What’s old is truly new again in our nostalgia-obsessed culture and we’re the monthly subscription box to handle this!

Order your June Retro Box today!

Your Retro Box will include up to 4 - 6 vintage items from the past. Items can include: vintage t-shirts, comic books, magazines, books, candy, pins, games and much more.

La box rétro de MPop’s !

Aujourd’hui, je vous présente une ‘box’ très originale ! En effet, il s’agit de la rétrobox by MPop’s . (more…)

Sony marks PlayStation’s birthday with Original Grey

TOKYO: Its 20 years since the small, grey original PlayStation emerges into the world, Sony apparently launches a PS4 that looks like the original console.

It will sell 12,300 of the honoring machines, colored in ‘Original Grey’, a symbolic number related to the original PlayStation’s release date which they will be sold for $499 in North America, €499 in Europe and 49,980 Yen (excluding tax) in…

At first the story seems pretty cut and dry, Bowser kidnaps Peach and you have to go and save her, the catch though is that a giant sword comes crashing down into Bowser’s keep, sending both Bowser and Mario and Peach flying off to different points of the world along with the seven stars that keep the world going (hence the title). Once Mario wakes up he’s off again to save the princess and along the way meets a very curious cast of companions including Bowser even if his only motives are to get his castle back. Throughout the game there are multiple references to other Nintendo properties including a few to the Final Fantasy series as well as well as throwing in characters that would be the base for future Nintendo characters, Wario for instance.

The game wasn’t perfect, it had its issue like all games tend to but on the whole they were minor compared to the overall package that you got and it’s very easy to see that the praise it has received, and continues to receive is well deserved.

The Break Down

Graphics: Keeping in mind this was made on the SNES it was still amazing even then, the 3D models looked superb, a little childish yes, but great overall. The worlds and environments were both familiar and new at the same time, and the effects were wonderful and all of it crammed into an SNES cartridge.

Story: Like I said, the story starts off simple then grows from there, not quite reaching the complexity of a Final Fantasy game but much more than the average Mario story, so a good mix right in the middle. Once you hit the end unfortunately it turns into any other RPG and there isn’t much reason to go back other than really loving the game in the first place.

Gameplay: The game itself treats itself like an early version of modern open world games to a certain point, you go to a location then you’re free to roam around as you please or as your abilities allow you to. You have the ability to jump around, finding hidden “?” blocks similar to any other Mario game, and stomp on enemies before starting a battle to give you the advantage in battle. Speaking of battle, the battle system at the time was both new and old at the same time, it was turn based and you could take as much time as you liked while you decided what to do, the difference comes into play when you actually attack, having a little bit of an action style allowing you to time button presses to do a little extra damage or, in the case of being attacked, block some or all the damage coming at you. Personally the battle system was one of my favorite things about the game.

Sound: The music was at times fun, and at other times boring, the battle music never changed so by the end of the game you got tired of hearing it, though to be fair a lot of RPGs suffer from that as well. The sound effects were very much in line with the Mario games so there was a lot of familiarity there and once in a while you would hear hints of music from the original Mario games thrown into the mix.

Replay Value: Sounding like a broken record but it’s true, with most RPGs the replay value is very low in terms of story, unless you enjoy the story a lot, don’t mind hearing it over and over again, or just really love the game as a whole, there is little reason to come back to it.

Final Word: 5/5

In spite of its flaws this was an incredible game, the first time I played it I couldn’t stop and didn’t really want to stop and will always remain on my list of all-time favorite games.

~FA~

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Released in June of 1997 in Japan and January 1998 in North America, Final Fantasy Tactics was SquareSoft’s first entrance into the strategy RPG arena and was met with a mix of reviews. For me personally it was one of the most addicting strategy games…