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By Mark D, September 22, 2011 3:19 pm

I’ve always been a big fan of Lord Of The Rings since I was read the Hobbit (at least I think I was, I might have just watched the cartoon) when I was little. I’ve always loved video games ever since I got my first Nintendo when I was 6 or 7 and the obsession’s been strong from there. I also had a PC at the time, but I was never as big on PC games when I was little. So putting together Lord of the Rings and video games should be a beautiful combo for me. Unfortunately it’s been a lot of hit and miss over the years.

I remember the first one though clear as day, War In Middle Earth. We were over someone’s house and they showed us the game. The battles were jaw dropping for the graphics in the day. The chills in my spine the first time I got to the Ford of Rivendell/Bruinen and suddenly there were 9 Nazguls staring down my poor Hobbits and Strider. It was certain death until the wave came and overtook them. Or the joy the first time I finally got the hobbits over the mountains and into Mordor. It was probably one of the first grand strategy games ever. Sure some of it was boring and slow, and a lot of the graphics looked the same, but for the day it was great. I kept the disks around for the longest time and would play them from time to time.

So when a LOTR game came out for the SNES, a system I loved, I thought it was going to be great. Thankfully I had the bright sense to rent the game before buying it. I spent 4 hours wondering around caves confused as all hell before finally giving up. Apparently I wasn’t the only one as the whole game was nothing but fetch quests and other people complained about the never ending caves. It’s amazing how a great epic game like Zelda could come out for the SNES, yet people wouldn’t think to simply rip it off for the LOTR license. That’s one of the reasons that Willow for the NES was a great game, it was pretty much just an updated Zelda game.

So that brings us to the movie adaptation games. Now I never played the one for Fellowship of the Ring, but I did play the two EA games and spend a bunch of time watching a buddy play them. The one cool thing about them was that since the games were released before the movies, you could get some sneak peeks at scenes and behind the scenes stuff by completing different sections of the game. While it was a good game, especially for being a movie tie in, it was rather simple. It was a beat’em up, which is nearly impossible to screwup. But you were limited to the scene/area you were in and couldn’t really explore. Also giving it minus points is that Gimli was just an unlockable instead of playable from the beginning unlike the overrated Legolas.

It’s been an amazing trip, but the game that’s really blown me away (at least for the first time since War In Middle Earth) is LOTR: Online by Turbine. Since it’s recently become Free To Play, I’ve been playing the hell out of it. Everything you could have imagined of Middle Earth is there and free to explore. Although there are no Nazguls the first time you get to the Ford, the cutscenes for the epic storyline which intertwines with the overall LOTR story. The beauty and work put into some of the places you see and visit is amazing. While not 100% interactive (you can’t go in and out of EVERY house) it’s enough so to be a more then faithful adaption. Wandering through the Old Forest and stumbling upon Tom Bomadil’s house was fun, and so is revisiting many of the scenes from the movie. While it is based on the movie, don’t expect the same likenesses as from the movie. Otherwise though I fully recommend getting the game and giving it a try. You can get all the way to level 30 without buying anything, and by then you will know how much you want to spend on the game.

If there’s one last game I want to mention here, it’s the wonderful Lord Of The Rings:Confrontation. Sort of like stratego but deeper and quicker to play, it involves trying to get the ringbearer across the map, while Sauron is trying to capture the ring. Each piece has a different combat rating, while you have 3 magic cards and 4 number cards which can help you in battle. When me and my roomie first played the game we went through 8 or 9 plays without realizing how fast time was flying by. It is a wonderful pickup if your a fan of LOTR and want a quick tabletop game.

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By Mark D, September 17, 2011 11:40 pm

So one of the first games I got when I got my Super Nintendo was Super Play Action Football. I had loved the NES game Play Action Football, and I proceeded to waste countless hours playing SPAF. Since there was only a single season mode, the NFL version of the game got boring. But the College version? That’s where I sunk my time, playing good ole Moldy Moss. Moldy Moss was the worst ranked team in the game, and it was always my dream to lead them to the championship. But my luck sucked. Every year I’d have them set to play the very best teams in NCAA, and every year some team I didn’t have scheduled would go undefeated and knock me down to #2.

It didn’t matter what I did or who I played, defeating Notre Dame 64-0 on week 1 when they were the top ranked team in the nation did almost nothing to help me. I’d go from being 120th (or 112th? Something like that) to being 80th in the nation. It would be a long hard climb, consisting of many 40+ point wins even on the hardest difficulty. Now I found out after all this time that there was a bug when you were the #2 ranked team in the Nation that always sent you to the Rose Bowl instead of having a #1 Vs #2 in the Orange Bowl. You had to turn down the invite to the Rose Bowl and then go through the whole list. Each invite you got would be less prestigious then the last, but when you got back to the top again it would offer you the National Championship game.

It’s a punch in the gut, reminding me of the time that I found out you could glitch Judge Doom in Roger Rabbit for the NES and beat him in a few seconds. Can’t tell you how many times I tried beating that bastard and it would never work. For the longest time he was in my hall of fame of final villains. The only thing worse was when I found out that the handful of times I got to my doppelganger in Battle Of Olympus for the NES (a classic underrated game) I was actually at the final boss. There were very few games I wasn’t able to beat for the NES that I owned, and it always bugged me when I couldn’t.

Its funny, because I decided to look around to see what people thought of Super Play Action Football, and all the reviews for it are horrible. Probably goes to explain why I always like the “bad” simulations of sports games instead of the more popular ones. Recently I picked up Solid Ice and gave it a bit of a try again, it was fun but was an awful play. For that matter so is Hockey Club Manager, it’s pretty bad. But for 2 bucks you can’t go wrong. Poor Super Play Action football isn’t mentioned anywhere and is hated, there has to be some other fans of it out there.

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By Mark D, November 29, 2010 12:08 pm

I can’t stand any of the critics/reviewers on Youtube and other places online. What annoys me is that most of them aren’t even old enough to have played these games (NES, SNES, Sega, basically everything before PS1). Look, every game that comes out these games seems to be paint by numbers First Person Shooters. Back in the day they would at least try to make quirky game play and test out something new. Some really great games were created because they were able to think outside the box. Now they weren’t all good, and there were some clunkers, but it’s still better then yet ANOTHER FPS.

I realize some games were just wrong, they were tough and nearly impossible to beat. But one of the issues was that in Japan you couldn’t rent games. So when they localized the game for the American market (which allowed rentals) they ramped up the difficulty to insane levels. Pretty much you didn’t want people to rent a 50 buck game for 7 bucks, beat the game and never buy it. That’s why Battletoads was so crazy to beat, in Japan it had unlimited continues. There were also mistakes in programming, but considering how early it was in game development, those can be excused.

But now you have all these people who have only played games since the PS1 or so coming out and bashing all these games of my childhood. Look, some of them were awful, some of them I look back with nostalgia and like, but WE HAD NO CHOICE! It was Nintendo or Genesis. Hell when I started as a kid, it was just the Nintendo as my parents refused to buy me a Genesis with good reason. Now I see these kids whose parents have gotten them every system, buy them every game the second it comes out, and they still aren’t happy.

They can’t even seem to believe that a time existed that you sat down with your Nintendo and had a choice between a bunch of awful games you owned because they were cheap (cough X-Men cough). Sometimes you would just find your own reason to keep playing a game, coming up with back stories and challenges. Even the quirkiness of some older games came to be loved.

The even more amazing thing is their inability to look beyond the graphics means that some great games that use ASCII or simple graphics (Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, Spelunky, Incursion, and many more) can’t attract this crowd. They just don’t seem to get the idea of deeper gameplay and less graphics. Some of these games I would have killed for when I was younger and spent hours at a time on them. As it was I got to enjoy Uncle Festers Quest and Master Blaster, among other great games.

No matter what you might think of Hudson’s Adventure Island, Dragonlance, Deadly Towers and plenty of other games, they were good for their age. They all had their issues, but it’s not like back then we could just break out Medal of Honor or even that many computer games. What we had was what we had, and I don’t think you can review these games fairly unless you played them growing up. It’s too easy to judge a book by it’s cover, and some books with worn titles have the best info.

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By Mark D, November 21, 2010 5:07 pm

With all the stories about everything that’s been going wrong these last few years for the Final Fantasy Franchise, it makes me sad. I loved playing FF1,2 and 3 on the NES/SNES. Then FF7 was probably one of the all time great games. But it feels like it’s been downhill ever since. I’ve played 8,9 and 10 and it does feel like it’s gotten worse. Some of the games did involve good new additions (FFX having the ability to switch in non active party members)but they seem to be trying to add too much and tinkering too much with what works. Here’s what works:

fighter

It’s Fighter from FF1. It’s everything that was right about FF and shows everything that’s been wrong the last few years. Simplify Final Fantasy. Your making a game, not a Movie that you occasionally play. Also, make at least one very male character, please? tired of whiny feminine guys and everyone having some sort of issue. Fighter, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage, Thief , Black Mage. We didn’t know anything about them except they were Light Warriors and they were the heroes.

For that matter, it wasn’t about the Toys, the Sound Tracks, the OAV or anything else that makes it seem like the FF series is about everything but the games. Then even the games end up being movies, the story ends up being overly convoluted and dumb, and people never connect with the heroes because they can’t add their own stories. There’s something to be said about Silent Protagonists. It’s part of why Cloud works so well, you become immersed in the game. It’s your voice that speaks for Cloud in your mind.

I wish they could in this day and age make a very FF1 like game. I think the hardcore Square fans would revolt if they didn’t have their flashy movies. It’s too bad though, because a once great franchise is getting run into the ground. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just keep things simple. Too often people figure simple with being stupid or dumbed down. There’s ways to make things simple but beautiful. That’s what the original Final Fantasy was, simple yet beautiful.

Square will never do it anyway, and I’ll probably get some FF fanboy yelling at me that they already did remakes of the original FF games. Also they’ll yell at me for calling it 1,2,3 and the American versions were renumbered and were actually 3 and 5 in Japan. I don’t care fanboy, you weren’t even born when the original FF came out. For that matter, her name is Aeris, if it was a translation error why would they make the same error for Final Fantasy Tactics too.

I have no idea why I ranted about this, it was pretty pointless.