Tagged: pax prime 2012

I Bought Some Stuff! 10/2/2012: Convention finds edition.

I Bought Some Stuff!
October 2, 2012
1

Since I just got back from going to two conventions in the course of a month, it’s about time for me to show that I Bought Stuff. It’s gonna be a double-header this time around: We’re gonna be covering not only the stuff I got from last weekend’s haul at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, but also what I stumbled upon after PAX back in early September. It’s gonna be a fun one, indeed.

A bunch of Sierra and some Pat Sajak for your Tuesday. (or any day, really.)

– Police Quest 2: The Vengeance (DOS, $3)

– The Colonel’s Bequest (DOS, $3)

– Pat Sajak’s Lucky Letters (PC, $3)

I got these three games the day after PAX ended, on Monday. I had some free time to kill before I had to get to the train station to get home, so I had a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts — highly recommend you do so if you’re visiting Seattle — and found a Value Village several blocks away from where the main convention center was. After poking around the store that was in an old building complete with freight elevators, I found these three gems.

Police Quest 2: The Vengeance and The Colonel’s Bequest are classic Sierra-published games. This was back in Sierra’s heyday, when they made a whole bunch of adventure game titles. Granted, most of them have not aged well primarily due to their obtuse puzzle mechanics, but finding complete box copies of both games is a treat.

The Colonel’s Bequest was the first game in a mystery series starring Laura Bow, which she returned in another Sierra game a few years later, The Dagger of Amon Ra. I have no idea where this ranks on terms of quality Sierra games, but judging how I didn’t hear of this until I bought it, I assume it’s one of the forgettable ones.

Police Quest 2 continues the same silly stuff that other Police Quest games did where you had to follow every step of police procedure to the absolute letter. I preferred the later spinoff series SWAT, which went from being a bad FMV game to a strategy game to a solid squad FPS that rivaled Rainbow Six in its day. As an unexpected bonus, Police Quest 2 had extra 5 1/4″ copies somebody made presumably to give to a friend. Funny, considering the original disks are also inside. I guess somebody didn’t watch Don’t Copy That Floppy.

Pat Sajak’s Lucky Letters, on the other hand, was more of a gimmick purchase. It had never been opened, and one copy there had a dozen GameStop price stickers on it, going from $20, to $10, to $5, to $2 by the end of it. This is the Wheel of Fortune host’s first foray into making video games after having a weird aversion to appearing in Wheel of Fortune games for a solid two decades. At least he eventually got over that.

This casual game is a hybrid of crossword puzzles mixed in with elements from The Joker’s Wild. Put into a sleek casual games package, it’s an interesting little game made around the time of the casual games boom. There was another game under the Pat Sajak Games label named Trivia Gems, but I don’t know if that ever got a retail package. Bet both of those games are worth looking into.

The rest of my PAX swag was a shitload of buttons, energy drinks, cards and promo stuff, followed by Guitar Hero: Van Halen. I mean, when Dan Amrich (then of Activision and One of Swords in 2012, currently at Ubisoft) just hands them out for just showing up at a panel, you can’t resist. Then again, I heard that lots of people got copies of that game, apparently they had excess stock.

PAX Prime 2012: Experiencing the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Event.

As I sit here in a Seattle hotel room writing this, day one of PAX Prime 2012 is over. While I met some people, got some swag to shove into my suitcase after the con, and got to enjoy a few panels like the PAX Game Show Night, there was another video game event happening around the same time. Square Enix decided to celebrate Final Fantasy‘s 25th anniversary with a small event about a block or two away away from the Washington State Trade and Convention Center, which is the central PAX Hub. Unlike PAX which required a badge, attendance was available to everyone. I met with a few friends local to the area and hightailed it to the ACT Theatre.

I should post a disclaimer here: My experience with Final Fantasy is pretty much little to nil. Platformers and first-person shooters have always been my preferred genres, and my JRPG experience is pretty limited to about a few games such as Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts and a few Pokemon games. I did play part of Final Fantasy VI on an emulator a long time ago, but I don’t think that really counts. Despite my inexperience with the famous franchise, I was curious what this little shindig would be about.

It’s like a little fan-gathering of FF nerds meets a club atmosphere. It’s pretty nice.

It was a celebration of Final Fantasy alright, as all the mainline titles were playable on the main stage. None of the Final Fantasy spinoff games were there, just the main 13 games plus Final Fantasy XIII-2 which came out recently as of this post. No spinoff games, so no chances of seeing Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles recreated with four Gamecubes and Game Boy Advances hooked together.

Now, you’re probably asking, “Wait, we didn’t officially get Final Fantasy II, III and V until they came out much later, are they being represented by their American rereleases?” Actually, no. They were the original Famicom and Super Famicom releases of these games.

Hats off to Square Enix for going the extra mile even with this.

I am not at all fluent in Japanese language, so I didn’t attempt to play them. Despite the language barrier, this was an absolute treat to see, as it feels like a combination between both American and Japanese households. Also because I hadn’t really seen a Famicom up this close until now.

At one point some of the TVs were glitching out and some of the older NES and Famicom games weren’t completely working, resulting in one of my friends to yell out “Blow the cartridge!” Even despite how that’s been debunked in the years since, it’s still suggested as a way to fix busted NES games. I seriously hope no one tried that.

While the whole ordeal was more a dedication to the classics, the more recent stuff was being featured, such as a tech demo for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIV. While I was skeptical of the trailer being real time footage — this is Square-Enix after all, once the king of full motion video — it looked pretty nice. I’m not big on MMOs these days, but I bet there will be some people interested.

One last observation: Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 were feature on the Xbox 360 as opposed to the PlayStation 3, which is weird considering Square-Enix’s dedication to Sony’s platform for so long. Granted, the 360 is more popular over here in the States, so it probably made more sense. there.

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