(Warning: I know it's hard to avoid spoilers for a game from 1989 anyway, but in case you do care, major Phantasy Star II spoilers are on their way.) On Christmas Day, 1991, I carefully removed the tape from the colorful wrapping on the bi...

If you're just coming across this, this is a repost of writeups I did when a friend and I played through the Dragon Quest games in 2010 and 2011. Here's my short treatment I did for the last two games in the series. Week 30 EIGHT Dragon...

Well, it's disappointment time. When we got to DQVI, this project seriously ran out of steam. This is partly due to the fact that my friend and I don't like VI very much, and partly because interest had mostly died out at this point where ...

FIVE Dragon Quest V (SFC) Stop me if you've heard this one: many generations after the last installment, a descendant of the previous Hero will become the new Hero of Legend when the Ruler of Evil awakes again. Our story opens on the birt...

Week Nine FOUR Dragon Warrior IV (NES) We travel now to a new world, where a new story is about to begin. The master of monsterkind is about to awaken, but the world is destined to be saved by a child of the heavens... but let's not get ...

Looking back, I don't know why I said "early 2011" is when we finished these playthroughs. In actuality, the project took us about ten months. THREE Dragon Quest III (SFC) And so the tale of Erdrick's descendants comes to a close. But ...

I choose to take a lack of people yelling at me to stop as encouragement! Here is my writeup of Dragon Quest II. TWO Dragon Quest II (SFC) What, you want party members? What kind of luxury RPG series do you think this is? Well... okay, b...

In late 2010 to early 2011, a friend and I played through all nine Dragon Quest games together in sequence, and I did a little writeup on GameFAQs. I was reading back through it and found it amusing, so I thought I'd post it here. ONE Dra...

1983 was the year of the famous North American video game crash. Going into the year, there were many competing consoles; by 1984, they were all gone. A glut of consoles, overall poor quality of games and high profile duds like E.T. and P...

The other day it occurred to me what we mean when we speak of what a game is "about," and how it differs from the explanations of other media. I think that part of the reason that the discussion of games as art is so contentious is that gam...

Dig Dug painting by Brock Davis I wouldn't say 1982 was quite the year 1981 was for arcades, but what year was? It still featured some great classics like Joust, Dig Dug and Q*Bert. 0033. Gravitar (Arcade) For me, the best way to desc...

1981 featured some fantastic arcade releases, including household name classics Galaga, Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man and Frogger, so it's appropriate that this year in the book is almost entirely arcade games. The one exception is an importan...

I was able to cover the 1970s section in just one post, but in the 80s, gaming really took off, so from here on out, posts will cover at best one year. 1980 (the "dark mists of time" according to the text) was a big year for gaming; any y...

Welcome to my new blog series, 1001games. And yes, that's one thousand and one, not 9 in binary. You see, a while ago I got this book, 1001 Games You Must Play Before You Die, edited by Tony Mott. I really admire this thick tome with its su...

When it comes to copyright and consumers' rights, there are some things I've been meaning to get off my chest for a long time. It's really the comments on websites like Destructoid.com that have spurred me to write this. You see, as abhorre...

Since Sega announced Sonic the Hedgehog 4, a lot of people have been talking about it. Some people are very excited. Some people are very angry. A lot of people say, "Why should I care?" These people say that it's just another 2D Sonic game...