My RPG journey began in 1988 in the Algol Solar System when I slipped into a Zen-like state guiding Alis Landale through the first-person dungeons and lunar plains of Phantasy Star4 megs (and Battery Back-Up!) of sheer 8-bit wonder, for a mere $70. From that point on if I wasnt playing an RPG, I was waiting for one, and the ones that stuck, like Phantasy Star II (with animated attacks!) and IV, Shining in the Darkness, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Lunar the Silver Star always left me wanting more. 1997 was the year of more. Three Japanese RPGs hitting in the same year in the US was uncommon, but two exceptional JRPGS (Wild Arms and Shining the Holy Ark) and Final Fantasy VII...on PlayStation...changed everything.
In a move that can only be compared to the Stay Puft Marshmallow incident of 84, by pulling the plug on their SNES-CD deal with Sony, Nintendo chose the form of their destructor...PlayStation. The ensuing move by Square from Nintendo to Sony was the final death knell for cartridges and the most influential RPG series in the universe, Final Fantasy, as we knew it. Final Fantasy VII broke sales records and redefined the genre and Nintendo had none (I hear theyre doing okay though) sure, but it also had a profound effect on Squares approach to game design. What if they had found a way to compromise and realize Yoshinori Kitases new vision for FFVII on cartridge forgoing the CGI and MIDI soundtrack? Would it have been as big, or maybe bigger? ...No loading. Not only do I think it would have been, but I think where Square placed their emphasis on glamorous CGI and sophisticated, increasingly realistic characters afterwards they might have chosen a different course favoring strides in gameplay while staying true to a more exaggerated design aesthetic had they stuck with Nintendo. FFVII felt like an N64 game with CGI and arranged BGM (and what a beautiful score, although I still consider those amazing SNES OSTs as the series-defining sound) and although IX saw a brief return to a more fictive design, the series, and RPGs in general, seemed to slip into a period where variations on the same basic CGI-heavy turn-based theme trumped the kind of gameplay innovation that was emerging in games like Chrono Trigger. There were a few exceptions, like Thousand Arms, with its 2D battles and "paper"-style sprites on 3D environments (and you thought Paper Mario was first) and later Grandia II, but otherwise other than FFIX and X-2, and Skies of Arcadia, which I played for sheer character design, my love for traditional RPGs steadily declined subjugated by alternative adventure RPGs like Vagrant Story.
Fate finally intervened in 2002, when I was poking around the internetback when you could without feeling like you needed a shower afterwardssearching for a wallpaper, when I came across one of Hyung-Tae Kims for Magna Carta: Phantom of Avalanche, which lead me to SOFTMAX and the realization that the most amazing RPG characters Id seen since FFVII were strictly PC, and Korean PC at that. A few weeks later, however, fate intervened again at E3 2003 when I caught a glimpse of an Xbox game that looked like an Xbox 360 game from the future (Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders) and ended up spending half the day with Phantagram, the mecca of Korean game publishers, becoming versed in all things Korean-developed and headed to US...console! Innovation was alive and well, incubating in Korea. Eventually Phantagram split, and Blueside was formed, giving me three avenues to explore: Phantagram with N3, Blueside with Kingdom Under Fire and of course SOFTMAX, who was busy working on the Phantom of Avalanche sequel...Magna Carta: Crimson Stigmata (Tears of Blood) for the PS2.
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