Tag Archives: genre

Seven Arbitrarily Chosen Things You’re Missing Out On If You’ve Been Operating Under the Mistaken Belief that JRPGs are “Dead”

It seems that every time we get a new Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Persona release, we have the same old “we’re having a JRPG renaissance!” discussion.

Well, dear reader, with my coverage of Death End Re;Quest on the horizon at the time of writing and plenty more RPGs in our shared futures, I’m here to remind you that RPGs have been alive and well ever since what people think of as their “golden age” — the SNES and PS1 eras. This will not be a shock to some of you reading this, of course, but I’m sure there are quite a few people out there who have passed up some wonderful experiences for one reason or another.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d do a list of seven arbitrarily chosen things that you might have missed out on if you’ve been operating under the grossly mistaken assumption that the role-playing game genre has somehow been “dead” despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Here we go!

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The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 17 – Death to Metroidvania!

Hello! Welcome back to The MoeGamer Podcast, featuring my deliciously fruity vocal tones along with those of my good friend Chris Caskie ofΒ MrGilderPixels.

The MoeGamer Podcast is available in several places. You canΒ subscribe to my channel on YouTubeΒ to stay up to date with both the video versions of the podcast and my weekly videos; you canΒ follow on SoundcloudΒ for the audio-only version of the podcast; you canΒ subscribe via RSSΒ to get the audio-only version of the podcast in your favourite podcast app; or you canΒ subscribe via iTunes. Please do at least one of these if you can; it really helps us out!

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

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Brotherhood of the World Bloggers Award

There’s gaming stuff coming a little later today, but for now it’s time for another Community post!

The charming and attractive Arthifis was good enough to nominate me for the “Brotherhood of the World Bloggers Award”, and these things are always a good bit of fun, so I thought I’d indulge.

For the uninitiated, these “Award” posts are primarily an excuse for those of us with itchy typing fingers to cross-promote each other, get to know one other a bit better and also to let you, dear reader, find out a bit more about us. So without further ado, let’s begin this round.

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From the Archives: A Question of Genre

How do you describe a piece of interactive entertainment? Chances are the first thing you mention is the way it plays, or the supposed β€œgenre” it is part of.

Final FantasyΒ is a JRPG; Gears of War is a third-person shooter; Mario games are platformers. And this isn’t only true for mainstream games, either β€” even the most esoteric indie games tend to be described in terms of their mechanics.Β FezΒ is a puzzle-platformer; The Binding of Isaac is a roguelike shooter;Β MinecraftΒ is an open-world building and survival sim.

While you may then elaborate on that by describing the setting β€” sci-fi, fantasy, cartoonish crazytown β€” it’s highly likely that this is not the first thing you mention. Interactive entertainment is pretty much the only artistic medium in which we do this.

This article was originally published on Games Are Evil in 2012 as part of the site’s regular READ.ME column on visual novels. It has been republished here due to Games Are Evil no longer existing in its original form.

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