I think it was the venerable Beatle, Paul McCartney, who at the Super Bowl once said...
"When you were young and your heart was an open book... you used to say live and let live (y'know ya did, y'know ya did, y'know ya did.....)
But...
In this ever changin' world in which we live in makes you give in and cry.... ya say live and let DIE!"
-McCartney, P. (Beatle), James Bond: Live and Let Die (1973, run time 121 mins.)
This is very very true but I recently replayed a video game I liked ... the re-released amped-up version of a cool old video game that challenges this time's old axiom.
Yes we must Live n' Let Die... but while we are living it ... We gotta LIVE A LIVE!
This game rules! Searching my blog... I've mentioned this game twice before it says even as far back as 2011.
Back then it was considered a "Lost Treasure" that never got an American release. Times have changed... as 28 years later... they gave this great game an American release. Wow.
That should give the Mother 3 fans hope, I think. People have been petitioning to get an official Mother 3 release to American audiences for decades now. If Live A Live can get one 28 years after it was made... then anything's possible!
Anyways, if you've read this blog over the years... you probably know I'm a huge Square head. I really marked-out to the Golden Era of Squaresoft as a 12 year old kid. Did I ever. Their games were so different than what anyone else was making. They had full orchestras, well-written stories and characters, cool moves... these games...they were in a league of their own for a while.
I consider the "Golden Age" of Squaresoft to be when they made... Final Fantasy IV (2 in USA), Live A Live, Final Fantasy VI (3 in USA), Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VII (7 in USA).
That era would be about from 1991 to 1997. For a good seven years... this company could do NO WRONG. It had the gilded touch! Everything Squaresoft touched turned to solid gold!
I remember being confused a bit in this era when Final Fantasy VII (7) came out... because we only had three up to that point released in the West. We had one on original Nintendo which wasn't even that great... we had "2" which was actually "4" the one with Cecil and Kain and Rosa and everyone... then "3" to the West was actually "6" the one with Terra and everyone.... and then in 1997 the seventh installment was called "7"... so we went from 3 to 7, basically.
I'm sitting there going... where's the other three games? The internet explained that two on the original Nintendo (NES) were not brought here and also the fifth game on SNES was not released here either. We didn't get them because they were deemed not interesting enough for the USA market that preferred action games and side-scrollin' violent stuff. To be fair, I get it, that these games are for a more docile and literate crowd and maybe the fan-base just wasn't there in America back then.
I'm so happy we got friggin' Chrono Trigger though, man. That game, in that era it was released, was pure GREATNESS. The greatest game, guys. Wow.
So Live A Live came out in 1994... and we didn't get it. Which is a shame in retrospect. To be honest... I can see why they skipped on an American release for this... MESS of a game. I say that in a positive way when I describe this game as a mess. It is an eclectic mish-mash of silliness and coolness all smashed together in this unhinged package and then thrown onto a chess board.
Oh and it's an emotional roller coaster too! This is another reason I think video games don't get an American release is if the story content is deemed to touch on sensitive issues... which to me is ridiculous.
America has no problem releasing the most insane violence simulators to its young crop of fragile minds but if a story touches on something deemed difficult for a kid to see... forget it.
Then again it might've not been America censoring these games but Nintendo. Nintendo wanted its global reputation to be built on family friendly fun.... it probably nixed a lot of its games on its own from getting an American release.
It's funny now, people are watching the 1993 Super Mario Bros. (run time: 105 mins.) movie after seeing the new Mario movie that's out and just collectively being weirded out about how strange it actually is. The 1993 Mario Bros. movie is not what you expect it to be. America has different sensibilities, I guess. In the mind of America the 1993 Mario film became a dystopian punk-rock struggle as Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis, and Mojo Nixon... stand up to the evil Dennis Hopper... who is trying to use a gun that can de-evolve people into primitive versions of their species!
Okay.......
I guess in the end... We Are ALL DEVO!!
I think it was more of not understanding what America wanted that kept these games from coming out... and I really think Japanese video game companies... especially post-Mario (1993) film... were so confused at America and what the nation actually believed in and stuff. Eventually Squaresoft even built a base in Hawaii and hired Americans to make a RPG aimed at American audiences... and the result was Secret of Evermore in 1996. It is a decent game. Secret of Evermore was a pretty good game.
What a strange time, honestly. So many great video games came out at that time. Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan) which is set in a make-believe version of 1990s America... is probably the greatest video game ever made still to this day. It's so fun and good.
Reading some of my old video games articles...I've said some not-so-positive things about Square... or now it's called Square Enix... after they merged with the Dragon Quest people. I remember writing a long article many years ago about how much I disliked Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII (8).
I really think there was a schism in the company in 1997... you saw it blossom in Final Fantasy VIII where the stories were not as well-written and the characters were not as likeable as previous Square games. Back then I thought they were just going for a different audience... like maybe some executive came in and told them that they are trying to get a more wealthier demographic to play these games and you have to change them.
Who knows...
I read an article once, a while ago, that said the Japanese government was so upset that young people spent so much time playing video games... that they sent out some sort of a decree that video game companies had to make their games worse... on purpose. Less addictive than worse, really. I read that Final Fantasy VIII was Squaresoft's version, possibly, of trying to make a game so bad that kids put the controller down and went outside. I believe it... I think I do... Final Fantasy VIII is a truly bad game. It really is.
If you play Final Fantasy VIII (8) with the angle on it that it was made as a parody to make fun of its own audience... it actually IS a good game. This mopey jabroni running around doing pointless nonsense and constantly feeling sorry for himself... and day dreaming and getting his junctioned magic all out of place from being an absent-minded turd-wad... that's how teenagers who played video games in 1999 were! If Squaresoft was trying to make their audience look in the mirror and learn something about themselves... then I actually have to amend my opinion of the game and change it from D- to D+.
As for looking in the mirror and learning something about our own selves ... Live A Live... wow... it still hits home with that. I really think this game is a masterpiece and highly suggest people play the new re-master of Live A Live. I played it on Steam the other week or so and really have to give the new Live A Live...
...11/10.
This is really how I remember Squaresoft games being as a kid playing them in the 90s. It was the Golden Age of the JRPG genre. They were so unique and different than anything else out there.
Oh and let me tell you about this HD-2D thing they got going. That is a thing of beauty. It's old school but it's new school! It looks like the stuff we played in 1993 but all souped-up! It's a thing of beauty is what it is!
Live A Live isn't the first who got this engine... Octopath Traveler got this engine first, I think. That game is basically a very Live A Live style game but minus the insane mind-bending nonsense that makes Live A Live so unique.
Eiyuden Chronicles: One Hundred Heroes is said to be in this slick new HD-2D engine too which is making me mark out before I've even played it yet, even.
I don't think video games need to have super realistic graphics... in fact... it makes them less fun in some ways. Do we expect our cartoons to be super realistic and we have to want to confuse them with reality or do we prefer cartoons to be artistic art with their own unique fun styles? The latter most definitely.
I think the HD-2D engine gives them room to focus more on story and characters then to always be worried about if some hamburger looks real or some chair looks real. Live A Live is a damned rock opera! It doesn't care if some fish-shaped pastry looks like how a fish-shaped pastry would look exactly like it would in real-actual life! Live A Live is too busy rocking my socks off to care about something as completely dumb as real life!
I was reading an interview with Takashi Tokita where he says he wants to make a sequel now... Live A Live 2: Livin' More Aliver! If I was Square Enix... I would give this man the green light to go! The green light to rock and roll!
It's time to make a bunch of HD-2D Rock Operas! Oh Yeah!
Yeah!
Back then it was considered a "Lost Treasure" that never got an American release. Times have changed... as 28 years later... they gave this great game an American release. Wow.
That should give the Mother 3 fans hope, I think. People have been petitioning to get an official Mother 3 release to American audiences for decades now. If Live A Live can get one 28 years after it was made... then anything's possible!
Anyways, if you've read this blog over the years... you probably know I'm a huge Square head. I really marked-out to the Golden Era of Squaresoft as a 12 year old kid. Did I ever. Their games were so different than what anyone else was making. They had full orchestras, well-written stories and characters, cool moves... these games...they were in a league of their own for a while.
I consider the "Golden Age" of Squaresoft to be when they made... Final Fantasy IV (2 in USA), Live A Live, Final Fantasy VI (3 in USA), Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VII (7 in USA).
That era would be about from 1991 to 1997. For a good seven years... this company could do NO WRONG. It had the gilded touch! Everything Squaresoft touched turned to solid gold!
I remember being confused a bit in this era when Final Fantasy VII (7) came out... because we only had three up to that point released in the West. We had one on original Nintendo which wasn't even that great... we had "2" which was actually "4" the one with Cecil and Kain and Rosa and everyone... then "3" to the West was actually "6" the one with Terra and everyone.... and then in 1997 the seventh installment was called "7"... so we went from 3 to 7, basically.
I'm sitting there going... where's the other three games? The internet explained that two on the original Nintendo (NES) were not brought here and also the fifth game on SNES was not released here either. We didn't get them because they were deemed not interesting enough for the USA market that preferred action games and side-scrollin' violent stuff. To be fair, I get it, that these games are for a more docile and literate crowd and maybe the fan-base just wasn't there in America back then.
I'm so happy we got friggin' Chrono Trigger though, man. That game, in that era it was released, was pure GREATNESS. The greatest game, guys. Wow.
So Live A Live came out in 1994... and we didn't get it. Which is a shame in retrospect. To be honest... I can see why they skipped on an American release for this... MESS of a game. I say that in a positive way when I describe this game as a mess. It is an eclectic mish-mash of silliness and coolness all smashed together in this unhinged package and then thrown onto a chess board.
Oh and it's an emotional roller coaster too! This is another reason I think video games don't get an American release is if the story content is deemed to touch on sensitive issues... which to me is ridiculous.
America has no problem releasing the most insane violence simulators to its young crop of fragile minds but if a story touches on something deemed difficult for a kid to see... forget it.
Then again it might've not been America censoring these games but Nintendo. Nintendo wanted its global reputation to be built on family friendly fun.... it probably nixed a lot of its games on its own from getting an American release.
It's funny now, people are watching the 1993 Super Mario Bros. (run time: 105 mins.) movie after seeing the new Mario movie that's out and just collectively being weirded out about how strange it actually is. The 1993 Mario Bros. movie is not what you expect it to be. America has different sensibilities, I guess. In the mind of America the 1993 Mario film became a dystopian punk-rock struggle as Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, Samantha Mathis, and Mojo Nixon... stand up to the evil Dennis Hopper... who is trying to use a gun that can de-evolve people into primitive versions of their species!
Okay.......
I guess in the end... We Are ALL DEVO!!
I think it was more of not understanding what America wanted that kept these games from coming out... and I really think Japanese video game companies... especially post-Mario (1993) film... were so confused at America and what the nation actually believed in and stuff. Eventually Squaresoft even built a base in Hawaii and hired Americans to make a RPG aimed at American audiences... and the result was Secret of Evermore in 1996. It is a decent game. Secret of Evermore was a pretty good game.
What a strange time, honestly. So many great video games came out at that time. Earthbound (Mother 2 in Japan) which is set in a make-believe version of 1990s America... is probably the greatest video game ever made still to this day. It's so fun and good.
Reading some of my old video games articles...I've said some not-so-positive things about Square... or now it's called Square Enix... after they merged with the Dragon Quest people. I remember writing a long article many years ago about how much I disliked Chrono Cross and Final Fantasy VIII (8).
I really think there was a schism in the company in 1997... you saw it blossom in Final Fantasy VIII where the stories were not as well-written and the characters were not as likeable as previous Square games. Back then I thought they were just going for a different audience... like maybe some executive came in and told them that they are trying to get a more wealthier demographic to play these games and you have to change them.
Who knows...
I read an article once, a while ago, that said the Japanese government was so upset that young people spent so much time playing video games... that they sent out some sort of a decree that video game companies had to make their games worse... on purpose. Less addictive than worse, really. I read that Final Fantasy VIII was Squaresoft's version, possibly, of trying to make a game so bad that kids put the controller down and went outside. I believe it... I think I do... Final Fantasy VIII is a truly bad game. It really is.
If you play Final Fantasy VIII (8) with the angle on it that it was made as a parody to make fun of its own audience... it actually IS a good game. This mopey jabroni running around doing pointless nonsense and constantly feeling sorry for himself... and day dreaming and getting his junctioned magic all out of place from being an absent-minded turd-wad... that's how teenagers who played video games in 1999 were! If Squaresoft was trying to make their audience look in the mirror and learn something about themselves... then I actually have to amend my opinion of the game and change it from D- to D+.
As for looking in the mirror and learning something about our own selves ... Live A Live... wow... it still hits home with that. I really think this game is a masterpiece and highly suggest people play the new re-master of Live A Live. I played it on Steam the other week or so and really have to give the new Live A Live...
...11/10.
This is really how I remember Squaresoft games being as a kid playing them in the 90s. It was the Golden Age of the JRPG genre. They were so unique and different than anything else out there.
Oh and let me tell you about this HD-2D thing they got going. That is a thing of beauty. It's old school but it's new school! It looks like the stuff we played in 1993 but all souped-up! It's a thing of beauty is what it is!
Live A Live isn't the first who got this engine... Octopath Traveler got this engine first, I think. That game is basically a very Live A Live style game but minus the insane mind-bending nonsense that makes Live A Live so unique.
Eiyuden Chronicles: One Hundred Heroes is said to be in this slick new HD-2D engine too which is making me mark out before I've even played it yet, even.
I don't think video games need to have super realistic graphics... in fact... it makes them less fun in some ways. Do we expect our cartoons to be super realistic and we have to want to confuse them with reality or do we prefer cartoons to be artistic art with their own unique fun styles? The latter most definitely.
I think the HD-2D engine gives them room to focus more on story and characters then to always be worried about if some hamburger looks real or some chair looks real. Live A Live is a damned rock opera! It doesn't care if some fish-shaped pastry looks like how a fish-shaped pastry would look exactly like it would in real-actual life! Live A Live is too busy rocking my socks off to care about something as completely dumb as real life!
I was reading an interview with Takashi Tokita where he says he wants to make a sequel now... Live A Live 2: Livin' More Aliver! If I was Square Enix... I would give this man the green light to go! The green light to rock and roll!
It's time to make a bunch of HD-2D Rock Operas! Oh Yeah!
Yeah!
