Introduction
Hello, welcome, greetings, salutations, and... um... felicitations. Today, rather than talking about a specific game, I just wanted to briefly speak my mind on a few things and give some updates for this site and a couple of previous articles, since a few days ago, on September 11th marked one year since I made this site and published the initial draft of my Popful Mail review.
🟢 Introduction 🟢
I’ve never been someone who’s been very interested in puzzler games; I’ll play a few rounds of Tetris or Puyo Puyo with friends in a casual setting, but aside from that, I’ve never cared much for the genre. That actually changed a few months ago when I was with a friend at an arcade. I was walking around looking for games to play and there was one small cabinet in the corner of the arcade which looked to be one of those SNK Arcade Candy Cab Machines. I don’t know the exact model, but this machine had three different games to choose from. I don’t remember the other two games, but the third one—Magical Drop III—drew me in because the art style was really cute.
I played a few games against CPU players and found the game to be quite addicting. My friend was waiting on me though, so I only played for a bit but I remembered what the game was called. So, when I got home, I did some research on the game and downloaded a ROM for the PlayStation version. I was hooked. I was so hooked that I devolved into researching the history and lore of the series, checking out the competitive scene, looking up supplemental media, and drawing fan art. And because of that, you’re going to be subjected to another one of my schizophrenic rants— I mean reviews. So I hope you enjoy listening to me talk about my current favorite puzzler game, Data East’s Magical Drop III.
Introduction
The Archanean Fire Emblem games have a lot of characters; I’d even go as far as to say they have a ton of characters. FE1 in particular was notable for having nearly 50 playable characters. For an RPG game that came out in the early 90s on the Famicom, that's a big deal, and if you count boss characters, you have even more. But would you believe that there were going to be even more characters? Well, you probably did, but you’ve probably never heard anyone talk about them much in detail.
Today, I want to talk about three particular cut characters who I find particularly interesting: Celio, Wyler, and Sabre. Characters who were planned to show up in FE1, but were all cut for one reason or another. So, without further ado, let’s dive in and take a look at Celio, Wyler, and Sabre.
Fan interpretations of Wyler, Sabre, and Celio drawn and/or edited by yours truly
Introduction
Unlike my previous character analysis of Matthis, Tomas isn’t really a character that I feel is overhated or undeserving of the ridicule he gets, nor do I feel like I have to really play defense or anything like that. He’s still an unpopular character, don’t get me wrong, but that’s mostly due to the fact that people simply forget about his existence. And anyone who does remember him just sees him as a weak Archer who joins in the midgame, which…he is.
When it comes to Archanea characters, some people may give them a lot of flak or write them off because they lack a lot of dialogue or any character, and Tomas is kind of one of the main poster boys of that notion. The guy straight-up doesn’t have lines of dialogue outside of death quotes in most of his appearances, so you’d expect this type of analysis to be devoid of substance. However, from the little we do get from this guy, I feel there is just enough for me to justify writing about him, talking about his character, and why I like him. So, let’s begin talking about Tomas, the Quiet Bow.
Introduction
From the outside looking in, the Super Robot Wars series may seem rather intimidating, and well, it is. The series has been ongoing since April 20th, 1991, with 48 entries and 10 spinoffs, and the games have their own respective timelines and lore; some are isolated entries, while others have two or three sequels. I swear, if you want to give yourself an aneurysm, I’d recommend searching up and trying to follow some of the full series timelines that fans post online. And that’s not even mentioning the references and appearances of the individual mecha anime series that appear in these games, some of which are very niche.
That said, as a series that I consider one of my favorites, I wanted to take it upon myself to review the lesser-discussed games that started said series. I see very little discussion of these first three games online, let alone reviews of them, so I prepared a special triple-feature blog post to shed some light on the unique mechanics of these games, talk about their significance to the overall series, and talk about how they laid the groundwork for the series we know and love today!
Introduction
In an era long, long ago... Before monetization, before algorithms, and before advertisers, there was a time when passion-driven fan content thrived prominently in fandom spaces on the early internet. Many series captivated viewers and inspired a generation to show off their own creativity. Much of this independent art was crafted using nothing but talent, personality, and Adobe Flash. While there are hundreds of different series I could talk about today, I wanted to focus on one particular genre of content that shaped my childhood—one that involves Kirby fan characters, sprite sheets, and early 2010s internet humor.
Characters portrayed from left to right: Aege (DestructionSeries), Kirby (HAL Laboratory lol), and Saito (LoneAlchemist).
Logo created by LoneAlchemist, character art and background edited by myself.
Introduction
From being one of the first RPGs to feature fully animated cinematic cutscenes, to being the game that initially put Working Designs on the map, to being labeled as Electronic Gaming Monthly’s Best RPG of the Year in 1993: it's Cosmic Fantasy 2. Developed by Nihon Telenet, Cosmic Fantasy 2 is an RPG for the TurboGrafx CD and is seen as a cult classic in the niche gaming market. It was one of the best-selling games on the console and was popular enough for NEC to consider making the game a pack-in title for the TurboGrafx CD.
In addition to everything else I just mentioned, it also recently received the honor of being played by me. And while I can see why it was very well-received back in the day, my thoughts on the game as a complete package are a little more complicated. So let’s not waste any more time and start talking about Cosmic Fantasy 2!
