to bother with this. But come check it out with me anyway, and admire quite how much worse Paradox made this version over the original!

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Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Nell Ellis

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Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm has an unusually small playable cast compared to other installments in the series. This is primarily down to the fact that two of the three playable leads are able to switch “Blades” any time they return to town, effectively giving them the functionality of multiple party members.

One of those privileged two is Nell Ellis, an energetic young woman who joins main protagonists Edge Vahnheit and Iris Fortner after getting into a fight with her sister Yula over the pair’s reasons for coming to the town of Zey Meruze. Yula appears to believe that the former prosperity of the Ellis family must be restored, regardless of cost, while Nell takes the rather more down to earth — and, it has to be said, friendly — viewpoint that they should make the best of the situation they’re in rather than moping over the glory days or doing something they might regret.

She’s a thoroughly likeable character, infused with a huge amount of personality over the course of Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm, so let’s take some time to appreciate her!

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Nell Ellis →

short;Play

short;Play: Cyber Protocol

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In today’s short;Play, we take a look at a Nintendo Switch-exclusive arcade puzzle game with a gorgeous ’80s-style aesthetic.

Cyber Protocol from RedDeerGames is a game where you’re attempting to save an android’s life. You do this by negotiating a series of perilous mazes, attempting to grab as many dots and bonus items as you can along the way.

If this all sounds a bit Pac-Man, you’d be right to an extent… but it’s the interesting additional twists on the formula — plus a rather different core movement mechanic — that make things truly interesting here.

Watch the video below, or subscribe on YouTube.

ADK Damashii, Neo Geo

Ninja Commando: Tiger and Dragon (And Eagle)

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ADK’s Ninja Combat is, as we’ve previously established, a game that is fun in principle but somewhat lacking in execution due to its extremely questionable difficulty balancing.

Two years after Ninja Combat helped to launch the Neo Geo, ADK returned to all things ninja with a spiritual successor. Enter Ninja Commando, which brought with it a shift in perspective from side-on to top-down, and a much more reasonable challenge for your average player — albeit one that still gets pretty tough in its latter levels!

Ninja Commando has been rereleased a few times over the years, and also forms part of the ADK Damashii collection for PlayStation 2, which is the version we’re primarily concerned with today. Let’s take a closer look!

Continue reading Ninja Commando: Tiger and Dragon (And Eagle) →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Leader Board

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Ah, golf. A good way to ruin a perfectly good walk, or something. Unless you’re playing it on your Atari 8-bit home computer, of course, in which case you don’t even have to get out of your chair!

Leader Board from Access Software wasn’t the first computerised golf game, nor was it the inventor of the power and accuracy meter system that many golf games continue to use to this day. But it did help to popularise the genre among home computer users, as well as cement a lot of conventions that have very much stood the test of time.

If you can play Everybody’s Golf, you can play Leader Board… in theory, at least. I can definitely do the former, so let’s see if the latter is true, shall we?

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One-Shots, Switch

Lonely Mountains: Downhill – Bringing the Outside Inside

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For a lot of us, the more “extreme” sports are probably best left in the realm of fantasy, because we’d probably kill ourselves within about five seconds of starting.

I, for example, know that while I am perfectly capable of riding a bike, I would almost certainly be never heard from ever again were you to put me at the summit of a mountain atop a suitable bicycle and encourage me to enjoy a scenic but perilous trail down to the bottom. Which is a shame, because I rather enjoy the peacefulness of being out in nature — the breeze brushing past you, the clear air and the relaxing, soothing sounds of being far from “civilisation”.

Lucky, then, that we have games like Lonely Mountains: Downhill, which allow you to enjoy at least some of that experience from the comfort of your sofa — and without any risk of injuries ranging from grazed knees to catastrophic eruption of ribcage from torso. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Lonely Mountains: Downhill – Bringing the Outside Inside →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

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Good morning everybody! Sorry this is a day late, but I was up until 2am finishing Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm; I’d rather foolishly believed I’d do this “afterwards”. Oh well!

Anyway, it’s been a busy week as always! Lots to catch up on if you’ve been busy — although chances are if you’re being good boys and girls and Staying At Home, Protecting the NHS (Or Local Equivalent) and Saving Lives, then you haven’t been that busy lately. Although my wife is finding time to hammer large holes in our house during her working day. She claims she has a “plan”. I’m staying out of the way.

Err, that aside, let’s catch up on what you might have missed in the last week. Hit the jump to find out!

Continue reading Around the Network →

Announcements

The Explorer Update

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Hi everyone! Quick announcement time. I’ve updated how you get around here on MoeGamer to hopefully make it a bit more straightforward, particularly on mobile.

The top navigation menu has had all its submenus removed; you can now access all the features you used to get to from that cluttered mess via the top-level navigation markers, which will now take you to pages with clear, helpful links. Of particular note is the new Explore page, which leads to everything that isn’t a Cover Game feature or MegaFeature, and the Videos page, which includes easy access to all of the current and past video series I’m doing on YouTube.

I hope you enjoy exploring MoeGamer; there’s a lot here now and I’ve made an effort to keep as much of it “timeless” as possible, so dive in as much as you please, and do feel free to share anything you particularly enjoy with your friends!

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