NFOpocalypse

[ Superior ] Epic Legendary

Any SNES\Genesis\TG-16\Neo Geo gamer can opine about the long list of games that never made it to the North American and PAL region markets, but how many can name one that never made it into the Japanese?  And with Action RPGs having their origins in Japan, wouldn’t you be surprised if this game fit that bill too?   Well then get surprised, because today we ROMinisce about exactly that: Secret of Evermore.

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Superior [ Epic ] Legendary

Being a creative medium, a fresh idea like Spore is well-received in the game industry (even if it’s tantamount to a five-part minigame).  Long before YouTube was flooded with “Creature Creator” penis-monsters, evolution was the focus of a now obscure 1993 title published by Enix known as E.V.O.: Search for Eden.  Combining Platforming with Role-Playing, creationism with evolution, and science with mythology, this classic game remains distinct and downright fun.

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You may have seen these Google ads on sites like… well, everywhere.  While I can’t find screencaps of the original “Your queen is waiting” ads, they were what got my attention because I’d always wanted my own sexy fairy queen.  A few nights ago, I finally gave Civony a try - hell, the worst case scenario was that I’d unearth some blog fodder!

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One of my hobbies is collecting old PC games. Over the years, however, I’ve amassed a large number of games that I’ve never gotten around to playing. I would like to play all of these eventually, but I don’t have a lot of time to invest into playing them all to completion. Therefore, I’m going to play them all for an hour or two and discuss my preliminary findings. I’ve chosen to start with strategy and war games.

Home of the Underdogs calls Silicon Knight’s 1993 D&D-licensed title Fantasy Empires as “one of the best fantasy games ever made.” I was not as impressed.

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To put this into context, I tend to go through phases when playing videogames. It normally goes along the lines of first-person shooter, American RPG, Japanese RPG, Strategy RPG, Turn-based Strategy, Real-time strategy, and then repeat at FPS. This is just how I function as a gamer. There’s individual games within those genres that I always play, and there’s some genres that are always good to play at any time. For example, I always play shoot-’em-ups. I always play Team Fortress 2. And when it comes to Japanese RPGs, I always play Persona 3.

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One of the more interesting Pokemon spin-offs, there were actually two Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games before the two I’m focusing on in this article; Red Rescue Team on the GBA, and Blue Rescue Team on the DS. The second pair, both DS games, are Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness (sometimes collectively called Mystery Dungeon 2 since they’re the second set). Please note, I never played the first two, mainly because I had no idea what sort of games they were.

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NFOpocalypse’s resident RPG expert reviews Captain Comic 2, a little known sidescroller from the 90s which was written by Michael Denio and released only on the PC, and rants about how modern game stores are boring.

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If somebody came up and told me that there was a game that combined my love of hammer throwing and danmaku shmups, I would vibrate with glee and pay that person exorbitant amounts of cold, hard cash. Well, in actuality, that’s not true. I’d laugh at them, tell them that hammer throwing is boring, and that no danmaku can eclipse Giga Wing, Touhou, or Ikaruga. And I was right.

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These reviews are probably different from what you are used to. Rather than using numbers (as most reviewers do), I am going to grade games on a three-tier scale of opinions, as well as tell my thoughts on the minutiae (graphics, gameplay, sound, etc).

1.) Buy: This is the best result you can possibly get. Instant recommendation. The review will probably tell you why I love this game so much

2.) Rent/Borrow: Don’t bother buying, you might not like it. Usually reserved for games I enjoy but are not really widely enjoyed, or games which could appeal to people in different ways

3.) Don’t: This game is awful. Buy at your own risk.

I won’t pull punches. I also won’t always review new games. If I find an indie or freeware game that I like or think I should review, I will.

Update (February 26, 2010): Now that we’ve taken more care in tagging posts, these are now present as tags on each review post as “reviews-buy,” “reviews-try,” and “reviews-avoid.”  These same tags will be applied across other authors’ posts as well as features and columns.  Hope this makes things more navigable!