Podcast

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 37 – The Art of the Remake

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Coming at you live from the continuing lockdown situation, it’s a brand new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my good self and 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!

Or you can just hit the jump to watch or listen to today’s episode right here on MoeGamer.

Continue reading The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 37 – The Art of the Remake →

Announcements, Community

Around the Network

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Good evening! Hope you’re all doing well and have survived another week cooped up at home with all those video games you haven’t beaten yet.

I’ve been getting in some good gaming time; I beat Final Fantasy VII Remake, am making good progress on Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm for the MegaFeature, and have found some time to tinker with Level-5’s excellent Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold too. There’ll be more on the latter when I’ve delved a little deeper into it for sure!

For now, though, let’s take a look at what you might have missed in the last week!

Continue reading Around the Network →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Dodge ‘Em

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The dot-eating maze game formula is most readily associated with Namco’s Pac-Man — but the genre had actually been around for a while already by the time our hungry hero had made his first appearance!

Atari’s Dodge ‘Em released for Atari 2600 in 1980, providing a peculiar combination of racing, dodging and dot-eating — but this wasn’t the first one, either! Dodge ‘Em was actually a clone of a 1979 Sega arcade title called Head On.

The reasons for the Sega game’s title will become apparent very, very quickly…

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Atelier Iris, MoeGamer Music

The Music of Atelier, Vol. 2: Atelier Iris 2 – The Azoth of Destiny

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cropped-atelier-megafeature-header-1-8868334This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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It’s time once again to spend some time in the company of Gust’s wonderful sound team and their sterling work on the Atelier series.

This time around, we’re looking at the soundtrack for Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny. The music is once again the work of Gust regulars Daisuke Achiwa and Ken Nakagawa, the latter of whom in particular has become heavily associated with the Atelier series over the years.

Conveniently, copies of Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny came with a bonus soundtrack CD, so we’ll be focusing on a selection of the tracks from this disc today. Let’s jump in — pump up the volume!

Continue reading The Music of Atelier, Vol. 2: Atelier Iris 2 – The Azoth of Destiny →

Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy Marathon, Videos

Final Fantasy Marathon: The Arcane Labyrinth, Part 2 – Final Fantasy II #16

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Today we continue Final Fantasy II’s endgame with the second part of the Arcane Labyrinth challenge — the goal: Firion’s ultimate weapon, the Ragnarok sword.

Each keep of the Arcane Labyrinth has a different number of floors. The first has 5, the second 7 and the third 10 — nowhere quite as sprawling as Final Fantasy’s Lifespring Grotto and Whisperwind Cove here, thankfully!

Today, we take on the 7-floor keep, steamrolling through the floors we previously completed before running into a Giant-sized roadblock…

Final Fantasy VII Remake

Final Fantasy VII Remake: The Future is a Blank Page

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To say that the Final Fantasy VII Remake project was hotly anticipated is something of an understatement.

Ever since the run-up to the PlayStation 2 launch, where one of the promotional videos showed a cutscene from Final Fantasy VIII apparently being rendered in real time by the new system, fans have been wondering what would happen if one of the world’s most beloved RPGs were ever to get remade.

Well, we’re starting to get some answers now… and a whole bunch of questions, too. Let’s explore!

Spoilers for both the original FFVII and FFVII Remake (yes, there are differences) ahead.

Continue reading Final Fantasy VII Remake: The Future is a Blank Page →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Casino Roulette

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Casino games, played solo on your home computer or console, may seem largely pointless… but they can be a good way of learning the rules or experimenting with “techniques”.

Of course, it’s a fool’s game to assume that any betting methods “work”, particularly in a game as inherently random as roulette — but if you’re playing in the comfort of your own home on your Atari ST, there’s no harm in trying a few systems for yourself, is there? Particularly when the manual is good enough to spell them out for you.

If nothing else, Casino Roulette for Atari ST allows us to appreciate quite how far speech synthesis has come in the last 30 years or so!

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Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Aerith Gainsborough

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While her castmate Tifa is arguably a more popular character — primarily due to her more obvious “sexiness” — I’ve always been an Aerith man, myself.

At least part of this may be down to the fact that on my first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII on PlayStation I changed her name to that of someone I really fancied at the time, but there was definitely a lot about the character that appealed to me.

And that appeal has successfully transitioned from the questionably translated, text-only dialogue of the original to Final Fantasy VII Remake on PlayStation 4, too. So let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Aerith Gainsborough →

PSP

Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary: The Remake Treatment

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At the time of writing, Final Fantasy VII Remake has just released to widespread acclaim (and a bit of moaning, but that’s just the Internet doing its usual thing). But this is far from the first Final Fantasy to get the remake treatment!

Granted, the remakes that the first Final Fantasy has received over the years are somewhat less drastic than the ambitious multi-part Final Fantasy VII Remake project, but they’re noteworthy nonetheless. And they don’t come much better than the PSP “20th Anniversary” edition that released back in 2007.

So let’s take a closer look at what makes this version great.

Continue reading Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary: The Remake Treatment →

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z: Interval

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Ever since the early days of computing, programmers have been finding ways to develop educational software for a variety of purposes.

One such programmer was Douglas Crockford, who was a particular fan of experimenting with the Atari 8-bit’s sound capabilities. One such experiment led to the creation of Interval, a piece of software designed to help you train your aural skills — whether you’re a musician, a teacher or simply someone with an interest in musical theory.

This is actually a really solid program that can still be of use to music teachers in the 21st Century — though quite how many still have an Atari 8-bit in their teaching space I have no idea…

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