Playstation #1: Arc the Lad

Developer: G-Craft

Publisher: Sony (Jp) Working Designs (US)

Release date: June 30, 1995 (JP) 4-18-02 (US)

Arc the Lad has a bit of an interesting release history. In Japan it was released way back in the summer of 1995 and became one of the first big hit RPGs on the new Playstation console. The Playstation didn’t launch until a few months later in America and as a result there was no Arc the Lad release. Over the next few years three more Arc games were released in Japan which didn’t get localized but sold well and created some buzz. Finally, in the spring of 2002 Working Designs brought all four games to America as Arc the Lad Collection. It was a game originally made in the SNES era that didn’t get its first release in America until after the debut of the Playstation 2. For those of you keeping score at home the only Playstation RPG released after Arc the Lad Collection in America was Digimon World 3. This made for a very primitive RPG coming out during a generation change. I am sure its release confused come people. I don’t think it matters quite as much now as most people playing it either bought it digitally on the Playstation store or are emulating it. If you play PS1 games today you know that they are going to look a hundred years old but still have the potential for greatness. 

Arc the Lad certainly looks like it’s from 1995. The bare landscapes and stubby characters have a Super Nintendo look to them. This is contrasted by the very nice looking cutscenes featured throughout. I was very impressed by scenes like the airship taking off, and I don’t think they were only good by comparison. I would guess they used too much memory for the cutscenes so they had to keep the rest of the game simple. You play as a lad named Arc who is looking for an Ark. I guess he should’ve seen that coming. It’s a little bit like if Indiana Jones was searching for the Indiana of the Covenant, but I don’t mind a little silly in my JRPGs. The other characters have names that are less prophetic but more difficult to pronounce so it’s a bit of a trade off. 

I do enjoy the kooky map screen with all the characters on it

The game itself is the quickest playing strategy RPG I have ever experienced. In most SRPGs the battles are slow and methodical. Arc the Lad somehow makes turn-based grid battles feel quick. Only the toughest battles lasted more than fifteen minutes or so. In most strategy games the battles can drag on for a half hour or more. They do this by stripping things down which I both like and dislike. The characters move quickly and the commands are very easy to understand while the game isn’t bogged down too much in stats and economy. Actually there isn’t any money to collect. The only equipment to change is accessories that are either dropped in battles or found in chests. So the battles were quick and fun, but sometimes they could be a little too simple. I wish I could’ve switched the directions of the characters without moving them. Many of their attacks are based on direction, and I would often be put in a position where I had to be standing right in front of an enemy even though I was using a ranged attack. The clunky interface does make the game feel rushed which wouldn’t surprise me given the early release date. It is, however, fun enough to overcome its mild irritations. 

Probably the biggest strike against this game is its short length. It’s definitely one of the shortest RPGs on Playstation. I beat it in about thirteen hours which is a little long for an Arc the Lad playthrough. I fell into the classic SRPG trap of not leveling up my characters evenly so I had to do some grinding at the end. I think a more typical game lasts 8-10 hours. It ends on a cliffhanger too so if you are the kind of person who just has to know how a story ends you will have to buy the whole series. I didn’t really mind the short length too much because it didn’t feel short. It was a fully developed game with plenty of battles, a compelling story, and interesting characters. It just all moves very quickly.

In the end Arc the Lad is fun and definitely belongs in the green section. I can’t help comparing genres when I rank games so I am looking at the space between Exodus and Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX. There are a whole bunch of arcade games in that section that need breaking up. For now I am going to put it right about Clu Clu Land which is a game I of course really enjoyed. Still I don’t think I would enjoy playing Clu Clu Land for thirteen hours as much as I enjoyed playing Arc the Lad. Excitebike has more replay value so it still wins out. Arc the Lad is my new #8 game which makes it a decent way to introduce the Playstation. I only have about 1300 more Playstation games to rank so I better start posting these things more often.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Arc the Lad

9. Clu Clu Land

10. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

11. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

12. Metro-Cross

13. Ice Climber

14. Gaplus

15. Dragon Spirit

16. Pinball (NES)

17. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

18. Red Sea Crossing

19. Baraduke

20. Gamma-Attack

21. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

22. Galaxian

23. Evoland

24. Defunct

25. Gyruss (2600)

26. Looney Tunes Racing

27. Squidlit

28. Baseball

29. Birthday Mania

30. Bad Street Brawler

NES #6: Ice Climber

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: October 18, 1985

This is an oddly inaccurate cover for an old NES game

Nintendo hard is a pretty common phrase in classic gaming communities, but I am much more fond of Nintendo weird. It’s hard to overstate just how strange some of these early NES games are and how much different they felt than anything that came before them. The NES wasn’t going to launch with space shooters, casino games, and edutainment titles like everyone else. Instead they were going to give us parka wearing cartoon characters with large hammers chasing giant, vegetable stealing birds up mountains. They knew they were going to have to be different to make gaming relevant again in America, and they went just about as different as possible. Of course another thing Nintendo taught us in the early days is that a game can be cute and weird but still be challenging and satisfying. Ice Climber is a prime example of this principle. 

Eggplant theft was a real problem in the 80s

Ice Climber is a hybrid action platform and arcade style game. The basic premise is fairly simple. You are jumping up an icy mountain split into different levels. When you go up eight levels you will reach a bonus level where you collect vegetables and then catch the bird on top for big bonus points. The game will loop, but it does have 32 specific levels in it making it feel a little more modern than Pinball or Clu Clu Land. You can pick any of the levels from the title screen, so the notion of actually beating the game is still a bit foreign, but it’s closer to the type of console gaming we are used to today. It sounds simple, but there is an important catch that has to be discussed.

Such colorful ice

This game has a very difficult arcing jump that is a true challenge to master. Jumping to the next level takes a bit of a running start and a landing that is completely on dry land. Most of the levels are blocked off by ice that you have to get rid of by jumping, so there are often tiny holes up to the next level. So imagine sliding around on ice with a weird jump and going through tiny holes while fighting off yetis to get to the top of the screen. Does this sound fun to you? Well actually it is. I know it sounds like a chore, but I don’t mind a strange jump when it’s a game designed for a strange jump. If this was a Mario influenced platformer than the jump would be a game breaker. In Ice Climber, however, it’s much of the fun. If you take too long than the screen will start scrolling up so speed is a must. The weird jump means that there is a great amount of precision involved. You have to aim and jump before the yeti fills the holes in again and the odd jump makes this process more exciting and fun. I think it’s funny that there’s not climbing in Ice Climber. Mountain Jumper might’ve been a more accurate name, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Of course this game would probably be completely forgotten if it wasn’t for the Ice Climbers being playable characters in Smash Bros. That just goes to show you that Nintendo never gives up on a game. Ice Climber was released in 1985 and quickly eclipsed by bigger, flashier games. However, Nintendo knew that it was a game worth playing. Smash Bros. probably made more than a few people go back to revisit the origins of the characters, and I can understand why they would people to. It’s a fun little game that still holds up decently today. 

Look at all the zaniness!

For ranking it in the Official Ironclad List of Correctness I am certainly going to put it in the green section. I can’t deny that I had fun, and that’s what counts the most. I am actually going to up it right below Metro-Cross at #12. They are both fun arcade games with personality to spare, but Metro-Cross is just a little bit more fun to play. For those of you keeping track at home that gives the NES a very good showing at 4-2. Of course I have mostly looked at games made by Nintendo so they should be good. When I start looking at third party games the quality factor will certainly change, but until then we can all revel in the high quality of Nintendo games.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Clu Clu Land

9. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

10. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

11. Metro-Cross

12. Ice Climber

13. Gaplus

14. Dragon Spirit

15. Pinball (NES)

16. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

17. Red Sea Crossing

18. Baraduke

19. Gamma-Attack

20. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

21. Galaxian

22. Evoland

23. Defunct

24. Gyruss (2600)

25. Looney Tunes Racing

26. Squidlit

27. Baseball

28. Birthday Mania

29. Bad Street Brawler

NES #5: Clu Clu Land

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: October 18, 1985

This is just the type of game I was hoping to find when I started this blog. It’s one I’ve had for many years and overloooked in a flood of more famous games that I bought around the same time. It’s a game that’s barely remembered today but is at least significant as a launch title on the NES. Nintendo had four very popular arcade games when they were launching their console. Oddly though none of them were released initially. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Popeye, and Mario Bros. had to wait until the national launch a year or so later. It’s interesting that they decided to forgo releasing their most famous games at launch. Perhaps they were worried about overexposure as all three of those games had been ported, and some of them very poorly, for other systems. Donkey Kong got bad to mediocre ports on just about every console and might’ve been too much of a symbol for the 1983 video game crash. It could also just be that the games weren’t ready yet. I don’t know the exact reason, but they decided to go with games that would be less familiar to American players. That paved the way for fun oddities like Clu Clu Land.

There really aren’t too many games out there like Clu Clu land so I hope my description does it justice. It’s a single screen arcade game where you play as Bubbles the balloonfish making her the first female protagonist on launch day. The screen is covered in pegs and your goal is to uncover pictures made of gold bars that look like rupees from Zelda. To uncover the pictures you have to swim between the pegs. Bubbles is constantly swimming in a straight line so the way to move her in a different direction is to use the control pad to grab on to a peg and swing her around. There are also deadly sea urchins and portals to watch out for but luckily her shots are infinite. I sure am glad it’s not just a couple shots because the whole game would then be running from monsters. Anyway that’s the basics of the game so yes it is as strange as its name.

It is a bit complicated for an arcade game and takes a bit of getting used to, but once I learned how to play I had a lot of fun with it. Seriously, this is a fun classic arcade game. It’s constantly exciting and has a great learning curve. I like that the pictures actually rotate in the levels so you can’t just memorize the puzzles and play the same game every time. That first level might be a smiley face or it might be a boat so you have to actually explore to figure it out. This is unusual for an era that was all about repetition. Still the more I played the better I got and I had fun every time. It never felt tedious or repetitious even though the five screens repeat over and over. That’s no easy feat in a classic arcade game. I also like how it shows off its age by having generic pictures to uncover. If it had been made just a couple years later it would be filled with stars, mushrooms, and other bits of Mario iconography. It takes us back to a time before it was all Mario and Mushroom Kingdom. It’s fun and a history lesson at the same time. My favorite kind of game!

I love how they work the obstacles into the pictures

If you were shopping on day one than this would’ve been an excellent choice to test out the new Nintendo controller. Before Nintendo, home video game controllers typically had a joystick and either one button or way too many buttons. Nintendo went with a functional minimalist approach and Clu Clu Land really shows off what it could do. I can’t imagine having to be so precise in an Atari or Intellivision game. I would miss so many pegs. With the Nintendo controller, however, new levels of gaming were now possible. So I am going to rate this one probably higher than anyone ever has before, but Clu Clu Land has earned its time in the spotlight. I am putting it right below Excitebike at #8. It breaks my heart a little to knock Metro-Cross out of the top 10, but that’s the hazards of ranking games. Maybe I’ll move Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX down a couple of spots and nobody will notice. Anyway, if you can find Clu Clu land for a good price you should pick it up. It’s a true classic arcade hidden gem.

1. Super Mario Odyssey

2. Galaga

3. Donkey Kong

4. Exodus: Ultima III

5. Pac-Mania

6. Pac-Man

7. Excitebike

8. Clu Clu Land

9. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX

10. Mickey’s Racing Adventure

11. Metro-Cross

12. Gaplus

13. Dragon Spirit

14. Pinball (NES)

15. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)

16. Red Sea Crossing

17. Baraduke

18. Gamma-Attack

19. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

20. Galaxian

21. Evoland

22. Defunct

23. Gyruss (2600)

24. Looney Tunes Racing

25. Squidlit

26. Baseball

27. Birthday Mania

28. Bad Street Brawler