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Foundation: Episode IV - The Top 25 Square Games
12.03.02 Kevin Leung
Last time on Looking Glass: Foundation Episode III.
Even before it hit retail, your mind was already made up: one way or another, you had to have Final Fantasy X.
At the Square Millennium Conference of January 2000, we didn’t get a single preview of Final Fantasy – we got three. Square’s campaign gave us a window into the digital future and it could not have been better calculated. Attendees of the conference could not stop staring at the official unveiling of Final Fantasy X footage stretched like a canvas across the wall. Meanwhile, an anonymous video camera that had been stolen into the show was recording everything we wanted to see. Millions gathered in front of their monitor to squint at some out-of-focus movie files that were uploaded to the Internet that very same day. There could only be one word to describe what fans saw onscreen: potential…vast potential. But more important than showing off a pre-Tidus rendered action figure (amusingly stuck in running-man mode), the early demo of Final Fantasy X displayed a fraction of what we could expect from a next-generation RPG. Twenty seconds of footage was more powerful than any amount of marketing could hope to achieve.
In short, Square sold us on the Playstation 2 console.
Onboard the wildly anticipated platform, Final Fantasy X would solidify Square’s foothold in the newest era of interactive entertainment along with what analysts today estimate as a 63% global market penetration; it’s Sony’s world, we just live in it. If you thought Final Fantasy VII was swell back in the day, Final Fantasy X took those benchmarks and punted them into the stratosphere. The game boasts fluidly animated characters, strong voice acting, full 3D environments, and oh-my-gawd graphics. Two years after the Millennium Conference, gamers were playing a bonafide hit while Square’s competitors were playing catch-up.
Plays like: The real reason why you bought a shiny new PS2.
“The journey of Tidus and Yuna was a story that was truly unforgettable…told in such a beautiful, powerful way, I was quite taken by it. Very emotional and at the end, even depressing in a sense. The characters felt so real…for me, this brought much more attachment to the story. I just loved every bit of it.”
Sometimes I think Japanese game developers are going crazy. How long does it take for them to acknowledge that we want sequels to our favourite games? Scratch that. How long does it take for them to realize that they could be, oh I dunno, making money? Let’s imagine a typical day at the office:
President: “Alright, bring us up to speed on today’s meeting.”
Producer: “Certainly, President-san. It seems that the masses have been demanding the next Final Fantasy Tactics and Chrono Trigger for some time now.”
President (in deep thought): “No, not this year, I’m afraid. I think we’re in the market for something a little different. Producer-san, I’d like to you make me a gardening simulator, another mahjong-dating game, and a ham sandwich, please.”
As you can see, whoever pushed for Chrono Cross, Serge’s fantastic voyage through dreamscapes and cross-dimensional travel, finally answered our pleas. The game is loosely based on the Super Famicom Satellaview interactive-novel entitled Radical Dreamers that was (say it with me) only released in Japan. I don’t know about you but I would have been perfectly content with a shameless clone of Chrono Trigger. Then again, rehashed Castlevania games make me cuckoo for cocoa-puffs so what do I know? I certainly wasn’t expecting a tour-de-force labour of love redefining the synergy between graphics, music, and gameplay. Like most of you, I was sleepwalking through the bridge of the plot until those last few minutes imploded with enough revelation and exposition to pummel Alfred Hitchcock into the ground. There’s so much to handle it’s plum crazy.
While the game has enough merit to stand on its own, there’s a strange but undeniable paradox that exists between the enjoyment of playing Trigger versus the excitement of playing Cross. It’s true that you have to experience Trigger in order to pick up the references and subtle nuances scattered throughout Cross. Playing the predecessor certainly enhances your appreciation of its kin and explains a lot of things, not to mention why this pedigree is such a sacred cow to begin with. At the same time, doing so might actually degrade your opinion of Cross altogether. Having finally received the follow-up game they had been pining for, ardent Trigger fans were so happy that they ostracized Cross from having any direct relationship because, in their minds, the game was far too unorthodox to be a Chrono game. This all-around excellent sequel did not live up to its predecessor and would have to carry that burden even before leaving the starting gate. A friend of mine tried to explain the logic in first principles: “Playing Chrono Trigger makes Chrono Cross better which causes it to be worse.” Clear as mud, I nodded. Back to what I was saying before about Japanese game companies going crazy: when it comes to producing sequels, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. So would everyone have been better off to receive Chrono Trigger version 2.0? Serge says, “…”
Plays like: Tropical Island Quantum Leap.
“I was glad I wasn’t weaned on Chrono Trigger, otherwise I would’ve never appreciated Chrono Cross for what it really is: a beautiful game that tells a beautiful story if it’s just taken as itself…‘take me by my own content and I’ll bring you to a land that you’ll remember in your dreams.’ ”
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