[This blog contains spoilers for the video games Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy VII Remake, as well as the television show Newhart.] As the hype for Final Fantasy VII Remake grew in the years following its 2015 announcement, and especially after I was finally able to play the game last month, I’ve had a very intense internal debate regarding how I should discuss my feelings about it. On the one hand, I’m not the video game aficionado I used to be…
Something about the way I play video games changed when Final Fantasy IX came out. To start with, after getting the two previous Final Fantasy games on the days they came out, I waited a couple of years to get Final Fantasy IX because Final Fantasy VIII burned me so badly. (I got Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII on their release days, never got Final Fantasy XI or Final Fantasy XIV because I don’t play online role-playing games, waited to get Final Fantasy…
[The following blog contains mentions of bullying and child abuse.] I have a “that’s not funny” reaction to a lot of viral videos and memes, simply because they display deep-rooted problems in our broader culture that need to be addressed seriously. There are certainly boatloads of funny videos out there on the Internet, but a lot of the stuff people laugh at on YouTube is of people with deep psychological issues. Not only do I find it cruel for people to laugh at those kinds…
I’ve been buying console video games for over thirty years now (I still have not only the first two cartridges I bought — Bubble Bobble and The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System — but also the receipts from the Highland Appliance I bought them at, for those of you old enough to remember Highland), and in all that time, I have only returned one video game I purchased. When I bought my first copy of Mortal Kombat III for Super Nintendo and…
[This blog contains spoilers for the video game Final Fantasy VII.] ‘Mega fire’ measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge (sfgate.com) The phrase “video game logic” doesn’t get used as often as it used to, and I have to wonder if that’s necessarily a good thing. I don’t long for the days when older people would smugly assert that there was no rational way Mario should be jumping several times his own height to stomp down on a goomba, but as video…