[Video Game Wednesday] My Adventures at the Arcade Auction

I don’t often write about the things I’ve actually done — I tend to get bored talking about myself — but I wanted to write up a brief piece reflecting on the arcade auction I visited earlier in the month.

As a kid, I was always drawn to video arcades, and I have fond memories of standing in Aladdin’s Castle in the mall, armed with a plastic baggie full of tokens and trying out as many games as possible until my money ran out. Another place that got quite a bit of my money was the arcade just outside the B/X on the military base where we lived — a great place to hang out while my mom was shopping for boring stuff, like clothes and household supplies. These were the days when arcade machines were everywhere, when Chuck-E-Cheese and Showbiz Pizza ruled supreme, when game magazines actually covered arcade games in their regular coverage. After all, arcade machines were a much better value proposition than the home systems — they had better graphics, more satisfying games and custom-built controls. Most only cost a quarter or two to play, and they didn’t tie up your family’s lone television set. I suspect, in the long run, I spent about as much on arcade gaming as I would have spent on a Nintendo Entertainment System with a small library of games. But whereas my Nintendo would have grown outdated and would be worth very little to me today, the memories of hanging around arcades discovering new games with my friends and my brothers are still with me.

As it happens, I live about three blocks from a fairgrounds where one of the largest arcade auctions in the Midwest is held. It happens every quarter (whether or not that’s intentional, it’s hilarious), and it involves people carting in retired arcade machines, pinball machines, air hockey tables and other amusement machines and putting them up for auction.

My wife would murder me if I brought one of these things home, so I have to settle for the next-best thing: the precious hours when they turn on all the machines and let people play them.

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[Video Game Wednesday] The Undisputed, Greatest Video Game of All Time

What game is the greatest of all time?

It seems like every year, at least one of the dedicated video gaming magazines, blogs, and websites comes out with a list of “the top 100 video games of all time.” These lists are generally pretty short-sighted and include games that, ten years from now, most people won’t even remember. Generally, as you get to the top of the list, you find a few sacred cows — Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metal Gear Solid — that are good games, and maybe even great games, but certainly with some element about them that prevents them from being considered the greatest of all time.

Maybe part of the problem is that the criteria used to evaluate the concept of “the greatest games” are subjective rather than objective; in the writer’s head instead of on paper; made up as the list is compiled, not established ahead of time. So of course a lot of games that are nostalgic will wind up on the list, not because they are truly the greatest, but because they stuck out in the writer’s mind.

We also should avoid the GameRankings style of quantitative rankings based on qualitative reviews. I’m not going to get into the details, but there are many flaws with such a system, and when you look at the top games (available here), you find that there are lots of really excellent titles that have been snubbed because they didn’t receive the level of acclaim that they deserved since they weren’t AAA releases. Plus, the GameRankings system has some very arbitrary logic to it, and it’s really not a very good system for judging the worth of a game any more than Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic are good for weighing the worth of a film.

I’m going to offer a different take on this. I’m going to start with a set of guidelines, and then narrow my focus down to one title that stands above all others. When you see my conclusion, it probably won’t surprise you — nor should it. But understand that the purpose of this article is not to state what the greatest video game of all time is, but why it deserves such a title.

Are you ready? Here we go.

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[Video Game Wednesday] Five Square-Enix RPGs That Are As Good Or Better Than Final Fantasy VII

In his FINAL form, Kefka is way more awesome than Sephiroth. But prior to that, he's just a weird clown.

So, I got a little passionate last week and decided to slay the sacred cow that is Final Fantasy VII. To summarize, I concluded that it’s a good game, and maybe even a great game, but hardly the greatest game of all time. (I’ll tell you what that is next week.)

But in talking about FF VII, I realized that one of the reasons it’s so popular is because people don’t realize that there are many other RPGs that are just as good, if not better, than FF VII. Oddly enough, none of them are recent titles, and all of them predate FF VII or were in development when it was in its heydey. And, just to make things fun, I’m going to set my handicap to “only Square Enix titles.” That means I can’t bring up Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Lunar or Lunar 2: Silver Star Story, Grandia, Suikoden II, or The Legend of Dragoon, all of which were great RPGs. I’ll also restrict myself to leaving out other Final Fantasy titles, since VII is generally considered the best of the series. (That assessment is incorrect, by the way; VI and XII are far superior in terms of actual gameplay, and VI’s only downside is the peculiar nature of its villain, a clown named Kefka, who just can’t manage to be as badass as Sephiroth despite the fact that he destroys civilization halfway through the game and rebuilds it with himself as its god.)

If there are any games on the following list that you have not played, do yourself a favor and track them down, if you can. Each of them is an amazing experience. Read more »

[Video Game Wednesday] Final Fantasy VII – The Most Overrated Game of All Time?

Cloud wielding his buster sword.

A friend recently talked me into picking up Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for my Sony PSP. For those who don’t know, Crisis Core is the prequel to the game for the original Playstation, Final Fantasy VII, which bears the distinction of being one of the first Japanese role-playing game that many gamers ever played. As such, FF VII has achieved a sort of legendary status among gamers as being one of the best games ever made. There are even a significant number of people who know everything about the game – its story, its characters, its places, its goofy moments — without actually having played it.

As it turns out, Crisis Core is pretty good, and I’d say it’s one of the better games I’ve seen on the PSP. But playing through it has reminded me about my mixed feelings towards FF VII, which is a good game, and maybe even a great game, but surely one of the most overrated games of all time.

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