Episode 185 – Xenogears (1998)
Episode 185 – Xenogears (1998)
This week in Your Parents Basement, we are playing as robot manifestations of our id, ego and superego! From 1998, we’re playing Xenogears by Square for the PS1.
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TIMESTAMPS
- 0:00 – Intro, which features the Japanese commercial for Xenogears.
- 25:00 – Todd has reasons why this is… The Most Best Game of All-Time! Followed by all of our regular, fun segments.
- 38:30 – Emails!
- 51:15 – Snifferoo. Next week, we’re playing one of the claaayysssics for the PC!
- 52:50 – Blooperonie! The boys have some fun with rowebuts before the show starts proper.
Vidya Game News – October 20, 2016
– Today has a crap-ton of current video game news. Nintendo says they’re releasing information on their new console, the NX, for realies this time at 10 a.m. EST. Likewise, Rockstar is releasing a trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2 at 11 a.m. EST. What a time to be alive! (UPDATE: The RDR2 link has been updated with the trailer, which looks awesome, and the NX is now called the Switch, and most of the trailer is about friggin’ controllers.)
– From ESPN property FiveThirtyEight, the world record speedrun for Super Mario Bros. continues to go down. And hey, check out our first ever episode, which was on that game!
– Wired.com has translated a really good interview with Miyamoto done by a Japanese publication. Read it here!
– Did you ever wonder to yourself: “Hey, what if the Swedish Chef loved vidya games? And then he hacked passwords for them?” Well, you’re in luck! Bisqwit has a cool video on passwords for River City Ransom on YouTube here. Listen to our past show on that game here!
– The Chicago Tribune has a review of “Merge,” which is a play about the early years of Atari.
– The Verge, via a Nintendo social media account, post a treasure trove of old systems they found in a warehouse.
– Paste’s Jason D’Aprile has a good, long interview with Rand Miller of Myst fame. Check out our Myst episode with Jovial Jackee here!
– A very British dude, Daniel Ibbertson a.k.a. Slopes Game Room, has the complete history of the Shinobi series on YouTube.
ON THIS DAY (OR CLOSE TO IT!) IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– Shining Force 2 came out for the Genesis at some point in October 1994 – the exact date is seemingly lost to time. The Shining Force series is Sega’s version of Fire Emblem, in that both tactical RPG series were ignored and not properly promoted for the longest time. And, well, Sega has kind of ignored it except for more Japanese releases.
– Konami released Metal Gear Solid for the Playstation on October 21, 1998. You can listen to the sweet baby boys and Dale talk about it here!
– Also in 1998, Xenogears came out. It tends to get a bit too much hype, but it’s still a pretty solid PSX RPG by Square. It tends to get more fame because of programming and localization issues.
– Borderlands came out for the PS3 and 360 today in 2009. The first-person shooter from Gearbox Software mixed RPG elements into a first-person shooter, and it had a distinctive art and humor style. It’s sold more than 4.5 million copies.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Vidya Game News – February 11, 2016
– Legitimately cool, but some NSFW text and language: Canadian punk band PUP has a ton of re-purposed vintage video game stuff for its music video of “DVP.” Check it out on YouTube! It’s definitely a must-watch for any old games fan.
– James Trew of Engadget has a cool retrospective on the Atari Lynx, which is one of those obscure systems from the early to mid-1990s.
– Are you in the Austin, Texas area on Feb. 21? You’re in luck! You can attend the NBA Jam Invitational Tournament at Empire Control Room & Garage. Find more details here. Also, from FOX Sports and several other sources, the University of Florida used NBA Jam graphics for a promotion.
– In “WTF Sega???” news, The Worldfolio has an interview with the president and CEO of Sega Sammy Holdings Inc., and he said development continues on a live action-animation hybrid Sonic The Hedgehog movie. It’s tentatively scheduled for a 2018 release.
– A hat tip to Friend of the Show Hypermotard, as he passed along this Reddit AMA with Don Rawitsch, one of the co-inventors of The Oregon Trail.
– From the appropriately named This Is Why I’m Broke, it’s a Nintendo console lamp. The price of $95 seems a bit steep to me, but still, it looks pretty cool.
ON THIS DAY IN VIDEO GAME HISTORY…
– In 2014, Square somewhat buried the third installment of Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning Returns, by releasing it in this traditional “dead” period. The game itself is a bit of a mess, but it has some cool concepts, like the ability to hunt enemies to extinction and the setting of the end of the world. Like a lot of recent Square efforts, it’s undone by some meh storytelling in the third act.
– We typically don’t use Japanese dates for “anniversaries” on the old YPB blog, but for whatever reason, Feb. 11 is a banner day for the genre in Japan. In 1990, Dragon Quest IV came out, and as usual it did major business in Japan. It didn’t hit American shores until October 1992, and it was very much a “niche” title with seemingly only 15 copies released. A Nintendo DS remake came out in 2007 and 2008; it tends to be controversial, because while it cleans up some gameplay and “where do I go next?” aspects, it gives all of the characters ridiculous accents.
– In 1998, Xenogears was released by Square in Japan. It has a strong cult following to this day because of its unique RPG system with martial arts and robots fighting, along with a plot that focuses on religion, psychology and identity crisis. The reaction is still mostly positive, even though the second half of the game falls apart a bit for behind-the-scenes budget reasons.
– Square released Final Fantasy VIII in Japan in 1999. It was the second Final Fantasy game for the Playstation, and drastically different from the preceding game, and as a result it’s somewhat a black sheep in the series. Although it has sold more than 8.5 million copies, it’s been passed over for remakes in favor of VII and X, even though its story and “look” hold up somewhat better. It’s not really a game for Final Fantasy newcomers though, as the battle system takes some getting used to, and exploit knowledge on a second playthrough can let you become an all-powerful character within the game’s first few hours.
Video game history information comes from GameFAQs and Moby Games. And as always, if you’d like to support the show, do so via our Amazon link.
Your Parents Basement 