Mento

Former Intern Nick's working for Rev3 these days as one of their video guys. I think Tall Ben might be there too; either that or he retired young from all the crazy money you earn from being super tall on Tumblr.

But yeah, it's because Patrick broke the story that the site went down for a spell. Was hearing reports that the traffic was around three times greater than the busiest heights of E3 last week because every outlet was linking to it.

Don't forget to do '89 Dennou Kyuusei Uranai at some point as well. Who is the idiot who keeps adding all these awful NES fortune-telling games to the wiki, anyway? The same kind of idiot who fishes for attention and approbation in someone else's thread, I'd bet. I'd like to take a baseball bat to that handsome scoundrel's face.

If you actually want to play a GOOD tarot deck-related game that isn't the various Personae, try The Fool's Errand. Like Fez but made in 1987 before Phil Fish was even a twinkle in his father's eye. Or maybe he was like 9. I don't know how old Phil Fish is.

All three Operation Rainfall games. Xenoblade was generally well-received by people who are into JRPGs, but The Last Story and Pandora's Tower saw nothing but tumbleweeds after release. Pandora's Tower especially hasn't seen a single forum post since it came out in the US, and mine continues to be the only review we have for the game on this site.

Thought it was interesting that two of the Two Best Friends menagerie liked The Last Story enough to include it in their top tens for last year. Seemed like they appreciated the short but sweet total runtime, which has me curious about where JRPGs ought to be heading in the future.

I could throw dozens more examples at y'all, but it's mostly Japanese/JRPG stuff that the Western world has apparently moved on from. No reason to beat a dead senpai-kun any further. I will say that there are a hell of a lot more Wii games out there that people instinctively ignored for reasons pertaining to that system's reputation. "Babby casual console" and whatnot. Since the Wii U's the only backwards compatible console this gen I don't imagine they'll stay undiscovered for long.

I'm just going to post so we can move onto a new page of the thread. It takes a while to load up all the images at the moment.

Incidentally, since I know how much of a delay there is between you writing a blog and posting it, will we be seeing the review before the blog? That seems like the topsy-turviest.

(Also that Fragile Junpei 'shop is one of your best. Ren-Fuuka was a nice touch.)

Steam's is usually mid to late July. Then again, I think last year the Steam sale started almost the same day as the GOG sale ended, so maybe GOG knows something about Steam's schedule.

The D&D pack is definitely worth it. All the D&D Infinity Engine games and everything Neverwinter with ToEE thrown in for color. I don't care much for Dragonshard or Demon Stone, but they're not terrible either.

I believe standard Steam sale rules apply here: Don't buy anything that's half-off right now in case they appear greatly reduced in one of the daily sales to come. But I suppose when there's a difference of a couple of bucks between 50% off and 75% off, it's not a huge concern.

@bhtav: The complete story thing you could do for the most recent incarnation of the company, and leave the older ones with the paragraph-long entries. Atari's definitely had a crazy history, but Atari Games and Atari Corporation (and Atari SA for that matter) were completely different entities and worth keeping separate.

But yeah, I don't really have any decisive plans on how to handle this. I just concur with you that we need the older companies connected to the games they made. It's like crediting Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to Wings because that was the last thing Paul McCartney was in.

@video_game_king: Nah, Port Island IS the entire world. The Dark Hour curse has cut off the island from the rest of the planet, like in Forbidden Siren. It's just Kool-Aid as far as you can see.

Aw, but I liked Ikutsuki. He's just like me: all puns and evil.

I really like the sad "end of the world" music that starts playing on the world map come November (or maybe December). Dunno if it's as creepy as foggy Inaba, but it's quite something.

• Warrior of Light = Blank slate.
• Firion = Non-entity that got stronger by hitting himself in the face. No idea why Dissidia turned him into Batman.
• Onion Knight = Blank slate (but a well-dressed one).
• Cecil = Dug the redemptive arc. Kain and Golbez were more interesting though.
• Bartz = The ol' "legendary hero that doesn't realize his origins" bit. Kinda old even then. "Had a pet Chocobo" is the only thing I can say about Bartz that wouldn't apply to a thousand other JRPG heroes.
• Terra = Most interesting of all the FF protagonists, definitely. Pity she vanishes so often.
• Cloud = Groundbreaking at the time, often amusingly sardonic and cynical, but spoiled by fame and adaptations that didn't understand the character beyond "mopey".
• Squall = Wettest of blankets. Going from petulant teen to adult was an interesting path for a JRPG protagonist considering how many of them are teenagers that don't act like regular teenagers.
• Zidane = Zidane's cool, I guess. They did try to have their cake and eat it by making him a chipper 16-bit-styled JRPG hero until a moody mid-game turn, but it felt germane enough to the story.
• Tidus = Lord no. Too much drownball and daddy issues. I have a horrible suspicion some of that will carry over to this new Noctis guy.
• Yuna = Don't really understand Yuna's character development beyond FFX. She spent that entire game knowing she would die saving the world and didn't, so... what comes next? Dresspheres? Sure, let's do dresspheres. She's got time to burn now.
• Vaan = Shoehorned in at the last second as desperate fan appeal, like Fake Lisa in that Simpsons Variety Show spoof. Had Matsuno had his way, I don't doubt it would've been the Basch and Ashe show (with a certain pair of sky pirates for color).
• Lightning = Seemed like the worst excesses of Cloud and Squall. Then she... kind of got more relatable? Then she went back to being a stoic badass again. I give up.
• Serah = Upbeat yet strangely aloof too. Like Yuna, in fact. Spend so long as an inanimate object and you're bound to get a little detached, I suppose.
• Ramza Beoulve = (Not so) Secretly the best FF protagonist. Again, Matsuno at work. Goes through a hell of a lot, isn't the most powerful fighter ever, still manages to keep principles intact.
• Benjamin = I'll just throw Benjamin in here for shits and giggles. Dude was not the sharpest tool in the shed. 2GP a month allowance?

This is definitely another one of those situations that needs to be cleaned up/clarified by a Style Guide. For a lot of the more venerable companies we do have their previous "legacy" incarnations as separate Company pages (take Namco and Namco Bandai for example, or Squaresoft), but there's also plenty of situations where the older company name has been superseded by the new one with the former being added to the latter's page as an alias.

I think we should probably ensure that there's separate company pages for every obsolete company, with links on those pages to indicate who now owns them or what they're now known as where applicable. Would probably be less messy than incorporating an alias-switching widget. (But then there's also the confusion that comes when people erroneously credit games made by the old company to the new one and vice versa. Hence it being a sticky issue that needs clarification from the high-ups.)