Blogs about nintendo from Pew Pew Laser Blog

Favorite Final Fantasys.

I shall now list the primary Final Fantasy games that I've played, in order of how much I like them. Oh, and do I really have to say "spoiler alert" for a 10 year old video game? Fine. Spoiler alert!

1. Final Fantasy VI (aka Final Fantasy III on SNES): I played this in it's original incarnation on the SNES. As a kid, my primary home never had a SNES. But we did have one during visitation weekends at our dad's. I would rent the cartridge over and over again, and hope that my save game hadn't been deleted.
2. Final Fantasy X-2: I enjoyed this immensely. The job-based leveling system was rewarding and strategic, and I also enjoyed all of the flashy girly costume changes. The only problem I had was the foolishness of the plot; the adventure centered on searching for a lost boyfriend, who may have been just a dream. I suppose it's a tad more unique than searching for a Princess.
3. Final Fantasy IX: This featured yet another implementation of the "job" system, which has always been my favorite kind of character building system. FF IX was also hilarious.
4. Final Fantasy VIII: While VIII didn't have the most interesting system for leveling up, it's story was excellent. It was tremendously mature and compared to its predecessors, and had one incredibly poignant scene on a spaceship that made me cry just a little.
5. Final Fantasy XII: This is pretty fun, but I haven't had time to finish it yet. I do like that the main character isn't not the central character to the story; the epic tale simply unfolds around him. I like the unique battle system, where I can just program the characters with actions to take under certain circumstances.
6. Final Fantasy IV (aka Final Fantasy II on the SNES): To this day, I miss having 5 characters in my party at once. And remember when Kain left the party and took his equipment?!? What a jerk.
7. Final Fantasy III: I played the recent version DS, and enjoyed the completely flexible characters and their jobs. The old school difficulty on this version kicked my butt without regular level-grinding. As is always the case with games requiring Wifi friends, I was disappointed that I didn't have any wifi friends so that I could earn the special wifi-only job.
8. Final Fantasy I: This first Final Fantasy was charming and pleasant, but just not terribly deep. Also, these early FFs really could hand you your ass.
9. Final Fantasy II: I played a pretty authentic port of this on the Final Fantasy Origins disc. One quirk was that instead of leveling up, your characters gained abilities based on what they did during battles. IE, if a character got hurt during the battle, they would earn a higher max HP value. I confess, I loved whomping my characters so that they would get stronger. I can't remember if I finished it; I should really pick it up again.
10. Final Fantasy V: I played this in the PS1 remake Final Fantasy Collection. I never finished, because one of my characters is stuck doing something wacky (I think it's a bug, rather than a curse). I should look into that.
11. Final Fantasy X: Rather like FF VII, FFX was epic and engrossing at its time, as it aged, I just don't remember it fondly.
12. Final Fantasy VII: By the time I played this on the Playstation 2, I had already known that Aeris was going to die, and couldn't wait for her to get on with it. It was revolutionary for its time, but doesn't have any special nostalgia for me.

Back Off the Wagon.

I have started a new live of indentured servitude to an anthropomorphized raccoon. Santa Claus brought me Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Nintendo Wii. I did some fishing, paid off my first mortgage, and had my house re-modeled. Would any of you like to visit my town? Let me know - I've got peaches.

For the rest of you, perhaps this will be interesting: Big Fish Games is offering two free downloadable puzzle games for PC, and 50% off any other game. Go to www.bigfishgames.com/borders and enter your email address.

DS Lite Randomly Powers Down.

Last month, the father in law told us that he'd been having some trouble with his Nintendo DS Lite. Yes, this the baby boomer for whom I insidiously instrumented a birthday gift of a Nintendo DS Lite, Clubhouse Games, and Brain Age. He loves it.

Anyhoo, the problem was the the DS would randomly shut down during play, sometimes only after a minute of play. The husband and I theorized that the root cause of the problem could be a bad cartridge, a bad connection socket in the DS, or a problem with the battery. We suggested changes to his DS - playing work flow that could resolve the trouble, or at least narrow down the cause.

It turned out to be battery trouble - dad-in-law tended to keep the DS fully charged, and even play at his desk with the power plugged in. Since giving the battery a more natural cycle of charge and discharge, he hasn't seen any troubles.

The World Ends With You - Aliens.

I've been leaving TWEWY in "talk to other Wi-Fi devices mode" frequently over the past week. I've had good luck on gaining experience from this, though some of the "Aliens" (non-DSes - probably iPhones) are quite weird:

• A Childhood Memory
• An Angry Monkey (some kind of monkey, anyhow)
• An Evil Spirit
• A Psycho Hose Beast
• the one that got away

The World Ends With You.

Recently, I've been playing The World Ends With You, one of Square's non-Final Fantasy RPGs for the Nintendo DS. It's very engrossing; fast paced and highly configurable.

Game progress is broken up into very distinct stages, with clear goals for progressing to the next stage. Within each stage, game play is pretty much up to you. You can spend lots of time exploring, fighting, or even running around Shibuya shopping. Or you can focus directly on the tasks to progress to the next stage. I'm really enjoying the in-game flexibility to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

The game difficulty is also configurable at all times, in a variety of dimensions. And great rewards are available with the increased difficulty settings.

One very unique attribute of this game is the powering up system. Equipment (which grants abilities) earns experience; not just for fighting, but also when the game is shut down, and when it communicates wirelessly with other devices. The DS/TWEWY can detect WiFi communications from other TWEWY players (ESPers), DSs playing other games (Civvies), and non-DS devices (Aliens)! Very fun.