Vagrant Story

"This is my game."

With many games on this 1001 list, I've either known about them for decades (whether I've played them or not) or haven't got a clue what they are at all. The middle ground didn't seem to exist, but it's the best way to describe my awareness of Vagrant Story, an Action RPG that I've been aware of for only a few years at most, and only when it's mentioned in passing by gamers recounting memories of their childhood favourites.

From the precious little I've seen, I've always been interested in it, but not so curious that I had to stop what I was doing and try it out. It has always caught my eye as being a looker, brown and beige though it may be, but I suppose I've then been put off with it being a game that would require many hours to get the most out of it.

What, then, can I find out about this Vagrant Story in the here and now of the 1001 list? Will I confirm my interest in it? Will I see what other gamers love about it? It's time to finally find out.

Vib Ribbon

"There's no time / Hurry Up / I'll be late so precious day"

Games are about the gameplay, and not the graphics, as excellently demonstrated by rhythm game, Vib-Ribbon, known throughout the video game world for its... graphics, probably, come to think of it.

But it definitely isn't all about the iconic graphic style when it comes to Vib-Ribbon. This quirky little game is so little that it can be fully loaded into the PlayStations' measly amount of RAM, freeing up the CD drive for something far more interesting/personal than the Japanese tracks that ship with the game.

Why on Earth would you want to play your own audio in a rhythm game...

ISS Pro Evolution

"I'm Terry Butcher." - Terry Butcher

The history of a video game series can get messy sometimes. Different names for different regions is one source of confusion, and subtitles launching an off-shoot series is another. ISS Pro Evolution manages to hit that special place of everything at once.

Originally released on the SNES, International Superstar Soccer would get sequel after sequel over the years. Eventually, it spawned a Pro line, at the time running separately to the main ISS line. This Pro version of the title would play more realistically than it's arcadey origins and would be a game for the smarter footballer, you might argue. ISS Pro Evolution is the evolution of that Pro line, and as the name suggests, it would ultimately lead to further separation from ISS series when it becomes the Pro Evolution Soccer series.

But that's in the future and this is in the distant past. Not the first 3D football title to arrive on home consoles, but supposedly one of the best. Indeed, as the intro outright tells us:

Threads of Fate

"Hey! When the time comes, I'll start shaping up."

Once more, the 1001 list presents a complete unknown to me, this time in the form of action RPG Threads of Fate. It's yet another title from Squaresoft, which makes me wonder just what kind of development farm they had back in the day, such was the amount of stuff they seemed to churn out, multiple times a year, year after year.

But this isn't a familiar title. Its original title, Dew Prism, isn't familiar either. What is this about? What adventures are in store? I've absolutely no idea. Let's get going.

Front Mission 3

Mankind never learns.

Ohhhhh boy. It's time. It's time...

When I was but a teen, I had some kind of cheat/walkthrough magazine, and to be honest I don't even remember why I had this particular magazine, but inside were pages dedicated to seemingly endless amounts of spreadsheets, tables for arms, legs, weapons... I knew what none of it meant, but I saw that it was for a game called Front Mission 3, and from then on, I knew that this game was awesome.

I didn't know what it was about, mind. In fact, I was probably only vaguely aware that it was about Mechs, and if you've been following along with the 1001 list you'll know how far I gush over Mechs. As time went by, and I learned more about Front Mission 3, I knew I had to play it - but never did.

It is time to rectify that wrong. It is time to play what could potentially be the greatest game of--I'm getting ahead of myself.

Final Fantasy VIII

Kept you waiting, huh?

Blimey, it's been a long time since I've been sat down in front of a blank blog canvas like this. Life, as it was always going to, got in the way a little bit, but I now find myself mostly settled and ready to crack on with the rest of the 1001 list, and the return title is quite the entry.

Hot off the heels of the insanely popular Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII stretches out a little (a design choice I would much rather look at than the animated potatoes of FF7), taking us to a world that's a little more familiar to that of our own - save for the introduction seeing students taking a final exam in the middle of an active military conflict, I suppose.

It was one of the first games I watched a Let's Play of, back in the day, and I watched it because I hadn't played it even further back in the day when it came out. Let's see how far I can get, and whether I'll be distracted by mini-games.

Silent Hill

Where could Cheryl have gone?

Horror isn't exactly my thing. Surviving is something I'll do if I have to but otherwise isn't really my thing either. Survival horror as a genre then isn't what I'd call 'my cup of tea'. However, this isn't a list of games that are my cup of tea, it's a list of 1001 games I ought to have played before I can no longer drink tea, and my eyes continue to be opened with survival horror Silent Hill.

You are Harry Mason, a skinny dude with no useful skills relating to surviving or dealing with horror, save for empathy and devotion to finding a missing child. A noble cause for a normal man, but unfortunately for Harry it's all going to take place in the supernatural fog-covered titular Silent Hill, a town empty of people, but full of horror.

How's this one going to pan out...?

Chrono Cross

Not a sequel

Don't you just love it when Life sneaks up on you and everything changes? Your norms are now your no-mores, your routines are regularly uprooted, and you just can't see when things will next go back to the way they were. What if we could cope by just getting sucked into a parallel dimension that inevitably leads to a grand adventure that requires us to save the world?

Actually, that'd exacerbate the problem. Let's not do that. Let's instead, finally, get around to playing age-old games I've never come across before and see what all the fuss is about, with not-a-sequel to the SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, kicking things back into gear.

Ape Escape

It works. It actually works!

I know these monkeys. Not personally - I know of them. I know they made their way into Metal Gear Solid 3 and Little Big Planet in one form or another, and I know they come from the Ape Escape series - but I've no idea what that series is actually about, other than capturing escaping primates.

The only title from the series to make the 1001 list is the first, and I suspect that the reason for its inclusion is not for the plot, which we'll get to soon enough, but for the fact that this is the first game to require players to own a controller capable of, and then use dual analogue controls on a home console (better slip that caveat in there to cover my arse in case an arcade title got their first...) - a controller configuration that I, for one, have been using for 20 years now, across multiple console generations.

I've certainly used the now-standard PlayStations' controller then, but have never played Ape Escape. I'm not expecting the greatest use of analogue controls in video game history, but I am expecting plenty of monkeys. Let's see what we end up with.

Ridge Racer Type 4

Better luck next time.

This looks a lot different from the original Ridge Racer, doesn't it? That classic kicked off the PlayStation generation, and to my mind, would be left in the dust by Gran Turismo and it's sequel. In fact, my memory of racing games on the PlayStation is so dominated by Gran Turismo that I could not for the life of me have told you that there were three sequels to Ridge Racer before the PlayStation 2 would come along.

Four Ridge Racer titles and the second one of those worthy enough of an entry on the 1001 list was R4: Ridge Racer Type 4.

It's said to be quite the looker, which is blasphemy to the ears of a GT fan, but we'll rev our engines and see how much rubber we can melt to the track to find out.

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear?!

Source // Metal Gear Wiki

Going through this rather long list of games, there have been times where I've been excited to get a game of something going. It might be because I hadn't played it before, or that I knew nothing about it and wondered how it was good enough to make it into the 1001 list. In this case, the more I got back into Metal Gear Solid for the first time in a looong time, the more I wanted to not write anything about it and keep playing instead.

I used to watch much more TV than I do nowadays, and when browsing channels to pass the time there would often be a film on, and I - like many others, I'm sure - have a list of films that just make you stop and watch them. Take Con Air for example. You can't not watch it. It's a masterpiece. Face/Off. Speed. Die Hard with a Vengeance. True Lies. The list goes on and on, come to think about it.

They're all movies that took over the evening, usually each and every time I found out that they were on. They all happen to be action movies, but the likes of Grosse Pointe Blank and The Devils Advocate also have their place in the (apparently growing) handful of movies that I attribute with 'must watch, right here, right now'.

That's my long-winded way of saying that Metal Gear Solid found itself on the 'must play, right here, right now' list, despite having completed it many a time before, so you can probably guess how this post will turn out...

Devil Dice

Bless you. Bless you. Blimey, are you allergic to these dice?

I'm a board gamer. I'm a (currently former) role player. I know my dice. My die? Whatever. I also know Devil Dice, for it is one of the demos on the greatest demo disc in history (Official PlayStation Magazine UK No. 42, in case you're wondering).

However... Video games have surprised me before, and they'll surprise me again. It has been around 19 and half years since that demo disc made it into my hands, and it has taken that long for me to learn that this game started like as a Net Yaroze project - a homebrew, of sorts.

Mind blown. I've kinda ruined the Fun Fact segment of this post now. Should have saved it.

Moving on...

Xenogears

Huff, huff... We shall be as Gods.

This shot, more or less, was the image used in the 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die book in order to entice readers into a deep, deep game that merges science fiction and fantasy and philosophy and ethics and lord knows what else, I was too distracted by the mechs it had as well.

This is the first playable section of Xenogears and a better screenshot should have been used. I don't know what - I'm no editor (have you even read this blog?) - but it could be more descriptive, I think. Something like this.

Yeah. Hard to see Mechs in the dark. That's the one.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go to space and see what's happening.

R-Type Delta

Shattered Canopy

Ah, the shoot 'em up. It feels like you're an ever-present in gaming history, with yet another one of your numbers making the 1001 list in the form of R-Type Delta, a PlayStation title described as 'the one shooter you should get' for the console.

Must be good then. Bad news for Einhänder, though...

Tekken 3

YOU WIN!

Some time ago, I wrote about playing Tekken for the first time, twenty years later, having only started the series with Tekken 2 in my childhood. I liked that I could, more or less, slot right back into the way I played, and while there were some differences and some difficulty spikes, it was Tekken through at through. No matter what it looked like, no matter how lacking I was in the skills department, playing Tekken was fun.

So imagine my merriment when Tekken 3 shows up in the 1001 list...

I've still got my copy of Tekken 3 because it's just that good, but I haven't played it for so long now that I'm almost ashamed. I say almost only because being ashamed to have not played something in a while is silly. We not-play things all the time, it's called Life, it happens. But here, now, Tekken 3 happens, and it happens with muh boy Lei Wulong.

Gran Turismo

Get The New Machine!

I don't drive a car. I have no intention to. But I enjoy racing games and can - should the make and model suit - enjoy looking at cars. For the longest time in gaming you couldn't really do both, and certainly not to the extent that Gran Turismo offered.

One hundred and forty licensed and detailed cars from manufacturers the world over, a simulation mode to take you from your first driving test to your final championship victory, an arcade mode to try out some of the best cars before you find the in-game cash to buy them in the simulation mode - Gran Turismo gave an awful lot to players when it finally hit the shops in the late 1990s, and at some point near its release it gave an awful lot to me too.

I've not played the original game properly since there was only the original game to play. Its many sequels and the console generations that have launched since have given me no need to, though I have always wondered whether it holds up, and just how different it is to the modern Gran Turismo titles.

Fitting, then, that I come back to where it all began while the PlayStation Network is experiencing problems that stop me from fully enjoying GT Sport...

Diablo

Hello, my friend. Stay a while and listen.

Source // Wikipedia

"Mindlessly satisfying", they say. Just clicking here, clicking there and watching monsters explode. Why, then, is Diablo on the 1001 list?

This action-heavy, hack and slash RPG was inspired by Rogue, the developers seeking to emulate not only the stories players found themselves in but the strategies of when and where to move and act so as to not die as soon as you enter a room.

Then, after a vote to turn the game from turn-based to real-time, gaming changed a tad...

Final Fantasy Tactics

"Have you ever heard of the Lion War?"

Previously, I dabbled in a game by the name of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, where Final Fantasy met Dungeons & Dragons and all was good - only it wasn't good because I found myself moving away from it, rather than towards it.

Final Fantasy Tactics is to Tactics Ogre what D&D 5th Edition is to Pathfinder: Easier for the newcomers. Developed by the same brains as those who worked on Tactics Ogre and steered in an easier but still tricky enough direction by those who knew the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I've been looking forward to playing for a while now.

The world of Ivalice is a world of war, and we are but knights in training looking for our place within it. And there might be something about a stone and some Zodiac signs. I really don't know. Time to dive in and find out.

Einhänder

Enemy threat removed by your heroic attempt.

What do we make? Role Playing Games! What shall we release? A 2.5D sidescrolling shooter!

The developers at Square probably didn't chant that as they were making Einhänder, but that's what players got in late 1997: an unexpected title from an unexpected developer on an unexpected system that unexpectedly made enough of an impression to warrant a spot on the 1001 list.

What's it all about? I have no idea. The name comes from German to mean 'one hand', and refers to your ship having one hand to pick stuff up with. Where we go from there is anyone's guess.

I.Q.: Intelligent Qube

Again?

The puzzle game is a genre that I tend to avoid, mostly because of the lack of a storyline. I enjoy racing and sports as genres, and while they don't have an explicit story (FIFA's The Journey being the exception, obviously), you can infer one from the events that take place - a racer must overcome his rival to take the gold, a team must score a certain number of goals in order to progress through a competition.

Puzzle games... not so much. The story here is that some little bloke (most likely a full-sized bloke who just happens to look little from this distance) finds himself suspended in an infinite black void and is tasked by choosing which of the coloured cubes that roll/stomp towards him will be saved, and which will be left to fall off the edge and tumble for eternity. Or something like that.

There's no story, really, but there is a task to accomplish, points to score and rules to learn, so let's get to it.

Why is it a sphere?