This was another huge year in gaming for me, although my focus had somewhat shifted from the big platforms. I had begun moving away from Twitch and streaming, while focusing a lot on other gaming projects and other retro games. There were still some huge games this year, but I played a lot of games as more of a distraction from work.
My year began with my continuation of playing through classic Zelda games. I had played through Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 at the end of the last year, and I started this year with Link's Awakening and the Oracle games on Gameboy. I finished up the Oracle games before the release of the biggest game this year.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was released in February, and it dominating my thoughts for the next two months. It's incredible that with such an expansive and huge game, all aspects felt hand-crafted and refined. Often huge open-world games use a lot of recycled quests or dungeons, using a script to manufacture its quantity. People argue there's too much stuff in Rebirth, but it's all there for the purpose of flushing out characters, lore, and story.
Both FF7 Remake and Rebirth are amazing examples of the lengths Nomura will go to retell the overall story of Final Fantasy 7 completely, which has been expanded upon over the 25 years since its original release. Everything feels like it's been completely thought out, even though the pacing is perhaps a bit much. I really hope the can stick the landing with the final game in the trilogy.
Following Rebirth's story, once again, I went back to YouTube and watched a playthrough of the original Final Fantasy 7 to compare the story. It made me really nostalgic for the original playstation, especially Final Fantasy 8. I had always preferred FF8 because of its characters, but I've largely forgotten it all at this point.
I started looking into what it would take to play old Playstation and Playstation 2 games, and with several videos on YouTube showing how this was done, I put together a PlayStation 2 set-up to have access to all those games from my high school and college years.
This became somewhat cyclical as I played a lot of Earth Defense Force 2 on PS2, then moved back to the PlayStation 5 for the recent release of Earth Defense Force 6. Both excellent games of running around and shooting gigantic bugs and monsters. EDF6 is probably the best in the series at this point, combining modern graphics and frame rate with the highest variety of enemies in the whole series. I bought the Japanese version to save some money, which ended up being a mistake because I missed out on the campy English performances.
After the harsh Spring and Summer, I went back to story-driven games with Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol, actually taking photos in game and exploring their stories and ideas.
The Switch didn't see a lot of play this year as I took a break from Pokemon and Twitch.
Surprisingly, in Spring, Nintendo announced a new Zelda was coming in September. We had just gotten Tears of the Kingdom last year, and already we're getting another game.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was the first canon Zelda game where you actually played as Zelda. It featured a creative game mechanic of using objectives in the environment to climb, fight, and explore the world to eventually save Link. Its style immediately identified itself as being developed by Grezzo, who did the Link's Awakening Remake from a few years ago. As such, I bought that and played through that as well.
Leading up to summer, I played through the remake of Super Mario RPG on Switch. It was interesting playing through both remakes so close to each other along with FF7. Nintendo has an absolute vibrant history of games. Everyone has their own interpretations of those games and how they could best be adapted to today. Mario RPG does almost nothing to modernize itself beyond some quality of life changes to the gameplay. The story, the maps, and the pacing are all the same from the original. Link's Awakening is pretty much the same, too. It's the complete opposite of Final Fantasy 7.
There's obviously no one best approach to remaking games. Would you rather have a gaming experience that reminds you of your childhood by playing a semi-modern version of the old game? Or would you rather have a new experience reliving the old story with the characters and lore you remember? For this year, Final Fantasy has had much more of an impact on me than these Nintendo remakes.
This year, with cheaper versions being release, I finally bought a Mister. This complements my Playstation 2 and Analogue Pocket for having access to decades of gaming history. Many of these older games still hold up quite well without the need of a remake or new version. I played through Snatcher for the first time in decades and it's still an incredible experience, and one that I don't think would translate well to a modern remake.
I feel incredible fortunate to have access to all these games from my past. And while I don't always have the time to play, I'm also grateful for the time I do have along with a platform to show them off.