Retrospective
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Final Fantasy retrospective: Part XI
GameTrailer's Final Fantasy retrospective finished looking at the Roman numeral games in the franchise weeks ago, but there are still many titles to cover that have the Final Fantasy name attached to them one way or another. This week they move into the Final Fantasy Legend, The Crystal Chronicles, and the Kingdom Hearts saga.Let's just skip past the Final Fantasy Legend games because those aren't really Final Fantasy games (although what really is?), they were just given the name to capitalize on the Final Fantasy brand in the west and are actually the Saga series. Next on the list is the endearing Crystal Chronicles. If the GameBoy Advance required multiplayer were done today using the Nintendo DS, it really wouldn't be such a big deal considering everyone and their mother has a DS that could link up wirelessly with the Wii. The smart man's modern Gauntlet, Crystal Chronicles really is a great multiplayer experience if you have the GBAs. Finally, the retrospective covers Kingdom Hearts, where the peanut butter of Final Fantasy meets the chocolate of Disney. Kingdom Hearts now stands alone with its own separate world and rules to continue down its own path as more additions to the series are guaranteed to come along. Next week the Final Fantasy retrospective will cover all the remakes of the Roman numeral series we've seen over the years.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX, Part X
Final Fantasy retrospective: Part X
GameTrailers moves beyond the Roman numerals in their Final Fantasy retrospective and into the peripheral media with the Final Fantasy name attached to it. Some of it good, some of it Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. One of the more interesting parts about this episode is all the Chocobo games, many of which never made it to the States. You'd think if there's anything that Americans would gobble up it's games with big cute yellow birds -- we've been watching one on PBS for decades. Next week the retrospective covers the successful spin-offs of Final Fantasy like Crystal Chronicles and Kingdom Hearts.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, Part IX
Final Fantasy retrospective: Part IX
GameTrailer's Final Fantasy retrospective chugs along into the last of the playable Roman numeral series: Final Fantasy XII. Actually this episode is more about the world of Ivalice -- all of it. At around 25 minutes long, you might as well grab a drink and some popcorn before you start this episode.The world of Ivalice is actually playable in four games: Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced and Final Fantasy XII. The big question is how these four games and their respective worlds tie into each other, which the retrospective covers in the last section of this episode. There are more games planned to occur in the world of Ivalice as well. In the next episode of the retrospective they'll cover all the random Final Fantasy stuff like the spin-offs and movies.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII
Final Fantasy retrospective: Part VIII
GameTrailers does an excellent job looking at the bright side as they go over Final Fantasy XI in their continuing retrospective. Remember when the idea of Final Fantasy going online sounded like a great idea, the dream of an entertaining and epic masterpiece that would revolutionize MMOs forever? Boy, were we all smoking the Moogle dung hard back then! Final Fantasy XI, which should have just been called Final Fantasy Online, brought an online experience that seemed fine at the time -- until the World of Warcraft came along.According to the retrospective there are still 4 million people playing Final Fantasy XI and enjoying its amazing grind and unforgiving gameplay. Actually, it'd be good to hear from people who are still playing what kept them involved all this time.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII
Final Fantasy retrospective: Part VII
The Final Fantasy X series on the PS2: Behold the summonings, the whining heros, and the fashion! Final Fantasy X followed the story of Tidus, a blitzball player who is ripped out of his dimension by his father's adventuring companion just as the city he lives in is destroyed by the indescribable Sin. When Tidus comes to, he meets the summoner Lady Yuna and they proceed to have their girlish infatuation with each other for the rest of the story. They defeat Sin and save Yuna's world ... and for the first time ever, that wasn't the end of the tale.Final Fantasy X-2, love it or hate it, it was the first true sequel to a Final Fantasy story ever and it went all-out in breaking the traditional mold, but still gave nods to some series conventions. Three female leads, J-pop musical numbers and fashion, fashion, fashion! Many gamers dismiss Final Fantasy X-2 -- for obvious surface reasons -- but from a purely combat perspective, it's still more truly Final Fantasy than the the MMO-style combat offerings coming up in Final Fantasy XI and XII.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI
Metroid retrospective: Part 5 -- Timeline squished in a morph ball
GameTrailers finishes off their Metroid retrospective by quickly going over the retelling of the original Metroid in Zero Mission and then setting up the chronology of the series. From Metroid (Zero Mission) to Metroid Fusion, they go over the 10 games, which have sold over 13 million units and bundle up the series in a nice morph ballAlthough the games bounce back and forth in the Metroid timeline, it's nice to know that there's an actual cohesive story in there compared to the debatable Legend of Zelda timeline. And now we look forward to this week when we finally get our hands on Corruption. Samus will be playable again in the near future with Smash Bros. Brawl, but we'll have to wait and see if the next full Metroid game takes place after Fusion, or if Nintendo squeezes another chapter out of the Prime series.
Final Fantasy retrospective: Part VI
With Final Fantasy VII -- and all the belly-aching that goes with it -- behind us, we move on with GameTrailers' Final Fantasy retrospective into the chapters of the Final Fantasy saga which attempted a love story and then a full-on throw back. Final Fantasy VIII brought us one of the single coolest weapons in gaming history -- the gun blade. It also attempted to have the most mature plot line of any Final Fantasy until that point.Final Fantasy IX was a throw back to cutesy Final Fantasy as games started moving towards becoming definitively un-cutesy. FF IX was also the last game before Square wised up and decided not to vomit full video in what started to feel like every single cutscene. Next week GameTrailers covers FFX and the ultimate fashionista game for all those little boys who are going to try out for Project Runway in a few years: FF X-2. Whether you loved or hated FF X-2, those fashions were fierce.See also: Part I & II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
Metroid retrospective: Part 4 -- DS games and Corruption
GameTrailers continues their Metroid retrospective focusing on the DS titles and the soon-to-be-released Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Metroid Prime: Hunters may not have been friendly in avoiding cramps for adult hands, but it was still a solid 3D handheld shooter game. Maybe not exactly the Metroid experience genre fans were looking for, but it was something for the road. As for Metroid Pinball -- well, you either liked it or not.We understand now why GameTrailers took forever to get this episode out the door this week. Turns out that they were adding a bunch of little snippets from this week's release of the Metroid Channel on the Wii. They take a nice plasma shot at putting the basic information we know about Corruption into this retrospective. The series concludes next week with a look at all the games mixed together in one gelatinous Metroid glob.See also: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Metroid retrospective: Part 3 - Metroid Prime
Metroid goes 3D as GameTrailers' Metroid retrospective heads into the Prime years. Although Super Metroid is the darling of the series, if you skipped out on buying a Gamecube, the Metroid Prime games are definitely a reason to get yourself a Wavebird controller for your Wii. Plus, you can use the Wavebird when Brawl eventually comes out. Hopefully the Wii iteration of Metroid Prime will bring fans to the Prime series, as long as that control scheme works properly. Please let those controls work properly.See also: Part 1, Part 2
Metroid retrospective: Part 2 - Super Metroid and Fusion
The second part of GameTrailers' Metroid retrospective covers the long gap between Metroid II and, arguably the best game in the series, Super Metroid. The game of speed-run junkies everywhere, Super Metroid was the power bomb back in the day. Adding almost every element we've come to expect from a Metroid game today exists in Super Metroid -- except for that whole pesky 3D thing.This episode also covers Samus' "final mission" in Metroid Fusion on the Game Boy Advance. The title is chronologically the last mission we experience with the intergalactic bounty hunter. What happens to Samus Aran after Metroid Fusion? Guess we'll have to wait until something not Metroid Prime to find out.See also: Part I
Metroid retrospective explores first two games
It's kinda strange how GameTrailers is doing the job we'd expect from a video game cable network. Anyway, right on the heels of the second installment in their Final Fantasy retrospective, GameTrailers has also released the first part in their Metroid retrospective. The five part series starts off with Metroid on the NES and Metroid II on the Game Boy, subsequent episodes will come out every week.Of course, the series goes in game release order and not chronological order. Metroid II is actually much later on in the Samus plot line than the Metroid games of recent -- but we're sure that'll all get explained. This retrospective seems to be done just as well as the Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy ones we've come to enjoy. Hopefully in time they'll find a little section on the site to dedicate to these for lazy Sunday afternoon viewing.
GameTap's Lara Croft mega-site
If there's been any entity who has surprised us over the last year, it's GameTap. The online game service that started off as nothing more than a retro library repository is really turning into something completely different. Starting with Sam & Max, then URU, then their reinvention of sorts at the end of this month including a "free-to-play" service, topped by the leak of Grimm this morning, this isn't the GameTap we once knew. Their latest venture is a website fully dedicated to Lara Croft with a retrospective documentary and a conceptually amazing animated series beginning in July.Although the 10 year retrospective documentary is definitely interesting, the thing that really catches our eye is the "Re\Visioned" series that starts in July. An animated series of shorts all featuring Lara Croft by artists and writers well known in the animation field. The first three episodes are by Peter Chung, best known for Aeon Flux and a segment in the Animatrix (although his credentials really do go on and on). All the shorts will be available to view for free on this GameTap Lara Croft site. After the Lara Croft series is done, GameTap will apparently do more characters as part of this Re\Visioned series. Even if they stick with Eidos' characters it'd be cool to see Hitman and Kane and Lynch, but they're apparently going in a completely different direction.The website also includes a bunch of extra content like clips of all the models who have "been" Lara Croft, conversations with developers, sneak peeks at Tomb Raider: Anniversary (which will be "free" to GameTap subscribers on the same day it launches in stores) and just a mess of other stuff. Definitely worth checking out for behind-the-scenes geekery and if you're looking to get a feel for the franchise in a nutshell.
Gotta have caught them all: a look back at Pokemon
We love reading about gaming history. Gaming Target has posted a retrospective about one of the most influential series ever, and one that is especially resonant for Nintendo faithful: Pokémon. The article begins with background information on series creator Satoshi Tajiri, and then goes into fairly detailed analysis of not only games in the main series, but the merchandising phenomenon and spinoff titles as well. The article finishes with a preview of the upcoming Diamond and Pearl.If you're like us and enjoy reading retrospectives, or if you just love Pokémon, then this article is a totally worthwhile read. We encourage you to let them show you it.
Zelda, a retrospective in six parts
It's likely that you've seen one or even all of the Zelda retrospectives at GameTrailers, but we wanted to collect them here for ease of viewing on those long winter evenings. They've done a really fantastic job of chronicling what truly has become an epic adventure -- perhaps even, for us, one of the foremost fantasy tales of our lives. Even if you're not a huge fan of the series, it's likely that you know some things about Link; that he is out to save Hyrule, that he favors green, and that his story is tangled with that of a certain princess. It's so strange to think of The Legend of Zelda as spanning twenty years (especially to those of us who clearly remember playing the original ...), but watching these retrospectives, one begins to feel the time that has passed, because the story of Link has become a part of us, alongside the other fairy tales with which we grew up. Link is a modern hero and his never-ending quest, in every form, is ours as well.If you're looking to save all the footage for posterity (and later watching), there's a convenient torrent of all six parts over at WiiNintendo.net.
WTF?! PSP Fanboy's 1000th Post!
It's been a long time since PSP Fanboy opened its doors and said "Hello World!" In fact, it's been one thousand posts since that time. Here are some of the more memorable moments in the past one thousand posts: Our first-ever user comment! Our first-ever Japanese sales report! (PSP's best-selling game was Brain Trainer Portable... original) The first time Samuel L. Jackson was pictured on the site The first time we used "WTF" in a title The first time we showed you people breaking their PSPs for fun The first time we had more than 30 comments (also: The first time we pitted the DS against the PSP, proving that flame bait = the mad traffic increase) The second time we announced the site going live (strange...) The first time prolific comment poster pixelator made a comment The first time new blogger Andrew Yoon wrote a story The first time new blogger Chris Powell wrote a story Hope you enjoyed our little retrospective look at the site. To bribe you to keep on coming back thank you for being such a loyal reader, we're giving away a free copy of the upcoming PSP game WTF. The game features tons of zany mini-games, and includes Game Sharing so you can play with your friends.To win your copy of WTF, think of a new meaning for the acronym. The PSP game stands for Work Time Fun. Try to think of a new, funny meaning for it (besides the obvious one).For example: Wax That Fanny, Women Touching Franks, Wank The Ferret, etc.Post a comment with your idea, and we'll choose one random person to get the game. The winner will receive their prize after 9/26/06. Contest ends on 9/12/06. Thanks, D3 Publisher!
