Blast from the Past (BFTP) is a new segment on the site, aiming to go back a few years in time and dig up gems that today’s gamers never heard of or yesterday’s gamers simply missed out on.

1. No Random Battles

The number of RPG’s still employing the archaic genre convention of random encounters seems to have decreased dramatically over the past decade, and Persona 4 makes the final case against them. While there was a time when I thought the absence of random battles in Japanese RPG’s would be the end of the genre itself, planned encounters significantly decrease frustration in a game where even simple encounters can be challenging. Even though the Dungeons in Persona 4 are little more the randomly generated corridors, the option to try and sneak by enemies or face them head feels much more rewarding then having to go into a battle every 6 steps.

The Earth has been ravaged by world war 3. Humanity is forced to live underground, due to the high contamination levels found on the surface of the planet. Tenacious creatures that we are, mankind looks to the stars in search of a new home. It’s a somber, heavy concept, and one that’s delivered in a frank and straight forward way by the introduction cinematic found in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. It’s also a story that greatly appealed to the sci-fi nerd in me. As that cinematic drew to a close, I prepared myself for a tale of humanity’s triumph over adversity.

When Chrono Trigger was released for the Super Nintendo 13 years ago it was truly a revolutionary game. It combined the talents of the then sovereign Developers Square and Enix to create one of the most memorable RPGs of the time. For those not yet initiated into the “Cult of Chrono,” it may seem odd to have such deep reverence, which could easily be mistaken for the blatant rants of a fanboy, for a game that seems generic at first glance; However even after a decade, Chrono still remains the benchmark for RPGs and games as a whole.

When I first heard Bethesda was taking on Fallout 3, I was terrified. Not because I thought they’d muck it up or anything like that, but because Oblivion took up over 240 hours of my life. It damaged my interpersonal…

One of my biggest gripes with the games industry is the planning of new intellectual properties. Often times these new IP’s are looked at through rose-colored glasses having their sequels announced before the launch of the series, making developers count…

Square-Enix, a Company that has obviously shown that they LOVE money, has found that the easiest way to make said piles of money is to use Japan’s favorite game machine, the DS. The staggering amount of recent releases of Square-Enix…