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My Gaming Journey – Part 2 – 16bit Era and the Game Boy

The natural progression from the NES of course was right into the SNES. I think the SNES may still be my favorite console, mostly for the graphics. There is such a perfect simplicity to the sprits of the SNES. It was just enough power and memory to make larger complex titles, but not overly complicate them. I enjoy modern pixel graphics games, but they are always much higher resolution with so many more colors. It’s just not the same. After the SNES, consoles became much more about polygons and 3D graphics.

In case you didn’t catch it, I had a SNES growing up. My friends had a SNES, one had a Genesis, but we were all basically cemented in as “Nintendo people” at this point. The SNES somehow ended up being a different experience as well, less multi player gaming and more solo playing together. We did play multiplayer titles, Super Street Fighter 2 was one for sure, and of course Mario Kart. Everyone loved Mario Kart.

But a lot was solo gaming. The SNES was also when I started really getting into RPGs. The SNES had so many good RPGs, and specifically, the Final Fantasy series. I’ve probably played through Final Fantasy 2(IV) and 3(VI) a dozen times or more. It was everything I loved of the first game on the NES, except the stories were so much more. It’s a love that would continue on for a long while.

I wasn’t only a SNES person though, my grandparents had a Sega Genesis for us to play when we visited, which was fairly often despite that we lived 2 States and an 8-hour drive away. We didn’t have as many games for the Genesis but I absolutely loved Sonic 2 and Aladdin. Eventually, I did get a Genesis for our house though as well, or maybe we just somehow ended up with the one from my grandparents. It never quite dominated my game-playing like the SNES did. It always felt a little off graphically I think, like everything with just kind of “dirtier” somehow. The SNES was a crisp cartoon world, the Genesis felt like it was trying to reproduce a real environment but ugly.

It’s probably worth noting, even though it’s not a 16 bit console, I also had a Game Boy around this time period. I think the Game Boy was just as played as the SNES. I’ve always been really partial to handheld consoles for sure. I had the gigantic HandyBoy attachment that would split out into a big mess of speakers with a magnification screen. I think it was bigger than the Game Boy itself. My brother had one too, I think part of why we got them was to keep us busy on car rides when traveling, which we did fairly often. My parents liked to go to my grandparent’s home, and we went camping a lot.

Final Fantasy was a big favorite on the Gameboy as well, with the Final Fantasy Legend series, though I would later learn these were technically part of another series called Saga. There was also a lot of Tetris too. I got really good at Tetris in the early 90s.

Review – Soul Blazer (SNES)

On a bit of a whim, I decided to pick up and play through Soul Blazer for the SNES. I know I have heard of this game previously ages ago, probably in Nintendo Power, I’m surprised I never tried it in the past honestly. Anyway, it turns out it’s a bit of a hidden gem of a game. It kind of feels like if Gauntlet and Zelda had a baby, though it’s better than Gauntlet, not as good as Zelda.

You play as this sort of spiritual angel entity, come to the world to save it from destruction, except the destruction has basically already happened. There are 7 stages, and each stage works the same basic way. You arrive into a barren area, then travel through one or more dungeon areas connected to the main hub. As you progress, you defeat enemy spawners by killing the enemies each one spawns, which allows you to free the souls of creatures, people, and related objects in each zone. Basically, once finished with an area, you’ll have constructed a little town.

This also occasionally means returning to the town to do little additional mini missions to unlock new abilities or weapons or armor in order to proceed. It’s a neat system. Sometimes you even have to return to previous areas to unlock new things. In fact it’s a bit required because you can’t complete the game without at least going back and unlocking the Phoenix spell.

An airship with an ignition, what will they think of next???

Along the way you also unlock more and more of the story. Most of the plot revolves around leader characters who knew of this character Dr. Leo, who was forced to develop a portal to the world of evil which is why the world has been wiped out. Or something along those lines. There are even a few twists along the way near the end that aren’t quite as expected.

New unlocks aren’t even necessarily straight upgrades either. Though they are an upgrade in base defense or offense, they often contain unique additional special abilities. Like wearing the bubble armor to navigate under water, or the Ice armor to navigate over certain hot spot floors (which even return in a later stage).

Finally, a shopkeeper in an RPG who APPRECIATES THE EFFORT.

Though this does lead to one of, if not my chief complaint on the game. You essentially have 4 equitable slots, sword, shield, magic and item. You can only have one active item at a time. This almost feels like a way for the designers to remove the ability to become a bit OP. Not all items are useful, but for example, you can carry one (freely replenished) medical herb, which will revive you upon death (once). Or a strange pot that lets you keep your magic points between deaths. Or other items like bracelets that let you take half damage or not spend magic, or do double damage. It kind of feels like, at the minimum, the herb and strange pot should just work automatically, since they are consumable items. The pots can’t even be obtained outside of regular game play, you just find them in chests.

I mean, I get that complaining about a 30 year old game is kind of pointless and all, but it’s worth mentioning. The game itself is still a lot of fun and it’s an interesting gameplay loop.