| Set On Stun |

As in most games of this period, the boxart looked better than the game

As we approach the release of Final Fantasy XIII it’s hard to imagine all this started …wait for it .. in 1987.

It’s still Square Enix’s most successful franchise and has been made and remade so many times (the first game was remade and repackaged with FFII) that at some point and time in the last 23 years even if you’ve never played this game, you’ve heard or seen some reference to it. The visual presentations and characters may have changed but the game at it’s core has maintained a consistency like no other game before or after basically laying the groundwork for other RPGs to follow. Confusing at times to keep track of,  all the FFs are not sequels but individual stories is this candy colored/bananas Chocoba filled universe.

But how did it all begin you ask?

The very first game debuted on the SNES in 1990 (Japanese version came out in ‘87) and the pitch if you want to jump in the Delorean for a minute (or now the Hot Tub) sounded something like this …

“So we have these light warriors and they have these, um orbs, and their are these — four fiends or bad dudes who make the orbs dark. So the warriors have to travel around fight them, make their orbs brighter and also save the world.” And scene.

Did I mention it was 1990?

Anyway this was considered a graphics masterpiece back then (laugh if you must) although the game itself involved a lot of meandering and turned based fighting where you never actually saw any fighting other than numbers changing. Yet with this type of gameplay the die was cast for RPG elements we now take for granted. Things like leveling up, magic powers, regular attacks, XPs (experience points), HPs (hit points) yatta, yatta, yatta.  If these things sound familiar it’s because this game was the major influence in this type of role playing becoming the norm.

This universe filled with all kinds of creatures, magical folk and even robots took place on three different maps (or continents depending on how geeked out you want to be) where you roamed around during this adventure. You engaged battles, talking to people and getting clues, finding dungeons and building your inventory, finding treasure and so forth. An all consuming  game, it took a huge amount of time to complete and involved not just adventuring, but character and party management as well.  Even the turn based fights involved a lot of assigning weapons and skills that would be best suited for each battle. So scoff if you will at how ridiculous it looked games like World of Warcraft and Mass Effect owe their existence to this franchise.

Final Fantasy was more than just ahead of its time, it was a pioneer developing  key videogame elements like a character development, team management, an actual story, and even musical score. The epitome of a long lasting franchise, it’s one of those games that if you played it back then, you would now talk about it with wonder and awe.

In honor of Black History Month this week’s Flashback will take a look, or try to, at black characters in videogames. Specifically playable characters that weren’t just NPCs or cast members in cut scenes. Guess what? There aren’t that many.

Barrett Wallace — Final Fantasy VII 1997

seriously -- look at me -- would you mess with this?

Did you see his arm? It’s a Gatling gun. C’mon! Former leader of AVALANCHE Mr. Wallace although not a big fan of Cloud decides to fight the good fight anyway. He was an ornery dude.

CJ (a.k.a. Carl Johnson) GTA: San Andreas (2004 — the game was set in 1992)

I dare you to race me -- I will beat you

Not only was San Andreas on of the best of the series, but Carl Johnson was the main character in this GTA set in San Andreas in the early 90s. Fresh out of Liberty City lockup he returns to his beloved hometown only to be thrown right back into the life he left behind.  Actually in terms of games, San Andreas had a primarily black cast. Of course they were gang bangers and criminals but hey a whole game, that’s something right?

Sergeant Johnson: Halo (2001 — 2007 {posthumously 2009})

Don't ever call me Avery -- I will shoot you

Correction: Master Sergeant Avery Johnson. One of the NPCs of the Halo series for all three of the games, Johnson was the gravel-voiced mean green military leader who had some great lines and was was a consistent character throughout the franchise. Unfortunately he met his demise in Halo 3 (sorry for the two people who have never played it) but he then became a playable character last year in Halo: ODST as part of a special pre-order download from retailer Gamestop where you could use him in multiplayer games. Okay so he had to wait 4 games to become a usable character but at least he finally got in the game. No word yet on whether we’ll see him in this year’s other prequel Halo: Reach

Cole Train: Gears of  War 1 & 2 (2006 and 2008)

The gun show isn't in town -- it's here!

Showing up midway through the first Gears of War Augustus “Cole Train” Cole, former Thrashball superstar becomes a COG and starts out on the Alpha team but ultimately joins the fight with Marcus Phoenix. The epitome of a badass Train  is basically that guy you want in any fight (pillows included).

Sheva Alomar: Resident Evil 5 (2009)

Hey Tomb Raider ... Suck on this!

Who? This is the newest entry to the list. The yin to Chris Redfield’s Yang in Resident Evil, this bomb diggity bomb is member of the BSAA South African branch and can head shot zombies like nobody’s business.  Zombies beware, she will kick your ass.

Honorable Mention — Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker

I will moonwalk all over your head

Not just a character, a whole game featuring the late gloved one as the zoot-suit fedora wearing charcter of his Smooth Criminal video. Believe it or not this was an adventure beat ‘em up game. How did you beat people up you ask? Why you kick them of course. And the best part — you got to morph into a robot.

Criminals, badasses, military dudes (and dudettes) and a morphing robot.  How do you like them apples?

Yeah that's right -- we're awesome

Is this really a question — is it? You know the answer. Any gamer worth their salt knows the answer. Final Fantasy. Ah but which one. Which one indeed ….

It’s the one, the only Final Fantasy VII. What are we up to now FF MCXXVII? Anyway this is the one. Go ahead make your point against it. In the meantime take a trip back to this amazing title.

We don’t have to journey far — just a scant 13 years. The year was 1997, Sony was the king of the consoles and along comes this life-sucking behemoth that would define what a role playing game should be. The PlayStation had it first then a year later the PC folks got to taste the glory. Among the FF’s that have come and gone, this one stands supreme. Before we go into the absurd plot (aren’t they all absurd?) let’s talk about the ground breaking technology. This was the first game in the series to use fully rendered characters on a pre-rendered background. We got to see FF like never before,  with 3D computer graphics.

The Plot

pretty + evil = pretty eeeevil

In a word — Sephiroth. You hated him like no other videogame villain. He was a badass among badasses. You have a villain who wants to become a god and one of the hardest end bosses to defeat in videogame history and that’s not even the whole game. The plot basically revolved around your character Cloud Strife and the motley crew who were trying to shut down the evil Shinra corporation. Shinra was sucking the life out of the planet to use it as energy, things get wicked crazy and ultimately it comes down to you and your gang going up against they main goon and top soldier, Sephiroth. As the story develops you get more and more consumed and suddenly you realize a month has gone by. Yeah it was that involving. Not to mention the stellar graphics and amazing score and you have one of the most influential RPGS ever made.

Sure there have been great RPGS since then and other Final Fantasies but FF VII still stands the test of time having as of last year sold 10 million copies and spawning a slew of other titles connected to just that storyline. It was just that good.

There was a time when many of our treasured classics and not so classic games had developed wild rumors and myths about them the perpetuated to the point where people actually believed  them to be true.  Some were true but not entirely and others, well not so much. You know know how it starts, it’s like a bad game of password or telephone and  by the time the dust settles the rumor or urban legend left standing becomes codified into gaming history .

So this edition of Flashback pays tribute to some of great gaming myths of yesteryear.

Nude  Raider

In your dreams boys

Every teen boy’s dream would be to see this anatomically endowed action girl, Lara Croft, in the buff  since her premiere more than 10 years ago there’s. So yes, there’s never been a cheat of any kind to unlock Ms. Croft in her birthday suit in all the versions of  Tomb Raider, but there was a PC patch a while back called Nude Raider that would allow you to see her pixelated boobs. Ah the days before DSL and cable modems. You had to be patient for your videogame porn.

The Mario Flagpole Trick

Jump around, jump up and jump over, jump, jump!

Super Mario Brothers had this iconic bit at the end of each level like the one pictured above and well somehow a rumor got started that you could actually … jump over the flagpole. Sure this crazy plumber dude who’s main ability is jumping could certainly jump over that pole right? Turns out you could. The act of jumping the flagpole wasn’t really the myth. It was the fact that everyone thought it granted you some magical level or an amazing score or something. Nope, no such luck. Not only was this a challenging task but the myth of untold greatness after you did it, well that was fantastically wrong.

Buried Piles Of the E.T Game

On this one Kruschev was right

While this sounds like a total fabrication it is in fact true and a sad commentary on what happens when someone doesn’t think beyond the dollar bills they envision they’ll make. Yes E.T. the movie was a huge hit but the game is still considered one of if not the worst game in history. That being said when it was released Atari thought, “We should make a ton of these because they’ll sell like hotcakes.” And when they didn’t — what do you do thousands of unsold cartridges? Bury them in a New Mexico desert. The bigger surprise to this rumor wasn’t that this actually happened, but that it happened more than once.

Home Repair Then and Now– Blowing On Stuff And Using Towels

Blow on this -- it doesn't work

only works if you bathe it in pointless hope

Back in the SNES days the alleged trick/myth was to blow on the cartridge (yes they used cartridges)  if it wasn’t working. That one was a total myth. Common sense tells you that blowing on a device with internal parts in the opening that led to said internal parts would … screw up the parts. But this is one of those old adages like blowing on the needle of the turntable (a what?) and hitting the side of the TV for better reception.

Fast forward to the modern consoles and we get — the towel trick. Back when Microsoft was awash with RROD consoles during the 360’s first couple of years, people wrote in detail and also made videos of this trick with a towel where you overheated the 360 on by wrapping it up in a towel and leaving it on with the purpose to get it to “reset” itself and fix the red ring of death. Does it work? Not exactly. It works  in the sense that you’ll feel like you’ve actually succeeded in stopping  your RROD … for about 20 minutes.  Alas the red lights would return and you would be stuck with a non-working machine you would have to send back. It is fun to see all the versions of the towel trick though.

The Sheng Long Hoax

I fooled you all! I'm not even Sheng Long!

Talk about a joke that turned in a long lasting  legend take a minute to ingest this one –  If played through Street Fighter II as Ryu and somehow  didn’t take on any damage then fought the end of the game boss M. Bison and neither of you took damage and outlasted the fight clock, this badass Sheng Long would show up, get rid of Bison, freeze time and then fight you to the death. Yes take a minute. Does this even make sense? Well back in 1992 it seemed logical especially since it was printed in the EGM ( the gaming magazine of the time) in a editorial. The whole thing — was an April Fool’s joke. Some other mags took it as real and reprinted it as a real game tip and thus the legend began.  From joke to legend in one page flat.

And the greatest myth of all — POLYBIUS!

Be carfeul -- you might get hooked

POLY what? No not the Greek historian

This urban legend is almost worthy of a flashback of its own but here’s the basic gist. In 1981 there apparently was this game that was released to the innocent masses sin the suburbs of Portland, OR area. The game was successfully to the point of addiction (lines around the corner, thousand mile stares, hysteria). As the legend continues this addiction led to the dudes in black suits and glasses coming around and collecting data about these psychoactive machines that were allegedly causing  amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide.

What’s that you say — a government conspired videogame weapon? Here’s the best part — no one could ever really confirm any of this from the Men in Black taking names of the high scores to the subliminal messages in the then revolutionary vector graphics.

As we head into the next decade of the 21st century it’s funny to think how this industry we love has become so commonplace in our vernacular. The Xbox 360 is now the 360, it’s either a PS3 or Playstation and when people say they’re going to do Rock Band on the Wii it doesn’t cause a puzzled look by the receiver of the message. Words like GTA, Halo and WOW are things you no longer have to explain to people. What a difference 10 years makes. In the year 2000 — well it was a little different.

First of let’s keep in mind 10 years ago, there was no Xbox. Microsoft’s first console didn’t launch until the following year.  In fact 2000 was the year that Microsoft acquired this little company that would help them make their system seller and a lot of money — Bungie Software. The big consoles at the dawn of 21st century? PS2 still only a year old was running the show in games and sales.  The Nintendo 64 was doing solid business and believe it or not the Sega Dreamcast, which was only a year away from being shut down all together. Over in the hand held world, Game Boy Color was the shizzle and had been for two years already.

Imagine telling somebody in the year 2000 that 10 years later people would be jumping around in front of flat screen TVs waving a remote control and bowling virtual balls. They would think you were insane.

“Motion controlled what? Flat TVs? Are you nuts? Man I’m worried about the world ending.”

What Was Hot 10 Years Ago

While the PS2 was beginning it’s dominance over the console market PC gaming had a much stronger standing than it does now and wasn’t just about  World of Warcraft. Stellar PC titles like Baldur’s Gate, Deus Ex, The Sims, Counter Strike and Everquest were all the rage. Over on the console side hot titles included Dead or Alive 2, the outstanding Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (so many versions ago) and the life sucking Final Fantasy XI.

So while games were not top news items or part of our vernacular and basically a key element  in  entertainment culture as it is now,  it was clear something big was on the horizon. The Game Boy marked the year by selling it’s millionth unit, IDGA tried out it’s new name, E3 was in it’s sixth year (what a spectacular blow out the next year would be), videogames actually were winning multimedia awards over in England and on the business side we start seeing the acquisition game with decent size companies getting bigger. Like the aforementioned acquisition of Bungie by Microsoft we also saw EA picking up Dreamworks Interactive, Ubisoft picking up Red Storm and this little company that would go on to make addictive arcade titles, PopCap games, launch their first and most successful title, Bejeweled.

Just one year later would see the appearance of the Gamecube and the Xbox and a gauntlet being thrown down that would essentially ramp up this industry right into the next decade with console wars, amazing leaps in technology both on the console and PC side and an industry that became a viable part our our entertainment landscape. For the current generation of gamers the last 10 years was like the 80s for the generation before them — a golden age of gaming that only looks to get better and better.

Here’s to the next 10 years and what it has to offer.