Much as you might reread a favourite book or watch the same movie again and again, there are plenty of games that I play repeatedly, and in some cases incessantly. EarthBound and Chrono Trigger occupy as much time in my Super Nintendo as the rest of my games combined, and knowing where every invisible block is hidden in SMB3 hasn’t stopped me from returning to the Mushroom Kingdom for more raccoon leaves.
I really didn’t want to comment on Fat Princess, especially in light of the consuming rage that threatens to tear apart any blug without a major corporate sponsor. Immediately expressing an opinion on a game that won’t be released until 2009 based on only six screenshots (not including a title screen, which would’ve been a telltale clue as to the glorification of the ‘fat’ aspect) and a brief preview is the sort of thing that fanatics and industry-moppers do, and I won’t be party to that sort of long-term speculation unless Nite Owl is involved.
Ask a group of gamers which Squaresoft title could be considered the most “alternative,” and a number of usual suspects will come up. Secret of Mana. Chocobo Dungeon. Rad Racer. Yes, these were all genre-redefining games that played with conventions and opened the landscape of videogaming for years to come, as the endless rhetoric (occasionally propagated by yours truly) will tell you. (Except for Chocobo Dungeon — it’s been done before and better.) But if you delve into the backlog, you can find one of the gems of videogaming hiding in the back, covered beneath the Final Fantasies and the old Enix merger plans, quiet and overlooked even in its home country: Live-A-Live.