Please go to my page and a lot has changed.

Sonic where you at!

Nice page theme!! I don’t think I recognise you but we’re both in each others’ multitaps, so figure I may as well pop in and say hey d:

I'd love to see fewer graphical callbacks and more thematic callbacks. Wouldn't it be great to have a big adventure that starts out with the usual suspects, and as you get later in the game, the themes and elements get more and more abstract?

At least until I find music... and I'm working on the Wizard of Legend sountrack this week, so... My lady made the request, and I'd been on the fence about ripping it for myself. I usually don't care for orchestral soundtracks in games, because they're bland and boring and have no real impact. Dale North really brings his A game, though; it's orchestral, but there's action, danger, and excitement! It's an unpopular choice (everyone loves Arcane Refuge), but Blinded by Night is easily my favorite.

They really do, and they look low-poly, too; they look like they're right out of some low-budget browser game with those cheap circular animations: [Link] What can I say? Having a way with words runs in the family; we're all a bunch of smartasses. I was going to mention that the geomancers look like black mages in pajamas, but I thought, "Nope; the trainers/tamers/beastmasters/whatever are much more ridiculous." And all that said, as much as I don't really like them, I do miss a time when that level of creativity and absurdity was accepted in video games. I guess if you count all the buckles and zippers stuff, there are games that have clothes that look like they were inspired by abstract art, but it's not quite the same, you know?

What I like even more is the rare game that gives unbridled destructive power to its mages. Of course, having infinite MP would make warriors useless, because who's going to swing a sword when you can create a pillar of flame the size of the Sears Tower, but there are a few games that really pull this off. Valkyrie Profile kinda does it by having the mages endure a cooldown period, and constructing the combat system in such a way that with the right setup, and sufficient player skill, you can greatly reduce that cooldown time. Live-A-Live makes every attack free, but with varying power, range, blast radius and charge time, so nothing's completely broken. Chrono Cross might be the best example, where your actions charge you up to let out a gigantic blast of magic from your grid, and you can configure that yourself. I love using magic; I just hate having to hoard it just in case.

Definitely. There isn't anything really wrong with having the typical biomes and elements; they're neat to see every once in a while, and can occasionally be done in an unusual way: [Link] (see also Bomberman 64: The Second Attack). Problem is that when that's all or most of what you have, it seems like you're just painting by numbers.

I'm just glad that it's been useful to anyone. Thanks! It's been over a year, but I finally have what will likely be a full collection for a while, weighing in at a monstrous 3737 songs, meticulously organized mostly alphabetically by game title, but series are grouped together. For example, right after Adventure Island 4 is New Adventure Island, rather than Adventures of Bayou Billy. Other unconventional stuff, too, like how Chip & Dale is under D for Disney, since it falls in line with DuckTales and all, and similarly, all Mario stuff is under M. Did I agonize for hours over this? You betcha!

Ideally, they should be on the cheaper side, so you're not likely to screw yourself over completely, and not be able to heal. That said, the NES was the lawless frontier for JRPGs, so if you stray from the usual Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy, you'll run into things like this... or worse. Every once in a while, I toy with the idea of using a Red Wizard, just to be using some of those offbeat weapons by the end. Also, they look damn cool; I wish the later NES and SNES Final Fantasy games would've gone with the taller characters, rather than the living bobbleheads. One thing I really like about Final Fantasy 5 is that if you want every skill, it forces you to stick it out with every class, which makes me use cool looking characters that don't fit my playstyle, like the red mages. They're not all winners, of course - sometimes, you're stuck dressed like sheep in pajamas - but I don't just learn white magic and parade around as knights for the rest of the game.

Tell me about it; as if I didn't love Cecil enough already, he plays just like the knights from the first game, but with golden armor and a glorious mantle. Well, you're not wrong, though that is also partially because JRPGs started getting even easier... and also, Final Fantasy 6-8 decided that EVERYONE is going to be a mage.

And people think the Zelda timeline is confusing... This wasn't some bullshit made up by fans, who then demanded an official canonic version; this was something the actual developer just did. They're actually one of the earliest enemies you meet in the game, and definitely not the most ridiculous. Even the dungeons have creative themes, rather than just being, "the fire level", "the ice level", "the forest level".

I actually didn't end up making any; I couldn't come up with anything that I wanted to make that we'd both eat quickly enough, so I didn't buy any ingredients for anything. I have a feeling that's going to be that way for a while, too, since I have a ton of other projects piling up. I have a 7-year-old guide to Super Game Boy palettes that needs more research, and that's just the top of the pile.

I never wound up playing it just because of the ability to run out of face-punches. Give me something I can fall back on in case I misjudge my resources. There was a JRPG on the NES that had that same kind of problem - Magic Candle, I think it was - where the game was fun, but the higher your level, the more it cost to stay at an inn, and it wasn't long before the simple act of recharging your HP was prohibitively expensive. Honestly, red wizards aren't bad, but by the end of the game, they're less powerful than a knight, less good at healing than a white wizard, and less dangerous with attack magic than a black wizard. That said, they're a good third member; you don't want 3 knights, because there isn't enough best equipment to go around, but red wizards can't use the best stuff, so they fit in okay.

It's funny, though: back in the day, your main character - when you had such a thing - used to be your tank, with all the best swords and armors, and occasionally with some light healing magic, but only stuff you'd use in the menu outside of battle to help your actual healer conserve their MP for longer dungeons. By the Fifth Generation, your main character was more like a red wizard, but better; almost a Mary Sue. I remember having a conversation with my friends, who didn't get into RPGs until they got a Playstation, even though they'd seen me playing them since the original Dragon Warrior. They were telling me about... I think it was Suikoden, and said, "...and of course, the main character is your best party member," and I remember thinking that was bullshit, but once I started playing PSX games, I realized that they were right.

Buuuut SaaaaawniiicBlaaaast, how can one accomplish anything in The Legend of Zelda without even the Wooden Sword??