This is what I’ve been up to recently:
The Good
Shining Force for Genesis: For the late comer to the Genesis, this one just barely holds a candle to its successor, one of the crown jewels of the console along with Phantasy Star IV, but it still makes for a bit of fun. There isn’t too much to the story, and driving interest seems to be the character advancement, through promotions at a certain level as in SD III.
Shining Force II: All the flaws from the first game are fixed here, it seems. The graphics most obviously, but there’s also a much better story, and a more detailed promotion system, as well as a wider variety of characters. The best tactical RPG from the 16-bit era, at least in America, in my book.
Phantasy Star IV: My childhood. I still remember not getting this for Christmas one year when I desperately wanted it. I had to continually rent it from the neighborhood Blockbuster and hope my game wasn’t overwritten. I also remember breaking a tooth off in an apple at the moment I defeated the bat boss from from that one tower you got to with Rune. The depiction of the worlds of Motavia and Dezolis are so strong that they created the mental categories I still think of RPGs in. Probably the best such depiction from the 16-bit era.
Shadowrun for the Genesis: Likewise, this obscure gem defined for me what video games could be all about, and was a great introduction to the curious world of the cyberpunk. It plays as a sort of action RPG with an overhead view, more a Western style than the Japanese. It sort of reminds me of Fallout. It’s a rather difficult game, one of those that make you spend hours upon hours simply making bare bones wages before you can get into the big time, which it does through randomly generated quests… unfortunately get quite repetitive. There are a lot of areas where the game could have been fleshed out, but it is a very interesting specimen of the early days.
The Bad
Only one here, because I quickly divest my memory of bad experiences. I acquired a version of the game Vandal Hearts for the PSX a couple days ago and tried to play it, after having rented it once in my childhood. I never remembered anything past the first battle (it’s a TRPG), and now I know why. The graphics are utterly laughable from a contemporary point of view, and the battle and menu systems are creakier than those from the 16-bit era.
OK, one more, just for fun: Ephemeral Fantasia, the Frank Stallone of RPGs.
Oftentimes, with older games the more important factor of any continuing worth is whether the game is well designed, graphically or otherwise, to begin with. New technology can cover up these flaws when the game is first released, to the wonderment of those used to the older model, but as time passes and that hardware becomes itself dated, the underlying artistic design shows through, often to contemporary embarrasment. This will probably happen in the future with games like Halo, while CS: Source will probably be able to hold its own through the loverly graphic design of the game. Lecture over.