Vintage Copies of Books – So, books will show up multiple times on the list in different ways, but I think that there are different types of books you can pick up for that fantasy fan. And one of the cooler ones is vintage books. Getting an older copy of Lord of the Rings, even if it has a little bit of wear and tear on it is going to be awesome for a fan of Lord of the Rings, because the vintage covers and just the feel of the books is different. Or, it could be any other vintage sort of fantasy book, but there’s just something about having that almost collectors type book, that fantasy book lovers will really like.

Box Sets of Books – Here’s the other book thing. Box sets of books are also that other book lovers collectible thing. Again, box sets are the pieces that you can put on the shelf and show off. It also means that you can give them something they might not buy, for example, if they were picking up the Harry Potter books as they went along and they were published, they could have a mismatched set, but most book lovers will spend their own money on more books, not making a consistent collection, so you could give them that as a box set, so it is consistent, and it’s something that they’ll likely love.

Fantasy Themed Artwork – Now, this is a bit iffy to put on here, simply because, while Superhero artwork you can know has a recognizable superhero on it, fantasy artwork is all over the map. So, I would lean towards artwork that is based on something. So, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter are good examples here. There’s going to be artwork that has been done depicting both of those stories, and if someone is a fan of that story, they’ll appreciate the artwork more so. That said, maybe the person has some obscure story that they like and there isn’t artwork on it, I’d be hesitant to suggest picking up large artwork, but postcard size stuff that is work appropriate and they can put up in a cubicle, that would work. Just don’t go with anything too large that they might not like because it’s just not their style.

Fantasy Themed Magnets – Fairly specific with this one, but I’ve found that a lot of people have pretty boring magnets, if they have many magnets on their fridge. Or they might again be using them at work in a cubicle. This is where you can go with the more generic fantasy, because, again, it’s smaller. And especially going with a cute art style or maybe a chibi art style, those work for a nerdy person’s fridge. If the person has a beer fridge or a wine fridge you can put magnets on, getting the hobbits drinking pints in chibi form would be great, in my opinion, for something like that. Or maybe, the person doesn’t want chibi but loves Dungeons and Dragons fantasy, get them dragon magnets. This also has the advantage of being something if you get a magnet that you can use as a stocking stuffer.

Lego – Yup, there are plenty of fantasy Lego sets out there, some generic, and then Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Sorry for you Game of Thrones fans, no Lego sets. This is another display type thing, or if they are younger kids, something that can be played with. But in our house, we have a Hobbit Lego on one shelf and a Hogwarts up on top of another shelf. So, you can go small or big with this, but Lego is a bit on the spendier side of things with the larger sets. It is a lot of fun to put together, and if someone has time off over the holidays, it gives them something fun to do through their time off.

Video Games – Woo, another generic category, but there are a lot of fantasy games out there. You can go retro if they have an older system or a Retron system and get them things like the original Zelda or Final Fantasy. Or, there are middle aged games (not games in the middle ages) like the original Dragon Age that have been ported over to the newer systems, but if someone still have an XBox 360, you could find it for that. There are so many fantasy games out there, figure out if the person you are giving the gift to like the more sword and sorcery style games, more story driven games, fighting, whatever it might be, and you’ll probably be able to find something unique for them. And if they are already a video gamer and have a lot of them, you can look towards more of the indie titles and there are a lot of interesting fantasy games out there.

Classic Fantasy Movies/TV Shows – When I say classic, I more so mean old ones. Find the fantasy movies or TV shows that people might not remember from back in the day. I’m sure there are plenty of good lists out there, or you could find the B-Movie classics in the genre as well. Definitely a lot of them you can check out, and if they are more of a classic one, the cheesy nature of them works better versus a modern cheesy story. Now, you still end up with some of them being too cheesy or dated poorly in other ways, so do a bit of research, but you can probably find bluray or DVD collections of them that would have a good variety as well.

This list is a bit more generic, so I apologize because it’ll make you do more work tracking stuff down. But fantasy is a bit broader than the board game topics and even broader than superheroes, because, while there are indie superheroes out there, most people think Marvel and DC. I tried to suggest some ideas that are a bit more specific for Lord of the Rings fans or Harry Potter fans, but there’s so much in the fantasy realm that it’s hard to cover some of the broader stuff. For that reason, if the person loves reading, books is always a great option, next time you see their book shelf, look at it and find what books might work there.

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Let me start out by saying that I enjoy that style of combat. I like picking out what skill I want to use and who I want to target and then letting the combat play out. When it comes to real time combat, I’m not as good because I like to figure out a strategy of who I want to attack whom in the game and figure out tactics. Now, a lot of modern party based combat games, think Dragon Age, do allow for some tactical choices, and I spend time, especially before final boss fights, tweaking the combat to how I want it to be, but in the case of Final Fantasy, you get complete control over it, then you just watch a round of combat unfold.

Also interesting in this game is the need to grind. It isn’t something that you see too often in older video games where you have to spend the time leveling your character up before you can take on a boss, it’s generally assumed that you’ll be at the right level by the time you make it to the boss. However, in Final Fantasy you get to grind. That does mean that sometimes the game just sort of stalls and you are doing the same sort of combat against the same sort of monsters over and over again. That is a bit of downside to the game as you don’t get a ton of experience points for certain monsters so you feel like you are stuck in certain areas of the game or going over the same ground again and again.

Besides the combat in this game, how is the story and game play?

The story is pretty straight forward, you are going around trying to gain various orbs and rescue the princess, but the rescue the princess quest feels more like a learn the game mechanics quest and figure out that you do need to grind some. It sounds like there are more quests in the game, but at this point in time I’m still grinding away. I do like the fact that I get to name my characters and choose what classes they are to build up my party of characters. That means that I can focus it how I want to, though, I feel like having a good blend is going to be what makes the difference at the end of the game.

The non-combat game play is pretty straight forward. You’re running around a map looking for combats. And by looking for combats, I mean having them randomly drop you into one. This can make it a bit tricky at times because you aren’t sure when you are going to find a combat, and depending on the area you are in, you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to handle the combat. So at times you’ll be running as fast you can to get back to the inn and save the game so that your characters and rest and heal up.

Will I continue to play this game?

While I do find how you get into combat a bit wonky and there is a lot of grinding for XP that you seem to have to do. I do plan on finishing this game. It feels like a classic, it’s easy enough to play, and my party of Dave, Boo!, YaYu, and Gary need to prove that they can actually become capable fighters. It’s also a very relaxing game to play, sure it’s a bit annoying when Boo! is doing melee damage 1 point at a time because I’ve run out of spell slots and then Boo! misses, but all the combats are easy to see what’s going on, and the run away mechanism keeps the party alive most of the time.

It’s a classic, it’s a fun time, and while it might take me a while to get through, I’ve enjoyed my time with it. If you are interested in the Final Fantasy games and want to try the original, it certainly isn’t a bad idea to jump into this game and give it a whirl. And, like I said, it’s not that stressful a game to play. Once you get leveled enough it makes it pretty easy to grind out more levels, it just takes time.

Game Suggestion: Own

[Game Suggestion
Own: Own it, it’s a classic and fun to play
Play: If you can find it and it’s your type of game check it out
Pass: This game sucks, why did they ever make it]

Mortal Kombat is one of the classic fighting games. You are going through a tournament trying to become the greatest fighter. With my skill level thus far at the game, I am far from the greatest fighter. However, games like this are fun to sit down and play, because I’m not that good, but I can button mash and sometimes accidentally stumble across a special move.

Mortal Kombat featured unique ways in which special moves were performed, being the first game to introduce special moves performed exclusively using the joystick. Most special moves were performed by tapping the joystick, sometimes ending with a button press.

As the Mortal Kombat Wikapedia link talks about, these special moves are what make characters that otherwise fought basically identically seem different. Since I’m playing with the Retron system with a Super Nintendo, I am going to have to learn the special moves myself. I was able to figure out a throw, and then immediately forget how that worked.

Like I said, one of the things that I like a lot about this style of game is the ability to just sit down and play it. It isn’t anything all that difficult to learn, and while the special moves require knowing how to do them, you can still get a fun experience from it. I’m also not playing this game on any sort of difficulty so that I can actually get through a few fights.

It’s a game that will continue to get more play and a game that I’m going to actually glance through the manual that game with the game. Another game that I picked at Heroic Goods & Games in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I got this one as part of a sale, I think it was minimum 10% off for the sale, and roll a D20 (twenty sided die) to see if you can get a higher percentile off, I am pretty sure I got 17% off. The game cam with the box and with the manual. So I flipped through it just to see what it looked like, but it’s probably going to be one of the spots to really get the story of the game. Since it’s basically just a fighting game, they don’t have much in way of story development in the part of the game that I’ve played. However, in the “attract mode” screen, the screen that plays in arcades or while the video game is waiting for someone to play it, it does tell some of the story. The Wikapedia article has some more about the story.

One final thing about this game, it uses screen capture for actual actors in the fighting. I remember this from some video games like Return to Zork that I played on a computer, but on a gaming system like the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) they don’t look as good. This was something that I always found interesting in games how they would use them sometimes just for cut scenes. But when they would blend them into the game it was generally an interesting choice. It works in a game like this as it stands out from the standard graphics for NES/SNES games.

I’m trying to figure out how to wrap up these articles on the Cartridge Capers. Normally I’d give it a grade, which I think I’ll do, but do classic games like this need a grade? I’m going to ask if people have played the games, but it feels like there needs to be some sort of metric as I play through more common/well known games now, but will eventually end up playing more obscure games, because I’ve picked up some random ones.

So, I think I’ll try this:

Final Thoughts on the Game

This is one of the classic arcade games, and while on the SNES it’s a little bit cleaner because they didn’t want the blood of the arcade version, it’s been a fun time playing it. Along with the likes of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat is a classic fighting video game and there’s always going to be a spot on my shelf for games like it because of the nostalgia factor, even though I didn’t grow up with a gaming system. They were the games that had that “attract mode” screen that was eye catching when you’d walk past it in an arcade or looked the coolest when you saw people playing them.

Game Suggestion: Own

So instead of doing my normal grading, I’m going to go with Pass/Play/Own. Own is the highest rating meaning that I think it’s a good one to have and keep in a collection. Play means that the game is fun and worth a play, but I wouldn’t go out hunting for it. Pass means that the game isn’t all that interesting to me or has some weird mechanic or annoying part to the game and I wouldn’t recommend it.

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Cartridge Capers

Is going to be a new series or articles that will come out from time to time as I play through classic NES/SNES games. I might make it through the whole game, and I might not. It’ll really depend on the game, because there are some poor ones out there. We’ll also get to learn about how well I can play these old games, and generally the answer will be not that well. I didn’t grow up on these systems so now I get to be a kid again and play through a lot of them for the first time.

Beyond that, why do I want to do this?

Reason #1 Because it’s kind of a crazy right now. Nintendo has put out their own retro systems, you can build or buy a RetroPie or you can find the old games.

For those who might want to do it, which would I recommend. Being a not to nostalgic, but liking to have the cartridges myself, I went with an option that isn’t fully up there. I have a RetroN gaming system from Hyperkin. It’s something that’s fairly new and fairly cool in that it allows me to play both NES and SNES games on the same system, and it has the unique controllers for both. However, I have played on the RetroPie as well, which is an emulator that can play basically any system with everything loaded onto it. It’s generally built on a Raspberry Pi micro computer. It’s also fun, and allows you not to have to buy specific games. However, you have a single controller for a lot of systems, so you do miss out on the feel.

Reason #2 I didn’t get to play these as a kid. Now that seems kind of goofy, why would I want to play them now? I grew up playing a number of computer games like Jazz Jackrabbit (which was awesome), other side scrolling platformers or side scrolling shooters but I didn’t have a gaming system. I don’t think I was a kid who really cared that much that I was missing out on that, but looking back on it, I want to know what I was missing out on, plus, I like that style of game a lot better than a fair number of modern games, because they can make me motion sick at times (the modern ones that is). It’s annoying.

I also like the idea of a game being “simple” enough that I can sit down and play for a few minutes without feeling like I have to learn a massive specific lore. I love games that do that, Dragon Age, for example, has tons of lore and adventure to it, but often times I like to get my stories through other mediums like TV Shows, Movies, and Books. So having a game that is easier to just play and have my brain turned off for, that’s great.

Reason #3 There’s an awesome little retro shop with retro video games, a lot of other off the wall stuff, and a big board game selection. So naturally I had to go and check it out. That’s where I stumbled across the RetroN system and decided that I should get one. Mainly because I could look at their selection and see games like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Super Mario, Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Ducktales, Mortal Kombat, and so many more. I’ve played some of those now, but I want to play even more.

Also, let me plug the shop a little bit. Heroic Goods and Games is an awesome little shop. I already said that, but I think I deserves to be repeated. The owner of the shop is really friendly and loves the shop. They almost always have a ton of inventory, in fact, they’ve had so much that you can go in there decently often and find that they are having a sale on retro video games. Put it’s the little store that you can come in and find whatever you want. Last time Kristen and I were in there, there was a family from Wisconsin who was in there, and they had been looking for things at larger game stores in Minneapolis and St. Paul but hadn’t been finding what they wanted. They had just stumbled across this place and were finding so many things and loving it. It’s a wonderful place to shop, and if you want to sell your old games, or maybe get even more old video games, they have a great selection. It’s a small town place in the heart of the big city, and it’s amazing.

I think those are good reasons to be wanting to do this, also it’s going to help me play through some of these games that it might take me a bit to get to otherwise. But the big question coming out of this, and check us out on Facebook/Twitter, what game should I play first? Facebook and Twitter will each have polls.

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