YAY let's finish this!
NUMBER 5: EARTHBOUND, SNES
I'm one of those people.
I'm one of those people that owns Earthbound, the original SNES Earthbound cartridge. I'm not selling it. I know it's worth like $300. I don't care.
I still have the guide. It still smells, like banana and pizza and burnt charcoal, and I was one of those kids who dug through the guide and just read the newspaper articles and the stories cover to cover, like a real book, because it more or less was. I used to religiously participate in Camp Earthbound. I followed Tomato's translation of Mother 3, and celebrated the day it came out. Hell, I was right in the middle of the party when Earthbound came to WiiU.
You know I bought a Nintendo 64 hoping for Earthbound 64? Ocarina of Time was my consolation prize, but I still remember sitting there playing it and thinking, "Wow, this is great, and when Earthbound 64 comes out, it's going to be even better!" I know Mother 3 is the spiritual Earthbound 64, but ... it's not the same, man.
Earthbound on its own is fun, since it's an odd little take on JRPGs -- it's got the same systems in place, but it's light and funny and the main hero's just some schlub kid, what the hell? But once you look into it and discover its history, that it's a Dragon Warrior parody that's actually meant to be read aloud (try it, seriously, try reading Earthbound out loud, you'll see what I mean), I think that makes it more loveable.
... at least promise me you'll love it more than Nintendo of America, Jesus H.
NUMBER 4: LEGEND OF MANA, ORIGINAL PLAYSTATION
"Hey, Bean, don't you mean Secret of Mana?" Nope. I like this one better. It's my secret mission in life to see that everyone plays this thing.
I think the first thing that drew me to this was ... okay, it was that you can play as a girl, and that's so damn rare, but after that, it's the customization. You can pick your weapon, you can change at any time. You can pick where you live. Hell, you can pick your whole map. You can pick your party, you can pick your pet, or a robot if you'd rather.
You can pick which stories you do! You don't have to do them all, after all. Hell, you can pick how you beat the game, because there's three different fucking ways to do it, all totally different from each other. I suspect that Legend of Mana is what Square wanted Secret of Mana to be, before Secret of Mana got shunted off to the Super Nintendo.
Also, I like to think of Little Cactus as the first MSPixeler.
NUMBER 3: XENOGEARS, ORIGINAL PLAYSTATION
"Hey, Bean, if Square made it in the 1990s, you played it, is that what I understand?" Yeah, pretty much.
For a long time this was my favorite. Xenogears is one of those games that you play for the story (even though the gameplay is pretty good), and holy holy holy shit what a story. Even though it does have plenty of anime bullshit in it (there are giant fighting robots in it for fuck's sake), it has a way of not being too mired in it, unlike some other RPGs from the same pedigree. *coughcoughXENOSAGAcoughcough*
It's complex, but complexity isn't in there just for the sake of being fake ass deep, does that make sense? It's not Kingdom Hearts. I just wish Square had the money and time for that second disk.
It also is probably the most misunderstood game in the history of the world -- it's surprisingly theist, but this is the Internet, what are you going to do?
Probably move on to another game, like so:
NUMBER 2: MASS EFFECT SERIES, VARIOUS PLATFORMS
If you didn't think Mass Effect wasn't going to make this list, I don't know what to do with you. Look, if I wind up sewing a costume from a piece of media? That's high fucking praise. It inspired an entire video game blog out of me.
So anyway, I think you've all had a fine introduction to Mass Effect, the horniest, drinkingest, ball-swingingest game they've ever made. If you manage to find a scene where someone's not talking about fucking, or actually actively fucking, it's probably a combat scene where you're charging headfirst into a combat mech sixty nine times your size, of course it's sixty nine times because this is Mass Effect, damn you. But yeah, Shepard's the only video game protagonist I can name that beats dudes off down with her own head, because she's that much of a badass.
So here's to Shepard, the only Canadian on my extremely Japanimu list, may she continue not having any actual mass effects in her game until the reapers eat us all.
... there is one other stand out from Mass Effect: it's the only game on my list I can share with Husbando~. If he even smells a little bit of anime on something, he bails. I had to make him read Dangan Ronpa at gunpoint. Actually, I nearly had to make him play Mass Effect at gunpoint. He heard that it was by Bioware, and Bioware makes those arrr peee geeeeeeeeeeeees, and that totally wasn't Halo, so.
He nearly climbed me when he saw Mass Effect in action, however.
.... if I had to pick a Mass Effect, it might be 2. The story's the most fun in that one. Mass Effect 1 is SUPER SERIAL, Mass Effect 3 is ... Mass Effect 3. But I dearly love the combat in ME3 and the cohesiveness of ME1, so I still stand by my "The Mass EFfect Series" pick.
What the fuck could possibly beat out Mass Effect?
NUMBER 1: CHRONO TRIGGER, SUPER NINTENDO
"Oh yeah, that game you reference all the damn time when you're talking about Mass Effect." Ta daaaaa.
I love retro games, and I love RPGs, and there's something nice about the two put together: the limited resources make for a very delicate presentation. Characters couldn't go on huge soliloquies or visit ten bazillion places, there just wasn't room on the cart.
The story of Chrono Trigger is already a tender one: the world's dying. More than that, time is dying. Everything's marching forward to an inevitable Day of Lavos, 1999, and we're all fucked. But the limited SNES resources forced Square to take a story about the planet choking itself to death and tell it in a very ethereal way. Final Fantasy 6 is in a very similar position, but Chrono Trigger did it better.
I'm playing Radiant Historia currently. Everyone says it's Chrono Trigger's successor, and I can see that, since there's so many similarities between the two. They completely occupy the same brain space. But Radiant Historia has the resources to be bigger and grander, and it takes advantage of that. I can't really fault it for that, but it then loops back around and loses what made Chrono Trigger so special.
Also, Lucca was a badass. So was Frog.
