Just Beat: Secret of Evermore

I need to come clean about a very dark period in my life that I don’t like to talk about. I did things I don’t care to admit.

I was a Square Fanboy.

Much like most games I pick up, I discovered Final Fantasy, a bit later than most. Despite being late to the party, I was still completely hooked. My first true Square addiction was Final Fantasy III (yeah, I know that III is VI, but I’m talking North America and SNES, so relax). Granted, I played Mystic Quest and the Final Fantasy Legend years before, but I don’t think I’ll get many arguments when I say those don’t really count.

I loved FFIII, and when I heard Square was moving to the new Sony console with a new installment, I was ecstatic. As soon as I had enough money saved, I bought a PlayStation and FFVII, but I still wasn’t a fanboy. It took two more games to send me down that dark path: Final Fantasy Tactics and Einhander. Both games are consistently at the top of my all time greatest games lists. Both are original, beautiful games. Both made me believe that Square could do no wrong.

For the following few years (well, maybe decade would be a better word choice), I gobbled up all Square had to offer. For the most part I wasn’t let down. Sure, I wasn’t super excited with Final Fantasy VIII and the Bouncer pretty much sucked, but the vast majority of what I got my hands on was pretty solid.

It is hard to say when my love affair with Square started to fade. Of course I still give Square, now Square-Enix, the benefit of the doubt and play most of their franchise games. But, somewhere along the Final Fantasy X, Front Mission 4, and FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus years, my love for all things Square(-Enix) began to fade.

Now, why do I tell this little anecdote? Because Secret of Evermore came before my membership in the Cult of Square. I was playing Final Fantasy III when Evermore hit store shelves, but this was before I had any particular brand loyalty to any specific developer. In those days, loyalty was still heavily influenced by the extensive propaganda of the Nintendo/Sega console wars. Loyalty back then was to the console not a studio or publisher.

Long story short: I never would have picked up Secret of Evermore based on it having been produced by Square. Perhaps, if I had played Secret of Mana, I would have been drawn to it by the extreme similarity in titles. Instead, all I had to go on was box art. And, uh, seriously, it's not that great.


Had I been swayed by the box art and played Secret of Evermore in 1995. I’m positive my young early-teen mind would have loved it. But playing it today, I can plainly see that the box art did not lie, the game is indeed second rate. However, after finishing it, I still think it worthy of some attention, despite its general mediocrity.

This is already getting way to long, Let’s roll with the bad:

Secret of Evermore is not Secret of Mana. To be honest, this game constantly gets compared to Secret of Mana, despite the games having no correlation other than the same menu systems and similar titles. But for someone who has never had the chance to play Mana, Evermore had enough vague similarities to only served to make me want to play Secret of Mana more (and Evermore less).

Wonky Hit Detection. Hitting fast moving or flying enemies was difficult and frustrating when using anything but the Spear. In fact, I never used any of the other weapons except the spears, mainly because they could not be thrown. Even the bazooka saw very limited use with me.

Plot. Everything seemed rushed. It was like the game ran out of time and places to continue the pacing established at the beginning, so they just shoved it all in at the end. Furthermore, the plot was just plain bland. I mean, an evil robot butler? Really?

Difficulty. Once I got the hang of the combat system (and ring menu system, which proved tricky due to my lack of an instruction manual), the game went fairly easily. Then out of nowhere, the Verminator boss in Ebon Keep laid down the law. He was like a massive Santa Claus of the Rat People, reaching into his bag of presents to hit you with spells several times stronger than you had yet faced. On a similar note, the end boss was also substantially harder than the difficulty curve for game. But, that’s cool. I can dig a hard final boss.

Alchemy is useless. Aside from Heal, Cure, and Revive, the only Alchemy that saw any use were the spells required to solve puzzles. Really? Pretty much the central gameplay mechanic useless? Lame.

So, why did I still enjoy the game?

It was genuinely funny. Having been the only Square game to be completely developed entirely within the United States, it didn’t suffer from poorly translated, poorly localized, engrish. Consequently, the humor throughout the game actually had me chuckling out loud. It is pretty rare for a game to make my angry, bitter self chuckle.

Cecil. I love that Cecil was in the game. Made my freaking day. Oh, and the way he is all nonchalantly leaning on the counter, just hanging out. He’s managing his shop with a total ‘I don’t take crap from anyone’ attitude. Yeah, that was awesome. Cecil’s cool. He should have stayed a Dark Knight. Screw that Paladin crap, let a bad guy be the hero for once.

Total package. It might seem like a B movie, but the game celebrates that fact. Despite being mediocre in most respects, it is still fun and quick to play through. I was rarely frustrated or angry and I even laughed now and again. It may not have had impressive graphics, deep story, or complex and innovative gameplay, but it was fun. And I guess that is what video games are all about, relaxing and having fun.

Oh, and one more thing about magic.

What the Hell Square? In almost every other Square game, Cure recovers HP and Heal recovers from status ailments. Why are they reversed here? You didn’t have a problem ripping off so much from your other games, so why deviate from the norm here? You know how many times I wasted ingredients casting the wrong type of spell?

Just Beat: Air Fortress

Despite what the date on my blog intro states, I actually started this little quest of mine about two weeks ago. For some inexplicable reason, I decided to start with a game I knew next to nothing about: Air Fortress for the NES.


The little I did know about this game came from the Top Secret Passwords book that came with a Nintendo Power subscription. I never had a Nintendo Power subscription, I saved up the money for it at one point, but my parents wouldn’t cut me a check. They probably figured that reading about video games was just as mind-rotting as playing them. At some point in middle school my best friend at the time let me borrow his copy of the password book and, uh, I guess I’m still borrowing it (sorry Guza).

In any case, I vividly remember looking through that book and reading about all the games I had never played, or even heard of. Air Fortress was one of those games that just looked silly. The silliness was further compounded by the hero and his ridiculous name: Hal Bailman.

To start things off, why the hell was this game called Air Fortress. There are supposedly eight (well technically sixteen due to the all-to-familiar Nintendo strategy of increasing replay value by adding a second quest rehash of the same levels just with ramped up difficulty) of these megalithic space battle stations that you have to destroy. They are in space, not in the air. All I think of when I hear Air Fortress is either:

A) The B-17 Flying Fortresses that served admirably during the 2nd World War







or

B) Mega Maid from Space Balls stealing the air from Princess Vespa’s home planet.









Poor word choice aside, I started the game to quickly find the control scheme very easy. Air Fortress really didn’t bring a whole lot of innovation to the table. Although, in North America, it was the first instance of a dual gameplay type of game, with a side scrolling shooter portion, followed by a, well, different sort of shooter section, which is reminiscent of Blaster Master (which came out before Air Fortress in Japan, but after in N.A.). In the first shooter section Hal needs to fight his way to the Air Fortress’ entrance on his equally poorly named space scooter, the Light Ship. Once inside the Fortress, Hal is on his own and is subject to a low gravity physics engine, which reminds me a bit of Solar Jetman, just much easier to control.

Oh, and one more thing, Hal and his Light Ship may have ridiculous names, but they look even more insane. Hal is supposed to be the lone commando sent against this epically evil empire, yet he is outfitted in a bright banana-yellow suit with a gigantic helmet. There might as well be a crayon named after him. Next time you break out a coloring book and the standard yellow isn’t quite bright enough, look no further than Hal Bailman Yellow.

When I initially began playing, I thought Air Fortress was going to be a push-over. The first three levels were pie. Fortresses four and five were a bit more difficult, with the mazes increasing in difficulty, but still didn’t put up much of a fight. I then learned the hard truth.

This game is freaking hard.

The sixth Air Fortress ramps the difficulty up exponentially. With a much more difficult maze to work through, limited energy, much more difficult enemies, and cheap design making damage avoidance impossible, level six was the bane of my existence for three to four days. I hadn’t drawn a map for a game in years. I now have pages of maps for all the Fortresses starting with six.

See, the real problem is, that you might make it to the energy core (boss), and they really aren’t hard to destroy, but once beaten, the core activates a destruct sequence and you need to reach the escape point. The path to the escape point is equally labyrinthine and full of difficult enemies. The trick is to map out both the path to the core and the escape route and clear both of enemies, before destroying the core. Even having done this, you can be sure that the game designers provided you with barely enough time to cover the distance between the core and the escape point. I died several times due to the station self destructing when I was mere pixels away from reaching my escape ship. Each time, it made me want to punch a baby.

All this ranting may make it seem like I despise Air Fortress, and I do. But, in actuality it was a challenging game that had me addicted. I never want to play it again, for fear of placing me in a homicidal rage, but I haven’t felt such a sense of accomplishment in beating a game for quite some time.

Hal Bailman: worst choice ever as a new character in the next Smash Bros game.

What's This All About?

I consider myself a Gamer. I love video games. I have a modest collection of games, to the tune of several hundred, across twelve systems. I could write comprehensive essays chronicling the evolution and lore of any number of franchises, from Final Fantasy to Metroid to R-Type. I make it my business to know what is going on in the gaming world regardless of console, manufacturer, or studio.

A few weeks ago, I sat down to play and went through my typical pre-gaming routine. I sat on the floor and looked into the bookcase that holds about half my collection, including most Nintendo platforms, a few odds and ends and my weak selection of PSP games. After about ten minutes of reading nearly every label in the case, with nothing catching my eye, I moved on to my second bookcase. Here I reviewed my collection of PS1 and PS2 games. Again, nothing inspired me to break it out and play it. Instead, I turned to my heavily used copy of Super Metroid and tried to beat my 100% item clear time. And if it had not been Super Metroid, it would have been U.N. Squadron with another attempt to beat it on Gamer Mode without dying. Or if not those two, I would have ended up playing one of the few remaining games that I play over and over and over.

Then it occurred to me: While I love video games, I simply despise playing them.

And that got me thinking.

After taking a long, hard look at my gaming, I came to a few conclusions.

1 - I, like many of the nostalgic gaming culture of the internet, grew up with the NES. As I look back at that era, I seem to recall that very few people had substantial game collections (apart from Lucas from The Wizard, of course, who knew all 96 of them). This fact, combined with extreme difficulty and the necessity of complete memorization meant that we played the shit out of those games in order to be even marginally successful. As a result I have, in essence, been brainwashed to believe that, if I want to beat a game correctly, it will take hours upon hours of dedicated playing. The perceived notion that a game will require an enormous commitment of time, added to the fact that I have so many games to even attempt to play, makes starting a new game a daunting proposition to me.

2 – I am a cranky bastard. I hate most of my games. Not for any rational reason, mind you. Rather, it is simply because they are not the games I grew up playing. There are very few games that I have picked up and played in the last ten years that I have genuinely really liked. This has nothing to do with me having a nostalgic bias to old school gaming either. I routinely pick up used NES games and, provided that I have no prior experience with the game, there is a fair chance that I will think it sucks. On the other hand, this isn’t about me having a love affair with online gaming and HD graphics. I’ve had a PS3 now for four weeks with a game that I really, really should want to play, Fallout 3. But, I haven’t even taken the dang thing out of the box. What it boils down to, is that the games I played growing up formed an integral part of my psyche. All my new games are not part of that psyche so I constantly nitpick and destroy games for even marginal weaknesses.

What I determined is that my apprehension to starting new games, or finishing those I aborted in the past, is wholly irrational. I fear the effort required to start and finish a new game, but instead pour countless hours into the same four or five games. Likewise, I hate everything mainly because they fail to have the same impact on me that the games of of my youth had.

I then made a bold move and actually made a decision. I’m going to rediscover my identity as a gamer. I’m going to give all the games I’ve never played the chance they deserve. At the same time, I think it is important to remember my roots. I also intend replay a lot of the games that I played endlessly years ago, loved, but now all they do is collect dust. I can’t promise to not be a bitter raging old man, but I want to start enjoying my games again.

I fully expect that no one will ever actually read this blog. But if you do happen upon it, you are more than welcome to come with me on my personal little odyssey.

Who knows, there may even be a few brief moments when I’m accidently funny.