Thursday 18 October 2012

The Perfect Game

Hey,

It's been a long time! It's time to talk about something special....something that is very fragile and personal...

Let's talk about my perfect game!

We all have a video game that we love, but not just love like normal love there...like a game we went through several times, and even if we know the whole thing like the bottom of our pocket...we still return to it. Something is pushing us toward this particular virtual world and we can't explain it at 100% to the other players how good this is...but that doesn't matter, what the others think about it, doesn't really matters.

I have several series that I love; Mario, Donkey Kong, Halo, Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy........the list is long, but 2 of these series once had a baby, and that baby is still my favorite game since its release.

I am talking about Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars.



What an introduction! When a game starts like that, you know right away that you are about to have a great experience!

So we are in the year 1996. It is summer time, and most importantly, it is the end of my school. My parents promised me a surprise if I had good notes, and obviously I did what I had to do in order to gain my reward!

What was special, is that I didn't have any clue about the origin of the surprise. My mother wasn't really into video games...I sat down with her and she put a a bag on the table. Like you already know, it was Mario RPG. In that time, we were sadly approaching the end of the Super Nintendo. A funny TV commercial was popping around with an old man telling a story and this is how my mother noticed the game:



All in all, Mario RPG was like one of the last breath the SNES took....but what a big breath that was! Everything in this game was meticulously calculated, like...mathematically calculated! Just look at those graphics! Isometric 2D never looked that good! It looks practically 3D, and with its beautiful colours, awesome characters and a story enough simple but entertaining, everything in Mario RPG was...perfect.

The gameplay, like the story, was simple, but entertaining. It really felt like you had important choices to make at some point of a battle, and sometimes that one choice changed the whole fight scenario. Also, a lot of the moves required button pressing, mashing, rotating, so it was keeping the player busy. Some today's RPGs seem to play by themself. Generally, I don't even like those kind of games anyway...but That RPG, I don't know why...there is just something special about it!

Maybe it was the music and sound effects? The music was composed by Yoko Shimomura, who also composed the soundtrack behind the Kingdom Hearts series. I must say...the music in Mario RPG was beautiful, but again, something very special was living through it. The instruments chosen for most of the tracks were particular...I am thinking about that funny synth bass that is in most of the songs and takes a lot of place in them. See for yourself:



Who would have thought that a synth bass like that would appear in a tropical music? The result is gorgeous!

 But that's not all, with the nice music tracks comes also the sound effects that are pure joy for the ears! Just take a look at those:



By the way, that was a secret boss...one of the hundreds of secrets that the game holds. I am not kidding when I say that this game is perfect...there is just nothing that can bother you about it. It's fun, it's simple and diversified. The developers even though about several and original ways to enhance the exploration between each boss fights with different gameplay phases. At one point you will be riding your cart in mines, or racing with Yoshi, or falling in waterfalls...

The characters were also a major plus. I am talking about all of them; the npcs, the monsters and the main characters were all very polished, well thought out. I think the one that marked players the most was Geno:

He was once a doll, and came to life to help Mario and his friends in their journey. His powers were very strong and were standing out from most super powers that I saw in any video game...at least from this era.

To conclude, if you never played that game...well do it, right now! Give it a chance...you might discover a charming world that will mark you for the rest of your life.