Was that really because of Red Cross objection, though? Lots of other games of that era featured the symbol without any publicized objections. I figured the Earthbound censorship had more to do with Nintendo of America’s blanket restrictions on depicting any religious imagery (crosses, in this case) than with the…

I think this is a relatively recent thing, actually. The Red Cross either couldn’t or didn’t care to go after video games featuring their symbol until the last few years. Obviously, lots of older games used it as a graphic, but I’ve noticed a bunch of newer titles, and rereleases of older titles (like the first two Doo…

I remember this coming up when id Software rereleased the first two Doom games as part of Doom 3: BFG Edition. The stimpacks, medikits, and berserk packs, all of which had featured the standard red cross symbol in the original release and all rereleases up to that point, were replaced with a red and white pill…

No, it isn’t. The video is subtitled, and the subs are sourced from the same Chinese release, but the entire point of this article is that the video has actually be redubbed into English using that translation. That’s the novelty, not the subtitles that everyone’s know about for a decade.

When EC abandoned comic books in the mid-1950s to focus on publishing Mad, CEO William Gaines soon found himself struggling to keep things running. In order to keep going, he sold EC to the Kinney Parking Company (yes, a parking lot operator: the 1960s were a weird time for conglomerates) in the early 1960s, of which…

The GBA was certainly capable of decent music, but developers did seem to have to make the choice between graphics and sound more often than not. See also, Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (great soundtrack, but ugly) and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (looks pretty good, but terrible soundtrack). Go figure.

If you’re able to run the PC version from Steam, it’s worth pointing out that version is identical, content-wise, to the GBA version (and actually superior to it in terms of musical quality). The biggest problem is that the sprites have been put through that godawful bilinear filter than Square Enix loves so much, so…

Bravely Default was a more or less direct successor to the DS game Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, which had the same aesthetic, and similar job system and battle system (minus the brave/default concept). The team that made FF:4HL, and later made the two Bravely games, had not worked on the classic franchise,…

Ah, memories. Way back when, I compiled a guide to blue magic in the game. It’s probably still out there on GameFAQs somewhere, although since it was based on the RPGe fan translation script, it’s probably not particularly useful to anyone playing the more recent official translations.

The only thing I hold against the GBA release of the game (Final Fantasy V Advance) is that the soundtrack suffered for the conversion. Same problem with Final Fantasy VI Advance, actually.

Amen. I’ve been a fan of the series since the NES days. Final Fantasy V is my third favorite. Final Fantasy VIII is my first.

Just to clarify something: the mobile/PC release of the game is identical to Final Fantasy V Advance, both mechanically and in terms of content. It has the two new job classes, and the bonus dungeon. The only real difference is the graphical “upgrade,” which are... unfortunate, I’ll agree, but, on the other hand,…

I kind of enjoy the PS1 version in a “so bad it’s good” kind of way. Mainly due to the translation. The game script isn’t the worst thing Square ever produced (though it is dry and awkward in points, it’s still better than Final Fantasy Tactics and probably on par with Final Fantasy II for the SNES and Final Fantasy…

It’s worth pointing out that this will be the first time the original volume has been available in English. Its absence was a significant, irritating hole in Cinebooks’ releases, and getting it at last makes at least the first volume of these reprints worth picking up. I’ll probably skip the subsequent volumes,…

I disagree. There’s definitely a marketing angle to Snoopy’s increased prominence in later strips, but I think he’s actually a more effective character for getting at some of the themes that Schulz tackled in Peanuts. All of Peanuts’s characters are deeply, almost existentially dissatisfied with their lot in life, and…

FFI: (Based on NES version, not remakes)
1) Add save points to dungeons

-Patch to wake up Yang and replace Edge as the fifth final party member

I love VIII. It’s up there with III (the Famicom original, not the travesty of a 3D remake) and Tactics as one of my favorites in the franchise. But, yeah, the orphanage scene was terrible. To make it worse, it felt like an afterthought. The overall plot doesn’t require it, and, in fact, it complicates things…

I don’t hate FFXIII as much as everyone else seems to do. I actually find the battle system interesting, even if it took me quite a ways into the game to really get a hang of it. And the characters aren’t completely without merit: even if some of them start to grate on my nerves after a while, at least they all have a…

No, all surviving complete serials from the classic series were available in US syndication until at least the late 1990s. The first time I saw the series was my local PBS station’s premiere of season 26 (the final classic season). They aired it over two Saturday nights (two omnibus format stories per night), and it…