I want to say that she was called Aerith in Kingdom Hearts, but I wouldn't swear to it (and I'm not willing to look it up, haha).

AAHHHH this is the best! Why, oh why, don't I own a console that can play World of Final Fantasy?

Wow, God bless Japanese game design. Those cactuars are so jarring and terrifyingly out of place, juxtaposed with their realistic environment, and I love it.

Didn't one of those Saga games pretty much pull this off? I want to say… Unlimited Saga? It was on the PS2. I could be way off, but I recall the drawn artwork looking like SNES Final Fantasy designs, if a little cleaner, and the 3D version emulating it pretty well.

I think one of the problems we run into when thinking about early 3D games is that we compare to their 2D contemporaries. Sure, early 3D looks shoddy compared to the pixel art coming out in the mid 1990s, but a more apt comparison would be to early 2D games. Those tended to look as tentative and crummy, in retrospect,…

I think this is a broader problem in the arts, with exceptions. Most early films that innovated have not aged well; as examples, see Birth of a Nation, Battleship Potemkin, or The Jazz Singer. This is partially because what they innovated, particularly in terms of the mechanics of film - editing, sound design, etc. -…

I suspect that this is sort of how game script-writing will be looked at in twenty years - even into the 2010s, it was a rather underpaid, cast-off portion of a development team; this will likely change in the future, as localization became a much more significant portion of game development by 2000.

Good call - Radiata City was such a lively place. Would Clock Town qualify too? That's very similar to Radiata City, in the sense that its inhabitants give it a strong and unique sense of place. Unfortunately, neither are especially distinct, architecturally, but I'm not sure that's a qualification for notability.

Argh, lousy exclusives, haha. The PS4 is finally getting a longer list of exclusives that appeal to me, which means I'll be more inclined to pick it up in a few years when the price has dramatically reduced (not that it's incredibly expensive now, but the Switch isn't going to buy itself).

I've been using an exercise bike for about a year and a half now (and loving it), while trying to figure out various entertainment options. I've succeeded in playing certain turn-based touch games on my smartphone, as well as a handful of 3DS titles (Fire Emblem and Pokemon), but found that virtually anything…

Funny enough, I've largely made my way through the gardens, and came within a hair's breadth of taking down the Consumed King, but failed. I really hate it when they make it time-consuming or challenging to get to a boss (even with a shortcut), so I just gave up on "completing" the gardens for now.

In what context are you writing about Broken Age for Gameological? It's one of those games that I'm always thinking about playing, someday… someday… someday…

Heh indeed.

I almost made this thread, but got up to get a coffee instead and came back to find you made it. Woo!

The tonal whiplash was staggering. A lot of this has felt like some surreal joke, but maybe nothing more than today's press conference. Good heavens.

Thanks for linking to the Zelda book you'd be translating - I'd been wondering, given your previous posts. I hadn't checked in with this company in a while, but I'd become aware of them last year and dearly wished that their titles would become available in English. Lucky me! And facilitated by a fellow AVClubber…

I have this issue with co-op in Dark Souls games. I hate being the guy that lets the team down because I didn't know what I was doing, and with Souls games, not knowing what you're doing is pretty much a given.

You are in for a treat. It was 2nd only to The Witness in ranking the games I played this year. It also has the rare distinction of getting better and better as it goes!

Funny enough, I've seen more of Siegward in DS3 than I ever saw him in the original. Weird, huh? Maybe they've flagged the quest stuff a little bit more clearly.

This is perhaps the primary thing that's made my household a Nintendo home. I mean, I love the charming characters and the constant desire to deliver games that are both innovative and glitch-free, but the work to make their games the peak of inclusivity is really what pulls me in. It's cool that people of all ages…