My Fond Video Game Anecdotes

My Fond Video Game Anecdotes

I fell in love with video games at the age of Two. My father bought me my first Nintendo and together with my brother we used to watch Mario defeat Bouser. During my video game experience there has been many memorable moments that have brought some spice into my life. In this blog I will focus in more contemporary anecdotes of my later video game experience. Most of it focuses on my experiences with video games RPG games, Guitar Hero and Devil May Cry and just one regarding ghost in the shell.

When I first tried the platinum match, I had heard rumors that Bahamut was to be the opponent. For those that do not know (or cared) Bahamut is one of the classical summon monsters of the Final Fantasy series. However, I was delighted to discover it was Sephiroth. Among the first issues about fighting Sephiroth was the fact that his sword covered a large range of area. Brother first fought him in level 41 in our first file. We had yet to discover Arcs of Arcanum , oblivion and all the other fancy accessories needed to putting a Sephiroth to sleep. So in a low level with no strategy and with a weak Areo technique fighting Sephiroth proved to be an exercise in futility.

What made matters worse was the shear desperation that we felt at realizing that his life guard would not go down. He had 5 life bars and they would not budge an inch despite how often we strike at him. Time and time again we fell at the mighty fury of Sephiroth. Our common sense told us that No one in their right mind would produce a boss that was immune to both physical and magic attacks. Thus after banging our brains we came up with two conclusions. Either he had too much defense or he had a shield. It proved to both. During one of those desperate strikes, this time in level 50, before Sephiroth gave the coup de grace we noticed that his lifeguard had budged a lil bit. This gave us hope and the determination to train and prepare Sora to defeat Sephiroth. Eventually, my brother was able to defeat Sephiroth once he reached level 100 with the help of the Oblivion Keyblade.

In kingdom Hears one, I had developed a special training system that consisted on choosing an opponent whose attack could be parry as a sparring partner. Whenever an attack is parry in this game one gains EXP depending on the strength and level of the opponent. This super annoying but efficient training style I called My Asinine Training.  In the past, I had fought and defeated Ansem Possessed Rikku. In this battle in specific I was finally able to notice the complicated pattern of his attacks. His pattern was a simple one masqueraded by gimmicks and special effects. The trick was that Rikku twisted his body and yelled before shooting his “strike Raid” like attack. In addition, the range and timing mimics a lot the “strike raid” of Sora, although his was at much larger scale. I was so happy to show off to my astonished brother how quickly Sora was being trained while fighting this boss. Thus Sora went from level 45to level 50.



Another memorable kingdom hearts moment was the “Dance Water Dance” Second Battle in front of the ruins of Hollow Bastion Castle. That “Dance Water Dance” Nobody is so freaking hard to beat in hard mode. Bro is the only one who could handle this kid in hard. Anyhow, in the first part with half the time one had to defeat 100 of his water clones or else Sora was stripped of hisH2O. Aside from that opening move his other attacks where notoriously massive and relentless. The area available and dodging time was quite minimal. From kingdom hearts one to Kingdom Hearts 2 (which is in fact 3), the bosses have reached Devil May Cry difficulty.  Aside from that from those massive attacks at any moment he could repeat his “Dance water Dance” technique. If Sora was too far away from the Nobody Sora missed his chance to activate his life saver counter attack trigger.  Being close to the Nobody was also hazardous to Sora’s life and limbs. It was truly a battle worthy of an expert.

I am ashamed to admit that my brother is a far more skilled video game player then I am. So far most many anecdotes have me cheering from the sideline while he gains all the glory. At best I am only a spotter. It is my job to tell brother that he is about to die. It is also my duty to train the video games characters. I fatten the cow and he eats it (as my made up saying goes). Still, my passive role is quite necessary. My powers of observation has given be the ability to discover the Tao (or pattern) of even the most complex video game character. For example, depending on the life bar is the attack pattern that Sephiroth takes. He becomes most vicious when he is at the final green. Like before, I discovered the Tao of the Boss.

Despite my supportive role in our game play I do have my moments from time to time. Among my most memorable battles (which I take full credit) was my epic battle against the Nevan. For those that are not familiar with this Devil May Cry 3 boss, Nevan was the electric bat shooting vampire opera singer boss. Yes, you heard it, electric bat shooting vampire opera singer. Like the picture shows, she had green skin, was nude from the waist up, had red hair and odd yellow eyes. This was the first boss that I fought in DMC3. During those days, my favorite form was the gunner.

Among the first issues was how massive her attacks were. It proved useful to stay the hell away from her because when she was near death she would try to suck your blood. To avoid this, best strategy was to stay in the air. However, in this early stage of the game, Dante lacked the flying capabilities that came available after subduing the Nevan. Thus, knowing full well such limitations I took the most appropriate course at hand. This consisted in using the ricochet of Dante’s gun to keep him in the air as long as possible. It was a good thing he was in the gunner form, otherwise that Nevan would have made quick work of Dante considering the low HP he had at that time.



Another memorable moment was when I fought the army of heartless. Among the few things that I found disappointing about kingdom Heart 2 (or three) was the fact that the heartless came in fewer numbers. In the old days, you could not enter a dark corner without getting attacked by at least 30 heartless .In this game they came in barrages 20s, 10s, 3s (although there is one noted exception). Aside from the golden fish barrages (in the coliseum, The Lion king and Mulan), I saw no were in sight true heartless armies. I found my opportunity after the Dance Water Dance Battle. In normal, the onslaught was of1000, however in expert it ranged from 1300 to 1500 heartless. Defeating them required bit of dodging and lot slashing. The trick was to clear large areas at a time. It is best to make quick work of them one row at a time or two slowly clear a larger and large circular area around Sora. The best way is to use either“Rising Sun” or use the blast attack of some of the heartless. It was truly among the battles that I enjoyed a lot.

Among other memorable battle include the two kingdom heart battles against Sephiroth. In the first I won by luck and not by design. Despite the fact that I can see his move I cannot keep up with the commands to chase after Sephiroth. My style of fighting is elegant in contrast with Brother’s brute, quick attacks. However, in the second part I obtain a fine perfect victory over Sephiroth using the rose keyblade given by the Beast. This keyblade gave critical boost. By combining natural Critical Boost, plus given boost and a technique that lowered the required strokes to give the Finishing Boost I was able to take large sums of HP with minimal strikes. Two strikes +finishing boost = half a life bar.  Though I must admit that I had to dodge a lot and have Areoga on constantly.

Another thing  about my video game playing style makes me rather stingy with the items. Sora or the others have to be at the edge of the abyss for me to waste one miserable potion. The only exception to this rule is the Sephiroth and final boss battles. Otherwise, I saved up my items even if it kills the characters that I am controlling. I learned that this mode of proceeding is preferable. This became most apparent when, under the whims of my brother’s hesitation, I started using far more often healing items in The Last Remnant. Like the name clearly state everything, specially the healing items, where in scarcity. I would have been able to defeat the final boss if I had not run out of healing items in the most crucial moment. And then when I finally went to train in order to save up money to buy healing items I happen to change the order of the characters thus loosing the winning harmony. Over all, it was the worst first file I ever made. It even topped my first FF8 eight file. It was so awful that it killed our love for The Last Remnant so much so that we stopped playing it for a year and a half.

Speaking of Final Fantasy 8, that Ultimecia  Final Boss was something else. In order to kill her one had to have 100 holy wars (items that grant temporary immunity to all harms) in addition to being in level 100. If the immunity failed for even a moment she blasted you to the abyss. It took me three files to figure out the training procedure. It took another two files to figure out that the odd named magic where in fact Guardian Forces. Overall, the first five files where a terrible mess. It got to such extremes, where in order to get pass level one, we would kamikaze Zell. Level one of Ultimecia is her worst form, then again in the last form was problematic because she would not die unless she finished her final epic speech.

Another Ultimecia related measure that we took was to make the main character the weakest. The general trend in the video game community is to always make the main character the strongest. Anyhow, since he was on permanently we used have Squall train the Guardian Forces until they learned their level up bonuses. Thus, the final character to reach level 100 was always the most powerful. In our last file, it was Zell who reached that state. He was still the sacrificial lamb due to the nature of his Limit Break. His was the weakest and the hardest to manage. Thus, we sacrificed him to safeguard the group as a whole. Also we were not too fund of Zell.

Aside from Ultimecia, the hardest battle that I ever faced in video game history was the final battle in the first CD of The Last Remnant. The way it was arranged assured that I had to win by strategy alone. I happened to have saved before the battle and the way the room was built it prevented me from going back to train the weaklings. So I had to work with a few number of troops. The way it was arranged assured the Gates of hell boss (a proper name for a hard as hell monster) 5 units of triplets. I first tried forming a small compact powerful team of three units.

However, after being surrounded trice and dying as a result I decided to split them into five weak units (one per enemy unit). It was a good thing the clock summon monster was around. He was a lifesaver despite the fact that I lacked control over him. When I finally surrounded the ugly monster a new problem arose. If I got too close he shot a deadly corrosive acid that killed the weaker lesser HP units. If I got too far away he would try the marionette trick. Time and time again I had to issue the command “heal them even if it kills them”. I think I lost most of my healing items because of this battle. After much time and effort, I was able to slay the beast. I guess the 30th time was the charm. I remember how for a month once a day we would come back to school and give a shot at the monster. Damn, we never had gotten so many games over in a game so many times. Heck they even gave us a battle trophy for it.

Aside from RPG the only two player games that we played was Ghost in the Shell and the Guitar Hero Games. In Ghost in the Shell, I never got into the story, plus I was awful with the sniper and other ballistic weapons. Yet my brother insisted that I played with him in two player mode. I only accepted the challenge if I got to fight with the Tachcoma. That robot spider made game play so much fun. In the dock area I used to get in the highest pillar to seek Motoko out. This was a double edge sword because there were only four of these kinds of pillars thus bro only needed to search a limited area to snipe me out. In time bro got fed up with the one-sided battle so he chose crammed location that prevented me from using the auto lock missiles. In such a crammed location I was my own worst enemy.

As for the Guitar Hero Games, we lacked the second guitar needed to play the game. Thus, for the sake of completing the game we hooked up the regular play station 2 controllers. That too proved quite problematic.  Thus in order to be fairs, we switched controllers from time to time. Needless to say the regular controller play station controller always played the bassist role. However, this strategy proved futile when we reached “One” by Metallica. In this song, both the bass and the guitar have to play at an equal level. Once you get to hard level there note combination start resembling more and truer guitar playing. In order to make matters worse, Bro had barely won “One” in singer player hard mode. Thus, it was up to miss not to miss a super swift not while my brother butchered the solo. We truly did experience “absolute horror” while playing that song in such a stubborn asinine fashion. But in the end our efforts were rewarded.

Other guitar hero related precious moment include Knights of Cydonia. Bro is good at complicated songs however in time my hands have become quite agile in swift repetitious keys, such keys strokes where common place in “knights of Cydonia”. Aside from the lightly issues, it really butchered the wrist the repetitious notes and patterns of the long “no one is gonna take us alive” section of the song. It got to a point that I experience my first guitar hero related wrist pains. In time, I was able to adequately adapt my wrist to knights of Cydonia. It wasn’ta five star performance but it helped us advance in the game.

Overall, the hardest final song in guitar hero history was “Through the Fire and the Flames” by Dragonforce. Although, “Play with me” (from guitar hero 80s) was also problematic. Only recently did we complete “Play With Me”. From the songs I played before the ones I enjoyed the most where “We are the monster”,“Miss Murder”, “Kings and Queens”, “No one knows” and “Helker Sketer” (this one is actually from The Beatles Rock band). Truly the true nature of these music games is both entertaining and a bit addictive.  Only once you dare pick up a real guitar do the players realize that in fact they are not guitar heroes (trust me I speak from experience). Still, they are among the safest forms of leisure available for our modern day couch potato.



Truly my experiences with video games has varied and wide. My excitement about video games has only been slightly mitigated by the ever increasing production of terrible video games. It seems to me that companies have been running out of ideas. It is for this reason that I look upon in a most positive light the efforts of Atari. I wish that other video game companies where more like them. They have actually updated and improved upon classical Atari video game. Time and time again I have been disappointed by brain farts of other companies. The biggest disappointments that I have received has hailed from Square Enix, sure the graphic of their FF13 games where wonderful, sure the storyline was perfect but I could not help but feel annoyed at how straight forward(literary) the game was. Plus, the storyline did not make any sense. It was all La Ciel this or Fa Ciel that. Square Enix, I miss games where training mattered, where there were non fighting related missions. And trust me the answer is not the stunt you pulled in Final Fantasy 12 (no, no). If anything, you must have the perfect balance between storyline (one that makes sense, mind you).  You should be more like Atari! I want to see a remake of FF7, not another disgusting DMC like Dirge of Cerberus.

Tri Ace is on the same path. Their Star Ocean the Last Hope Wondering dungeon was super annoying and time consuming. The fact that they made it humanly possible to defeat is not a point in their favor. Even should the dream team defeat all the bosses if you happen to be short of one miserable material you are back to square one and all your efforts are for naught. Also, I am a bit spiteful about what they did to Faize. How there they make an Aeris out of Faize!

Ubisolf’s Dragon Age 2 was just awful. The entire game took place in an Island, and the dark spawn rarely appeared. They sacrificed lengthiness of the game for the sake of improving graphics even a lil bit. What also annoyed me was how they made it futile to try ambushes. In addition, they used the brief appearances of some of the Dragon Age 1 character as a trick to keep the gamer interested. It was truly awful and the limitation and weakening of the magic was also not a point in their favor. In addition, it had even more technical errors (such as jumping scenes, infinite loops and freezing). It gave me the impression that they did not stop to fix all their bugs. It’s all publish sell, publish sell, these days. Quality control has become stagnated in the above mentioned companies. Only Atari seems trying to make a difference for the sake of all hardcore gamers.

All of the good memories of video games are all in the past. Modern day video game of the RPG nature are going on a downhill slope. I fear that such good memories are nothing more than a distant dream now. Truly video games are not what they used to be…  Remakes,remakes, that’s the way to go. They should do things in the Atari fashion for the sake of all nostalgic gamers like me.