miketheratguy

Yep, that's exactly how it went down. It was overwhelming option overload. The game simply provided so many opportunities and potential outcomes that it was too hard for me to just relax with the confidence that I'd made the right choices and say "eh, whatever will be will be". I first noticed something like this in the supremely underrated, supremely great Dragon Warrior III for the NES. Partway through the game you have a chance to change the class of the characters in your party, giving them new bonuses while at the same time - I think - cutting their current stats in half. So I'd sit there thinking "Ooh! How cool it would be to have a soldier who can also cast spells. But wait, should I level the soldier up more first before changing him into a wizard? Or maybe I should turn my wizard into a soldier. Maybe I can take my pilgrim and turn him into a wizard, thus keeping my soldier's strength but coming out with an even weaker wizard. But then again he'd be so low level after the change that maybe he'd quickly catch up?" Etc, etc, etc. Maybe it's a bit simplistic but that's one of the things that I preferred about the more popular classic Final Fantasy games: They gave you characters that had specific roles and that was it, it was up to you to learn how to properly make the most out of whatever given team you were left with. By the time we got around to Final Fantasy VI (which, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adored) and everyone could equip Magicite to learn any spell in the game, and Final Fantasy VII (which, don't get me wrong, I don't ever want to hear about again as long as I live) where anyone could equip Materia to learn...well, EVERYTHING, it not only stripped the characters of what made them unique, it caused me to dive down countless rabbit holes of strategic planning hell. I bought Vandal Hearts, way back in like 1998 or so. I enjoyed it and don't remember it being crazily complicated but I never got to finish it, I sold it to buy something else. Probably like Theme Park or something. Wait, there's even MORE planning!!! NnnnnnnoooOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

I've found that podcasts and wrestling shoot interviews are great additions to long drives, plane flights, jogs, and video game sessions that don't have a particular emphasis on reading or number crunching.

I wasn't much of a comic reader growing up so I can't fully appreciate Kirby's involvement but Thundarr opened the door for Masters of the Universe, and if I was about anything in the early 80s it was Masters of the Universe.

I even loved Zelda II, despite the fact that it is considered the black sheep of the franchise for obvious reasons. I haven't played every Zelda game out there, but every one that I've played I've loved. It's weird, I used to hear that Final Fantasy V was the lost gem of the franchise, the debatably best game in the series that we simply didn't get to play because it got lost in the shuffle in the translation of various Square games from Japan. Now, I only seem to hear people complaining about it. For my money the two bookending games (IV and VI) are RPG masterpieces, the best in the franchise, so with its relatively weak story and nonlinear character-building structure I didn't feel that it stacked up. I did love the concept of the job system, but with my anxiety disorder it was hard to really enjoy it: I spent more time stressing about whether I was developing my characters properly than just experimenting and having fun with taking risks, lol.

I can't speak for him but as I got older I too felt a growing sense of embarrassment when I read Gamepro. As I've said in various places I felt that their reviews were really good but the tone of the magazine was relatively childish compared to the other gaming rags of the time. They were full of cutesy, cheesy artwork from Francis Mao (mentioned above), their reviews and articles were absolutely riddled with lame jokes and corny puns, and their staff used pseudonyms like "Scary Larry" and "Boba Fatt". The magazine just didn't have an edge, at least not until they transparently tried to create one in the early 2000s or so.

I loved Warzone and Attitude back in the day but I don't think that I could get behind their awkward use of Mortal Kombat-style inputs for doing moves anymore.

14 straight hours playing Spider-Man 2. We're talking 14 hours without stopping to eat, use the bathroom, take a phone call, anything. What can I say? I was completely enveloped by the urge to swing around a virtual New York city sandbox, hurl ragdoll thugs from the roofs of 20-story buildings, and piledrive them headfirst onto the concrete below from the top of the Empire State Building. Jesus, Spidey has to be stopped!!!

I hope you do! I'd love to hear what you think. So far the feedback's been pretty good, so I'm hoping that you dig it. Awesome, I'm glad you decided to check it out, and that you enjoyed it. I hope you listen to the rest and if you do, that you tell me what you thought of them. Thanks a lot for the likes and subs. We're still small-time so any attention is a huge help. It keeps us motivated, if nothing else. I listen to them while I play too. The Breaking Bad podcasts were great and lately I've been listening to a Star Trek podcast that's really decent. Check out ours sometime, you might find us relaxing as well.

I grew up with the Atari 2600, though also tinkered around with the Colecovision and Intellivision, which both felt so inferior. Then I got the NES when I was 9, and...well, I never looked back. Actually that's not true. I sometimes do look back, to be reminded of what those old Atari games were like. .... Then I remember why I prefer to emulate systems from the NES onward.

If I recall correctly EGM gave them shit about that sometimes, mocking them for "hiding" behind pseudonyms instead of backing up their reviews with their real names. I remember reading this and thinking "daaaaamn"! Then I turned the page to read the latest gossip from Quartermann, all the hot codes from Trickman Terry, and the newest reviews from Sushi X. I somehow never managed to catch the show when I was a kid. I'm guessing that in 1991 it was rad, and in 2016 it would be absolutely awful. ....And probably also rad.

Holy shit, Thundarr the Barbarian!

I agree with pretty much everything that's been said so far. The sense of being carefree, happy, living with such limited responsibility and limitless possibility. Time went by more slowly and the days were populated by friends, family, and fun. Video games, discovering now-classic movies for the first time, realizing that there's scant medical evidence to support cooties and deciding to chase girls. Man. I miss being a kid. I couldn't possibly describe all the things that made my childhood great in the space of a single text window, I'd need several chapters of a book.

Well you were right anyway: She IS a better video game journalist than IGN or Game Informer. Who'd have guessed?

Why, I sincerely doubt that you've even met my mother! There are stories of her boldly dismissing cultural etiquette and standing right up to the Japanese editors by telling them EXACTLY what they were going to do to make the magazine better. Supposedly they named her "The Dragon Lady".

We really are spoiled these days, aren't we? If I could go back in time to talk to my 13 year-old self, and tell him that every game he'd ever played, owned, or would touch in the next decade would be freely downloadable on something called the "internet" and fit onto a "memory card" the size of a quarter - he'd shit himself mad.

I saw it. It was decidedly British and starred John Cleese. Since I was a major fan of Monty Python and the Holy Grail I thought that I would love the show. I was sorely mistaken.

Yeah it was one of the more noteworthy releases for the Genesis but it also came out right when the Super NES hit so I think that any momentum that it may have gained was overshadowed. What was it about it that turned you off?

Oh wow, first time you ever tried that one?

I apologize for bumping this but I figured that I'd just give an update to the people who were interested. After a months-long hiatus Howard and I have resumed production of the podcast, recording our 10th episode - Toejam and Earl - just minutes ago. It should be live on Youtube and itunes by the end of the weekend and from this point on we're going to try to do our best to get a new episode up every couple of weeks. I gave a shout-out to this forum in the episode so hey, free publicity.

Was that the game with the ad that featured a guy being whipped by a hot dominatrix? Now that's some sacrilege. Sexy, sexy sacrilege!!!

Mortal Kombat 4? Goldeneye? Castlevania: SOTN? Final Fantasy VII? After the cover of the last uploaded issue (#96), which was stuffed to the gills with some of gaming's most notorious flops, the cover of this issue rebounds in spectacular fashion by featuring some of the heaviest hitters in gaming history. Sure looks purty too!

"Metal Gear Solid 2: Konami's masterpiece unveiled". If they'd have unveiled Raiden, they wouldn't be calling it a masterpiece. BOOYAH!

We were shown Degrassi in junior high school back in like 91 or so. I don't remember it very well but I thought that it was supposed to be sort of like an after-school drama, and then Kevin Smith came along and got involved by making it all self-aware and silly. Maybe I'm wrong. Canadian things often frighten and confuse me.

Make no mistake, EGM was my preferred magazine of the two growing up. I just didn't like how awkward and unpolished many of their reviews were. By contrast, you make a good example of your own: Gamepro seems too polished. If one is real but raw, the other is smooth but softball. Looking back I don't even know what it is that made me prefer EGM. I didn't like most of their layouts, didn't care for the personalities of most of the staff, and I don't really recall getting any exciting information from them before I could get it from any other magazine (with the exception of their coverage of the Mortal Kombat series. They were pretty good for that). I think it's just the simple fact that they skewed relatively older, and as a result covered more exciting games, while Nintendo Power and to a lesser extent Gamepro catered more to the kid set. Plus Gamepro had that damn artwork from Francis Mao infesting it, which I've already complained about elsewhere. I remember when EGM's format changed slightly so that one reviewer got a fair amount of space and the other three were relegated to quicker supporting comments. That worked alright, especially since the magazine was at that time staffed by older employees who could articulate and make their points more clearly. Of course this was also the age when they started referencing each other in their reviews ("Ignore what Hsu says. He's just complaining because he can't play.") which bugged the hell out of me for some reason. C'est la vie. But yeah, the internet was definitely invented for porn video game reviews. So who's better, IGN or Game Informer?