Meme Day Retro

[swordianmaster]

DAY 29: A Game From Your Childhood



Before Sonic.

Before Mario.

Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is the game that got me into video games.

I'll admit it; I've always been a bit of a high-fantasy (and in turn steampunk/dungeon punk) freak. I've also always been drawn in by video games, but never really had a chance to play them through my childhood due to exorbitant console prices and the fact my family's pretty much always been the screwed-over lower-middle class white family, better known as "the standard everyone forgets about". My uncle wasn't much of a kid person back then, a little like myself, but when I was about nine he started letting me hang around him a little more often. That's when I saw it. His new Sega Genesis, hooked up to his old Commodore 64 monitor, and this game playing. I insisted on watching whenever possible, slowly inundating myself to what would later be recognized as turn-based strategy and JRPG norms, and wanting to play games like that myself, more and more.

Eventually, I would inherit the Genesis and the game both, and they remain favorites to this day. They're my beginning, more than anything else. That's part of the reason I get so frustrated that the series franchise that it spawned has deviated so far from what the first three Force games (Shining in the Darkness notwithstanding) were.

Day 1: Your current favorite game
Day 2: The most Underrated game you’ve ever played
Day 3: A game that makes you really happy
Day 4: A game that makes you sad
Day 5: A game that reminds you of someone
Day 6: Favorite puzzle game
Day 7: The game with most surprising game plot twist or ending (don’t share the actual twists, and if you do, mark them spoilers for the love of all that is nerdy)
Day 8: A game you’ve played countless times
Day 9:A game with the best or most original soundtrack
Day 10: Favorite Retro game
Day 11: A game that changed your opinion about something
Day 12: A game that you dislike
Day 13: A game that is a guilty pleasure
Day 14: A game that no one would expect you to love
Day 15: A videogame character who you can relate to the most
Day 16: A game that you used to love but now hate
Day 17: A game that disappointed you the most
Day 18: A game that you wish more people would’ve played
Day 19: Favorite game based on a movie/book/comic/etc
Day 20: Favorite stress relieving game
Day 21: Favorite Fighting Game
Day 22: Favorite table-top RPG
Day 23: Favorite racing game
Day 24: The one awesome game idea that still hasn’t been done
Day 25: The most hilarious game you’ve ever played
Day 26: A game you’ve left sitting at the final boss fight and still haven’t returned to
Day 27: A game that you wish you could play, but suck at
Day 28: A game that makes you feel guilty
Day 29: A game from your childhood
Day 30: You favorite game (or series) of all time

Comments

[hcuz.livejournal.com]

SSL gifted me this on WiiWare a year or so ago, but I can't really get into it :(

[swordianmaster.livejournal.com]

It hasn't aged well. Back in 1993, it was pretty much this or the NES Fire Emblem games... IF you were Japanese. For America, as far as turn based-strat JRPGs went, this was IT.

However, since then, America's gotten things such as the Advance Wars games, Super Robot Wars (at least the OG games), Final Fantasy Tactics and its followups, Tactics Ogre... All games that do the same thing Shining Force did, but better.

Basically, nowdays it's a monument to why "retro" isn't mainstream any more - most things have been improved upon drastically when it comes to video games, and those that don't get improved upon (God of War 2, Super Mario World, and the Guilty Gear X series come to mind as stellar examples of their genres) just get polished to a mirror shine and then hammered into the ground until nobody WANTS to play them any more.

I still love the hell out of the original two Shining Force games, be it nostalgia or otherwise.