Author: Jared Lord
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In Defence of Dragon Quest: Your Story
For an American JRPG fan, I am something of an oddity. Even though I got into JRPGs at the height of Final Fantasy-mania in the late ’90s, that is not the SquareEnix franchise that I am most familiar with. While I like the games I’ve played, there’s another SquareEnix franchise I tend to get more…
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Exploring Pikmin 3 For the First Time
To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before This may come as a shock to you readers out there, but I am something of a Nintendo fan. Clearly, this is an utter surprise to you, given the stuff I generally write on here. Who here would think that I enjoy my Mario games, my…
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The Sega Dreamcast: Console War Memoirs
Recently, Famitsu had an interview with Sega Creative Producer Yosuke Okunari. The subject of the Genesis Mini and the Game Gear Micro was brought up. No definite plans have been made, but Okunari has mentioned Sega is exploring the idea of releasing another one. One of the consoles that he mentioned the possibility of was…
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Musings on Star Ocean: The Second Story
Throughout the 8-bit and 16-bit eras of gaming, RPGs were kind of a niche thing. Even though there were some great games out there during this time (early Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and the Phantasy Star series), it was mostly a niche genre of gaming as far as these things went. It wasn’t until the…
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Musings on Pokemon Black & White
It’s hard for me to believe, but Pokemon: Black and White have turned ten this year. Maybe it’s age creeping up on me, but it feels like these games didn’t come out that long ago. In a lot of ways, they still feel brand new. It could also be the fact, I still have ready…
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Sega Genesis: Console War Memoirs
While the current major players in the console industry have been consistent for the past several generations, this has not always been the case. When people talk about the 16-bit era of gaming, the Super Nintendo receives a lot of love and attention. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. History is, after all, written…
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Musings on the Myst VR Remake
Take a Look, It’s in a Book A few years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who lives out in California. She had just had a date with her now-fiancé at a virtual reality park out her way. We got to talking about how Virtual Reality games are now actually becoming a…
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Starlink: Battle for Atlas In-Depth Analysis
In 2018, Switch users came ridiculously close to a sequel to Star Fox, in the form of Starlink: Battle for Atlas, an action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Toronto. It was an attempt to revive the waning popularity of the ‘toys to life’ style game. While it was released for multiple platforms, Switch players had some…
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Gaming with Anxiety: This is Bear Country
One of my coworkers is a huge Zelda fan. Zelda is basically her favorite video game franchise ever. And as such, she was super hyped for the announcement of a sequel to Breath of the Wild. Not all that surprising, since Breath of the Wild has become many people’s favorite Zelda game. One day she…
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Musings on Super Mario 3D All-Stars
When Super Mario 3D All-Stars was announced, I was immediately excited and did not hesitate to preorder the digital edition. But if you look all over the internet, there is a lot of back and forth about this game. People are questioning whether Nintendo put enough effort in, the graphics are good enough or if…
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Five Songs to Liberate the Galaxy To
Like many who were young boys in the early ’90s, I grew up on a steady diet of Star Wars and other galaxy-inspired sci-fi films. But unlike a lot of my friends who were in it for the Force Powers, the Light Sabers, and the Jedi Knights, I was more into the ships. I always…
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Sonic Mania 2: Dreams and Desires
Sega has recently announced that they have big plans for Sonic’s 30th Birthday in 2021. While they haven’t announced what those plans are, they have assured us that the plans include games. And it only makes sense. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time Sega has released nostalgia-filled celebrations for Sonic’s Birthday. When the…