Tag Archives: retro games

Green Tea Area

Dig Dig Mine: Cake or Death

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Don’t you love it when you find a happy little bonus; something unexpected on top of something you already like?

I encountered one of my own this week. I’ve been following a bunch of Japanese and Korean erotic artists on Twitter recently — partly to satisfy my bottomless libido and partly to drown out the endless negativity of Western Twitter — and I was delighted to discover that one of them is not only into drawing pretty girls flashing their pants at you (NSFW, obviously), but also into making loving homages to retro-style games.

That artist’s name? Albe– wait, no, that’s something else. That artist’s name is @ryokuchamichi, also known as “Green Tea Area”, and the first of their games I’d like to share with you is Dig Dig Mine, which you can snag your own copy of for a mere ¥200 (about $2) over on Booth, a Pixiv offshoot focusing on independently developed digital art of various forms — including video games.

Continue reading Dig Dig Mine: Cake or Death →

Atelier

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana – It’s an Alchemy Thing

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cropped-atelier-megafeature-header-1-8868334This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
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Despite being the sixth game in the series, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana was the first to come West.

The exact reasoning behind this isn’t entirely clear, but it may be something to do with the fact that the early Atelier games were primarily abstract management simulations with RPG elements, while Atelier Iris unfolds in a manner much more like what the Western audience would have understood “an RPG” to be in 2005.

Perhaps it was assumed the West wasn’t ready for that sort of thing. Perhaps the amount of text in the earlier games made them impractical to localise at the time. Or perhaps they just sort of fell through the cracks. Whatever the reasoning, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana was the West’s first Atelier game, so that’s where we begin our journey.

Continue reading Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana – It’s an Alchemy Thing →

Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy Marathon, Videos

Final Fantasy Marathon: The Search for the Black Mask – Final Fantasy II #7

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With Fynn safely back under the control of the Wild Rose forces, the time has come to take the fight to the Empire. To do that, we’ll need some firepower.

Minwu set off for Mysidia a while back in an attempt to track down the Ultima tome, but no-one’s heard from him for a while. Firion and company decide to set off in search of him… but not before they stop by the Tropical Island to track down the Black Mask they’ll need to find what they’re searching for. Which, of course, begs the question why Minwu didn’t take it with him… but we’re not supposed to think about that.

Today’s episode is a bit shorter than previous ones; we’ll probably go back to about this length from hereon, as it’s a little more practical for me to record. It’ll mean the series as a whole takes a bit longer to get through… but these games aren’t going anywhere!

Videos

Atari A to Z: Zybex

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We made it to Z once again, folks, and it’s time for an all-time classic shoot ’em up for the Atari 8-bit: it’s Zybex, from Zeppelin Games.

Zeppelin began their life as a company specialising in budget-priced titles on cassette; the first time I came across them was when they released today’s game Zybex and motorcycle racer Speed Ace for £2.99 each. Speed Ace was fairly decent, from what I recall — though at the time of writing it’s not one we’ve revisited as yet — but Zybex was something truly special.

Featuring frantic shoot ’em up action for one or two players, Zybex truly brought the arcade-style scrolling shoot ’em up home in style — and it still holds up pretty well today.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari A to Z Flashback: Codebreaker

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With the digital revolution, many classic tabletop experiences have fallen by the wayside. But back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, you could count on most households having a copy of Mastermind.

Mastermind was a code-breaking game developed by an Israeli telecommunications expert named Mordecai Meirowitz, and it was based on an earlier pen-and-paper game named Bulls and Cows. The concept is simple: one player develops a code consisting of four coloured pegs, and the other player has to guess this code in as few steps as possible, making use of the codemaker’s feedback.

Codebreaker is essentially a digital adaptation of this game, making use of numbers rather than coloured pegs. It also features an adaptation of the ancient mathematical game Nim, for those who enjoy taking the last chocolate in the box. As a complete game package, it might look a bit limited from a modern perspective, but there’s fun to be had here.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

MegaFeatures

The Atelier MegaFeature: Prelude

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cropped-atelier-megafeature-header-1-8868334This post is one chapter of a MegaFeature!
Contents | Next >

We’re trying something new here on MoeGamer for 2020: something I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to do for a while. How, exactly, to tackle a series of significant length — both in terms of number of games and the sheer amount of time it takes to play them?

I was initially prompted to think about this by Falcom’s Trails series, which I’d very much like to cover when (if?) it’s finished. Each of those games are upwards of a hundred hours, and their narratives are interlinked, so they’re not things you can easily analyse in isolation. Or rather, given that interlinked nature, they’re not things I want to analyse in isolation.

That’s not the only series I wanted to explore in depth, though. One that’s been steadily filling up my shelves for the past few years is Gust’s long-running Atelier series… and given that the series as a whole is subdivided into smaller trilogies and duologies, it seemed like an ideal opportunity to experiment with the format.

And thus, I welcome you to the first MoeGamer MegaFeature!

Continue reading The Atelier MegaFeature: Prelude →

Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy Marathon, Videos

Final Fantasy Marathon: The Liberation of Fynn – Final Fantasy II #6

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The time has come for the Wild Rose rebellion to take back what is rightfully theirs: the city of Fynn and its castle!

Well, before that there’s the small matter of extracting Princess Hilda from Palamecia, but surely such a straightforward task won’t prove a problem for Firion and company after all their training to date!

Today’s episode is a good example of how Final Fantasy II makes a strong effort with worldbuilding and a sense of narrative progression, bringing back characters you encountered earlier in the game and showing you places in different contexts. Besides its unusual progression system, this side of things is probably the most noteworthy thing about the game in the context of the series as a whole.

Sega Ages, Switch

Fantasy Zone: Intergalactic Monetary Fund

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An unstable economy might not sound like it would make the setup for a compelling video game, but Fantasy Zone is here to prove you wrong!

To be fair, the premise is little more than a justification for the fact that all the enemies in the game drop coins that you can use to upgrade your ship; Fantasy Zone is instead much better known for being one of the progenitors of what came to be known as the “cute ’em up” subgenre, alongside Konami’s Twinbee.

First released to arcades in 1986 and subsequently ported to a variety of different platforms, Fantasy Zone has been a beloved part of Sega’s back catalogue for many years now. And, at the time of writing, the recent Sega Ages version for Nintendo Switch promises to bring it to a whole new audience. So let’s take a closer look at that particular incarnation of this colourful blastathon!

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Atari A to Z, Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Slaygon

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There was a time when we couldn’t take first-person adventures for granted; a dark time when you could only turn by 90 degrees and move by 5 feet at a time.

Okay, we still have games like that, but at least we have a choice these days. Back when Slaygon was released for Atari ST, it’s pretty much all we had if we wanted to infiltrate some sort of complicated installation… such as a futuristic tech company looking to unleash a deadly virus into the atmosphere for… some reason!

Slaygon put an interesting twist on the dungeon crawler formula by putting you in control of a futuristic cybertank with all manner of fancy systems for you to use. It was still all about finding the right keys for the right doors though…

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Waifu Wednesday

Waifu Wednesday: Alis Landale

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We tend to think of the world of video game protagonists being a boys’ club until Lara Croft came along in 1996… but female protagonists have been around for quite a while longer than that.

1987, for example, gave the world Alis Landale, protagonist of Sega’s first Phantasy Star game. Alis wasn’t a damsel in distress, she wasn’t a secondary character, she wasn’t a love interest — she was the lead. She had a mission, and she was damn well going to make sure she carried it out, come hell, high water or Dark Falz.

Being the protagonist of a 1980s 8-bit role-playing game, we don’t really learn a lot about Alis the person within the game of Phantasy Star itself. We can, however, look at the context in which she appeared, and the various ways she was presented. So let’s do that!

Continue reading Waifu Wednesday: Alis Landale →