Rummaging through the collection I happened upon a past gem. I decided that enough time had passed and it was time to revisit the old classic.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I have serious commitment issues when it comes to replaying my favorite games. What seems like a great idea in the beginning becomes dull and arduous later on, picking up old titles only to drop them hours later when my ever growing sense of impatience takes hold.

But this time that didn't happen.



I have not been as pleasantly surprised by and old favorite as I was when I ran through Secret of Mana this past week (Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan). For a game that launched in 1992 (only recently re-released on the virtual console), almost everything about it was fresher then some of the more recent RPGs I've enjoyed.

Now fortunately for me, I got out my frustration with all of the game's shortcomings long ago, returning to the second Mana installment with a new found sense of appreciation for the title's glaring mistakes. The NPCs are, for all intensive purposes, less helpful then toad stool and the story's translation is at points incomprehensible.

And yet the interface for switching between party members is seamless. One button switches the player's control instantly if the girl or sprite get caught running into walls while another allows you to directly access their action menus (for magic, items, etc.).

As for the story, while I'm sure there's loads of background and mythology I missed out on, the basic plot is there and character motivations are made clear enough. Converted for release in the states in approximately a month, most of the story's fat was cut one the way, over leaving only the meat and bones and driving some gamers crazy. However, in an age of RPG cliches (emo protagonists, evil empires, and disguised princesses) I was more than happy to be told only the bare necessities involved in my quest. As RPGs become cinematic and story driven it was refreshing to play through Secret of Mana without those aspects of the game belabored.



Instead of fifteen minute dialogue exchanges with embarrassing voice acting, a bugged out cannon operator blasts you from one adventure to the next for 150 GP. Less than 15 seconds of text and you're off exploring the next area, getting more magic and battling new monsters.



Due to the genius of Square producer Hiromichi Tanaka and programmer Nasir Gebelli, Secret of Mana sports a streamlined battle system and creates the rich world that later Mana titles have built on. I lavishly applauded FFXII's fluid battle mechanics at the time of it's release, sick and tired of changing between screens and awkward menus in battles past. But Mana accomplished this more than 15 years prior. Granted, Mana is a homogeneous real-time action RPG, free from many of the burdens of traditional turn based games. But still I wonder how developers could have gotten gameplay so right a decade and a half ago while present teams botch one title after another.

The Mana series itself serves as the quintessential example of this, having progressed from its ground breaking roots to the present misguided incarnations.



Everything from the art style and character design to the gameplay and music fit together to give players something simple but still engrossing. With balanced combat, magic spells can save lives and change the course of a boss fight but a powered up sword combo still packs a punch. And what the game lacks in character and inventory depth it makes up for with its intuitive and natural fighting mechanic. Even the "lost in translation" quality of the story ends up adding a bit of mystery and the sense of a vast explorable world outside of the linear plot line.

In other words: clear up some time on the calender, turn away from the tsunami of subpar JPRGs for a second, and get back in touch with your roots.

There's been some discussion as of late about the current reality of the video game industry. And while the bitter nostalgic inside of me resists, I'll admit that the industry is at a more exciting point in time then ever before. If I stumbled back in time to find two kids sitting down to their first playing of Metroid, I would first be humbled, but then prophesize with glee, "you ain't seen nothing yet".

While Nintendo's Ford Model T approach has been serving up economy and volume with the number of games it's been releasing, Microsoft and Sony are not only still more relevant but have the diversification to fund their juggernaut consoles until the sun burns out.



And then theres Katamari creator Keita Takahashi who took the words right out of my mouth:

GI: I was thinking about your presentation while I was walking around the show floor at GDC. It was interesting because there wasn’t anything on display about making games fun. There were booths for tools to make better-looking trees, or higher-quality faces or smoother animation, but nobody was talking about how to make the games enjoyable. You would think that would be the most important consideration. Is that because it’s hard to package and sell tools to make something “fun” or do you think it’s something else?

Takahashi: I want to ask the same question. Why aren’t these vendors trying to sell ideas or tools to make the games more fun? Thinking about it, maybe it’s because the gaming industry has become a little too big. It’s all about business and money. It’s more about keeping the shareholders happy. Sometimes I really wonder if these creators are in the business because they love games or if it is because of the pay.

more at http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200904/N09.0406.1733.15632.htm

And even before I could contemplate the effects of million dollar budgets on gaming investment, David Crane, previously of Activision, beat me to the punch :

David Crane: Well, except for the indie development that’s going on as one person on the iPhone. There is the entire gamut that’s running now. It has gotten to the point where the biggest problem with the massive console games are the 100-man teams and the six-year development cycles mean that you can’t do anything original, because somebody is paying $20 million to make this happen.

and here [url] http://gameinformer.com/News/Story/200904/N09.0402.1446.25546.htm?Page=1[/url]

Now this isn't some conspiracy theory rant about corporate greed and commercial insidiousness. More money and more people making games can only be good right? But like massive banks, and massive car industries, and massive film studios...well, competition is good and the way the board is laid out right now new developers with fresh ideas have to hold their breath and hope they can hop it from Marvin Gardens past Boardwalk in one roll of the dice.

But wait, isn't that what the internet is for? And so for the time being I see gaming at a cross roads (huge generalizations are usually wrong and always come after the trend has begun) between embracing the possibilities presented by the internet and massive digital networks.

Microsoft and Sony see this, and so they've been inching closer towards PC like, all in one consoles that are part machine and part super computer. Meanwhile Nintendo who as far as I can tell is lagging behind, no pun intended, in its technical capability (who wasn't excited for online Brawl until the that sad reality was experienced for the first and last time), seems leaps and bounds ahead in its layout.

Crane loves to talk about the iphone and how it is revolutionizing casual gaming. And if any of the current players are headed in that direction, Nintendo, infamous for dragging its feet, might have the best opportunity to embrace this.



What is this? I don't know yet, but as one Mr. Water World was once told, "if you build it, they will come".

Music is changing faster than anything I can think of (I bow to no one, especially prepositions). Since I was born, and I'm only 21, there have already been three major transformations. At my youngest cassettes were the mainstay and radio was huge. Growing up Y100 and Q102, (Philadelphia, Pa) were THE radio stations defining not only what was cutting edge music but your personality, VH1 or MTV preference, and whether your had a soul or not. Then CDs started hitting their peak, civilization turned the bend in 2000 and before any of us new it, the internet and Apple single (or double) handedly changed the music industry. The internet allowed people to circumvent the middle man cutting out distributors and sometimes recording labels. Straight from my recording equipment to your PC speakers.

And that's where I want to see video games headed. There is no doubt that the music industry is still in a great state of flux, working out how to deal with illegal downloading, free radio websites, and the like, but for the time being I have no doubt Coldplay, Feist, and Beyonce will continue to sell albums. Likewise, huge titles like Bioshock, the next Zelda, etc. will get the glory they deserve. But just imagine if you will, turning on the virtual console and looking out over an endless abyss of possible gaming gems created by upstart developers and disgruntled ex-employees. Then think about sorting through that wonderful mess. Like David Crane mentions in his GI interview, there would be a ton of crap out there. There are a ton of unoriginal and even untalented music artists out there roaming the plethora of Myspaces. But with the endless resources of gaming journalism, online and in print, trudging through the Deep Deep Swamp with your piggy nose on and discovering that one gem would be easy, well worth it, and dare I say fun. Imagine the creativeness (I make my own words) of World of Goo or Little Big Planet on a smaller scale but a biweekly basis. The possibilities are mind numbing.

And so we're back to the fork in the road where gaming can embrace the limitless future of interconnectivity and creativity, with Blockbuster titles and numerous smaller, shorter master pieces as well, where the imagination can be set lose and the big companies can make money without completely shutting out the little guys, or the industry can stagnate while we sift through recycled first person shooters, hack'n slashes, and superficial JRPGs at fifty dollars a pop waiting each year for those three or four titles that are truly worth owning.

I haven't posted in a while, and only posted once before, so I felt it was time say something.

It'll be short and and quick. Just something that occurred to me as I watched some video game ad waiting for a video to stream on a website. My thought was this: wow graphics have come a long way. My second thought was wow, that looks more real than the view from my window. And here we go.

Electronics have come so far. Digital technology is amazing and the resolution quality of the screens we play games on have become more like a rectangular cut through reality into another world. Before what comes next arrives I'll preface it with this: I like games like Fall Out 3 and Metal Gear (though I've only play one of them), Metal of Honor, etc. Zombie games are fun. I mean who hasn't walked into a room and seen someone playing a Resident Evil game without wanting to pick up and play for five seconds just so you can unload a couple of shot gun shells into the nearest undead.

Alas though I wonder if the progress of technology, the number of computations per microsecond, the textured and clean graphics, hasn't lead me away from what drew me to video games in the first place. Nintendo was a scheduled escape from reality with Mario, Sonic and friends hijacking me every weekday at 3 to crazy worlds of over sized mustaches and hedgehogs in red track shoes. Games that stick players in the lives of WWII soldiers or intercity gangs are cool. They have great gameplay because of their creative teams and large budgets. But I wonder what games those same development teams would have been putting together if some natural disaster had landed humanity back in days of 8bit cartridges. Cartridges are dead and before anyone accuses me of being a nostalgic bleeding heart I'm not whining about getting back to the good old days (well maybe a little). I just wonder if in our perfectionary natures we haven't become to obsessed with graphics. Graphics are great. I'm as glad as anyone that the days of Splintering polygons harpooning my eyes is over. But why not use the amazing graphics technology we have now in a more creative way.



I said this would be short so I should stop before I make a coherent point. The movie industry might make it clearer. For how many years have directors and special effects people tried to make things look more real? Putting all hyperbole aside the answer is forever. But the whole point of special effects was to do something you couldn't in real life like show two superheros flying or a person dodge bullets or an over sized lizard destroying downtown Tokyo. And yet it seems like the majority of mainstream games (mainstream referring to where blockbuster titles), have been trying for a long time to become more and more realistic, not just in how things are shown but the material itself. Shadow of the Colossus is a visual delight that was not possible ten years ago. In it technological and graphics prowess meet dreamlike art. In the end I'd just rather be galloping through a forest that I couldn't find in real life than with a bow in one hand and a master sword in the other instead of puttsin around robbing hookers in a back alley that looks remarkably like the one I see every day on my walk to 7 eleven.



Well I have to get back to finals studying and the West Wing now.

There are plenty exceptions to this, maybe so many that they aren't exceptions, in which case I'm sure more than one person will correct my ill advised rambling.

So you're walking along, minding your own business, looking for that cave with that treasure chest that has that key that goes to the door that from the looks of it leads to some kick ass room full of kick ass items,
where the kick ass princess is being imprisoned when all of the sudden...Random Encounter!

Next thing you know there are three giants and a dragon that from the way they just handled what you thought was your bad ass knight are gonna completely total your wondering band of Tolkien rejects. Quick! If my mage can just cast Escape...maybe if flare misses, maybe if the sky rains goats, maybe that's thE LAST TIME I GO IN THIS DAMN CAVE.

Two decades later I miss that cave.

I miss the excitement of RPG townsfolk with such bad translations you can't figure out whether you're looking for a forest or trying to find a hidden mountain pass. Whatever happen to the good old days when side quests were full of fiendishly strong monsters but necessary if you were going to beat the game's even more powerful final boss.

Before you cry to me about level grinding and repetitive fighting patterns, really take a step back and think about the adrenaline rush when every fight could be your last, when dungeon crawling required real preparation, wizards truly were your ace in the hole, and the infamous game over screen was one random encounter away.

Truly this dynamic has become a long forgotten myth as companies turn out one mind numbing pat on the back after another.

When has anyone cried as much they did when facing Exdeath?



As I sat on my couch today, marching through Star Ocean, Second Story (the 3rd time?), I found myself engrossed as I fought battle after battle, leveling, gaining abilities, and scraping through near death situations. And then, half an hour later I found myself nodding off as my characters destroyed the enemies and uttered inaudible battle cries with no help from me.

Yes, it was my third time through, and things were different the first, but this scenario has become all too common now a days.

There are a range of problems plaguing the current market of RPGs, the least of which are their trite and over prioritized stories, cookie cutter game play, and annoying characters (made worse by their over acted voice overs). However, put aside all these things and you still have a game that I could teach my dog how to play. Rogue Galaxy, Star Ocean 3, FFXII, Kingdom Hearts, The Last Remnant, Suikoden/Wild Arms/Dragon Quest insert number here___? They may (some of them), have many offsetting pros, but their level of challenge has become so watered down that if you removed all of the dramatic dialogue and extravagant FMVs my house plant could finish the game in time to chuck it out the window before Square Enix unloaded their next piece of trash at the local EB.

Hopefully, some day in the future, side quests won't be tedious and inconsequential. Boss fights will demand you think on your toes, dungeon crawling will require you find that spell buried in Bahamut's lair, and Final battles won't be just that thing you do to watch the credits so you can say you officially beat the game even though your characters out leveled 2:1 the supposedly all powerful, half god, half intergalactic cosmological anti hero freak show final boss weeks ago.

Until then I'm loading my file back up and heading back to that son of a bitch cave.