Top Five Characters For Soul Calibur VI

With the recent announcement/reveal of Soul Calibur VI having properly sunk in now, I think it’s fair to start theorising about a potential roster. Well, I say theorising but that process is a potentially depressing affair since – if done logically – it involves putting together a hypothetical roster based on what the marketing men think will sell the game. I’d rather lay out a top five countdown of the characters from that I want to see return to the Stage of History. I have put together my dream shortlist with three things in mind:

1. The game’s story is supposed to be further back in the SC timeline (around the time of the original Soul Calibur) so I’d like to think that some of the older characters that were dumped for the later games might be able to return in all their glory.
2. No guest characters. That is a separate list for another time (possibly). These are all original SC characters that have been in the games before.
3. These are simply characters that I like!

With those loose “rules” established, I shall waste no more time and jump right in!

Zasalamel

Amongst all of the clones and ‘mimic’ fighting styles that were in Soul Calibur III, Zasalamel’s scythe-based style was refreshingly individual and certainly interesting to learn as well as fight against. I also really liked his visual appearance despite the obvious Assassin’s Creed similarities that his original outfit (pictured) was guilty of displaying. Better yet, SCIII‘s plot saw Zasalamel morph into the demonic final boss, Abyss who shares a lot of Zasalamel’s basic fighting style. Abyss is one of the coolest and most bad-ass bosses in a fighting game and while I highly doubt that we will ever see him again, I would at least like Zasalamel to return from his post-Soul Calibur IV exile.

Cassandra

We’ve already seen Sophitia revealed as one of the first two characters in the game and while Sophie will always be my #1 character in the series, I have to say that I missed her spunky, more aggressive younger sister in SCV. Yes, people will say that we don’t need any more Alexandra family members (they’re everywhere!) and others will argue that more females with big boobs are unnecessary but as far as I’m concerned, Cassandra has been a staple since her debut in SCII and her omission in SCV was one of the most disappointing in my opinion. She actually has a very different fighting style to Sophitia and while nobody can argue that the way she battles is overly unique or interesting, I’ve always enjoyed her character and she is in many way (whisper it) more endearing than her sister. Yes I feel treacherous for even typing that…sorry Sophitia!

Hwang

A true classic who debuted in the original Soul Blade (or Soul Edge in other territories) for arcade/Playstation but was ditched by the time of Soul Calibur II for the younger and (I suppose) cooler Yun-Seong. Hwang made one more appearance as a non-fleshed out bonus character in Soul Calibur III and was properly re-instated for the rare arcade edition of SCIII but hasn’t been seen since which is a pretty rubbish way to treat one of the founding characters of the series if you ask me. Even Yun-Seong didn’t make it to SCV, meaning that the most recent installment in the series had no Korean characters and no Falchion wielders. I really enjoyed playing as Hwang in Soul Blade and I also think he looks pretty cool so I’d like to see him again for those reasons but also because he simply SHOULD be in an SC game again.

Li Long

Another founding cast member of the series, Li Long was treated even worse than Hwang. The original nunchaku wielder didn’t even make it off the Playstation to the original Soul Calibur since Namco had already elected to introduce the new, cooler character of Maxi who became the default (and only) representative of the nunchaku style from there on. Like Hwang, Li Long was given a bonus character slot in SCIII and also re-instated properly for the arcade update. Interestingly, he was armed with a new double nunchaku style that actually set him apart from Maxi. I would love to see Li Long return with a more fleshed-out version of this style in Soul Calibur VI. Like Hwang, I just think that he should be included for historical reasons.

Night Terror

Up until this point, my list has been fairly safe, predictable even. We can’t have that though can we? So to finish off my top five, I’ve decided to put the case forward for the true boss of Soul Calibur III. If you thought Abyss was monstrous enough…well, you hadn’t seen anything yet. Night Terror is a beastly version of Nightmare, the result of Soul Edge’s vengeful will fusing with Nightmare and nobody enjoyed fighting this creature. Massively over-powered, boasting insane priority and immune to ring-outs (he flies back up to the stage!), Night Terror was everything a cheap boss should be. I lost count of the amount of times I heard “versus, Night Terror!” as I kept hammering the option to try the fight again. For all his cheesiness however, I absolutely loved the idea of a souped-up Nightmare that had been overcome by raw power and transformed into a truly imposing boss. Like Abyss, I highly doubt that Namco would ever bring this guy back but I would certainly take him over Algol or Elysium any day.

Honourable mentions!

Because five is never enough is it? Not when there have been so many characters both major and minor in Soul Calibur over the years. Seong-Mina should definitely grace an SC game again for the same legacy reasons as Hwang/Li Long but also because she has always been a fan favourite who certainly didn’t deserve to be left out of SCV. Valeria from SCIII was a second-tier bonus character but did at least have a cool fighting style based around kicks and bladed footwear. Did I forget to mention that she was a pink-haired shopkeeper/maid design with eye-poppingly big boobs? Funny that… Another classic that I hope returns is Rock because honestly, I don’t like Astaroth that much when it comes to the large “power” characters and Rock already had to swap his original axe style for a mace so that he had a “reason” to return for SCIII & IV.

Because five wasn’t enough and I’m greedy…

If you read my post on femme fatales then you will already know that really like the nutty Tira but will she fit into a pre-SCIII plot point? I’m not sure but I think Namco would be mad to leave out such a unique fighting style. Setsuka is another dangerous lady with a fairly individual style that I’d like to see again, not least because I used her a lot in SCIII and found her to be utterly lethal with some crazy combos. Lastly, would actually like to see Edge Master come over from Soul Calibur V since the “bad-ass old guy” archtype needs some representation and I don’t mind there being at least ONE mimic character. Just please, Namco, don’t waste 3-4 slots with them like you did before? Ta.

So those are my choices. What do you think? I’m cautiously optimistic for a few of these but I also fear that Namco might see some of the older or more obscure characters as less marketable and won’t include them. I’ll reserve any form of judgment until we know more however. Let’s see who they’ve chosen…

[Yu-Gi-Oh] Crazy Pharaoh’s Servant Pack Opening Luck

First up, opening packs of trading cards isn’t going to become a regular thing here on this blog. There are sooooo many Youtube channels that already do that sort of thing for example. However, I decided I’d share this one because a) it’s a nice quick post for me to make in between writing something with more substance (hey, at least I’m honest!) b) TCG is probably my main geeky hobby outside of videogames (as already detailed in a previous post) and c) I actually had some mega luck with these three Pharaoh’s Servant packs!

The reason I bought these in the first place is because I’m trying to put together a framed collection of all the original packs from Legend of Blue Eyes to Ancient Sanctuary so I needed an empty Pharaoh’s Servant booster. It was cheaper to buy a set of three on ebay than a single pack so – considering that I’m trying to collect sets of Yu-Gi-Oh cards anyway – that’s exactly what I did. Now, I wasn’t too concerned about my pulls from these packs because I completely expected them to be scaled. “Scaling” refers to the nefarious art of weighing out the slightly heavier boosters from a box which will contain the foils (in theory anyway). The owner of said packs then keeps/opens those ones while selling the others at the full going rate, knowing full well that they have all of the good stuff in the weighed-out boosters. Since booster packs are meant to be pot luck anyway, there’s no way of knowing whether this has happened to you unless of course, you purchase a sealed box and get no foil cards at all!

So with these lowly expectations in mind, I was pretty damn pleased to find an Ultra Rare Thousand-Eyes Restrict inside the first pack I opened!

This pull was even sweeter considering that it was one of the foil cards missing from my PSV full set collection which is probably over 80% finished at this point with the majority of Super and Ultra Rare cards already in the binder. Seriously pleased!

Is Suda51 Overrated?

Overrate (verb) : to have a higher opinion of (something or someone) than is deserved.

I realise that the very title of this topic may appear sacrilegious to many but it was something that came up when chatting to a friend about games in general and I thought it was worth exploring. This friend (who has been gaming since the SNES days so has an opinion I put some stock in) had recently completed Flower, Sun and Rain for the DS and described it as “horrendous”; one of the worst games he’d ever played. He had then also tried to play through Shadows of the Damned on the Xbox 360 but gave up part-way through on account of the game just not striking him as interesting enough to continue. I’d not played Flower, Sun and Rain myself so I wasn’t able to share (or not share) his scathing criticism of that particular game but I DID have a copy of Shadows of the Damned for PS3 in my (embarassing) stack of unplayed games. Naturally, I decided that it had to be moved up the pile. I had after all purchased it on the back of it a) being a Suda51/Grasshopper-developed game and b) the positive comments that the game seemed to get on forums from those who had played it.

I may not have bothered with this discussion on whether Suda51 is overrated as a developer at all but I did play Shadows of the Damned and I had to agree with my friend. The game was a painfully standard, linear third-person shooter with irritating mechanics, dull/miserable environments and “edgy humour” which amounted to your speaking gun constantly spewing out phallus jokes. I have to stress that the game wasn’t bad: it worked and was perfectly playable but it also did nothing to interest me or keep me playing beyond the first 4-5 levels so I binned it off because I’m not the person who likes to persevere with average games if I have other things to be playing.

It’s far from ugly but we’ve seen all of this before.

This was a genuine disappointment because I’ve always been a big fan of anything that Suda51 and his Grasshopper Manufacture team put out. In a gaming landscape dominated by FPS’s, sports games and seemingly endless sequels to cash-cow franchises, I admired the way in which he pushed forward with risky and incredibly niche concepts that went against what the marketing men wanted. Games like the bizarre Killer 7 or joyfully weird No More Heroes were welcome treats in release schedules that often did little to turn me on. Shadows of the Damned does indeed have some noticeable splashes of Suda51 weirdness but the overriding sense was that I was playing a fairly standard shooter that had had gore, tits, swearing and penis jokes thrown at it. Now these aren’t always bad things in themselves but such additions can come off as lazy attempts to sell a game to an adult audience. I’m not saying that this was the intention but it’s just how Shadows of the Damned rubbed me up personally. Ultimately, it just didn’t sparkle and keep me intrigued as many of Suda51’s previous efforts had done in the past.

This was how I ended up giving a second thought to what my friend had said about beginning to believe that Suda51 is overrated. Had he simply been lucky with his first few “big” releases for us Western gamers? Has he ran out of ideas in recent years? Or were his games actually not all that good when considered as standalone products and not antidotes to what the industry was trying to get us to buy? Before we go any further, I’ve pulled up a list of all the games that Suda51 has been involved in so that there is some sort of reference before I attempt any further analysis. Titles that I have put in bold are the ones that I have personally played.

• Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout (Super Famicom, Director)*
• Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special (Super Famicom, Director)*
• Twilight Syndrome: Search (Playstation, Director)*
• Twilight Syndrome: Investigation (Playstation, Director/Writer)*
• Moonlight Syndrome (Playstation, Director/Writer)*
• The Silver Case (Playstation, Director/Writer)*
• Flower, Sun and Rain (Playstation 2, Director/Writer)*
• Michigan: Report from Hell (Playstation 2, Original Plan/Producer)
• Killer 7 (Gamecube/Playstation 2, Director/Designer/Writer)
• Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked (Playstation 2, Director/Writer)*
• Contact (Nintendo DS, Producer)
• Blood+: One Night Kiss (Playstation 2, Director/Writer)*
• No More Heroes (Nintendo Wii, Director/Designer/Writer)
• Flower, Sun and Rain: Murder and Mystery in Paradise (Nintendo DS, Supervisor/Original Game Staff)
• Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (Nintendo Wii, Director/Writer)*
• No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Nintendo Wii, Executive Director)
• Shadows of the Damned (Playstation 3/Xbox 360, Executive Producer/Writer/Story)
• Rebuild of Evagelion: Sound Impact (PSP, Creative Producer)*
• Sine Mora (Xbox 360/Playstation 3/PSVita/PC, Producer)
• Diabolical Pitch (Xbox 360, Producer)
• Lollipop Chainsaw (Playstation 3/Xbox 360, Creative Producer)
• Liberation Maiden (Nintendo 3DS/iOS, Original Concept/Creative Director)
• Black Knight Sword (Playstation 3/Xbox 360, Executive Producer/Writer)
• Killer Is Dead (Playstation 3/Xbox 360, Executive Director/Screenwriter/Story)
• Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day (Playstation 3, Original Story/Scenario Writer/Overseeing Director)
• The Silver Case (Remaster) (Playstation 4/PC, Producer)
• Let It Die (Playstation 4, Executive Director)
• The 25th Ward: The Silver Case (Remake) (Playstation 4, Producer)
• Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Nintendo Switch, Director/Writer)

A few things to note from the above list:

1. Games marked with a * were only released in Japan. The bulk of Suda51’s early work didn’t make it to the West save for the few titles that have been remastered/remade in recent years.
2. As you can see, he has had varying roles on different games. It is hard to consider everything Suda51 has been involved with to be all his own for example.

The important, most prominent titles from his back catalogue for us in the West would arguably have to consist of:

• Killer 7
• No More Heroes
• No More Heroes 2
• Flower, Sun and Rain (DS version)
• Shadows of the Damned
• Lollipop Chainsaw
• Killer is Dead

This focused selection of games are what I would consider to be most crucial to us (and this discussion) because despite Suda51’s large portfolio, these are the titles we know him best for. But how do we recognise a Suda51 game without prior knowledge of his involvement? Typically, the games won’t be technical masterpieces and will often be behind the curve in terms of graphics and modern mechanics BUT sheer style tries (and often succeeds) to compensate. We’re talking crazy plots, bizarre characters and moments that make you think “I can’t believe they got away with including this in the game!”. Blood, heavily sexualised females and all manner of self-indulgent elements (such as Suda51’s love of wrestling and America for example) will also inevitably play a part in these experiences which are arguably style over much substance.

Lollipop Chainsaw was gory, sexy and oh so very weird. Unmistakably a Suda51 creation.

[On a brief side note, it is also important to remember that our impressions of Suda51 titles here in the West are skewed by the fact that we only really received the downright bizarre stuff with bloody violence and daring attitude. Some of his earlier works that remained in Japan focus on crime and mystery. It’s a shame that we didn’t really get a lot of those things over here.]

The big draw for a Suda51 game back in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation was the fact that we they were simply different and challenged the status quo. True, oddball games have always existed on any gaming platform but the likes of Killer 7 received a lot of press attention pre-release and these sorts of games were hailed as the antidote within a generation of gaming that had become obsessed with sequels, FPS’s and violent crime titles that were striving to be realistic and gritty/urban. Suda51 games were bright and colourful but also extremely dark and bizarre. No More Heroes on the Wii for example was a breath of fresh air on a console drowning in family-friendly software and fitness aids. The updated ‘Heroes’ Paradise‘ edition on the PS3 made very few waves however, an assessment which could also be levelled at the direct sequel to the original on the Wii which – while being the far better game – failed to garner as much interest and intrigue.

No More Heroes doesn’t hold back on the violence but was a more endearing experience than the senseless violence in the likes of GTA which were striving for realism.

And this for me is the crux of the issue when asking the question “Is Suda51 overrated?”. Once the shock value has worn off, once we’ve become partially desensitised to the wackiness and once we no longer need a cel-shaded champion to save us from being overrun by miserable brown WWII shooters, where does that leave a Suda51 game?

Speaking from my own personal experience, I adored a game like No More Heroes despite the fact that it is a heavily flawed game. It was unable to escape the necessity of motion controls (when the game would have been better without) and the barren open world was pretty awful for travelling around in to name two examples but I was able to forgive it because it was deliciously quirky and just the sort of thing that I wanted more of here in the West. It felt good to support the game on the Wii too at a time when newspapers and parent groups were furiously demanding that their little white family box not be made a home for the likes of NMH, House of the Dead Overkill and Madworld. Thing is, gaming has moved on as have expectations. We are no longer so prepared to put up with clunkiness or terrible game design masked over by style alone. Additionally, the last generation of consoles really opened the gates for more weird Japanese software. The PS3, PS4 and PSVita for example are home to lots of JRPG’s, visual novels and racy games such as Senran Kagura and Valkyrie Drive – all the sorts of games that we used to rarely get and would have to go out of our way to import for modified/hacked hardware capable of playing them. Sure, a Suda51 game will have a billion percent more artistic merit than a game like Senran Kagura but the underlying feeling is that we – as gamers – are no longer starved of ‘different’ experiences.

So to come full circle and return to Shadows of the Damned, it’s entirely possible that I would have really enjoyed this game and been prepared to overlook the flaws had it been a PS2-era release. As a PS3 game however, it simply didn’t excite and tried too hard to be hardcore and openly controversial. The following Lollipop Chainsaw was much more likable but then again it was far more akin the likes of Killer 7 and NMH in its colourful but bloody tone. That said, I’m sure that it failed to impress gamers in general who could look past the short skirts and nutty cutscenes. After all, zombies, linearity and a combo-based grading system were hardly revolutionary concepts.

I’ve yet to play Killer Is Dead but it seems that the critics saw through the style based on the general concensus that it isn’t a particularly fantastic game. Personally this doesn’t bother me and I will of course give the game a go (since I seem to be more forgiving than most…) but it’s interesting to note that there was very little fanfare surrounding its release despite the game – on the surface at least – bearing resemblances to past triumphs.

Killer is Dead certainly looks similar to past Suda51 efforts.

Is Suda51 overrated then? I don’t think so. I think his most lauded games were products of their time, praised in comparison to what was then considered to be stale on the same platforms. Times change as do expectations and what we have access to. His output was – in effect – being rated against what gamers wanted to escape from and therefore I believe that the general perception of what a Suda51 game is has always been a little warped. Personally, I’m a fan but it will be VERY interesting to see how No More Heroes 3 for the Switch fares when it releases. The Switch – in my eyes – is a huge success like the Wii but other than Mario Odyssey (and discounting Wii-U ports) there doesn’t seem to be many must-have “big” games. Could NMH3 tap into that same hunger for something different and exclusive that existed back in the Wii days or has the audience moved on?

Crystal Dreams

This last week saw me finally polish off the e-shop download of Pokemon Silver Version for 3DS. I ended up spending around 60hrs with the game and in truth, that figure could have easily been shaved by a considerable amount had I not spent ages hunting out my favourite monsters and training them up even though I had no space for them in my final/ideal team. I felt like a bit of a boss taking a Lv60+ team of Lugia, Typhlosion, Tyranitar, Dragonite, Raikou and Gyarados into the final showdown with Red (I would have also taken Ho-Oh but I needed Gyarados as my ‘HM slave’ to navigate Silver Cave) and I managed to beat the toughest trainer in the game on my first attempt. That Snorlax that bothered me so much back in the day? No problem! Typhlosion ended that sucker with a few Dynamic Punches. Yeah!

It was a very nostalgic experience overall and I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting the classic sound effects, sprites and simpler Pokemon mechanics that I’d been missing with the newer games. Despite the amount of hours I invested into Silver, I’m still keenly waiting for January 26th and the next classic re-release that I’d been hoping for…

Pokemon Crystal Version was the edition that everybody had really been clamouring for when the Gold/Silver re-releases were initially announced and I can only presume that Nintendo held it back on account of it being so similar to G/S that nobody would buy either of those versions. This way, gamers like me will double-dip and I can’t deny that I have fallen for their nefarious marketing tactics! Yellow Version was re-released alongside Red/Blue but that was likely a different scenario given how Yellow had quite a lot of differences compared to the games it was updating and was changed-up to follow the TV show more closely.

Crystal is more of a subtle update over its direct predecessors but is – in my opinion anyway –  the definitive edition of the second generation of games. When this game was originally released, the introduction of animated sprites was incredibly special for example. The first iteration of the Battle Tower debuted in Crystal too (and boy was it brutal!) and a slightly tweaked storyline put Suicune into a position of prominence, allowing the player to eventually battle the legendary Pokemon without worrying about it fleeing as it, Raikou and Entei would immediately do in Gold/Silver.

Gotta love those old sprites!

Crystal is – like most of the early Pokemon games – quite nostalgic for me as I clearly remember receiving it for Christmas on the year of release along with a brand spanking new Gameboy Advance. How ironic that the first game I played on a new system was one via the backwards compatibility! The more advanced (see what I did there?) aesthetics of those shiny new GBA titles didn’t deter me from embarking on a second tour of Johto however and in 2018, history is set to repeat itself. I really cannot wait and I’m fortunate enough to have received a £15 e-shop voucher from my sister at Christmas so I’m saving that for the 26th!

It’s also worth mentioning that Nintendo have slightly tweaked this version of Crystal in a rather special way. Aside from Pokemon Bank compatibility, they have also included a way to battle and capture Celebi without the need for any sort of special ‘event’! Wow! Celebi has long been one of those Pokemon that has been impossible to capture without being fortunate enough to attend a special event and outside of said event for Gold/Silver/Crystal (or the Japanese bonus disc for Pokemon Colosseum), I don’t believe Celebi has been made available since.

Roll on the 26th!

Why I love collecting TCG

Other than videogames, one of my other turbo-nerd interests are trading cards, specifically Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!! I’m no player of either game but I certainly do like to collect the cards and keep up with the current events where Yu-Gi-Oh is concerned since I also operate a very small ebay buying/selling business purely for selling Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I’ve found discovering which cards are worth money and keeping up with what’s trending in the meta to be fascinating and I’ve had some fantastic scores this year alone. But this isn’t a post where I’m going to be blabbering on about investments and my best sales; this is going to be me discussing my personal collections and how I got into these card games in the first place.

The Pokemon Trading Card game was the first obsession and I got into it right at the very beginning when the Base Set came out here in the UK (I believe I actually started with the cards before the Gameboy games) and a friend at school gave me my first card for free. It was either Machop or Charmander (I forget which) but I soon got hold of Koffing too and so the collection began.

Humble beginnings…

Of course, the big problem as a kid was the price of booster packs! At £2.49 for an 11-card pack which often had nothing too interesting inside, it was difficult for my parents to justify buying many for me and so I had to rely on trades, the odd pack here and there (when I was allowed one) and decks for birthdays/Christmas’. Later on when I got an official pocket money (or allowance) sum to last me a month, I could buy more packs BUT I also had to make that money last so I STILL couldn’t go crazy. It was often frustrating to go to school with other kids whose parents bought them tons of packs over the weekends, brand-new binders etc. because every Monday, they’d be showing off all of the new foils or “shinies” that they’d acquired. Still – in hindsight – it was better that I learned the value of money and wasn’t spoilt I guess so there is that little life lesson to be thankful for. Besides, having less to work with made those trades all the sweeter. I once somehow managed to trade a ‘rare’ Base Set Dugtrio for a common Onix by arguing that Onix could “easily swing its tail around a chop Dugtrio’s head off”. Ignoring the dark outcome of that hypothetical battle for the moment, it was an epic trade.

The scores were cancelled out by some of the terrible deals that I made though (something I’m sure all TCG collectors can relate to!). One in particular saw me buy a Fossil booster pack for £4.99 from a market before they were officially available in UK shops and pull a holo Hitmonlee card. Needless to say, I was hot stuff come Monday morning in the playground but what did I do? Yep, I traded Hitmonlee away on that first day! Another poor trade was exchanging my booster-fresh Neo Genesis Typhlosion for a Japanese version of the other Typhlosion card from the same set only to later discover that the card I’d received was a fake. Doh!

Anyway, I collected the cards all the way up to Legendary Collection before quitting in secondary school, partly because of growing up and partly because of there simply being nobody to trade with anymore as things such as cool clothes, girls and tech became the things to chase. I briefly returned to collecting current cards during the very early ‘EX’ era and collected from EX-Ruby/Sapphire up to EX-Unseen Forces before binning the hobby for a second time. These new cards just didn’t appeal to me anymore due to poorer (in my opinion) artwork and a focus on the newer generations of monsters that I wasn’t as interested in. The EX holos were usually awesome though, even if the earliest examples were laughably unplayable in the game itself.

Cards like this convinced me to keep collecting into the early EX/Nintendo era of the TCG.

Fortunately,  I didn’t sell my collection of cards once my brief second stint of collecting was done and so when I decided to get back into the hobby again (around 3-4 years or so ago now) I had a pretty good base to build on. After all, I’d always kept my cards in great condition and organised by set so going for full sets of the original Wizards Of The Coasts-published expansions (the most nostalgic sets by far) was more a case of filling in the gaps rather than beginning from scratch. I decided to not bother with Legendary Collection since buying the same cards a third time (if you factor in Base 2 to the mix as well) was a step too much, especially since I had very little from that set in the first place. The same applied to the three Wizards ‘E’ series expansions (Expedition, Aquapolis and Skyridge) because those sets are huge and the holos extremely valuable in some cases.

So I limited myself to Base 1 through to Neo Destiny and honestly, considering that this period pretty much summed up my original collecting days, it seemed quite fitting and nostalgia-infused to try and complete these sets. The added bonus of this kind of collection also being an investment of sorts is another plus that has to be remembered because these classic cards are constantly going up in value. Obviously nobody can predict the future’s interest in such things but for now, buying old-school Pokemon cards seems a pretty safe investment. Thus far, I have managed to finish Base 1, Jungle, Fossil, Team Rocket and Base 2. I should be working on the Gym sets next but due to rising asking prices, I have decided to skip ahead and try to get Neo Destiny done next since even the core holos from that set can cost between £20-£30 apiece for the most desirable ones – that’s before considering the going rates for the ‘Shining’ cards.

I have very little interest in the new sets of cards to be honest and it’s largely down to the fact that I stopped following the games after Diamond/Pearl so I’m very unfamiliar with the monsters and in any case, I’m no fan of the designs that I have seen or the crazy CG-orientated artwork on a lot of the cards. The days of Ken Sugimori’s simple watercolour artwork or the primitive CG of “CR CG Gangs” is where the appeal lies for me. I DO however pick up some of the full-art cards when I can because they are absolutely stunning at times with their embossed/textured surfaces and artwork which usually impresses me when the regular cards can’t.

It’s incredible to see how much card design has evolved since that all-important debut Base Set.

But it isn’t just the Pokemon TCG that has my collecting attention. At the start of secondary school, I became aware of the existence of Yu-Gi-Oh!! and it didn’t take very long for another collecting bug to infect the inner workings of my impressionable mind. As with Pokemon, it all began innocently enough with my first card being given to me for free. That card was a copy of Succubus Knight from the first booster set (Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon) and so it began. I bought the obligatory copy of Starter Deck Kaiba (in 1st Edition!) and then booster packs from then on when I could. Money was still tight as a teenager however so as with Pokemon, I couldn’t afford to amass as many cards as those I was trading with at school and building a collection was doubly harder given how brutal the pull ratios were in those older Yu-Gi-Oh sets. A standard 24-Pack booster box would only contain six foils, possibly seven if said box also had a “Secret” rare card so as you can imagine, you had to be lucky to pull a foil card. In contrast, twelve out of thirty-six packs in a Pokemon TCG booster box would contain foils so the strike rate was a lot better. Younger Yu-Gi-Oh players/collectors have grown used to kinder box ratios and all packs coming with a Super Rare foil card at the very least so those early days of Yu-Gi-Oh were a very different time.

The first Yu-Gi-Oh card I ever had. It was only in recent years that I discovered that the art was censored!

What really sold Yu-Gi-Oh to me was that even though it was still a children’s card game, the artwork was so much darker and more grown-up. Here we had cards based on dragons, demons and ancient Egyptian evils. Tombs, magic and all manner of bizarre creatures also contributed to my fascination and I was easily hooked. Sadly, the newer sets don’t quite captivate me in the same way because things have grown more cartoon-like with anime-inspired designs and a greater quantity of comical cards or art that simply no longer interests me as a collector. The golden period for me personally was between Labyrinth Of Nightmare and Ancient Sanctuary; this was where the card art peaked with it’s darkest and most fucked-up designs and where some of the most famous (and broken) cards made their debut. In general however I do appreciate the cards right through the GX era and I am usually able to find cards from beyond that which I want in my collection.

Unlike Pokemon however, I did sell my collection off once I’d had enough the first time so getting back into collecting Yu-Gi-Oh was a steeper hill to climb. Fortunately, I’d kept a few cards that I’d held onto for sentimental reasons and these included the likes of my 1st Edition SDK Blue-Eyes White Dragon, secret rare Thousand Dragon and Ultra Rare LOB-coded Red-Eyes Black Dragon so there were a few desirable cards already ticked-off. My second era of collecting started with me simply buying cards that I liked or had fond memories of but due to purchasing many large joblots of cards, I accidentally found myself with lots of semi-complete full sets so after much organisation, I decided to go for full sets from Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon up to Enemy of Justice which was where I’d originally halted buying Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day. I also have many boxes and binders of promos, OCG (Japanese) cards and other stuff that I like enough to keep from sets beyond those that I collect.

So far I have only been able to complete Rise of Destiny but those early GX-era sets are quite small and less valuable so I actually managed that one without intending to and only had to purposely buy the last four cards which weren’t even that expensive. I’m taking my time however since my attention is also focused on Pokemon and the buying/selling side of Yu-Gi-Oh which can be quite lucrative if you know your stuff. I also like to follow the meta and pick up certain cards as future investments since card prices fluctuate massively and old cards can suddenly gain value if the community finds a worthwhile use for them within a new tournament-viable strategy. As well as potentially rewarding, I simply find all of this very interesting which is why I do it!

I do apologise for all the reading in this post but any future TCG-related posts will certainly be shorter and more to the point. This was just an intro of kinds before I start including TCG here on Darkstalker90 Gaming. I will still predominately be focusing on videogames but sometimes there just isn’t anything I feel like talking about so I’d like to have a few different subjects to mix things up a bit, this being one of them.

Why I love Femme Fatales in Videogames

Contrary to the fact that I’m not posting on here every day, I do actually have a lot of things to say and various topics/reviews semi-written in my mind (just not physically typed-up where it matters…) so it’s a shame that life just loves to get in the way. Anyway, today I have found some time…time to plunge my arm into that insane melting pot of thoughts that is my mind and retrieve this topic centred on Femme Fatales in videogames. Or “Why I find dangerous, psychotic videogame girls sexy”. Yeah, that didn’t sound so great as the official title hence why I didn’t go with it.

So, what is it about femme fatales that I like so much? Well, I’m probably not alone in saying that I find strong women attractive and as much as I will unashamedly confess to having fun with pretty bimbo types in the likes of Dead or Alive Xtreme, I much prefer a strong lead female with a well-written personality/backstory. That’s the normal part. The not-so-normal part is that I find the psychotic, killer archtype pretty damn attractive as well when it comes to videogames (and books and movies too for that matter). Maybe it isn’t so strange though given how many guys seem to get some serious wood over DC’s Harley Quinn?

As well as attractive, I just consider the really bad girls to be straight-up cool and interesting. To better illustrate my point, I’ve compiled a shortlist of some of my favourite femme fatales who immediately spring to mind…

Tira (Soul Calibur III)

Let me begin by saying that Soul Calibur‘s most attractive lady is – without any doubt – Sophitia for her Greek Goddess-like charms and I will always ‘main’ her in any SC installment or at least her style via custom-created characters (the less said about her absence in SCV and poor replacement in the form of her daughter, the better). When Tira was introduced in Soul Calibur III however, I took an immediate liking to her. The blue hair was very out-of-place in the game but otherwise, I really dug her sexy green rags, feathers and pet raven. Most importantly though, her fighting style was new and unique and actually utilised her loopy personality with multiple stances accompanied by visible mood swings for the character. Tira is nuts and loves killing in an excitable child-like way that really does remind my of Harley Quinn. A really fun character that I am pleased to see appear in every installment since her debut.

Jane Doe (Devil’s Third)

Devil’s Third for the Wii-U is no classic. It was in fact, a pretty poor game in my opinion that could (and should) have been something rather more special but the end product was a generic third-person action game full of the cheap crap that should have been left behind years ago in videogames such as invisible walls, inconsistent difficulty spikes and painful linearity. There were a few good elements though and some interesting characters (that were pretty much wasted by being in this game) such as Jane Doe, one of the toughest bosses in the game. A voluptuous Spanish beauty clad in a traditional Japanese kimono (when you first meet her in the game), she soon ditches the far eastern garb for…sexy lingerie and a massive rifle?!? Yep, she’s a bit of a mish-mash of things but all you need to know is that Jane has killer curves and equally dangerous attacks. Fight from a distance and she will try to gun you down but get up close and personal and try to dance toe-to-toe with her? Yeah, you will probably die…a lot. She has several kinky moves involving choking Ivan with her thighs or trying to break his neck while making suggestive groaning noises. If this kind of thing turns you on then repeatedly falling foul of her cheap one-shot kills may not be a terrible thing.

Bad Girl (No More Heroes)

Surely a cute blonde in a Little Bo Peep get-up can’t be that dangerous, right? Wrong. The original No More Heroes was one of a slew of games for the Wii that dared to ignore the trend for family-friendly software on Nintendo’s crazy successful lil’ white box and us gamer’s loved Suda51 for it. The sequel is arguably the better and more streamlined game but the original is worth playing, even if it’s just for Bad Girl. That sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt image is quickly discarded as Bad Girl reveals herself to be a foul-mouthed, beer-chugging psychopath with an unpredictable personality and a love for beating bound/gagged male gimps to death with her trusty baseball bat. It’s the kind of madness that can only come from somebody like Suda51 and Travis Touchdown’s encounter with this crazy lady is as memorable as it is fucked-up. Is it wrong to be just a little bit turned-on by Bad Girl’s insanity?

Selvaria Bles (Valkyria Chronicles)

Now for character that has partially been ruined on the internet by exaggerated fan art: Selvaria Bles from Sega’s most excellent Valkyria Chronicles for PS3. This is a game that I cannot praise enough and while the sequels are an acquired taste for the truly devoted, the original is an outstanding tactical RPG that was a true breath of fresh air upon release, both in terms of gameplay and world design. The character of Selvaria was one of the best things about the game in my humble opinion. One of the opposing armies’ main generals, Selvaria wields the ancient power of the Valkyrur and is a feared force known to all. On the battlefield she is practically invincible and can destroy tanks with a single shot from her huge energy lance. There is a particular chapter in the game where Selvaria suddenly rocks up midway through the battle and proceeds to utterly demolish a player who foolishly believes that they can actually take her out like any other enemy boss. All you can do is frantically hide and attempt to complete the mission without Selvaria slaughtering all of your units. Valkyria Chronicles’ superb storytelling comes to fore when it initially portrays Selvaria to be a cold, merciless warrior but in reality she is simply being used by Maximillion, loyalty and love for her leader exploited so that he may wield her power in the Europan war. The DLC chapter titled Behind Her Blue Flame is particularly touching as Selvaria is revealed to be warm and caring towards your nameless engineer character. It’s a small bit of quality writing that shows that even the enemy is human and not necessarily evil.
Selvaria makes this list for being a great character in general, a fearsome/memorable enemy boss and a rare example of a female character designed to be attractive but also strong and succeeding on both counts.

Ayane (Dead or Alive)

I suppose when talking about femme fatales, I should be talking about “bad” girls and – as already mentioned – sexy nutcases but Kasumi’s half-sister from Dead or Alive isn’t really either of those things. She’s cocky and arrogant as a character but not an evil/bad person yet I suppose I will say that she leans more in that direction just to get Ayane on a list of some kind – she’s a bad girl at the least in some sense. Whenever I play Dead or Alive, I always ‘main’ Ayane because I love her speed, agility and the way that you maintain a distance from your opponent and punish them when they close in. Of course, it helps a ton that Team Ninja have always made her aesthetically pleasing on the eye and while most fanboys prefer Kasumi, I prefer her purple-haired nemesis for some reason. Surely it couldn’t be because Ayane is one of the most top-heavy of the DOA girls? No (what do you take me for?)…she’s just a cool girl in a cool fighting game. And she’s a ninja – everybody loves ninjas.

Nina Williams (Tekken)

There aren’t may Irish characters in videogames and even less female Irish assassins so Tekken‘s Nina Williams pretty much has the niche to herself although there’s nothing particularly Irish about her, especially with respect to her voice-actress who is…er…not very Irish. This blonde bombshell was clearly Namco’s version of Virtua Fighter‘s Sarah Bryant back in 1994 when the original Tekken was released into arcades and (more importantly) the Playstation. A cool-headed assassin with top-tier combos and a selection of bone-snapping holds, Nina may look like a sexy model but she’s utterly bad-ass and calculating as per her assassin occupation. I’ve always mained Nina in Tekken (after Kazuya) and love her combos plus her variety of special ops-inspired outfits. I even have a soft spot for her solo PS2 game, Death By Degrees, despite the majority of people agreeing that it’s a poor game (possibly something I can properly re-visit and speak about in the future). Also, you have to admire Namco’s way of keeping Nina youthful between Tekken 2 and 3‘s large time lapse by explaining that she’d been placed in cryogenic storage. We certainly weren’t complaining.

There are undoubtedly more great examples of femme fatales that I have forgotten about and countless more from games that I haven’t even played so what do you think? Do you also have a little something for the wackier ladies in gaming? Do you agree or disagree with my choices? Let me know!

“It has risen again!” (Medievil remake coming for PS4)

There have been some very interesting announcments in the world of videogames over the past few days but there was one in particular that got me feeling all excited as well as depressingly sceptical. That announcement? A remake of Medievil is heading for the PS4 next year (source here).

First of all, let’s begin with some positivity and explain why I’m excited about this. Medievil is one of my all-time favourite games and along with such other Playstation classics as Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Driver and Tekken, it is one of the reasons why I fell in love with gaming in the first place and am still here today (for better or for worse). Thanks to my Dad, we got the original grey Sony slab beneath the TV in our house in 1998/1999 and one of the best things that came in the box was the most recent version of the famous “Demo 1” disc. This disc contained demo versions of all the big releases that had just hit the shelves as well as some previews of upcoming titles. Medievil was one such game on the disc and my Dad and I must have played that demo a thousand times before he bought the full game.

The dreaded boulder section of Mausoleum Hill. Not so difficult as an adult but slightly more fiendish as a wee nipper still new to games!

I can only decribe the game as having a “magical” atmosphere. The design is a clever mix of horror and comedy with a perfect balance between the two being struck. Aesthethically, it reminds me of a Tim Burton movie with all the darkness and evil elements being kept in check by funny bits and the almost cartoon-like character/scenery design. The twisted shape of the gravestones has always stuck in my mind for example as have the sinister airborne demons from later in the game. Don’t forget the imps or killer pumpkins either. In short, the game has a lot of memorable visuals and made the sort of impact on me that other games (despite their quality) have failed to do in the 19 years or so since I first experienced Medievil.

The music too was incredible and carried a haunting, gothic tone that thoroughly bewitched my ears and added to the magic. To this day, it is a perfect example of an impressive, fitting videogame soundtrack composition and I often stick some earphones in and revisit my favourite tracks via Youtube.

I re-played both games last year as I so often do and found the original to have lost none of its charm. Yes, the game felt a little bit clunky and unforgiving (especially when it comes to falling from edges) at times but overall it still held its own. That graphical style in particular has really helped Medievil age well and does a super job at compensating for the general ageing that all early 3D videogames have suffered with many being cited as “unplayable” due to how poor they look today or how offensive those once cutting-edge textures are on the eyes.

If I were a female groupie then this kind of graphical style would have me dropping my undergarments in an instant.

Medievil 2 (to discuss it quickly) was a little different in that I also recalled it fondly but upon re-playing the sequel (I usually just revisit the original) I found it to be a lot more fiddly and frustrating than I remember with numerous irritating elements such as the Dankenstein boxing match, trying to save all of the civilians on the Kew Gardens level and the monstrous difficulty of the final few levels. I’m ashamed to admit that I had to resort to an old-school print-out of cheat codes from back in the day that had been folded up and stuffed inside the game case. As far as personal gripes went, I missed some of the classic weapons such as the magic bow and dragon armour. Obviously with the game being set in more modern time, these fantasy items made no sense but even so, I still mourned their absence. The game is still decent and worth playing but I much prefer the fantasy setting of the original which didn’t come with so many annoying, gimmicky additions to the core gameplay. At the time of writing this reaction to the remake announcement, it isn’t clear whether Medievil 2 will join the original and mirror the recent Crash Bandicoot remasters (which included all three main PS1 games) but I can honestly say that I’m not fussed either way.

Unfortunately I now come to the part of this article where I must do a bit of doom-mongering and air my reservations. First of all, I’m usually extremely sceptical about ANY remake (whether it’s a videogame, movie or music) because more often than not, it isn’t really needed and in the case of older games, developers feel the need to expand on things or add new bits to the original formula in order to give a game the necessary meat that it needs in order to exist as a full-fledged release in the modern age where consumers have come to expect more for their money. In my eyes, Medievil is a perfect game and doesn’t need anything adding to it so there’s that.

Secondly, it is utterly vital that they preserve a) the tone of the original b) that superb soundtrack (whether it gets remastered or not) and c) the balance between gothic horror and comedy. Before anybody accuses me of baseless assumptions, let’s not forget that Medievil was already re-imagined for the PSP as one of the machine’s launch titles and that version changed several things as well as tipping the scales firmly towards comedy. It has not been well-remembered by fans of the original and the comedy look to the ghost at the end of the remake teaser trailer does give me cause for concern.

The tomes on these stands provided hints and added to the game’s lore/atmosphere.

In general I am trying to remain on the fence until we have some more information or at least some footage to make a judgment on what kind of direction the developers behind this remake are taking. Using the PSP game for a base would be an instant turn-off for me and many others (judging by the comments section on the official Playstation Blog page for this news story) but remaking the game and losing that special balance in general would also leave me no other choice other than to say “no thanks”.

If it does turn out badly then it’s important to remember that we will always have the original to comfort ourselves with whether we dig out that old Playstation copy or fall back on the PSN re-release. When we still have this choice, I try not to moan or rant too much about what I consider to be “botched rehashes” because nobody can take away our memories or ability to play a game as it was originally released and nobody forces us to play a remake. Even rare games are available to play via emulation these days so we will always be pretty much sorted for the OG products when the marketing men take a steaming dump on our memories.

Here’s hoping that I will be looking forward to revisiting Gallowmere in 2018.

The Soul Still Burns (Soul Calibur VI!!)

Well…did anybody see this coming? After years of rumours, random polls and a few filler games that I don’t class as “proper” entries, a brand-new Soul Calibur has been announced by Namco Bandai. Soul Calibur VI will be hitting PS4, Xbox One and PC in 2018 and the initial reveal trailer was quite intriguing. I thought so anyway but then again, I’m a weirdo with strange concepts of what is “interesting” so take it with a truck of salt.

The little teaser shows Mitsurugi squaring off against Greek goddess Sophitia and judging by the outfits and Mitsurugi’s apparent reversal of age, I’m going to assume that this is a prequel of sorts or at least a game that takes place earlier on in the storyline. Let’s face it, Soul Calibur‘s plot has gotten utterly ridiculous during recent games so going for something easier to digest while not binning off the existing canon wouldn’t be a terrible idea at all.

Mitsurugi forgets how to treat a lady and gives Sophitia a right wallop. (image: Gamespot)

So am I hyped for this? Well obviously I am in some way or else I wouldn’t be writing about the announcement BUT I am still feeling extremely cautious. So far, I’m pleased that the game is even going to exist (because SC is one of my favourite series’ of all-time and I’ve been playing it since Soulblade/Edge on the Playstation) and of course, I’m doubly pleased to see that my main character and one of gaming’s most beautiful ladies, Sophitia, is back after being unceremoniously killed off between SCIV and V (because: rubbish plot).

My caution comes from the fact that I thought Soul Calibur V was absolute pants and not the fancy, lacy variety being worn by a pretty lady but that pair of nasty old boxer shorts that you sometimes randomly spot on the ground in an alleyway. The game looked incredible and it had one of the most enjoyable character creation tools that I have used in any game but everything else was wrong. There was no single-player experience to speak of to begin with and perhaps that should have been expected given how fighting games are all about the online these days but for me, SC has always been a fighting game with killer SP. I have great memories of unlocking all of the characters in SCII and the ridiculous amount of modes in SCIII for example. By contrast, SCV was a complete insult with its pathetic arcade mode that had the same two opponents for the last couple of battles every. single. time (Aeon and Nightmare).

Best way to die ever? The trailer confirms the return of this classic neck-breaking grab of Sophie’s.

Worse still was the loss of so many favourite characters with many being replaced by descendants or students/disciples in order to keep the classic fighting styles present in the series. The problem was that not many people liked these new characters and just wanted their old favourites back. Some (such as Natsu) looked completely out of place for a game set in the fifteenth century, others were simply “WTF?” (Z.W.E.I) and there even characters that seemed to mock players such as Elysium who looked like Sophitia but wasn’t Sophitia. The plot was rubbish and nobody wanted to play as the whining Pyrhh or pretty-boy Patroklos. There were way too many characters that adopted random fighting styles between rounds as well – wasted select screen slots for sure. All we wanted was Cassandra, Mina and Hwang but no, we got the likes of Dampierre (*shudder*) instead.

Clearly, they had attempted to do what Tekken 3 and Street Fighter III did before: breathing new life into an existing series by introducing some fresh faces and youth into the roster. In Tekken 3‘s case it worked due to the replacement characters being closely modelled on their forebearers and while SFIII‘s updated roster alienated a lot of the SFII fanbase, it did at least have a killer gameplay system to fall back on.

Speaking of gameplay, this was the final thing about SCV that switched me off due to how they’d messed about with an established and very enjoyable template. It was done with good intentions no doubt but the addition of flashy super moves seemed unecessary and having the classic Guard Impact only available when a specific meter had some stock was a very, very poor change. I suspect that the latter was implemented in order to make the game more accessible to those who couldn’t learn to use GI frequently but it rubbed me up the wrong way. The SCVI trailer appears to show super moves of some variety and the breakable armour feature that debuted in SCIV but I hope that this doesn’t signify a continuation of what SCV was.

It might sound like I’m being negative but I’m still actually cautiously excited for Soul Calibur VI and until there’s any evidence of the bad stuff returning, there’s no reason to be overly cynical. Street Fighter V has set the benchmark for disappointing fighting games this gen anyway – with its poor single-player and F2P style DLC onslaught – so SCVI can’t be any more deflating can it? I just hope that Namco Bandai heard what people didn’t like about SCV. Recent strong form with the Tekken series gives me some confidence at the least.

Has Fire Emblem become a Waifu Simulator?

This question (amongst others that I will discuss here in this post) was on my mind after having just invested 30+ hours into Fire Emblem Fates and deciding that I simply couldn’t be arsed to play the game anymore. A quick bit of background first though because I think that it’s extremely important to remember how the Western exposure of Nintendo/Intelligent Systems’ tactical gem has evolved in recent years. Fire Emblem has been around since the Famicom days in Japan and proved to be popular enough to spawn many sequels heading into the the 16-bit Super Famicom era. Over here however, it was a different story.

The first official Fire Emblem release that we received was for the Gameboy Advance back in 2003. Simply titled ‘Fire Emblem’, it was a prequel to the previous GBA release that remained a Japan-only deal and largely owed its English language existence to the popularity of Marth and Roy, two Fire Emblem protagonists that had been included as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Once our FE cherry had at last been popped, the sequels began to flow in the form of The Sacred Stones (GBA), Path of Radiance (Gamecube) and Radiant Dawn (Wii). A remake of the original Famicom title christened ‘Shadow Dragon’ was also released on the DS in 2008 (2009 for North America).

The graphics in Path of Radiance weren’t the prettiest by Gamecube standards but the gameplay was utter gold.

Up to this point, the series was still relatively niche in the West despite the steady flow of localised sequels in the wake of that initial GBA release. This modest popularity was likely propped up by Nintendo in the form of much smaller print runs of the games than other software releases on the same consoles (Shadow Dragon is a pretty expensive pre-owned game here in Europe for example). It sold well enough for the first 3DS installment – Fire Emblem Awakening – to be given the green light for us however and this is where things began to change. For the better? In some ways…but not ALL ways.

Now, I have to point out that Fire Emblem Awakening is one of my favourite games amongst all games that I have played since I started gaming in the early-mid 90’s. I ploughed around 130 hours into it and enjoyed promoting my characters and embarking on an excessive level of grinding in order to create a formidable army. At the same time, it was apparent that the tone of the series had shifted seismically in many respects. Fire Emblem has always been a series where you will find characters with luminous hair hues for example but with Awakening, the anime tropes were beginning to dominate. You could now advance support links between male and female characters to the point where they would declare their feelings for one another and marry and I actually quite liked this element as I thought it was handled pretty well.

However, the fact that your main character is custom-created at the outset of the game and supposed to reflect YOU, the strategist, meant that you had the choice of who to get it on with in midst of war. Is this a bad thing? No but the fact that the majority of FE players are male really endeared this aspect of Awakening to the “Waifu” crowd. Now for those unfamiliar with the term “waifu”, I’ve gone off and retrieved a definition of the word from one of many online dictionaries:

waifu. Noun. (fandom slang) A fictional character from non-live-action visual media (typically an anime, manga, or video game) that one is attracted to and considers a significant other.

One thing I always admired about Fire Emblem was the way in which it was able to give us attractive/pretty female characters who were also formidable warriors, clad in plate armour and not made to look overly-sexy in a try-hard manner. In Awakening however, these sorts of traditional FE ladies are joined by several more sexualised characters that gained a following all of their own (Tharja for example) and various bits of borderline jailbait clearly not prepped for bloody battlefields.

Your MC in Awakening can marry Nowi. If you feel uncomfortable with that, just constantly remember that she is actually over 1,000 years old.

This aside, there are other things about Awakening that really made me see FE as a series that was pandering to the Otaku types. The increase in crazy, out-there anime style characters for example or the DLC hot springs episode which – of course – included lots of awkward moments as battle-hardened valkyries suddenly switched chain mail for swimsuits or kimonos. I’m not saying that I’m against this kind of thing because I’m as appreciative of a bit of casual titillation as the next male BUT it made no sense in a Fire Emblem game and it was that thought which continued to return to me. On the whole though, Awakening was a great game with the usual excellent gameplay, some fantastic music and – despite some of the weirdos – some brilliant characters. Yes, these new elements felt out of place in an FE game but thanks to how addictive the gameplay itself was, there was a pretty good balance.

Then came Fire Emblem Fates, a follow-up with a brand-new world, storyline and characters unrelated to Awakening as is often the case with FE sequels. The game was unique in that it shipped as two versions, entitled “Birthright” and “Conquest”, with each edition following a different perspective of the storyline’s war. A third segment of Fates called “Revelation” was then released digitally on the e-shop (or available physically in the Collector’s Edition) which tied together both games and acted as a conclusion of sorts. This sounded very interesting to me and I battled for a long time against stock shortages and greedy ebay re-sellers to obtain a Collector’s Edition boxset (and story/saga in itself) so that I could get the cartridge that contained all three parts of the storyline. After the brilliance of Awakening, this had to be the next step up? Wrong.

Oh boy! Somebody forgot their armour…yep, we’re knee-deep in Waifu territory with Fire Emblem Fates.

Aside from my gripes with the gameplay additions (such as new classes that I didn’t particularly like) and the fact that I didn’t care one inch for the storyline, there were many aspects of the game that had fully stepped over that line into Otaku territory. Waifu-ism was rampant now, especially when it came to the eye-poppingly breasty Camilla (pictured above) who thought that wearing some token midriff armour but leaving her overflowing chest and underpants exposed is a good idea when going up against axes and spears. Again, I cannot lie and say that I don’t like her design but I also think that it’s not very Fire Emblem and shouldn’t really belong here.

There are all these female characters for the male Waifu fanatic to choose from and this time, when you marry, the two of you have a little house within your army’s fort and certain ‘events’ trigger upon visiting such as receiving a kiss from your significant other or having them speak to you directly in a first-person viewpoint. Most of these moments are quite touching (if you’re a bit of a softie like me) but time and time again, I felt myself asking “is this just too much?”. Along with wildly mis-matched,  impractical outfits for many of the women, the romance element made me feel that the game was definitely part Waifu simulator.

There were other issues of course. I couldn’t care less about the majority of the characters for example and the usual assortment of stereotypical personalities were gradually drip-fed into my swelling assortment of units. The game also committed the sin (in my opinion anyway) of having a Japanese/Ninja-themed setting in a fictional, fantasy world. What is that all about? Why do developers have to do it? Familiarity for Japanese players perhaps? Possibly but for me, this sort of thing has always struck me as lazy and unispired and yes, I will include the likes of Final Fantasy VII‘s Wutai in that criticism. No game is safe.

Usually, Tharja would probably suck your soul away with the Nosferatu spell but because Waifu culture is a thing, THIS can happen too.

Overall, I simply didn’t enjoy Fates. Once again, I will just reaffirm that I really don’t mind the pervy fanservice-y stuff (such as the above image) but there are games specifically geared towards that kind of stuff and I really don’t think that Fire Emblem is the place for it. Unfortunately, Intelligent Systems likely had no say in the matter because – from what I have read – declining sales of the series (even in Japan) forced Nintendo to issue an ultimatum when it came to Awakening: sell 250,000 units or it will be the final Fire Emblem installment. This would largely explain why they have shifted the tone a little and tried to appeal to that niche but sizeable Otaku crowd. The move clearly paid off but at what price? The series seems secure for now but it has taken a new path that the old-school fans who grew up playing translations of the Famicom/Super Famicom releases may (understandably) turn their noses up at.

One final note/disclaimer from me is just to say that at the time of writing this post, I haven’t played the latest 3DS Fire Emblem game which is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden. Drop me a comment down below and let me know if it is a little more restrained than Fates…

Digital: Pokemon Silver Version (3DS e-shop)

Recently I have had serious trouble finding the time to sit down and really get stuck into a home console game. I have various titles on the go for different machines but work and life in general keep getting in way. Enter the saviour that is handheld gaming. So far on this blog, I have talked about the PSP quite a bit but I owe my interest in handheld gaming to the Gameboy Colour which was my very first machine (discounting the Playstation in the house which wasn’t my own console). As with a lot of people my age, I received the GBC as a Christmas gift purely because I wanted to play Pokemon like all of my friends at school were doing. Red Version was where it all began but it would be the follow-ups, Pokemon Gold/Silver, that would really impress…

This moody title screen was impressive for an 8-Bit handheld…

I can distinctly remember being given some sort of really thick, unofficial Pokemon magazine by my Gran which had loads of information on the upcoming sequels. The magazine mapped out the initial few towns/routes, showed all of the new monsters (with Japanese names) and detailed new features to the series such as berries, the Poke-Gear and the introduction of Dark and Steel types. I absolutely pored over this magazine which was bringing us the latest information straight from Japan and the sequels simply could not come soon enough. I saved money bit by bit (money being difficult to come across as a child!) until I had the required £29.99 put aside in advance and I’ll be completely honest: I miss those days. Being so impressed and excited for a videogame as well as slowly but surely scraping the money together to buy it…so much better than the present day me who thinks “meh” to most game announcements and could afford any new release immediately if I was feeling irresponsible enough to casually drop £40-£50 on a PS4 game (which I very rarely do).

The very best part though was that the game lived up to all the expectations I had and then completely surpassed them. I opted for the Silver version since a) Lugia looked cooler than Ho-oh and b) there was this strange, unspoken sureness that the Gold version would be better because the word ‘Gold’ sounds more impressive than ‘Silver’. This meant that more people at school owned Gold Version and so having the opposite meant that I would be a more attractive trading partner. On a side note, this amusing little quirk also happened with Ruby/Sapphire on the GBA but since then, I think Nintendo haven’t produced a duo of Pokemon games with one version sounding better than the other.

Colour! This was a huge deal back on release.

Fast forward to 2017 and I have just downloaded the digital re-release of the game from Nintendo’s 3DS e-shop service. Initially I’d been intending to pick up the re-release of Red/Blue that has been available for some time now but I’d completely forgotten that Gold/Silver had also been slated for a re-release so when I saw these little beauties were available…well, I HAD to skip a generation unfortunately because Johto was calling and I didn’t have enough shop credit for both. These games retail for £8.99 by the way which is expensive for a digital download of a retro game but I personally think that the price is extremely fair for the size and depth of the games. Don’t forget that original cartridges have shot up in value over the years and that it is depressingly easy to end up with a bootleg copy or a genuine cart with a dead battery that needs replacing. These 3DS downloads bypass all of that and are so convenient. The 3DS’ rubbish battery life also does a great job of emulating the Gameboy Colour gobbling up those AA batteries!

Understandably, I was a little dubious about returning to one of my all-time favourite games in case I’d been looking back through rose-tinted specs all of these years. Thankfully this wasn’t the case and I am happy to say that I am utterly in love with this game all over again. Going so far backwards in a series that has evolved (get it?) so much over the years takes a bit of getting used to, mind. I’ve ploughed hundreds of hours into the GBA games and first generation of DS games (Diamond/Pearl) for example and so returning to a time where there were no passive Pokemon powers, no animated sprites, no weather effects and no many other things takes some getting used to. I keep expecting to be paralysed when hitting an electric type with a physical attack for instance. I imagine it would be even tougher for anybody who has played the DS remakes or the newer 3DS installments, doubly so if they are a younger gamer who only started playing Pokemon with the latest games.

Night-time was another “wow” moment in 2001

Maybe I AM blinded by nostalgia but I personally prefer the older games like this. The more primitive sound effects and old-school sprites invoke a warm fuzziness inside – sights and sounds of a simpler time. I find a lot more charm in these things anyway (regardless of the reason) and also happen to enjoy the more stripped-back simplicity of the game with knocking over the game’s gyms, trashing the Elite Four and swiping as many different Pokemon as possible being your only objectives. Obviously there were a few new distractions added to the second generation of Pokemon games and a lot of these relied on the game’s in-built date/time facility which dictated when certain events such as the bug-catching contest would occur. Other nice touches included trainers calling you on the phone (with pretty terrible conversation it has to be said!), being able to use the radio and different Pokemon appearing depending on whether it was day or night. At the time, these additions were incredible despite how trivial they may seem today. I’ve not played any of the 3DS generations of the games so I imagine that there is so much to do in those versions but I’m in no rush to find out. My Pokemon obsession ended with Diamond so while I am interested in catching up, I would still rather go back to a more focused and ‘innocent’ period in the series’ life such as Silver Version.

My current play-through is going very well and I’ve found myself using Pokemon in my team that I would never have previously even considered such as Slowpoke, Exeggcute and Zubat (mostly all evolved and nicely levelled by now of course). Revisiting all of the old towns and hearing that fantastic 8-Bit music again has been a lovely experience so far but I’m only around halfway through what the game has to offer with one final Johto gym standing in my way. Catching Lugia is my first priority however but the initial attempt didn’t go very well! I completely forgot about how Lugia makes the battle so annoying with its ‘Recover’ move as well as how higher level monsters in these older games simply refuse to be captured, even when at the lowest HP point and hit with a status effect. All good fun though!

So would I recommend this download? Whole heartedly. As I said earlier, the price may look steep for a retro download but considering all that you avoid by not trying to buy a working, genuine original copy then it’s fantastic value and having the game on your 3DS memory card with all of your other stuff is just so convenient and perfect for taking on the move – in perfect keeping with the spirit of the original releases and their pocket nature. I really hope that they also offer Crystal at some point since the remixed storyline, introduction of Pokemon animations and other little tweaks made it an update worth playing through all over again way back when and I’d happily do the same again today. Make it happen Nintendo!.