Showing posts with label Super Nintendo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Nintendo. Show all posts

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Project 5: SNES Coasters - Update - Larger and ... newer?


So this is an update from the last update in 2014, but it’s an update. That being said, having taken … 6 … years to finish this project a lot of my thinking is totally lost to me now. Still I’ve made newer bigger coasters and they seem pretty good.

The Coasters


Four perler bead coasters shaped like exclamation blocks from Super Mario World.
The original coasters.



I set out to make coasters because I wanted to play with pixels and to make myself some geeky stuff. The first set of coasters have been pretty good, but they are a little small. They’re pretty good with tumblers or a can, but they’re a little small for mugs. They also worry me a bit whith wine glasses, so I tend not to have them out when we have guests over. They have always had a bit of a curve or a cup to them, which, so far I think is the nature of something made out of perler, which makes them a little bit prone to tipping.

They’ve held up quite well over the years. I took an inventory and a few have a bit of separation between the backing and the beads, but all 8 of the original set get use everyday.

Blue exclamation coaster on bedside table
One of the blue coasters where I use it daily.


The cupping always bothered me a bit and the size has also been a small problem. So a long time back I figured adding in an extra ring of beads (taking the width from 16 bead x 16 to 18 x 18) would fix the size problem. I’m also hoping that the bigger coasters will also help with cupping, but since that seems to develop over time I don’t have a great answer for that yet.

Pattern


For the pattern I added in an extra ring of the interior colour. That helps actually float the exclamation mark more in the middle so I think overall the bigger sprite makes sense.

Closeup on unfused beads showing the expanded patern.
I didn't generate a pattern, but here's the expanded layout. You can see the extra row above the exclamation point) which effectively wraps around the whole coaster.


To compare here's the original coasters with the completed larger ones:



All the original coasters with their larger new versions
All of the originals with the newer ones behind.

For each I used the perler colours

The Black and White are Black (80-19018) and White (80-19001).

The Red:

Sprite Colour Bead Colour
Outer Red Red (80-19005)
Inner Red Magenta (80-19038)


Red Coaster
Red Coaster - click to enlarge

The Blue:

Sprite Colour Bead Colour
Outer Blue Dark Blue (80-19008)
Inner Blue Turquoise? (80-19062)

Close up of Blue Coaster
Blue Coaster - click to enlarge


The Green:

Sprite Colour Bead Colour
Outer Green Dark Green? (80-19010)
Inner Green Green? (80-19080)

Close up of Green Coaster
Green Coaster - click to enlarge



 The Yellow:

Sprite Colour Bead Colour
Outer Yellow Cheddar (80-19057)
Inner Yellow Yellow (80-19003)

Close up of Yellow Coaster
Yellow Coaster - click to enlarge



Any of the beads where I'm either not sure what bead I used, or what colour the bead is I've marked with a question mark. Those are best guesses.

I also had a bit of an adventure and made a rainbow exclamation mark block. I have a lot of beads kicking around that aren’t really getting used for anything so I thought it would be fun to make up my own. 
 
Close up of rainbow coaster
The Rainbow Wonder. The white ring matches the extra row of beads if you're curious as to size.


I didn’t take notes, so I have no idea what colours I actually put in here.

Fusing


I fused three of these at least a year ago and the other two in the last few days.

For the ones I did in the last few days, I also made some shapes out of the same beads so I had a feeling for how those beads melted. I’ve noticed a bit over time that the different colours have slightly different melting / fusing points.

I also noticed for future reference that depending on how I fuse the beads the depth of the coaster can be pretty different. It doesn’t show so much from the front, but it’s a factor I hadn’t really considered. For the future I’d like to find a way to be more systematic about fusing.

Five coasters viewed side on with different depths
The different depths of the different coasters.


Backing


I used the same backing as I did for the original coasters. Which I do mean literally, they’re the same set of sticky felt that I purchased back in 2013 (2012?). So they might not work as well as I’d like. But it’s what I had and given that going out to the craft store is not an option while I’m working, I figured I’d go with what I had.

As it works out the 18 x 18 bead squares are exactly 3 ½ inches wide. So I proceeded to cut a bunch of squares that were *almost* 3 ½ inches square. I have a new cutting mat that’s a little warped still and I guess I just need more practice (and maybe a bit more technique). 


Red coaster on a cutting mat, measuring almost exactly 3 and a half inches.
The fit of the red coaster. The cutting matt is a little wonky underneath.
 

I also realized that 3 ½ inches is too wide, because it doesn’t allow for the edge where the beads hang over the backing. I tried to make that a ½ bead overhang and it seems like cutting the squares to be 3 ⅜ inches would have been a better approach. I also had to trim the corners to deal with the curve. I found it was a bit difficult to get a proper trim, so I think if I do more of these it would make sense to have a template or a jig.
A pile of self adhesive felt backs for the coasters
The coaster backs.



So the backs are a little adhoc, despite my best efforts, but they seem to be on comfortably despite all of the potential problems. I’ll use them for a bit and then update to see if the backing actually works, but given how long the smaller coasters have lasted I’m feeling a little optimistic.

Coaster with the felt backing on
Coaster with the backing on.


Wrap-up


These were fun to do. The several times I’ve worked on them over the last (checks notes) half decade, I’ve enjoyed it. Filling in the fields is a very peaceful activity, especially when compared to my Chrono Trigger perler sprites
 
Four coaster (one in each colour) sitting on a small table
The four coasters ready for action.


Now I’m going to use them for a bit and see how they do. In the mean time I get to mark this project done.


And now time to relax.









Friday, May 31, 2019

Blog: Thoughts on Earthbound

Earthbound is a pretty cool game. I guess that goes without saying, now. It’s a different spin on a JRPG that really show how games don’t just have to be about getting your numbers bigger to win against the next boss. Games are art, and Earthbound is a good example why.

A place long ago and far away.



I never played Earthbound as a kid partly because it came a big box and for SNES games I figured that meant it had / needed a multi-tap and I’d need friends to play it. It also had the “it stinks” marketing campaign which I reacted to quite badly at the time. Fortunately, in recent years, YouTube has come along in the form of Chuggaconroy and Stephen Goerg (and friends) to show me just how great this game is.

I started playing Earthbound (on the WiiU Virtual Console) in early 2017 and played until mid-late 2018. So it’s been a while since I finished, and a really long time since I started. Still this game is so full of fun and interesting things that I wanted to talk about, that I thought I’d write a post.

As always, beware of spoilers for Earthbound. I totally recommend playing it yourself or watching a good Let’s Play.

Kay-o. You Thank.


Things I Liked


There’s practically nothing I didn’t like about Earthbound. It is, at its core an incredibly charming game in story and style, that has a really interesting combat system. As with a lot of SNES RPGs of the era, the store is somewhat simple, but filled with interesting and well-rounded characters. As you journey around the world every place you go is unique, memorable and interesting, and every character you meet is also unique, memorable and interesting.

Bones bones bones


Playing Earthbound I left, feeling as though I had been to another world and met ,learned about and loved people along the way. This particularly included the characters in the main party, I can’t think of a lot of other games from this era (or honestly ever) where the party was this deeply characterized with understandable motivation and struggles in the world.

I also liked the art style in. It’s simple, but very visually appealing, and everything was clear and easy to see. The battle system in particularly is fascinating with large and interesting art along with Earthbound’s notorious psychedelic backgrounds. I think there’s almost no chance that anyone who’s seen Earthbound would ever confuse a screenshot with any other game (except maybe its sequel).

Very rewarding.


The music is also quite iconic, helping to illuminate the style and feeling of the world. It’s a mix of cheerful and creepy. It’s style is very varied from, SNES meets rock-and-roll in the early urban areas or synthetic weirdness when you’re fighting the UFOs and Robots in the creepy underground bases.

More specifically I love the scrolling health mechanism. The combat is turn based, but when you take damage, rather than the damage being taken from your HP right away, your HP ticks down over a (relatively) short period of time. In the case of big or fatal damage, this gives you enough time to use a healing item or cast a healing spell, which will start healing you from wherever your HP has ticked down to, cause your health to tick up (much faster than it ticks down).

 Combat via GameFAQs user Eevee-Trainer

I think this is a fantastic mechanism for a number of reasons. First off, it keeps you interesting in and focused on the combat, because you always need to be ready to abandon your planned command in the menu and get to healing as quickly as possible. This felt to me like a really good method as opposed to some of the Active Time Battle present in other games like the Mario RPG family.

I also like it aesthetically. The HP counter is styled as an [odometer] rolling number, and so the ticking is styled as the number rolling down. Something about that really just appeals to me (although I’d love to see it styled as a train-station flip clock). Finally, it has provoked a thought about how you could structure HP and damage differently in a game, which I will talk about more later.

The final thing I wanted to talk about in the things I love is the way they handle mismatches between your level and the enemy level. Lots of SNES RPGS which came before (and after actually) forced you to keep fighting low level enemies in low level areas long after you were levelled up. In Earthbound, thanks to their visible enemy system, where enemy sprites are visible on the real world and you touch them to initiate combat, enemies will actually run from you if they think they can’t defeat you. This means that if you want the XP you can go after them, but if you don’t want to they’ll stay out of your way.

The enemies flee! via GameFAQs user Eevee-Trainer 

This is also combined with the other nice effect of the visible enemy system. If you surprise the enemy you get an extra round of attack (and if they surprise you they do). When they’re running you automatically get that extra round, and if the game calculates that you’d win in that round it doesn’t make you even enter the fight. It just gives you the XP and your other rewards for the fight. This is a wonderful touch in the game and honestly a thing that a lot of games still don’t implement that nicely.

Things I Didn’t Like


There’s not much I don’t like about Earthbound and a lot of them are easily forgiven seeing as this game had a very difficult development cycle and has some incredible things built into it.


The one thing that constantly frustrated me playing Earthbound was the inventory. It’s small and there are a lot of things that need to go into it and it’s often not very clear what a lot of items do and when you need them. Now that being said compared to a lot of other games it’s a much more effective system and it has things like a callable storage company that will take things to storage for you and bring it back, all you have to do is find a phone, call and wait in a place they feel safe to get to.

At least they're speedy via Earthbound Wiki

Still, “cleaning the fridge” is a regular activity, probably every hour or so. The mechanics for doing so are clunky and the whole thing just grinds the game to a halt. So a little more flexibility in design and a little more explanation would have been nice.

Another  element they introduced which seemed like a good idea at the time is condiments. These alter the effects of your healing items. Ketchup on your hamburger improves the amount of HP you get back and sugar improves a cup of coffee (which I think gives you magic points). On the other hand ketchup in your coffee is supposed to make it worse, as is sugar on your hamburger.

Unfortunately, if you want to use it you have to keep it in your inventory and the game decides automatically which condiment to apply (and not always the best one). This means that you lose a inventory spot, for a chance to improve one healing item, not quite as much as having two of the same healing item. So the whole system becomes useless and cumbersome. Not that the developers could be expected to make one, but a rudimentary crafting system would have made this work really well. It might also have tied in nicely with the PC who builds and fixes things.

The game is also a bit slow. That’s probably somewhat intentional, but the maps are large and intricate and sometimes it takes a very long time to go anywhere, even if the enemies are running from you. There is a fast travel system (and a very nicely diegetic one at that), but it has a limited number of places you can be dropped off, so you still get to walk.

The final thing I didn’t like about Earthbound was it’s ad campaign. I’m not sure that, being the kid I was in the 90s I’d have liked Earthbound. I had strong opinions that if you didn’t have swords and magic, it wasn’t an RPG. I *might* have come around on Earthbound, but the whole It Stinks ad campaign they ran with back when the game was new turned me right off. I hated scratch-and-sniff and the whole it’s gross so boys will love it thing in the 90s just turned me off.

It's not the game’s fault, but I think a different campaign might have brought me in (also a smaller box, since I assumed that all of the big snes boxes were for multi-taps and I didn’t really have much in the way of video-game playing friends as a kid.

Serious nostalgia vibes now. Fear then. via Some Google Archive


Things I Noticed


It would have been nice to have a little more gender parity in the party, the world and the story in general. Paula, the only female playable character is portrayed as very strong, but is also quite stereotypically girly. On its own I think that’s great, but having a different type of female character would have been a nice balance to the game. She is also kidnapped significantly more often than her male counterparts. Given that this is a game developed in Japan in the 1990s, it's not outrageous for its time, but it does feel limited in light of a lot of modern games and media.

These are pretty cool. via starmen.net


As I mentioned I did not play this game as a kid for a variety of reasons. That being said I’m not sure that this is ever a game I’d have liked as a kid. It feels as though it is intended for a much more mature audience, with more uncomfortable ideas, more disturbing situations and more complex problems to be solved. Given some of the discussion I’ve seen about this games development that’s intentional and I think it’s good to have a game that does a good job of maturity and complexity of story.

Things I’d Include In a Game


The first thing I’d include in a game is the active health system for a menu based RPG. I think there’s a lot of neat ways to play with it including to alter the spin speed as status based attack or to somehow mess with the numbers. I’ve also been considering a version which is some kind of liquid system where you pour health in and the enemies try to pour health out and you’re trying to manage keeping more going in than they’re getting out.

I also think I’d like to look at more audiences for games. I recognize this is not a unique thing at this point, but I like the idea that two games with similar mechanics could be aimed at very different audiences depending on how their story is constructed.

The final thing I think everyone should include in their games is the attention to detail. I love the attention to paid to the detail in both the story and the programming and while I know there’s a ton of people who worked on this game, I feel like Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata really poured a lot of themselves in to the game.

Final Things


I’m really glad I played Earthbound. I’m also really glad I played it as an adult, because that gave me a lot of perspective on the story and the characters.

I’m also really glad I got to play Earthbound. A few years before it was released for the WiiU I remember walking around the local comic convention and seeing Earthbound boxes for $1000 a pop. It’s not that easy to find physically and it’s really nice that it got a digital release for the WiiU. I’m hoping that Nintendo remembers how important that kind of access is and makes sure that everyone will always be able to have access to important games like this one.

Somehow still a question 24 years later.


Saturday, February 25, 2017

Blog: Thoughts on Illusion of Gaia

I have a complicated relationship with Illusion of Gaia. It’s, sort-of, my favourite SNES game. It’s also a game that makes me profoundly uncomfortable, and has some bad memories associated with it. Replaying it now, I also see that it’s also a poorly produced game, but one that’s trying to do a lot of things and even does some of them well.

Illusion of Gaia - From GameFaqs User SSCloud99


I talk a lot about the game in this one, so if you feel sensitive to spoilers go play it now (or watch a Let’s Play). It’s only a dozen hours or so long.


Illusion of Gaia is an interesting game in a lot of ways. It has a much darker story than a lot SNES games (or a lot of modern games, I guess), including a deep look at slavery and the economic realities that lead to slavery, gambling, especially with human lives, death, the impact of humanity and industry, as well as how humans react in the face of unstoppable change.




Like it's first cousins, Soul Blazer and Terranigma, Illusion of Gaia is a save the world narrative in which you might be destroying the world as much as you might be saving it. Quintet, seems to be interested in trying to tell a more complex story than a lot of its contemporaries. They also were very good artists and all of their games have really pretty sprites. The art is certainly one of Illusion of Gaia’s strongest points.


One factor of the game is that it almost has an environmentalist message, but doesn’t. I think this is one of the factors that makes me uncomfortable with the game ( the same message in Terranigma makes me uncomfortable there as well). There is absolutely a message that humans are destroying the world and that “man’s inhumanity to man” is a driving force of that destruction. At the same time there’s a message that any amount of destruction that humans can bring to bear is nothing when compared to the destruction that the comet will bring to earth and that further the very existence of that comet drives human cruelty.


This complex message is coupled (and delivered) with the fact that you are on a mission to “save the world” but you can’t. You have no capacity to save the world and you’re told, fairly early on, that the best you can do is destroy the world in a better way than the comet will.


The story telling in the game has always made me uncomfortable, as I mentioned and the fact that the game is also quite hard (at least in some respects) redoubled that discomfort leaving me with a very conflicted opinion on this game. It’s scary, (as a kid, possibly terrifying) unsettling, and hard but also interesting and beautiful. The sprite work is some of the best on the SNES and the animation is very rich compared to almost any other game in the genre. All of that combined is why I think this is a game from my childhood that has really stuck with me.

A self sacrificing pig



The game also has some drawbacks, especially when replaying it as an adult. It’s very poorly translated, with a lot of errors not only in the text, but in the text attribution. It has a very confusing switch in narration between a character in the game, a character in the future telling the story and an omnipotent narrator. It’s difficult to tell if that’s a stylistic choice or a further factor of the poor translation. The game play is also a little lacking. You interact with the world by whacking it (mostly with your flute, sometimes with your sword, occasionally with your … plasma?) and there’s not too much to most of the combat or puzzles. Still having replayed it (with a great deal of nostalgia) I think it’s a game worth taking a look at for its story and its style.


If you’re interested Illusion of Gaia is also the first entry in the 16-bit Gems series by Roo at Clan of the Grey Wolf and his videos also offer an interesting view on the game.


As mentioned above, I’ll be talking about the whole of the game (and not necessarily in order) so if you’re sensitive to spoilers, here’s your warning that there will be some.

Things I Liked

The story of Illusion of Gaia is better than you might expect. It's not a literary epic, but for a video game from the mid-nineties, it's enjoyable.


It's especially good considering that it's a story that starts out with a hero suffering from amnesia (also one that's a recent orphan). The good news is that our hero's amnesia only covers the a small portion of his life, particularly the events that lead to him being an orphan. This leaves us with a hero who wants to understand what happened to him and one that wants to live up to the legacy of his parents.


Beyond being an interesting character, our hero, Will, also serves as the story's narrator. I like Will as the narrator, because he brings some colour to the story, and the narrative is inflected with the enthusiasm of a young adventurer.


The story is also more interesting than your average save-the-world plot might suggest. In particular, I don't think you're saving the world at all. Our hero and his friends are travelling the world, and doing what the need to do to investigate Will's parents’ disappearance, and then doing whatever needs to be done for the locals, but their journey doesn’t have any promise of saving the world. In fact, they’re basically promised that the world will be destroyed whatever they do, they only get control over how.


The story is also driven by the character arcs of all of our hero's friends. Each character undergoes a process of becoming more mature in at least one aspect of their lives and Will helps a lot of them, at least a little each. Lance and Lilly’s romance is a good example (where will actually has to complete some mechanics to help them), but there are more, such as Neil’s acceptance of responsibility taking over his parent’s company (the largest slave trading concern in the world) or Kira becoming more aware of the plight of people in the world.

Journeying



I also think that the game’s story is very good despite the fact that it’s missing an antagonist. The comet, Dark Gaia, is technically your antagonist (also your final boss), but at the end of the day it doesn’t actually do anything to you directly. It’s coming, it will destroy the world and you can’t stop it (and you don’t really). I think as an allusion to global warming, it’s an interesting tie in. It’s happening, your only option is how to react to and mitigate it.  


The other potential antagonist in the game is the Jackal, the “Bounty Hunter” that pursues you for most of the game. The drawback for the Jackal is that until the very end of the game he never appears on screen. You get references to him, he leaves his mark a few places and roughs up your grandparents, until your Grandmother fights him off with a Poisoned Marsupial Pie (I … don’t know how that works) and you get words that he’s pursuing you but you don’t actually see him. When you do see him you kill him with an automatic flute solo … so his end is a touch anticlimactic.

Death by Flute



So you’re primarily driven though a plot, kicked off by a comet that doesn’t really care about you, and pursued by a non-present enemy. You end up following the plot at least partially because of the “but thou must” structure of the game. It seems like a slightly stronger antagonist presence might increase the tension in the game a little and pull the story a little tighter.


The last thing I liked about the story in Illusion of Gaia’s Story is the way it address some serious issues in an adult way. It addresses slavery, gambling, suicide, selflessness, the end of the world and the question of what a person even is. Some of that gets a little submerged in the North American version of the game, but they are still present.


I actually think the slavery aspect of the game could have been used to a strengthen the story a touch. There are several NPCs including King Edward, the Vampires and the Rolex Company (Neil’s Parents) are involved with the slave trade, it would have been interesting to see these different forces interacting more alongside the rest of the story. Even then I think the game does a good job of discussing the topic.


The game also embraces some of the other uncomfortable topics. One thing that struck me is that no one knows you’re on a journey, no one cares about your journey and no one even knows that the end of the world is coming. So in towns you get the feeling that the world doesn’t care at all about you. This may not be unusual for SNES games, but I feel like Illusion of Gaia steering into that a bit.


While I think the story is the best part of the game, the art, music and game design are also really good.


The art is very detailed and well animated, especially when it goes to the playable sprites. The game is actually able to use different animations in Will’s hair to indicate the solution to certain puzzles, which I think is a good thing. Other sprites might not be as detailed, but hey are always bright, interesting and evocative of the different cultures that inspired the game’s dungeons. I also absolutely love the fantasy world map and the way you move across it. I spend a lot of time as a kid imagining how cool all of the places in that world had to be.

A pretty game - From GameFaqs user Shotgunnova


The music has that SNES RPG quality to it, so it’s good (like I’d tell you anything else). That being said, I really do like the music. It’s very bold and like the art, very evocative of the cultures the game is based on and very evocative of the different emotions that the characters (or you the player) are feeling. The title music and the game select screen music both touch my nostalgia strongly and a lot of the other music is very good at making the hair stand up on my arms and making me want to smash things with my flute. The game also uses a couple of very pure flute melodies as tools within the game and those melodies have stuck with me ever since I first played this game.


The last thing that I really liked is level design. While the combat is a touch uninspired, the combat levels themselves are very well created. They have a lot of verticality to them, which is reinforced by the design choice to let you see lower levels of the dungeon from higher levels. Beyond that each dungeon (and actually most of the towns too) is developed to be a unique experience and give you new and interesting things to do each place you go.


They also do a good job of using the three protagonist characters (Will, Freedan and Shadow). Levels often involve needing to switch between the three, especially later in the game, which requires you to revisit parts of the level and interact with them in ways that you haven’t before. As a kid it was also really cool to be able to switch from little kid Will to giant, awesome Knight Freedan and then cosmically powerful Shadow.


Things I Didn’t Like

As I mentioned some of the production values of the game are a little low. The translation is one of the leading problems and if the story wasn’t as good as it is, it might have totally broken the game. Fortunately that isn’t the case, but I do think to really enjoy the game you have to take a step back from the literal text on the screen.


The other big place where I think the game really falls down is the special item collection to play the optional special boss at the end of the game. The gems are used through the game to give you rewards and some extra powers, but to get the secret boss, you have to get all of them.




The problem is that the gems are missable at certain points and some of them have random positions. If you didn’t know you were looking for them you wouldn’t find them all. Sadly this means that you can’t really play the game intending to get that secret boss, without a guide and if you didn’t have a guide you might not ever know that there was a secret, due to the random positioning. You can tell that the game’s designers (or at least the North American localization team) knew this was a problem because the game’s manual includes that full guide.


Finally, I don’t like the way the game balanced. In general the minions throughout the level are not that hard, but the bosses tend to be much harder. Particularly the first boss Casoth and late game Mummy Queen . Now, as usual I’m happy to accept that I ought to “git gud” but I still feel like the difficulty the present is very uneven.

Castor - my mortal nemesis - From GameFaqs User The Mighty KELP

Things I Noticed



Illusion of Gaia is quite short and linear but as John Friscia points out in his article, it’s a game with no filler. While even compared to Terranigma and Soul Blazer it has even fewer moments of choice for the player, I don’t think that’s as much of a detriment as it might be. I think the linearity lets the story telling of the game stand more strongly.




In every game there’s a struggle between how much story the creators want to tell and how much story they want to let the players tell. Illusion of Gaia sits very definitely on the creator’s story side of the equation (you can suggest Lance impress Lilly with a necklace, flowers or a kiss, but in the end he’ll do all three). In order for that to work, you have to tell an interesting enough story for the player to keep playing (reading) and you have to ensure that the gameplay is fun (or compelling) enough that it’s worth it for the player to keep playing along with the story. I think Illusion of Gaia manages this and the shorter length of the game means that you’re never doing anything that isn’t a beat of the story.

Things I’d Include in a Game

For Illusion of Gaia, this section fell into two questions for me: How do you push this game to be better? and What can you take from it to strengthen another game?


The answer to that first question, I think is mostly focused in the quality of translation. I think if you could retranslate the game and simultaneously avoid Nintendo’s very strict rules of the 90s you could tell the same story more clearly and reinforce the interesting points such as the discussion of slavery or gambling.

A menace we should have fought more - From GameFaqs User The Mighty KELP



The other factor would be to make the story slightly tighter around the threats to you. I mentioned earlier that there’s no real antagonist to the game. I’m not sure that you need someone chasing you (more directly) or someone pulling strings against you, but a plot that ties the different evils of man together as a counterpoint to the greater evil of the comet might really give the story that little bit of oomph it needs. Or, it might make it melodramatic and over the top and cheesy.


On the other hand, there’s the question of what to take from this game. The first answer I have to that is the art. Illusion of Gaia is (part of) the reason why I hated so many games visually in the 3D era. Don’t try to squeeze in an extra few polygons, squeeze in hundreds of more beautiful sprites! I know it takes a long time and a lot of work but I really think the beauty of the SNES pixel art is not to be forgotten.


Next I think I’d take the level design and especially how they use verticality to show you other parts of the world before you get there and I think the level of attention to detail in the levels (as with the art) is also very important.

Final Things

At the end of the day I don’t usually spend this much time thinking about games I don’t like. So you shouldn’t be surprised when I say that I think it’s worth playing Illusion of Gaia. I think it’s an interesting example of storytelling in games and I think it’s lot of fun to play. I also think it’s a beautiful game and a great example of why my nostalgia for the SNES is as strong as it is.


I think there’s a lot of space in games for different types of games. Games that are all about how you feel when you play and games that are all about the story you make as you play and games that are all about the story that you get to see as you play. It’s nice that we have that flexibility and I’m really happy to support Illusion of Gaia as one example of a great story that you get to experience while you enjoy smacking floating heads and giant mud men with your flute (that’s not a euphemism if you haven’t played the game by the way, Will really does fight everything with a flute).

Also you should have pie. Like, a few times a month, pie is good, but more to the point I can’t think of another game that celebrates pie this much, nor uses it as a weapon. So seriously when you sit down to play this game, make sure you have some good pie on hand. Grandma Lola would be pleased to know you cared.

The Video Games I Played - February 2024

This is the second new monthly games post . I'm not feeling very settled in what anything means. The book posts have some basic stats...