One of Squaresoft’s last games for the Super Famicom, Bahamut Lagoon takes the strategy template of the Shining Force and Front Mission series and places it in a fantastical sky world filled with legends and dragons.

Over the Tamar Bridge, high up above the angry, frothing sea, set into the clawing crags of an ancient cliff is a whitewashed Cornish house. It smells like history and just being there makes you invent stories.

Its tall windows are rimmed with black painted frames. Like a pale-faced gothic mime artist, the mascara-set eyes quietly command a watery horizon twenty miles long. A small distance along the coastline is the house where Daphne du Maurier lived and wrote. If you watch Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Rebecca you’ll get a pretty good idea of the bleak but beautiful black and white surroundings.

It’s the kind of place that makes you want to pull up a chair and leisurely jot down a career’s worth of novellas before quietly and perhaps anonymously passing away.

Up narrow flights of creaky stairs in the attic is a dusty Jacobean chest of drawers, once feverishly in fashion, now, its handcrafted curves sidelined for Ikea’s omnipresent factory-spat wood-pulp style.

In one of the drawers is a dead red admiral butterfly, wings flaking their faded glory at the slightest touch. It’s tiny expiring breath is mixed with the musty wood-trapped oxygen of four generations of dwellers, the story of how its body came to lay there buried with the forgotten, mischievous childhood of a long-dead ancestor.

We go there to stay and sometimes I open the drawer, look at the butterfly and invent stories.

Bahamut amalgamates Square’s most successful innovations as we see the silent protagonist (a la Chrono Trigger) supported by a huge cast of distinct controllable allies (a la FF6). The plot initially looks like a straightforward rescue the princess affair but thankfully Square steer away from tired cliché, confusing expectations whilst all the time fleshing out their characters with witty precision and clever scenario. Square look to have mastered the art of 2D graphical characterisation and, as the game boasts some of the best graphics the system has seen, achieve some wondrous moments of expression with the sprites.

I remember when I first discovered London’s few, short-lived exclusively retro videogame shops. They were a phenomenon probably never to be repeated in this brave new world of globe swallowing eBay abundance.

I’d completed Squaresoft’s enchanting Chrono Trigger and was hungry to play more of the same. Thanks to a well-researched feature on the Japanese videogame storyteller in Playstation something-or-other magazine, I discovered a raft of other Japanese-only, older releases I’d never heard of and, seeing an advert in the back for CEX Retro, made a phone call to find out if it was possible to buy such things in late nineties England.

Nowadays Retro-X et al are long gone and CEX Retro is squeezed into the basement of the main Rathbone Place shop off Oxford Street. Japanese gaming niche curios sit there overpriced and undersold next to ever-changing blockbuster Hollywood DVDs.

But back in those preBay days, the shop had its own proud premises and quick business, situated ten short minutes walk and at least ten long years talk from the Tekkens that dressed its parent store’s windows.

CEX Retro’s narrow shelves were crammed with every gaming system there had ever been, their blips and bleeps and flashes lighting up so many mint cardboard boxes of eastern promise. The snooty, wizened staff had a know-it-all air and, between them, probably did know most of it. They were exclusive and elitist but happy enough to talk to you at length about anything you showed an interest and less knowledge than them in.

My interest was the tightly clutched magazine article bearing a box-out discography of Super and Famicom Squaresoft titles. The names enchanted: Romancing Saga, Square’s Tom Sawyer, Live-a-Live and Rudra’s Treasure. These were stories I needed to swallow and characters I wanted to become and this shop was my best hope of getting there.

The American Squaresoft games were kept on a shelf behind the counter, never there for more than a day or two. A shrink-wrapped Chrono Trigger, the cellophane neatly sliced along the opening flap with surgeon’s precision, would sell for £70 in an instant. But those were games I knew; places I’d been.

Across the aisle, behind the glass were the Japanese games that some idiot/ sensible suit in America had decided we wouldn’t ‘get’ and had left off the list for localisation instead favouring rubbish like Secret of Evermore or Final Fantasy Mystic Quest or something they presumed our dumb Western adolescent intellects could cope with.

The team-based approach to the storyline compliments the strategic gameplay wonderfully. Battles are fought in areas divided into grids on which you command six teams each made up of four characters of your own choosing. Each team also has a corresponding dragon that can be ordered to attack or defend. Tactically the game is deeper than any Strategy Rpg yet seen and players must carefully pick terrain conditions and near or far combat choices. After each team takes their turn their Dragon will behave as he sees fit within the offense/ defense guidelines you have set for it.

I scanned the boxes, marvelling at the minimalist box art, remembering the joys of Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana, and wondering if these forbidden, grey import bedfellows held the same promise.

Bahamut Lagoon caught my eye, it’s purple and blue dragon artwork set on a ghost white shiny backing bespoke wonder and magic and childhood dreams.

Even in these formative internet days I managed to find a hand written translation of Bahamut Lagoon. Someone somewhere had clearly translated the script into sketchy Italian and then someother had Chinese-whispered that into English. This was long before the days of Snes9X ROMs and fan-translated IPS patches so the best I could hope for was reams of printed-off paper in my left hand and a kanji dictionary in the right to join up the narrative dots.

It was the Christmas holidays, and I was alone in the Cornish house.

The set piece battles are a refreshing antidote to the random skirmishes that have become genre standard before now. The player is not only responsible for team composition but also for the development of their dragons that can be fed every item in the game, from characters’ armour to porn mags. Every item bolsters particular stats from strength to IQ adding an excellent tension to one’s item management as the player decides whether to increase a dragon’s HP with a high potion or save it for possible use in the ensuing battle.

The night was a stormy Hollywood sea disaster: egg shell cracks of lightening flicking the skylights on and off and scorching retinas. The rain sheeted down, fighting for sound space with the crackle of an open fire.

I flicked my SNES on, and began working through the game, line after line of dialogue checked off on my 58-odd pages of poorly translated Japanese text print-off; the only treasure map going for this journey.

It was the kind of painstaking endeavour no-one would attempt these days but the effort, despite its stuttering, sometimes confusing rewards, was totally worth it. Bahamut lagoon is a wonderful game, its breadth and depth of gameplay only recently surpassed by Nippon Ichi’s output.

The creative sky based setting is richer than Skies Of Arcadia’s, the glorious artwork as good as Amano’s, the underrated female-penned score more imaginative than Uematsu’s and the dragon feeding and breeding mechanic deeper than Fire Emblem.

The game follows Chrono Trigger’s marvellous lead of the silent protagonist- his character built up by his tiny animated reactions to the others and your own colouring in of the blanks using whatever palette you prefer. It’s a stark contrast to the irritating, pouting teenage angst of seemingly all Japanese RPG lead characters post Final Fantasy VIII.

The setting helped: I spent a week in an ancient, wind-battered, salt-stained house breathing in imagination, and for that week Bahamut Lagoon’s enchanting pixels and chip sounds came to life in those surroundings. Now I sometimes open the drawer, look at this game and remember stories.

Although it was only a couple of years after the game had been released in Japan, in that time the world of videogames had shifted its universal ideals from 2D to 3D and this game seemed as outdated as the dead butterfly. But this was the game that proved to me new games aren’t necessarily better than old games when everyone was furiously chasing the next big thing.

Here Square are demonstrating the future of Rpgs comprising almost full player control over team make-up and extreme levels of micromanagement. The fact that the game is complimented with a rip-roaring and extremely enjoyable story makes it one of the most compelling adventure titles since Final Fantasy 6.

A few years later Edge introduced a new one-page Retrotest section in the back of the magazine. The idea was that each month a seminal title from the past was reviewed as if it were a contemporary release. It was only a short lived item- swept away when the new editorial team arrived, but I was able to convince features editor Mark Walbank to let me review Bahamut for it, so, in a tiny way, I returned its favour.

Nine out of Ten

Click here to download a now fully translated ROM of Bahamut Lagoon for play with SNES emulators

I was on holiday in Japan last year. We had spent a week in Tokyo then had moved down to Osaka and were about to head on to the ancient capital Kyoto. Each day was a wonderful mix of slurping down Shinto temples, taking evening residency in karaoke hotels and propping up DDR machines next to the local arcade brigade.

I’d been trying to combine some work with the pleasures of a stuffing a suitcase with wonderful and/or rare videogames and so had taken a camera to do some filming for a cover-mount disk commission.

On the way out of Osaka we rounded a corner and saw this huge impromptu gathering of breakdancers. Orthodox hip-hop was blasting from a sizeable PA and there were chairs set up for dancers to collapse on and spectators to critique from. I slipped the camera out and started filming what was an extraordinary and quite unexpected scene. Obviously, all the dancers played up to the camera and despite flicked-eyes and turnhead cool, secretly snatched glances at me mid-moves as I ran around, shaky-handed, capturing their best poses.

A couple of segments made it into the edit I did for the Xbox World cover disk and then, thanks to the magic of Future’s “we own any material you submit to us and can use it any which way we want for eternity without telling you” policy, a couple of the dancers appear in scene setting of this month’s Edge cover-mount disk of TGS (the around-Tokyo section).

It’s a pretty basic edit done on imovie as I didn’t own Final Cut at the time but it’s fun and the pudgy guy in the suit will grab your eyes and probably won’t let go – at least he did with me.

(Click the photo below to see the quicktime movie)

Edge magazine. January 2005. E145.

When we last spoke to Yoshinhori Kitase for our ‘making of Final Fantasy VII’ (E123), the idea of a sequel to modern videogaming’s most significant RPG seemed formative to the point of disqualifying even the most spurious conjecture. But here we are, two years, one box office suicide and one celebrity RPG marriage down the line, sitting with Kitase’s co-producer Shinji Hashimoto to discuss not only the jump that led to the sequel, Advent Children, but also to witness a preview of the cross-media leap back into the world of the CGI film.

Best known for his role as Kingdom Hearts producer, Hashimoto began his career as a CGI artist on modern anime’s origin of point, Akira. But having worked on sales for the original FFVII he well understands the severity and concerns of his work here: “We left the ending to FFVII deliberately open to allow for the audience to draw their own conclusions. But it certainly took a fair bit of courage to go on record defining what happened two years later for this film.”

A bit of courage may be something of an understatement as, in the 25 minute preview, we witness the return of the full character roster from secondary walk-ons Reno, Rufus, and Marlene through all the central characters up to, perhaps most confusingly for plot-watchers, a glimpse (and voice credit) of the instantly recognisable silver-haired antagonist himself: Sephiroth.

On one-hand Advent Children is everything that Square’s first, and, post-release, presumed last feature should have been. “The thought process behind this film is quite different to that of The Spirits Within,” explains Hashimoto. “With that we were creating a feature film for the young or old, fan or newcomer but here we are focusing on something specifically for FFVII fans – a complete works DVD released sequel. We have a positive attitude to this whole different strategy and feel it’s a lot more targeted.”

Indeed, its success is staked on the fact the film builds upon an impressive, much-loved and well-recognised universe rather than creating a new abstract world merely echoing the brand’s themes. Similarly it features some of the most identifiable videogame characters from a unique IP and, in daring to explain some of FFVII’s climactic mysteries, it encourages the speculation and grass roots internet-based peer marketing that 2001’s film never achieved.

On screen, the action is fast paced, technically impressive and packs a sharp impact punch, even for a post-Matrix generation with CGI ennui. Aurally, the lush orchestration will be deeply evocative for any one of the millions of gamers who sampled its original programmed form. Indeed, Square-Enix has been careful to maintain team coherency. “The core personnel that worked on the original are all still in place so I am certainly not worried about maintaining the feel and mythology of the Final Fantasy universe,” enthuses Hashimoto. “Certainly having Nobuo (Uematsu) on board musically helps to ground the viewing into the atmosphere that the game produced.” The film also neatly dovetails into the forthcoming 3rd person shooter focused on hidden character, Vincent Valentine, aiding cross promotion and forcibly hauling the world of film and videogames a little closer, at least in marketing potential.

But on the other hand these are all the self same facets that will restrict it. The film doesn’t prefer intimate knowledge of a niche, seven-year-old slice of almost obsolete media so much as demand it. Even the concise introductory synopsis will not adequately paper over the information cracks in a newcomer’s mind and, even for those who completed the game, seven years is a long time to expect anything more than a cursory remembrance of characterisation.

But Kitase and Hashimoto are demanding much from their viewers as they exposit themes such as Cloud’s guilt for his part in the death of Aerith. Likewise, the ecological (the world and humanity share the same ‘life-stream) and sociological concerns (Cloud’s overarching quest for absolution through saving orphans), while worthy and interesting to the keenest fans, are dangerously over complicated by abstract (and new) terminology.

Advent Children seemingly has no mainstream aspirations and, despite the superficial artistic similarities between this film and The Spirit’s Within, there has, in reality, been an about-turn: a kind of ideological repentance. Whereas the precursor was deliberately etched onto a blank canvas merely stamped with FF’s weightily branding, this film is fundamentally targeted to the microcosm of fandom. Artistically this will surely result in a worthier, more coherent product synergy between Square-Enix’s game and film output but whether the financial gamble will pay off this time is far from assured.

However, for Hashimoto and, implicitly, the wider Square-Enix plan for company evolution, success or failure of this product seems irrelevant to the long-term drive for videogame and film’s cross-pollination: “As creators you have to keep challenging yourselves. We love to create beautiful images, so for our company, we’re going to keep pushing the into both film and videogame media.” The inference being then that this brainchild is perhaps just the advent to a new concept of convergence altogether.

Lost in translation
(Box-out cut from final piece)

Interviews involving a translator are inherently three way transactions with communication as their tender. As words change minds they are often refitted for each agenda, nuances rearranged and inflexions missed. In illustration, an aside to long term Final Fantasy and Advent Children composer, Nobuo Uematasu, inquiring as to which is his favourite FF soundtrack, ventures an English language reply: “nine”. Jumping in, our translator, in a moment of unwitting Germanic awareness translates: “he favours none of them”. Add in typical Japanese diplomacy and gaijin curveballs such as ‘who has final say over what happens in the Final Fantasy universe since vice-president (and brand originator) Hironobo Sakaguchi’s resignation as VP, are neatly batted away.

After something of a false start I finished Shadow of the Colossus last night. The game is still weighing heavy on my heart which makes it hard to write about – like when you just get back from an amazing holiday and you know there’s no way you can communicate the experience to those who stayed at home, and the rest of the world is summarily and violently divided into those who have been and those who have not.

Just sixteen fights with giants make up the whole game.

I think it was Treasure who first used the boss game mechanic on the Megadrive’s Alien Soldier. Hearsay or some long-forgotten interview reckons that the designers looked at the adrenaline graph of a player’s videogame experience and concluded the biggest buzz came from the boss fight: so they made a game bursting its seams with just those.

All well and good if you’re Treasure and can wheel out ten thousand new, inventive and subversive ways to build a harrowing but compelling monster, but harder for most developers used to trotting out lines of grunts as far as the eye can be bothered before their endgame set-piece.

But zoom out and it becomes clear that Alien Soldier wasn’t that alien an idea to videogames after all. Essentially what Treasure did was to rip out the Punch-Out boxing game mechanic of a finite set of sequential and increasingly hard one-on-one fights, and apply it to the sci-fi side-scrolling shooter genre.

So perhaps you could say that Fumito Ueda has taken the same idea and here levered it into a fairy-tale land of diving meadows, reeds and giants. Perhaps the best way to understand Shadow of the Colossus, then, is Alien Soldier meets Punch-Out meets Grimm.

It’s not that ridiculous a concoction. Take away the fluttering doves and soaring hawks and the craggy cliffs and the swelling orchestra and the diluted greens and chattering trees and meandering promise and simply pin down the gameplay with words and you have: sixteen enemies; each which must be taken down in a set order; each one making incremental demands upon the player’s tool kit of moves and techniques until all are conquered and you are left, in simple terms, the winner.

It’s not a million Nintendogs from Punch Out is it? Sure, the form and flair are different; but it’s still essentially the same drink poured into a different glass.

But when you’re in Shadow, playing hide-and-seek with a rock-hewn lion or being flung through the sky as you cling to a Colossus’s fist, scenery blurring and fizzing and disorientating, your faithful horse whinnying a hundred metres below, it feels like the only glass that ever mattered. There’s just so much soul you’re either wooed, besotted or just overwhelmed.

The coherency is such that you could probably glance at a 10 by 10 pixel screenshot of Ueda’s world and, from such a small visual cue, immediately smell the emotions it awoke in you. But it’s ironic that, with so much soul on its virtual wind, this is a ghost land. You can only fight the next colossus in line: you can’t pick and choose and, other than the eponymous giants, there are only a few lizards and birds to cross your path and the booming voice of a God clueing you in and spurring you on to victory.

The gameplay is just one side of the coin’s magic. Sure you can plot the game-flow in two sentences but to create a world of such vision and coherency clearly took a warehouse of sketchpads, feverish mouse-clicks and sleepless tears. Without SCEI’s art, motion and vision, Shadow of the Colossus is just a 3D Punch Out. Sixteen boxers you must dodge and weave around to find their partcular Achille’s heel. Next.

But encased in this visual mythology, it’s completely and utterly essential playing and shows how stale but solid gameplay can be fresher than the future if you nail the form and function.

One-on-one fighters are tough to review entertainingly, especially so when Japanese, 2D and based on the Street Fighter mechanic that’s so deeply etched on their typically hard-nosed fans. Still, I had played Rumble Fish a fair amount on Atomiswave in the arcade and so felt qualified to tackle this review and I think on balance it worked out well, even if I had to stow most of the mechanic dissection in the box-out

Edge magazine May 2005.

Soul. That indefinable something that can take a good videogame and make it classic is all the more desirable in the 2D fighter genre, where the technicalities of the genre are so deeply etched and established. It’s not just a case of finding a dragon punch-esque glove to perfectly fit a quarter turn hand. Neither is it simply about synergising instantly immemorial characters with animation fluid enough to allow player and avatar to act as one. Nor is it only a case of assimilating the special move systems of benchmark titles that have gone before, distilling and refining until you have a mechanic that is at once unique and yet familiar. The 2D fighting soul is more than the sum of these parts. But, in a genre based on the passions of primeval engagement, a game without soul will fast become a game without followers.

On paper, Rumble Fish, Sammy’s latest attempt to forge a new fighting series in the wake of Guilty Gear’s own distinctive and, crucially, ongoing popularity, should succeed. Combos and special moves trip off the controller with ease for the accomplished Street Fighter or King of Fighters player. The move lists, while perhaps a little undernourished, are varied enough, striking a good balance of long and short range attacks. Smooth-flowing showboating juggle combos will come quickly to the skilful or practised and there’s a diverse, if unremarkable character roster. The novel approach to the special gauge is interesting and yet straightforward enough to get to inspire commitment to uncovering its intricacies.

But, after prolonged play these technical plans fail to conjure real passion. The marionette approach to animation, whereby limbs appear superimposed onto torsos, creates an unnecessary visual distinction between player and avatar. While it allows graphical gimmicks, such as clothes to tear and rip during play, it’s a constant reminder you are controlling a puppet; there is no illusion of amalgamation. This is exacerbated by an occasional slight delay in the input cause and output effect of the controls. While the pause is largely only split second, it further undermines that all-important relationship between a player and their character where a split second can win or lose a fight.

2d fighters were born in the arcades and, of all genres, they retain this DNA most overtly. Rumble fish has largely failed to set the viciously critical arcade scene alight. On paper, it’s hard to explain exactly why. As the pool of 2d fighter fans drys up maybe it’s a case of survival of the fittest. There’s no room for competent titles curiously lacking in soul: here more than anywhere that’s the one thing they need for immortality.

Six out of ten

Special delivery

Rumble Fish’s special gauge is innovative, working on three levels. Attack moves fill an offensive gauge that runs from left to right along the bottom the screen. When this fills you can trigger a typically exuberant special attack. Conversely, defence moves and blocks will slowly see a defensive gauge filled which, when full, allows a character’s defensive special to be performed. If you wait until both gauges are simultaneously full then you have the option of the character’s critical special– the most powerful move in the arsenal. The system works fairly well but is surprisingly restrictive forcing players to use the particular move they’ve been powering up rather than allowing the choice players are used to in its competitors.

Sometimes art and life really don’t mix too well. It was a stupid thing to do but last night I decided to embark upon what I’m sure is going to be the sweetest and most magical of journeys, Playstation 2’s fluttering swansong, Shadow of the Colossus.

I tried to savour the rolling vistas and soaring violins, retinas straining at the glorious draw distance, trying to work out what delightful promises them-there misty hills were whispering for my adventure.

I tried to ride my black horse across the washed-out green grass of a thousand Japanese programming wunderkinds, mane flicking in the wind, pixels and suspended disbelief kissing synapses into a tussle of passionate wellbeing.

I tried, but repeatedly my screaming baby and nagging wife shoved my head through the plate glass of reality.

Don’t get me wrong, it was my fault: good friends coming round for an evening meal that needed cooking, infant that needed bathing and house that needed tidying; clearly not the best time to start something beautiful. But, come on, this is the sequel to Ico for goodness’ sake. Surely life could offer me a window to climb out for half an hour just this once?

Ico, Shadow’s four-year-old father, sticks out like a gilded thumb amongst the PS2’s ocean of identikit JRPGs and licenses. Fumito Ueda’s masterpiece of grace fast became the title onto which cognoscenti’ gamers heaped their hope for mainstream critical acceptance.

It’s lush dreamlike castle backdropped the most eloquent of gameplay dynamics whereby you, a young Viking-helmeted boy had to take a trapped princess by the hand and lead her from captivity as the wind of her esoteric queen captor whistled and sneered over ramparts and through vines around you.

Naturally, the game sold next to nothing and, where mainstream critics did nibble, they found the experience too difficult and too wrapped in the unspoken presumed language of gameplay, to properly unravel.

Still, those who loved games knew and found another place to both pin their hobby’s justifications and reminisce. Ico’s a magical place and it’s memories fade slowly, so, naturally, excitement for it’s sequel Shadow of the Colossus has swelled and buffeted emotions with each new piece of footage; the visual hyperbole of the skyscraper-high plodding rock colossi inspiring at once wonder and slack-jawed devotion.

I missed most of the introduction yesterday: a ten minute sequence surely pored over by the design team as a way to gently and smoothly lower the player’s consciousness into their world. Instead I gobbled it down staccato style, batting away the noises and distractions of 6:00 p.m. lifestyle in my household.

So, when I finally got control of my character, and climbed onto my horse I had no idea where I was meant to be going or what I was meant to be doing.

I rode through a rustling forest, sunlight speckling and dancing and promising; then I rode over a sheer cliff onto expansive plains, sunlight beating and sheeting and promising; then I rode down into a echoing valley, sunlight shading and cooling and promising. I saw a few lizards scuttle up tree trunks but no giants on the horizons. All the while, outside the bubble, questions and commands: clean this, make that, dress her.

Eventually I had to look to gamefaqs. Seriously. Gamefaqs. I had no choice: I’d done nothing, found no-one, spoken silence, simply lost in Ueda’s imagination without purpose and with only a clutch of screenshots and a couple of magazine brochures to point to what was meant to come but hadn’t.

It turns out, I’d looked away when directed to hold my sword high in the castle towards the sun and follow the reflected beam. I retraced my horse steps to the beginning and then followed the light to a cliff side. I began scaling the rocky walls, Ico’s muscle memory rushing back to the front of my brain.

Ding-dong. Friends arrived, dinner was served, the enveloping sense of purpose dissipated. The evening went on was great, of course, but I’m an idiot to not have waited. Forty minutes flitting between two worlds, one of pixels and promise one of atoms and angst. But I just couldn’t wait and, having briefly tasted, can’t wait for tonight to actually settle onto the gameplay rails.

I guess videogames are never truly played in an avalon-esque bubble of isolation from this world and, I guess I’ve got some adjusting to being a parent to do.

This was the first piece of writing I did for Edge magazine and was featured in the first (and best) of their special editions, Edge Retro. I originally called the feature Not just for Christmas but this got changed: I guess the headline was too long – or perhaps too obscure. Either way this was the first time videogame collecting was properly examined in the non-fanzine specialist press and I’m still pleased with how the article (of which this is just the first part) reads today. The magazine was structured exactly like the modern day Edge (of the time) and is still the best retro magazine I’ve seen published. There was talk at the time of making it quarterly but perhaps it didn’t make enough money or was just too labour intensive…an enormous shame

Edge presents: Retro. Christmas 2002

Rare books, rare coins, rare stamps, rare records. Just some of the sub-industries that attract variously salivation or scorn from those who are respectively in or out of ‘the know’. The auction house half-truth cliché that an item is worth what someone is willing to pay is beginning to ring true for the games market. Week by week the market watchers see collectible games further edge their way into the spending stratosphere.

It is no surprise really. There is a universal truth that the games industry would rather pretend doesn’t exist: Great gameplay is timeless. Just as Hollywood would have us believe its latest spawn improve indescribably on their forefathers, so the gaming billboards of the world declare, “new games are better”. Well, yes and no. Evolution is a good thing but basic primal fun never really changes- just the places we find it.

Each generation of gamers has seen more and more videogames so it’s getting harder to pull the wool over their globally-wise eyes. For every Gungrave there’s a Gunstar Heroes. Whilst Gungrave will net tens of thousands of dollars, fill as many second hand bargain bins and produce even more dissatisfied customers, Gunstar Heroes will make 40p for the local Oxfam and someone very happy. Great gameplay is timeless.

But this isn’t the closing speech at the trial of retrogames. We’re looking at the collectors market- a peculiar yet immensely powerful offshoot of retrogaming. For what collectors want to buy influences what retrogamers want to play. But before we dive in attempting to understand the collector, we must understand that gameplay endures. And that’s why players want to bottle it. And bottles have always been important.

Indeed, it’s a very different type of gamer who boots up Mame to get their 80s Defender fix compared to the collector hunts down the original cab and begins a restoration. Almost all collectors are retrogamers, but not all retrogamers are collectors.

It’s an important distinction that’s scarcely mentioned. The collectors view emulator propagators as the Capulets view the Montagues. They are different breeds, fiercely distinct but tied to each other by virtue of their passion. Romeos are frowned upon. For the collector sub-species, the thrill is in the hunt for the mint-boxed cartridge that just might be at the next boot sale or on ebay this week. The completist gamers value their packaging more than their graphical frippery. It’s much harder to empathise and enthuse with the past when you have no bottle, just a pc file marked Romz.

To be a competent collector you need to be feverishly enthusiastic, comprehensively knowledgeable and perhaps a little worryingly obsessive. However, Toy Story’s parody of the money hungry toy collector is (in most cases) unfair when applied to the games collector. Most collectors are, or were, fundamentally gamers, not moneymakers. Edge looks at some of the gamers who are helping to forge a new industry with an age-old phenomenon by using their retroactive spending.

I’ve been greatly enjoying Namco’s Taiko no Tatsujin on PSP this month (which along with Everybody’s Golf and emulation is currently the best reason to own the handheld) so I thought I’d post up my review of its grandfather on PS2. There have since been a raft of sequels completely unchanged from one iteration to the next (at least Konami has attempted some sequential invention with DDR). Nonetheless, it’s a good enough idea to keep its appeal and the seven was wholly justified. The peripheral attracted quite a lot of attention when I took it in to do grabs at the Edge office as this was long before Donkey Konga

Edge magazine. E121. March 2003

One by one the Japanese Rhythm Action developers tick off the various instruments they have recreated in plastic. The genre shows little sign of slowing down in Japanese arcades and the latest home port comes from Namco, a company perhaps looking to Konami profits and launching themselves at a departed bandwagon.

Taiko no Tatsujin (Drum expert), a game based on the practice of Kumi Daiko (Modern Taiko Drumming) first appeared in the arcades in 2000 and this debut is also the first in the series to wind its way onto the home console. The premise is well worn to genre fans: beat the drum in a variety of ways in time with screen indications to earn points and unlock additional songs. As per usual you will earn higher points for hitting the beat dead on, whilst being a little early or late will garner fewer points and missing the beat altogether a penalty. Should you fail to meet a predetermined quotient of accurate hits during the song its game over. The physical action is varied by virtue of mixing up standard hits with rim shots, drum rolls and staccato hits and by dividing the drum in two allowing for left and right directions. So far so samba. Indeed, we are at the stage now where the core gameplay of the genre is so defined that one’s enjoyment of any particular title depends entirely on one’s affinity with the peripheral.

That said- Namco’s Taiko drum (affectionately known as the TaTa-con) is well-constructed and sturdy. There is little danger of breaking drum skins here- a valid concern when attempting the higher difficulty settings. With 30 musical offerings to bang the drum to, ranging from Pomp and Circumstance to the theme from Klonoa 2, there is much to see here especially as each track is featured in three difficulty levels. Unfortunately the majority of the music is made up of current Japanese anime themes and hits and so the in-visual jokes will appeal to only the most dedicated cultural importer and for many the familiar classical pieces will initially be most enjoyable.

The difficulty is well paced and despite text heavy presentation the game is accessible to both the importer and casual gamer alike: important as the chances of this title and its peripheral finding their way into pal hands is slim. Ironically, given the extreme Japanese presentation, it’s an excellent title to introduce to non-gaming friends demonstrating again how the genre continually transcends cultures by virtue of its core universal gameplay.

Seven out of Ten

A review for the Danny Boyle directed catholicish film about two boys who stumble into riches and a deep moral dilemma. It was commissioned by an editor of one of the national religious papers via the PR company in charge of the film’s promotion. While on reflection this is an unremarkable film, it does touch on some interesting issues, particularly for this readership, and the review was weighted accordingly.

Looking into the boyish, angelic face of 8-year old Liverpudlian Damien (Alex Etel) as he discusses the finer points of heaven with an esoteric saint while sitting in a cardboard box ‘rocket’ at the side of a railway track, evil is furthest from our minds. But, as the title stealthily suggests, this film, exploring what happens when a misappropriated bag stuffed with stolen bank notes falls into the hands of two pre-teens, concerns just that: the root of all evil.

The money in question (£229, 370 to be exact– but that would never have made a snappy title) is thrown from a speeding train onto Damien’s boxed hideaway and quickly transpires to be a lost element of an otherwise successful train robbery. A moral dilemma speeds to the surface as Damien and his elder brother, Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) ponder what to do with their newfound wealth. Damien, believing it to be a gift from God with which he can help the poor, looks to the appearance in his bedroom of famous saints through the ages for guidance as to where to dole out the notes while the more capitalistic-minded Anthony plots to spend and hoard in equal measure.

Both boys ethically tussle with each other in a gentle manner until their single parent father is roped into the secret and they then play the voices of good and evil hovering over his shoulders. The moral quagmire is deepened by the fact the sterling notes were in transit to be destroyed just a few days before they became worthless at the hands of Britain’s switching to the Euro. Ostensibly then no-one but the furnace has been stolen from. All the while the central characters get caught in this swirl of ethical greyness, the criminal who lost the bag closes in on its whereabouts shunting the story along as he does so.

Despite a largely ludicrous plot line that turns on a set of unlikeliest circumstances the whole is pleasingly un-Hollywood and so rooted in gritty everyday reality that it avoids the saccharine absurdity of Love Actually et al. Indeed the unlikely partnership of Scouse screenwriter Frank Cottrel Boyce (described by esteemed Chicago Times critic as “the most original and versatile screenwriter in Britain”) with Director Danny Boyle, of edgy Trainspotting and 28 Days Later fame, conspires to produce a deeply interesting and leftfield family film untouched by Hollywood’s compromising millions.

Thematically, it’s a film that examines deep Christian conundrums regarding the poor, distribution of wealth and how to give with true integrity, while functioning and existing within a western capitalist society. Perhaps unwittingly, it unpicks many of the moral dilemmas that adults face trying to connect with global as well as local poverty and strikes a symphonic chord with those engaging with the make Poverty History campaign.

Ultimately, Damien, in his pure and endearing, yet at once wise naivety, decides that money really does makes things far more complicated and takes the dramatic and cleansing step of burning the cash. The film closes with an ambiguously fact/ fiction sequence where he and his family take off in his cardboard rocket, and visit a third-world community where a well has been built for just £50. It’s clear at the denouement that Damien is by far the richest of the lot and, mercifully, Boyle et al have led us to conclusion artfully, sidestepping the clichéd and twee. This is a film that speaks directly into our lives and the decisions we make by way of exaggerating the facts and scenarios: the essence of deep, life-enriching and challenging cinema.

The new Sigur Ros album.

I like the way it’s like a little girl is playing a Susumu Yokota melody on a wind up music box standing alone in her bedroom while an alien bleeds his fingers on guitar strings as he tears chords through a skyscraper high Marshall stack so loud it can be heard in space while a drummer pounds a 12 foot cymbal with an iron hammer swung from behind her head while an angelic 35-year-old choir boy sings with faltering falsetto as his voice breaks in an empty cathedral.

It’s the kind of music that makes me want to forgive.