Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, Chapter 12 - Epilogue

 

The final boss may be defeated, but we have one last battle to fight: Spike's feelings for Tania.

JUST KIDDING, it's an uberboss. And it's a DOOZY.

Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, Chapter 11 - Finale, Part Two

Casa Del Mortamor descends.

Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, Chapter 10 - Finale, Part One

After getting the flying Pegasus, you still need to talk to this guy to advance the story. I spent a few minutes bumbling about trying to go to the underworld until I found this out. Time to invade the realm of Mortamor.

Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation, Part 9 - The Lost Post

 

So this is super weird. After "Part 8 - The Legend of Welda" something bizarre happened and one post just fell through the world geometry and got lost. So today I put up that lost post. Going to repost the several after this as well to get them back in the proper order, before I go onto finishing the Super Famicom version (finally).

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#169 - 181)

 

#169 Dragon Warrior 4 (NES) – Winter 2001

Today's post is going to cover the entirety of 2001, a year where I finished 13 games. So that fits nicely inside of the year. DQ4 is one I was looking forward to for a while. I emulated the first three over the previous several years so of course I was going to continue the series. This was the first thing I played in 2001 and it was a fantastic time. 

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#160 - 168)

 

#160 Chrono Cross (Playstation) – Summer 2000

The parade of incredible PS1 RPGs continues in this post, which is pretty much the back half of my 2000 golden era of RPGs. This game is notable for being the only game in history (yes, ever) that I stayed up four days in a row to play. Obviously I took breaks and I probably took naps too, but they were short enough that I can't remember any. Nope, for the better part of a week I was planted in front of the TV and the incredible soundtrack of this game was wafting through the house. I don't remember this four day extravaganza even being particularly tiring, where now I'm going to sleep every night whether I like it or not and usually earlier than I want to. Turns out youth is awesome and often taken for granted until it passes you by.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#153 - 159)

 

#153 Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy) – Spring 2000

 

Another Game Boy game! So far, 2000 has been The Year of Gameboy. It's about to become The Year of RPG, though. You can tell how I did all of my NES and SNES emulating in 98 and 99, so Game Boy emulating finally had its moment. Too bad I never picked up the real game though, because this might have my single favorite box art on the system. Just a tremendous aesthetic here.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#150 - 152)

 

#150 Everquest (PC) - Spring 2000

This is the game I've spent more time playing than any other game ever. Wasn't even sure where to place it on the list because how do you "beat" a persistent world MMORPG that adds new areas and bosses almost every year? Not just going to leave MMORPGs off the list though, that'd be silly given the time investment if I leveled up and did raid content etc in one. So I figured "the point in time where I really got into the game" would be the best spot for it.

Solar Striker (Game Boy, 1990)

 

Basically the Space Megaforce of the Game Boy, this is a vertical shoot 'em up that plays very well for the system it inhabits. It's yet another game from the Game Boy Player's Guide, which I'm pretty close to playing / covering everything from at this point. Also, little-known factoid: This game was directly produced by Gunpei Yokoi and developed by a Nintendo studio. You don't see many Nintendo space shooters flying around.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#134 - 149)

#134 Goldeneye 007 (Nintendo 64) – Winter 1999

The second of the two games I got with the N64. Talk about two great games, because in its era this was a damn fun experience. I don't think it'd be very playable if I went back and tried it again now, but I can leave the memories alone. Either way, it was incredible at the time, the first fully 3D console first person shooter that supported four-player splitscreen and just generally revolutionized the genre. This was Halo before Halo in that sense. Also it made great use of the Rumble Pak, and I still remember how cool it was getting one for this game and feeling the rumbles.

I was kind of depressed playing this for some reason, probably because of how damn cold and mopey everything was (in the game and also the real weather). This and Wild Arms were the two main things I played over the Christmas holiday, and while WA fell off (temporarily), I finished this one right at the end of the year before the world ended and Y2K hit (maybe that's why I felt gloomy, lot of doomsaying in those days). Great game, most known for the multiplayer, but I played the single-player myself and had a ball with that.

Gradius II (Famicom, 1988)

 

I somehow forgot about this game entirely when I covered the series on here a while back, and was reminded by its presence on the big list. I went from Gradius to Life Force to Gradius III and thought nothing of it because I figured Life Force was the second game. Well, it's more of a spinoff that became the second game in the U.S. by default.

Meanwhile there was an actual second game that wasn't released outside of Japan. To make things even more confusing, both this and Life Force were both released in 1988. Also, Nemesis II on Game Boy was called Gradius II in Japan, so there were two different Gradius II games. And there's also an arcade version of this game... that closely resembles the SNES Gradius III. My head is spinning like a kitten on a fast-moving record player.

Final Fantasy VI: Strago Solo Game (Ruin Edition)

The Strago solo game rolls on as I take on the rest of WoR and the big bads in Kefka's Tower. I'd like to know the story behind this picture. Is he flying? What's that vehicle? Something he built himself? All things are possible in FFVI's Neo Victorian steampunk era of invention and discovery.

(Reposted from July 2013, with various fixes and notes)

Final Fantasy VI: Strago Solo Game (Balance Edition)

I'm feeling ultra-nostalgic as of late. Know what I'd like to do? Play FFVI solo... as Strago. Nowadays, Final Fantasy games just aren't what they used to be. They have titles like Fabulous Nova Whispering Dawn that sound more like feminine hygiene products than video games.

Once upon a time, though, the series was great. And FFVI might have been the highest point. It might be the first true "epic" RPG story. Like the first legitimate sprawling epic that transcended the medium. It's also noteworthy for having a female main character for the first time in that series.

I wanted to do a solo run of this game for the challenge of it, but couldn't settle on which character to play as. Who'd be interesting, and challenging yet not a PITA? I settled on Strago, the spell-slinging hip wunderkind from the upper east side of Thamasa. Can I beat this game (well, the second half of it) with just one character? Read on.

(Reposted from July 2013, with corrections and new notes)

Fortified Zone (Game Boy, 1991)

 

Another of the Game Boy Player's Guide games that I wanted to check out for a long time. Man, that Game Boy guide sold me on games so well that I'm still checking out stuff from it 30 years later.

This is a decent, if very short, game from Jaleco. Looked cool in the guide but wasn't expecting much, got a pleasant surprise.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#127 - 133)

#127 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64) – Fall 1999

At this point I finally got an N64 (that's right, I got a Genesis, NES, and N64 all within a couple months of each other, 1999 was a smorgasbord of deals). What did I get with it? Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye 007. Played the first one first and I remember being incredibly stoked for the first 3D Zelda. The cartridge of Goldeneye meanwhile sat on a shelf for a while, with Pierce Brosnan staring at me creepily.

The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#111 - 126)

 

#111 Dragon Warrior (NES) – Summer 1999

This was a co-play / race with my friend JM on emulator. I don't remember who won, and considering I was playing on an iNES emulator with sped-up default frameskip (and JM might have been as well IDK) I'm not sure a winner could be legitimately called. Having never played this or used iNES before, I thought the sped-up version I was playing was the normal speed of the game. Little did I know that the normal speed of the game is actually VERY SLOW.

Regardless, this was my first Dragon Quest series game and I enjoyed it a lot. Nowhere near as much as the Final Fantasy series, though later I ended up liking both pretty equally as far as RPGs go (maybe even edge to DQ if factoring in the last couple of FFs and how they were...action games). I liked the NES Simplicity of this game and was open to playing more of the series, which obviously I did. This is a fun romp and short enough for a quick replay once in a while.