It seems that when Capcom was looking around for a team to take on the DMC reboot/prequel, they were looking around for people who knew nothing about the series. The guy Ninja Theory threw out to take the flak is Tameem Antoniades, NT’s Creative Design Boss. Here’s a quote by Tameem on Dante’s look and why it was changed.

“But, you know, what was cool 12 years ago – I think that was when the first game came out (DMC came out in 2001) – isn’t cool anymore. If Dante, dressed as he was, walked into any bar outside of Tokyo, he’d get laughed out.”

It seems that to be ‘cool’ these days you have to be skinny, have a face that has been punched in repeatedly with bruises, wear a red jacket with a Union Jack (I see what you did there Tameem), and smoke. Let’s ignore the fact that Dante basically can’t have bruises since he heals wounds almost instantly and let’s also ignore the fact that somebody actually managed to capture Dante while holding him under physical and psychological torture (first E3 trailer); let’s instead mention the smoking. Kamiya originally created Dante with the full intention of not having him smoke (I’m not saying that was the basis of Dante’s creation, just that he was a non-smoker). He always said how Dante was just ‘too cool’ to bother with smoking. Many people agree that if a writer/artist wants to give a character an edgy look or an attitude, make him a smoker. A smoker in visual media usually means that character is either a tough Rambo badass, or an edgy teenager. Now I don’t mean all characters who smoke do this, I mean the characters who emphasize their smoking whenever they’re on the screen. This new Dante is an incredible unlikable looking person. I doubt anybody could relate to Kamiya’s Dante, but we liked him because he was a likable person. I’ll admit that the game isn’t out yet and we haven’t seen much footage, but I can almost guarantee he’ll be incredibly sarcastic and full of a good helping of angst (that one’s actually true according to NT).

There’s an incorrect notion that fans hate the reboot simply because they got rid of Dante’s white hair which is a terrible argument used by anyone not familiar with the series (or journalists trying to stay on Capcom’s good side). Sure, Dante’s white hair and red coat was a main part of his look, but those were there to add to his character. His personality was what made him an unforgettable character with his cocky confidence and goofy jokes. Dante’s idea of a good time was eating pizza with a strawberry sundae, not brooding around & smoking.

Alright, let’s get back to NT’s clear lack of DMC knowledge with another. Ninja Theory seems to have this idea that DMC was always all about being ‘cool’ when in reality it was all about stylish, fast paced, & over-the-top gameplay. Having Dante look ‘cool’ was just a bonus. Bayonetta doesn’t look cool and yet it’s being hailed as a sort of spiritual spin-off, no surprise considering Kamiya was the lead on Bayonetta. Fans want over-the-top, which unfortunantly seems that we won’t be getting that considering NT completely misses that being over-the-top is the point of DMC.

“Personally, I don’t. I love the game. I think it’s awesome. It’s taken everything – it’s just gone to a total extreme. But in terms of, ‘Do I think it’s cool?’ No, not at all. I think it’s caricatured and over-the-top and very ‘Japanesey,’ and for that absurd style it does that really well, but that’s not what I want.”
-Tameem on Bayonetta

This quote helps cement the fact that this reboot will most likely be closer to the mediocre Dante’s Inferno than Devil May Cry. The trailers already gave off that this game was going for a grim story, but this quote just strengthens it more. Devil May Cry always had a grim and gothic setting, but that was just the backdrop for an otherwise humorous game. They threw comedy and over-the-top characters in a dark castle.

I know most of the hate goes towards Tameem, but this is the guy who’s going around saying these things. He’s also chief designer which means basically anything he says is a good representation of how the game is going to turn out. That’s also besides the fact that he had the audacity to basicaly self-insert himself as the protagonist of the game. It’s one thing putting yourself in as a small cameo as a random NPC (Tameem apparently did this in his previous titles) and it’s another to base the main character off yourself and even change his look when you cut your hair. I know this isn’t the first time an artist based a main character’s look off themselves with the most notable being Adam Jensen looking like JJB, the art director in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The difference here is that it wasn’t JJB who did it, it was another person on the team and everyone else liked it so much it stuck; there’s also no previous look for Adam to be based. Dante had a look and Tameem basically said “That guy doesn’t look very cool, you know what is cool though? Me. Yea I am pretty cool aren’t I?” and then here we are with Tameem May Cry. To be fair, maybe Tameem didn’t base it off himself and another designer on the team did it instead, it still doesn’t help since you can’t argue that the new Dante strikes quite a similar resemblance.. When I play a DMC game I want to play as Dante and when I play DmC I’ll feel like I’m playing as some guy masquerading as Dante instead.

Ok, now that we got that over with let’s move on to the gameplay. The biggest criminal here is that the game is using the Unreal Engine instead of Capcom’s MT Framework engine. This is an engine made primarily for shooters and it shows when certain games of a different genre decide to use it. Two of those being Heavenly Sword and Enslaved, both of NT’s only other titles which, while well received, suffered from some framerate issues. You’d think Capcom would give DMC to a capable hack & slash developer like Team Ninja or Platinum Games, hell even the Dante’s Inferno guys would’ve been a decent choice; instead they opt to give it to the guys who produced two decent titles who preferred story over gameplay since the gameplay in both titles is incredibly boring when looked at its contemporaries who outshine them in every way. Sure, Heavenly Sword might look pretty and cinematic, but that doesn’t stop it from being a beggar’s God of War. When my friends ask me what hack & slash titles they should pick up, Heavenly Sword is at the bottom of my list, if at all. Let’s also mention that (since it’s on Unreal) the game has been confirmed to be locked at 30 frames per second. To anyone who doesn’t understand this, it means that the game will play slower than DMC3, a 7 year old game. Ninja Theory has mentioned that this is necessary since the environments are doing crazy things like moving around. It’s nice to know that my fast-paced game is getting slowed down so I can see a castle sprout some spider legs and walk off. I will stop to say how gorgeous the environments are looking so far, big props to the environmental artists (release an artbook please?). This also means that there will be a lower amount of enemies on screen and many fans are doubting if this new title will be able to play at the tournament level that previous DMC games played at considering the 60fps were necessary for pulling off most of the high score combos. They are also ditching the styles feature in favor of stances; you’ve got your angel stance (light/aerial attacks) and your devil stance (heavy attacks). I suppose only show offs liked the styles since all four offered a different twist on the gameplay and actually added some depth to the combat. Simplifing it to what is basically light/heavy buttons is much better, that way people don’t have to waste their time actually thinking about wanting depth in their game. The ‘finishers’ that are being added aren’t helping the situation either. Each time to pull a finishing blow on an enemy you’re treated to a slowmo shot of it which as you’d expect kills the flow in a game that’s about tight fast-paced combat. Recent trailers also show that the devil trigger ability that allows Dante to turn into a demon has been changed and now turns reboot Dante’s hair white while slowing down time because players need a break. I really hope the gameplay trailers they’ve shown had somebody terrible at the game demoing it because it looked SLOOOOW. This isn’t a good way to advertise a DMC game to DMC fans, we want to see over-the-top crazy action. Oh man, I really wish I could find the interview where they said Ebony & Ivory are not only going to be reloadable, but they might actually put a sort of cool down on using them because (according to Tameem when he played DMC2, the first and only DMC he said he played) they were ‘overpowered’.

Apparently DMC4’s impressive nearly 3 million sales was incredibly disappointing for Capcom. Capcom has stated that they want this new title to hit *at least* the 5 million mark which basically means “We want Call of Duty’s sales”. They said that this was one of the main reasons for the reboot since they wanted to rework the series to appeal to a wider amount of people. It’s a pretty understandable reason, but Capcom basically decided to drop those original fans in favor of trying to get a whole new set of unreliable fans. When you reboot a treasured franchise it’s priority #1 that you don’t try to alienate your original fans. These are the guys who will buy DMC5 without much question and these are the guys who will also drop you if they don’t like any sort of radical change you make. What Capcom is trying to do is pull in people who don’t play hack & slash games or never heard of DMC; the outcome of this is even lower than normal sales because lots of the original fans won’t bother picking this up, and the ‘new audience’ won’t even achknowledge it.

As much as it disappoints me, hack & slash titles will never sell as much as Battlefield or Call of Duty and Capcom needed to realize that. Was $180,000,000 (rounded up a bit) from DMC4 too little for them? Previous DMC fans probably won’t buy this title (I’d bet on them flocking over to Platinum Game’s MGS spin-off releasing later this year) but of course that’s not to say it’s going to bomb. If Bioware barely sold just under 2 million copies of ME3 in their first week, the finale to an incredibly popular trilogy, how the hell is Capcom expecting a reboot of a game that *sadly* doesn’t have the name power as Mass Effect to come close to it in sales? I honestly don’t see what was so wrong with going ahead and putting out DMC5 considering DMC4 did pretty damn well since it introduced a new main character and the campaign was reminicient of Dragon Age 2’s dungeons. Nero ended up being pretty fun to play as with his spin on combat and we still got to play as Dante so it was a win-win for fans. I suppose we’re never going to get answers to Nero’s connection with Virgil if Capcom decides to leave DMC with NT.

I understand that the game still has a few months left until release, but I consider myself to be a very good judge of compatibility and my warning signals are on blast with this game from what I’ve seen and read so far. I don’t doubt that DmC might be an enjoyable game, but I am trying to explain why people are doubting whether it will be an enjoyable Devil May Cry game. I’d like to compare this situation to when Dante’s Inferno came out; sure it was an enjoyable game, but it just wasn’t a Dante’s Inferno game and if you don’t know why go read the book. I also find it funny that the last time Capcom tried to give Dante a total makeover (DMC2) it was so negatively received that Capcom said “We want to pretend that DMC2 never happened”. Who knows, maybe Capcom is just doing this to spark up some interest in the franchise before they surprise us with DMC5 sometime soon.

Tiny Toots
Tiny Toots can be purchased for 0.99 on the App Store.
Tiny Toots is a recently (as of yesterday) released game that I’ve been playing for a while and it’s safe to say that it’s pretty damn fun. If you’ve played Tiny Wings then Tiny Toots is right up your ally with virtually the exact same gameplay. Now I didn’t play much of Tiny Wings so I’m going to stop comparing the two and just tell you what’s cool about Tiny Toots. In it you play as a dinosaur called Houston who just escaped from the laboratory of Dr. Beanstalk and to help Houston escape you’re going to need to eat beans to keep up your speed (SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE?). As your sliding from hill to hill you’ll eat beans to fill up a boost meter that you can then use to give you a bean powered boost to launch you into the air (smell not included). A neat feature I liked was that when you lose/get captured and start over you’ll see a ghost of your previous run so the game has a sort of ghost mode melded into the regular game. I will admit that I’m quite rubbish at the game, I don’t think I got further than stage 5 or 6, but I still had fun with what I played and highly recommend it to any players of Tiny Wings.

Jetpack Joyride
Jetpack Joyride is FREE on the App Store.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months you probably haven’t heard of Jetpack Joyride, or if you’re an Android/Windows phone user like myself then you’re probably cursing anyone who can play it (luckily I have an iPod for my iOS needs). In Jetpack Joyride your task is to travel as far as you can without dying from electrical currents, missiles, or lasers all while collecting gold coins. With these coins you can then purchase outfits to deck Barry out in and you can even get new jetpacks with various visual effects. A few jetpacks you can expect to get include the piggy bank that shoots money, the bubble jetpack, fruit jetpack, laser jetpack, and my personal favorite the rainbow jetpack. There are even objectives given to you such as reaching a certain limit without hitting any coins or dying a certain amount of times to earn more coins. The only thing cooler than a jetpack is piloting one of the sweet vehicles you can pick up while playing like the robot dragon, Terminator influenced motorcycle (complete with shotgun), a mech and many more.

The Heist
The Heist can be purchased for 2.99 on the App Store.
The Heist is a neat little game where you’re hired by a mysterious woman to help her break into a vault that she says is full of riches galore, your job is to simply crack the code. You’ve got your typically infuriating sliding block puzzle game where you’ll need to move various blocks around to plug the electric circuit into the outlet, an even more infuriating sliding block game where you need to match wires up correctly (sorry, I really hate sliding block puzzles), a brilliant matching game where various rocks need to be placed in the right spot to achieve perfect zen, and a neat game where you control a robot that needs to move the blocks into the right spots. With four different types of puzzles all adding up to a total of 60 stages, The Heist will definitely give your brain a much needed work out for a few hours. Did I mention that if you fulfill a required amount of puzzles you’ll unlock a code to activate a Steam copy of the puzzler Eets? If you like Lemmings style games then Eets is right up your ally, and it’ll only cost you $3 plus the time it takes to unlock it (which isn’t long).

Knight Defense
Knight Defense can be purchased for 0.99 on the App Store.
As a fan of Chess I picked this game up thinking it was just a neat looking chess game. Instead I was given a sort of tower defense game with a chess setting. This is NOT a chess game and there is (unfortunately) no chess mode in it; this is straight up tower defense with a chess twist. Each round starts with your pieces in predetermined spots but you can’t move them and you can’t add more or pick which pieces you start out with. Each piece has a specific power that it can use such as the pawn being able to freeze enemies, the queen can give all her surrounding pieces a shield, and the Rook can fire powerful lasers in a cross formation. Now all these powers a fueled by an energy bar that all the pieces use so it’s wise to use a power when you really need it or else you’ll find yourself low in energy and with a fresh wave of enemies incoming. Now the enemies will spawn from various points in the map and beeline straight for your king so it’s wise to plan ahead what pieces need upgrading (which will also bring them to full health) and where to make the best use of your powers. These enemies don’t share the same skills you do so the only difference you’ll see with them is that some pieces do/take more damage such as the Rook having and dealing more health than a Pawn yet being slower. With a few dozen levels separated by easy, medium, and hard sections you’ll find quite a lot to do with this game.

The reasons for this are twofold:

A. I couldn’t even access MonsterVine for some time
B. Couldn’t find a worthy game to play

So to make up for it, would you want me to a belated Midnight Run with a classic game?

I’ve played the game and enjoyed it but I’ll admit that I don’t have the patience/autism/imagination to sit there for hours building a castle. I built an evil underwater lair influenced by the Hall of Doom (Luthor would’ve been proud) and an evil volcano lair in a snowy mountain. I was pretty proud of both achievements and soon stopped playing when I realized there was nothing else to do. I had, in a way, ‘beaten’ Minecraft. I had all the best gear, I had two amazing lairs that were quite complex, and I was drowning in all types of ores. It would be months until I booted up the game again to check out any significant updates whenever they were doled out. I remember the enthusiasm Notch oozed when he talked about all the updates he was going to put in the game to further flesh out this dream adventure game with basic building mechanics. Updates rolled out almost every Friday and things went pretty well.

Then it got popular.

Now I’m not trying to go all hipster saying that I liked Minecraft before it got popular, but I liked Notch before he got popular. He had something special and hasn’t done anything with it which makes me feel a bit disappointed that Minecraft will probably never reach its potential. He’s shown shoddy developer behavior since he started making millions off this game and people have been excusing him simply because he’s an indie dev. Indie devs are usually given slight excuses since they have to work with a small budget, this is a man who has made fat bank when his game wasn’t even officially released yet. Remember when his tumblr was used to discuss things he wanted to add to the game instead of reasons why he couldn’t be bothered to code (due to playing games) and vacations? In the 1 ½ year since it got mainstream notice Notch has added the following items:

• Nether (Hell) world that served no purpose contrary to the immense hype he built for it, he also postponed many other neat updates (where the lanterns at yo!) to be included with the Nether release
• He added a few more items that serve no purpose besides adding some variety to existing items that do the same job
• He did add a few useful things like expanding redstone and pistons
• Added the Endermen enemy, 2 new enemies for the Nether, tamable wolves, and snow golems
• Added the Adventure Update which he then split into 2 updates and then released it unfinished
• Jacked the price up from $13 to $27

Minecraft is now officially released. It has shot up in price from the previous $13 to its new $27 price tag. The things mentioned above are the most major updates that I can remember that Notch has added in the last year since Minecraft gained mainstream success. These additions are not only underwhelming, but many of them are UNFINISHED such as everything in the Adventure Update which was the most anticipated update. The game is still buggy and Notch somehow breaks things with each update he rolls out. The game is plain and simple NOT finished and my reason for making this article is not to bash Minecraft, but to reason why you should not trust any review site that gives Minecraft anything higher than a 70% at best (3/5 or 7/10) and that it should never have jumped in price. I’m not comparing the game to something like Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto, I’m comparing it to what a fully released game is supposed to be when it comes out and Minecraft achieves none of these. The game should still be at its original $13 price since these updates aren’t worth an extra $24 and should never have left Beta status. A similar game that has gotten some attention to being a ‘2D Minecraft’ is Terraria. Personally I don’t like it, but I love how the developer is adding fundamental updates that actually change the game continually since release and the game has always been at $10. The only thing Minecraft has over this game is that it’s in 3D. The core of the game has remained unchanged since August 2010, before the Nether update, yet Notch believes that the game is somehow now worthy of being called ‘released’ and worth $27.

First thing we need to clear up is that we’re not going to bring mods into this. Just because a game has a decent modding community doesn’t mean that you can use that as an argument for a game. That’s like a critic calling a Bethesda game out on its graphics or bugs and people flocking to the comments section to shout “BUT THE MODS WILL FIX IT”. We’re also not going to mention how Notch is going to fix anything he ‘forgot’ to finish in the full release with future updates. You can’t just release a game with unfinished mechanics and say “lol no worries guys, I’ll fix it later. Thanks for the dosh”. I know many major developers do this all the time and I hate it when they do it too.

Let’s get on to the graphics. Minecraft is ugly which is nothing new to anyone, but what people need to stop kidding themselves over is that it’s supposed to have a retro art style. Minecraft has NO art style, Notch is NOT an artist yet does all the models/art for the game, and it never was supposed to look ‘retro’. Many people seem to forget how over a year ago Notch kept saying up how he was hiring an artist to help establish an art style for Minecraft, obviously not to give it Crysis level graphics, but to bring together an art style for the game. Minecraft’s look is not original and there have been many games that had that Lego/pixilated look. A competent artist would have also been able to help the transition of biomes look more natural with the help of a competent coder since everything changes so abruptly and it looks ugly. All the enemies look out of place and don’t match, the dragon is the biggest joke of a dragon I’ve seen, and the NPC’s look fucking HORRIBLE (fitting I suppose considering they do jack shit).Did you know that Notch hired an artist who was supposed to help work on this stuff but hasn’t done anything (he released some pictures of his Minecraft work, what ever happened to him)? Did you also know this happened around the time when Minecraft gained mainstream popularity and people thought it had a “so ironic retro” art style? I suppose Notch decided that if people thought it was supposed to look like shit then he was fine with leaving it like that as long as it didn’t cut into his vacation time.

Minecraft is a buggy game. Each time Notch pops out one of his half assed ‘updates’ he somehow manages to fuck something up which is amazing considering he’s working in Java. I have a friend whose worlds keep getting frozen over with ice each time Notch updates the game (mine too), and the last time I checked Notch never put out a “going to freeze oceans for giggles” update. Some people would argue that I gave Skyrim a high score even though the game has many bugs. I was one of the lucky few whose only bug was a freeze once in the beginning, since then I haven’t seen a single bug. Skyrim also has more to offer and is a technical achievement that helps outweigh the fact that it’s full of bugs. Minecraft has nothing to offer to help outweigh its bugs.

I understand that there are some people who think Minecraft is a Lego style building game. They continually call Minecraft a ‘building’ game and that adventuring is a bonus. They seem to fail to recall that before Minecraft got popular Notch always called Minecraft an adventure game and that he wanted to keep adding content to the adventure part of the game. The BUILDING was the bonus and is evident since he’s only added updates for the adventure part of the game and added almost nothing to contribute to the building. Yet it seems Notch couldn’t even get his adventure game right since he’s added nothing significant to the game to the adventure part. Oh wait, he did that Adventure Update right? Oh ok, let’s see… he added an XP bar that does nothing, health regen/hunger bar is more of a nuisance, he added critical hits that adds nothing, and the combat is still boring. All you do is swing your sword and hit the enemy, there’s no depth to it (sure don’t need good combat in an adventure game right?), and combat feels more like a chore than a fight. The only tension from it is if a Creeper closes in on you and you’re too far away from your spawn point to recover your items. Oh hey, did you know Notch added blocking? If you hold the right mouse button (if I recall correctly) you’ll block with your sword. Neat right! Well it’s such a shame that instead of giving enemies an attack animation they just bump into you to attack and even that feels a bit off sometimes so you just need to hold block until you think you’re good to attack. The enemies don’t even have any proper sort of AI; it’s just “bump into player until one of us dies”. Oh yea, I forgot that there are NPC villages so I suppose that’s something that would be in an adventure game right? Well Notch has been talking about adding fully functioning villages with NPC AI that you can interact and trade items with by the time the game releases. Well the game has been out for weeks and we only have villages with NPC’s that do as much as a retarded monkey. You can’t argue that he’s going to update it in since the game is FULLY RELEASED. This is NOT OK in a game that is fully released, even by indie game standards. Notch promised an adventure game with tons of features, which is what convinced many people to buy the game since we put our faith that he would deliver us this game. Such a shame that the biggest thing he’s added since he got rich was the Nether, which ended up being NOTHING.

One of the most recent updates (in the Adventure one) was a final boss that was added to the game. You go around your world looking for a few special dungeons that actually sort of look like a dungeon since they have some fancy ruins look and you would collect some orbs or something. Once you catch ‘em all you’ll get to unlock a portal to a floating sand island full of Endermen and an Enderdragon. This battle is not fun. Endermen already are not fun to fight (there’s a reason you only encounter 1 or 2 rarely) and being tossed on a flat plain FULL of the fuckers is just being a dick. So not only do you have these Weeping Angel/Slenderman rip-offs teleporting up your ass, you’ve also got a dragon bumping his face into you from time to time. The dragon has an insane amount of HP and it recovers health by flying towards one of these “Endercrystals”. There are at least 10 of them on top of tall obsidian towers(lost count during my fight) and the goal is to smash all the crystals to stop the dragon from healing itself, then killing it since it has no way to regen after this. The choices you have with destroying them are to hit them with your bow/arrow from below or for some dumb reason climbing up by placing blocks if you don’t have a bow (this is stupid since the scary dragon will bump you off each time and you’ll have to climb it again). Protip: If you wear armor then the dragon does NO damage to you, which makes the entire fight a waste of time. This is not fun and is called artificial or ‘fake’ difficulty. Notch had to compensate the lack of AI and combat complexity with a bullshit boss fight that’s more a chore than hard. Oh, and when you win you get a bunch of experience orbs which Notch has said will be used to level up your character and give you skill points that you can then use to buy upgraded abilities like more health or higher jumps. Notch said we can expect leveling to do this when the game fully releases… oh wait.

I know some people have clocked in dozens of hours into this game and have gotten their moneys worth, but a review should be an objective view of a game with the writer’s opinion seeping in at certain parts. You can’t use ‘fun’ as the basis of your argument to defend it since you’re still defending an unfinished/broken product. You can’t argue that this is what Notch envisioned when he thought of a finished product since he has yet to include features that he said would be in a ‘finished’ product. I’m sure Toyota never said people had fun with their broken trucks. This is like buying a basketball with a hole punched in it and claiming it was worth the price since you’re having fun with it. Even though Minecraft is the most popular of its genre, it’s not the first building game out; it just got popular and added some adventure related things. Minecraft is a VERY basic game and in no way does it innovate the gaming industry like journalists keep claiming. It just doesn’t deserve all the perfect scores and praise that it’s been receiving since the official release when the game is obviously not ready to be released. Notch hasn’t added anything significant enough to justify his price jump and all the major features are either not in the game for some reason or are unfinished in a fully released game. Anyone who tries to defend the lack of content in the year since Alpha by saying Notch will make future updates just shouldn’t be taken seriously since I’d like my games to be FINISHED when they release. How do you think people would react if Blizzard decided to release Starcraft 2 without any units besides the basic marine, zealot, and zergling? You think people would defend that if Blizzard charged $60 for it and promised they were totally going to add more in later? You could argue that Blizzard is a million dollar company, so I guess you guys win with that logic. Oh hey, I wonder what Notch is going to do with those millions of dollars he got from Minecraft. Minecraft should either still be in alpha or stay at the original price. I understand Notch always said how the full release would be around $30, but he said this with the implication that the game would get updates significant enough to make the price worth it. You can’t just say “Oh I’ll update all the stuff in later” since many people have already given you money for a game that just isn’t finished. I suppose he does deserve all that money in a way. He found a way to tap into all your wallets to get your money with minimal effort. He promised things he didn’t deliver and still made millions on it while spending your money on one of his many vacations since it’s obvious the millions Notch made has barely gone into Minecraft. Go ahead, have fun with your building game, I won’t judge you (as long as you bought it during Alpha) for it, but don’t you dare try to give him credit for innovating the industry or praise him because he made a fully finished-as-he-promised game that not only met its expectations but surpassed them.

Because he DIDN’T.

Because of the controversy of the game using tarot cards as its magic system, for the American and European release, the tarot cards were changed to cards with a fantastic language on them and elemental glyphs. Oddly enough, the Japanese anime uses the language created for the American and European version when the characters summon an arcana.

Despite the controversy, the game sold quite well, but not on the level of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. (some speculate that had it not been for the controversy, it may have rivaled those series) Both animated series and the game retain a large following, and mint copy of the game goes for about $40-60. Both animated series were released on VHS, but so far, only the anime has made it to DVD

The basic premise was that the unnamed fantasy world had its own spirit that protected it (the titular Mystic Guardian) and that a dragon lord had imprisoned it. The Guardian would only be freed by collecting six elemental crystals (the four Western elements of earth, fire, wind, and water plus light and darkness) scattered throughout the world.

Players could choose between a sword wielding warrior, a dual dagger wielding bladedancer, a bow wielding ranger, and a staff wielding mage. Each character had their own strengths and weaknesses, meaning you had to play through each of the stages 4 times to get everything. Of the four, the bladedancer and the mage were the most powerful (physically and magically, respectively) and the most popular.

Unlike Gauntlet, Mystic Guardian did not have constantly respawning enemies. The only time enemies would respawn was if you took too long to clear the stage, and they would oftentimes be harder then before (but not so hard you could not defeat them at your current level.

Despite its vast world and many stages teaming with secrets and treasure, the critics panned Mystic Guardian for being a little too similar to Gauntlet for its own good. It still managed to sell well, and spawned a successful TV series that ran for seven seasons (210 episodes) The series was relatively faithful to the game, but what surprised the fans the most was the giving of names to the characters–the warrior was named Senion (the calm and laid back leader), the bladedancer was named Aisenna (whose hot headed personality made her a fan favorite), the ranger was named Fanyir (the spiritual member of the group), and the mage’s name was Petra (the intelligent member of the team)

The game and series retain a loyal following, so a mint copy typically sells for $50-70. The show has been released on VHS (but tapes are hard to find), and plans are in the works to release the series on DVD

I have not even contributed to MonsterVine for a year yet, (my anniversary with MonsterVine is at the end of December), but I have already had an extraordinary experience with the site. Going to events and seeing a game early is a fun experience, but writing a preview and informing gamers of the exciting games and features coming is such an exciting experience, I smile every time I publish a preview. I love to share what I have seen with people who are equally passionate about video games. It’s a relationship that I only wish to continue to grow with readers over the course of my career in the video game industry.

MonsterVine has helped me become more knowledgeable of the intricacies of the industry, something anyone looking for a job in the video game industry should learn. It can all feel overwhelming, just like any media job in the world, but the process has been smooth in my time with MonsterVine. My confidence has grown while being with this site, along with my sense of belonging in the video game industry, and that sense of belonging has been one of my best feelings to date.

I will always be thankful for MonsterVine, and always cite this wonderful small and independent publication as the main reason I land future jobs in the video game industry.

Happy third birthday MonsterVine, and here’s to another three years.

-Trevor Stamp

Like most game stories of the era, it was very simple–in the world of Espica, the demon lord Sorsael brought terror and despair, only to be driven back by a hero wielding a magical blade–the titular Sword of Eternity. Ever since then, the people of Espica look to someone to take up the Sword when evil threatens. The game was notable for having a female heroine as its main character before Final Fantasy VI pulled it off with Terra a year later. Airyn was the exception in an era when most females in games were either damsels in distress or relagated to healers or ranged attackers. A sword wielder that also knew a few offensive spells, Airyn had the drive and spirit to achieve her goal–become a renowned heroine.

The game was also notable for having a strong minstrel character–after arriving on the heels of Final Fantasy IV, gamers and critics alike were surprised to find Tadeva, the spell singing minstrel that was anything but a spoony bard. She had a variety of strong elemental attacks, and many a gamer remembers unleashing Flaming Melody on a strong monster. Not even Sorsael was safe from her songs–it was possible to take down the demon lord with Tadeva alone, leading to the popularity of “Solo Minstrel Runs”

The press praised the dungeon design for its ingenuity–while you were often faced with as many as two routes to as many as ten, the game was nice enough to remember where you had already been and leave treasure at dead ends, proving exploration a vital skill to survive.

While the game didn’t reach the height of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, it still sold very well in the US and Japan, and retains a loyal following among gamers. Copies of the game typically run about $50-70 for a mint condition copy.

If you have a suggestion for a Game That Never Was, please let me know!

Only, this won’t be a story per se…this will be a tribute to the games that came before in the forms of Classic Games That Never Were.

What I will do is generate a game title here., pick a realistic sounding game title from what comes up (while the generator is mainly for humorous purposes, you can occassionally get something that sounds like a real game–these will be the basis of the series), and develop a storyline for it, some characters, memorable moments, what the press said for the imagined game at the time, and how much it would be worth if it were real.

Of course, if you have a suggestion for a Classic Game That Never Was, please let me know!

You can help and support us by donating to Team MonsterVine and any of our participating members: Austin Paul Adamson, Trevor Stamp, William Saw, Zachary Mok.

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