It was a rather big week in gaming, this last one in February—mostly because we got Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, and everyone came out of the woodwork to spout their hottest take and spiciest opinion about the Square Enix RPG. Is Cid redeemed? Is Aerith a goat lady? Is jank good?
It wasn’t all FF7 all the time: We also had some things to say about third-person shooter Helldivers 2, this week, because we’re a well-rounded bunch. Click through to see our most opinionated stories of the week.
2024’s most anticipated game is finally here, and the further adventures of Cloud Strife and his besties has launched on PS5. Final Fantasy VII Rebirthexpands and enhances the middle section of the 1997 classic, and there’s a big, beautiful world to see. If you’re looking to spend a few dozen hours in Square Enix’s…
It can be tough figuring out how to manage everything Persona 3 Reload throws at you. Between school life, social life, and fighting demonic shadows during the Dark Hour, your time in Gekkoukan High School is hectic, to say the least. So whether you’re returning to Persona 3 or playing it for the first time via the brand-new remake, here are some tips for how to get the most out of every day on the game’s calendar. — Kenneth Shepard
It’s hard to properly review Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and not just because it’s the kind of AAA release most people already know will hold a certain level of quality.
To be sure, it is an amazing game. It looks and plays like a top-of-the-line offering meant for current-gen hardware, and it can effortlessly suck you into its story, gameplay, and overall experience for dozens of hours on end.
But beyond that, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is such a lovingly crafted game that it’s impossible not to get sucked into the passion that exudes from its every pore. The team at Square Enix wanted to deliver a second act in their Final Fantasy VII Remake series that raised the bar even further than where the first game set it, and in almost every regard, they succeeded.
The Price of Defying Fate
Image Credit: Square Enix
For starters, the game doesn’t skimp on its narrative presentation. Picking up shortly after the end of FFVII Remake, it sees Cloud and the gang in hot pursuit of Sephiroth as they explore the outside world. While it might not actively be under the shadow of Shinra and its malevolent overlords, it’s still plenty dangerous; especially when Cloud’s deteriorating mental state starts to rear its head thanks to Sephiroth’s influence.
Simultaneously, an entirely new plot plays out from Zack Fair’s point of view. Having survived his fateful confrontation with the Shinra forces that pursued him and Cloud, he returns to Midgar to find Aerith in critical condition and the rest of the party presumed dead after their confrontation with the Whispers on the outskirts of the city. Not only that, but a giant rift has opened above the city, ominously silent throughout all the chaos below.
Both these storylines interwine as the game progresses and drive it further towards its status as a reimagining instead of a straight Remake. It’s to the game’s benefit, and helps it stand apart from FFVII Remake as a worthwhile story to experience in its own right. I was just as enraptured by the tried and true scenes adapted from the original game as I was by the new elements, and was fully reeled in as the plot moved toward its crescendo.
The presentation only helped further the immersion. On the visuals front, the game is as stunning as its predecessor, and then some. Both the characters and the wider world pop with hyper-realistic beauty, and every given moment is a treat for the eyes.
In terms of audio, there’s just as much to enjoy. Every member of the voice cast gives it their all with heartfelt and impactful performances. The music accents everything from the action-packed cutscenes to the more serene exploration segments perfectly, and the sound design of explosive spells, clashing swords, and bestial roars helps to keep players enthralled by the experience all the more.
Combat Fit for a SOLDIER
Image Credit: Square Enix
But then, the real star of the show is the gameplay.
While most of the central mechanics are largely untouched from FF VII Remake, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth does tweak and refine them so that they’re easier than ever to use. Players can tweak their party layout at will and save presets to minimize time swapping out configurations, and the application of Skill Points is now done via a much more streamlined and easy-to-read sphere grid.
And all that’s on top of existing features. You have the ability to swap between party members for free control on the battlefield, and Materia is a breeze to equip, combine, and utilize across the many characters you can bring into battle. The gameplay is also still a blend of turn-based and action too, so there’s no need to worry about a loss of depth or engagement.
At the same time though, there are plenty of new bells and whistles that make the experience that much more enthralling. Key among them are the new Synergy Abilities in combat, which play off of the ATB gauge and the usage of multiple party members. For every spell, offensive ability, and technique you spend ATB charges with, you gain points toward a Synergy Ability that can be used against foes for massive damage; and, in some cases, a temporary buff to your character.
The only catch is that both characters have to meet the Synergy Point requirements, which motivates you to switch across multiple characters during a fight instead of sticking to one or two.
It’s a clever design choice, and it works perfectly with the existing systems. I spent plenty of time carefully swapping between party members until I was ready to unleash a Synergy ability against my opponent, and reveled in the bombastic techniques that were on par with the equally flashy Summons.
Variety Is the Spice of Life
Image Credit: Square Enix
And all of that is just the combat of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Outside of battles, there are an absurd number of mini games to take part in both for the main story and as fun distractions on the side, and I do mean absurd. There are shooting galleries, flight challenges, rhythm games, Chocobo races, and a fully fleshed-out card game known as Queen’s Blood that even has its own substory which plays out entirely in the background of the wider plot. And that’s just to name a few.
The wildest part of all, though, is that almost all of them are a blast to play. Each one feels fully fleshed out in a way that made me want to go back to them again and again, and I’d spent far more time than I needed to delving into each one to see the full breadth of what it offered.
An Open World of Repetition
Image Credit: Square Enix
The only criticism I can truly hold against Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is that its open world design feels padded early on.
Whereas FFVII Remake had several open-ended sandboxes for players to explore via the different sectors of Midgar, the sequel has different regions which are interconnected via an honest-to-goodness world ripe for exploration.
While there may be dozens of activities to carry out within a handful of different regions — and each has plenty of smaller locales to discover off the beaten path — most of those in the first few regions revolve around a select few mini games or scavenger hunts that are copy-pasted across every region. It doesn’t take long for them to become repetitive, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t forgo most of the ones that weren’t absolutely necessary to my progression.
Which is a shame, because there are some genuinely good examples of open world side content hidden among these bad apples. For every Ubisoft-style tower I had to climb to illuminate points of interest on the map, there were side quests with whimsical premises like sentient Fort Condor pieces who needed my help to save their commander. Each identical rhythm game offered by Life Stream Crystals was matched by special battles with unique variants of a region’s fiends, and led to challenging duels with rarer mini bosses.
The game does throw some much-needed twists into this formula in the later regions, so it’s at least not an issue that persists long-term. Still, though, it’s unfortunate that the game makes such a bad first impression with what players can expect from the content of its larger settings.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is, for all intents and purposes, a phenomenal second act in the Remake series. Though it’s open world design isn’t perfect, the game is finely honed in every other area and provides as luxurious of an experience as FF VII Remake did. It’s well worth a look for new and old fans alike, and is sure to keep everyone occupied while we wait for the conclusion to this reinvented epic.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Reviewer: Keenan McCall
Award: Editor’s Choice
Pros
Fantastic narrative and story
Welcome additions to the established gameplay formula
Creative side quests
Gorgeous graphics and phenomenal sound design
Cons
Open world elements can get repetitive
Release Date
Feb. 29, 2024
Copy provided by Publisher
About the author
Keenan McCall
Keenan has been a nerd from an early age, watching anime and playing games for as long as I can remember. Since obtaining a bachelor’s degree in journalism back in 2017, he has written thousands of articles covering gaming, animation, and entertainment topics galore.
Image: Kotaku / Xbox / Thomas Mucha / Lukasz Pawel Szczepanski (Shutterstock)
Over the February 3 weekend, reports from different outlets and insiders claimed that a number of big, Xbox exclusives—like Starfield and Gears of War—could possibly end up on PlayStation 5 in the near future. Once the news spread around the internet, the most Xbox-pilled users and creators began theorizing, denying, mourning, and ranting to those within their Church Of Xbox circle and beyond. Then, Xbox boss Phil Spencer posted a vague statement, seemingly confirming something was happening but the faithful would have to wait until next week to hear what. Perhaps he thought this would calm the masses. It didn’t. Instead, for some devoted Xbox fans, it was confirmation that the brand they worshiped was leaving them behind. And they aren’t taking it well (though some remain pretty chill about the prospect of Starfield coming to PS5). – Zack Zwiezen Read More
This week we’re going back to school,collecting Pals, and being reborn—that’s a lot of stuff to do without some tips. Palworld, the breakout hit from developer PocketPair, got a handful of major bug fixes that will make your creature-collecting a lot easier. And Atlus’ recent Persona 3 Reloadrelease means you’ll want to make sure you’re a Grade A student and a damn good friend—luckily we’re here to help you with all of that. The week also saw the surprise-debut of a Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth demo, and with progress carrying over to the main game, you’ll want to make sure you do everything you can with Sephiroth and company.
That’s why we’ve gathered the biggest, best, and most helpful Kotaku tips of the week, all in one spot. You’re welcome.
Ever since the launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake back in 2020, fans of the original have been wondering how the next installment of Square Enix’s reimagining of the landmark 1997 game would handle the many iconic setpiece moments, reveals, and twists yet to come. The Nibelheim Incident, which centers around Cloud’s consequential return to his hometown five years earlier, has been an especially fertile ground for speculation. The original game and its many spinoffs revisit this mission numerous times to show off the varying perspectives of the key players. It’s an overused analogy, but The Nibelheim Incident is essentially FF7’s equivalent of the Rashomon murder scene.With each slightly different retelling, we inch a little bit closer to the truth.
FF7‘s save-the-world story wasn’t revolutionary in 1997, and it certainly isn’t today. But the palpable sense that something is “off” with Cloud and his mentor-turned-nemesis Sephiroth elevates it into something far more memorable and enduring. For much of the game, the fate of the planet kinda takes a backseat to finding out what the deal is with these guys. At the same time, with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the developers at Square Enix face the daunting task of attracting newcomers to the second chapter of a trilogy, those who may primarily know Cloud and Sephiroth as cool badasses with fun hair from the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster.
So when I booted up the game at a recent media preview event, I was delighted to see that Chapter 1 of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth immediately begins with Cloud telling his version of what happened at Nibelheim. Rebirth throws you in at the deep end and delivers high stakes right up front—and it’s exactly what longtime fans want and newcomers need.
Sephiroth and Cloud ascend Mt. Nibel as jagged peaks loom ahead.Image: Square Enix
Déjà vu all over again
I’d played a smaller segment of this section at a preview event a few months back, but that slice was more combat- and traversal-focused. True to the original game, the full version of Rebirth’s Nibelheim incident is a slow burn, a cozy evening with friends winding down after the frantic escape from Midgar. Present-day Cloud narrates over this extended interactive sequence where you play as his younger self, and his storytelling is punctuated by interruptions from Barrett, Tifa, and Aerith. Many of these exchanges are taken beat-by-beat from the original game, and it’s nice to see them return here to inject some levity and sense of camaraderie into Cloud’s suspenseful and gloomy story.
Rebirth’s take on Nibelheim largely sticks to that of the original FF7. (Mostly.) The reason for Cloud and Sephy’s mission remains the same—they’re sent to investigate a malfunctioning mako reactor at Mt. Nibel, and deal with any monsters along the way. We get a clearer sense of Sephiroth’s renown and celebrity—we’re mostly told, not shown this in the original—as townsfolk breathlessly gossip about him and jostle for photos. As before, you get the chance to control Sephiroth in combat during the climb, and he’s absurdly strong and fun to play.
Ascending Mt. Nibel functions as a light tutorial for Rebirth’s new traversal mechanics, including jumping and climbing. It’s nothing complicated, but it does convey that Mt. Nibel is dangerous enough to require a guide’s assistance better than the original game did. Speaking of guides, we get quite a bit more of young Tifa in this section of Rebirth (Nibelheim is her hometown too, after all), complete with her adorable cowgirl outfit. And there are some very intriguing consequences of that, which I am not going to get into here.
On that note, Chapter 1 of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a veritable bonanza of jaw-dropping spoilers for folks who haven’t played the original game. Despite knowing exactly what was coming at certain moments, the impeccable visuals and environmental design blew me away. And, as was the case with Remake, when Rebirth’s soundtrack is firing on all cylinders, it’s the stuff of real-deal goosebumps on your arms. As the flames reach higher and the music shudders like a terrified heart, suddenly I’m 11 years old again, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to my older brother in front of a CRT with a skateboarding sticker on the side, unable to say anything but whoa.
Kalm is a far more charming and intricate city in Rebirth than the original game.Image: Square Enix
A whole new world
After Cloud gives his friends the rundown of what happened with Sephiroth in Nibelheim, we resume the present-tense story in the city of Kalm. And golly, what a glow-up. In 1997’s FF7, the town was little more than an RPG gas station—a place to pick up some potions, cheap equipment, and a quick snooze at the inn. There was never much reason to go back once you’d progressed to other places. This time around, its cobbled streets, overgrown flower boxes, and rabbit-warren layout ooze a tranquil charm that’s worthy of the name.
Cloud and his pals have a new slate of double and triple attacks this time around.Image: Square Enix
You won’t spend too long here in Rebirth either, but it does provide a chance to get acquainted with several new gameplay additions. The most notable of these are party relationships and party level, which allow you to strengthen your bond with your teammates through dialogue choices and optional activities. The original FF7 had a less fleshed-out version of this that culminated in the infamous Gold Saucer date, and it’s nice to see that the devs are finding new ways to let players spend more time with their favorite characters.
The innkeeper at Kalm will introduce you to Queen’s Blood, Rebirth’s answer to card games like Witcher 3‘s Gwent and FF8‘s Triple Triad. I can already tell loads of people are going to be utterly obsessed with this minigame, though I sadly am not one of them. (Happy for you guys, though!) This section also offers a brief rundown of skill trees, weapon upgrades, and item crafting. I remain unconvinced that Final Fantasy 7 needed a crafting system, and I didn’t find much occasion to use it during my demo. I can see how it may be useful for some optional fights later on, but I hope it’s more of a “take it or leave it” mechanic.
But we can’t stay in Kalm for long, and it’s soon time for our merry band of weirdos to hit the road in search of adventures, pocket money, and eventually Sephiroth. Rebirth’s version of the original game’s vast open world is bigger and more beautiful than I’d hoped, with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. You’ll gain access to both menu-based fast-travel and chocobos pretty much immediately after leaving Kalm, mercifully cutting down on the ponderous backtracking of the 1997 game. Instead of large swaths of empty space for random encounters, now there are small farms, hamlets, and ruins between cities and dungeons. This makes Rebirth’s open world feel like a natural expansion of scope rather than just a concession to the expectations of fans. After hitting up the Chocobo Farm, you’re free to explore for a while, but once you’re ready to return to the main story, a Ghost of Tsushima-esque green Mako trail will appear to nudge you toward your destination. It’s a thoughtful design choice that avoids the immersion-breaking “map game” vibes that have become a bit too commonplace in open-world design.
Holding down the basic attack button for Red XIII will allow him to do a continuous “Sonic spin” attack.Image: Square Enix
Naturally, once you get out into the big wide world, you’re gonna be doing some fighting. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth adds another layer to Remake’s real-time combat system, and I’m still not totally sure how I feel about it. You’ll have more than three party members to choose from at any given time, and each unique duo or trio can team up for a unique special attack. On paper, this sounds like Chrono Trigger, which is terrific. In practice, it kinda feels like one thing too many to keep track of. Remake’s combat had a satisfying cadence of managing cooldowns to pull off magic spells, heals, and special attacks. But in the early hours of Rebirth, even mundane fights have a noticeably stop-start feel to them. I’m hoping to settle into a flow eventually, but I’m also curious if this all might feel better in classic, turn-based mode instead. (Thankfully, it’s an on-the-fly toggle in the full game.) Quibbles aside, I’m still enjoying the heck out of the combat and the demo left me hungry for more. Pro tip: Red XIII’s strangely Sonic Spinball moveset is extremely fun to play.
The big question heading into Rebirth and its unnamed successor is: can it recapture—or even exceed—the magic of the original game? That remains to be seen. But, so far, the first three chapters are a helluva good sign for what’s to come.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth launches February 29 on PlayStation 5.
Were you bummed Final Fantasy VII Rebirth didn’t make an appearance? Well you’re not alone. Good news, though! On February 6, 2024, we’ll be treated to yet another State of Play showing, this time with a closer look at the upcoming second chapter of the Final Fantasy VII remake project.
And that wraps everything we saw at tonight’s State of Play. Which games are you most excited about?
It’s time for a second trip to Seattle in The Last of Us Part IIRemastered. Originally shipped in 2020, Part II amps up the scope of the series, as well as the violence. The result is a dynamic, stealthy survival horror romp that takes place decades after a world-ending pandemic. It can be a tough game to play, and Remastered also includes a new roguelike mode for those who want an even greater challenge. – Ari Notis Read More
Screenshot: Square Enix, James Lambert, Bethesda / Xbox, Naughty Dog / Kotaku, Image: Disney / Lucasfilm
After a couple sleepy weeks, the gaming hype train of 2024 is finally moving at full steam. We saw the first major showcase of the year with Xbox’s Developer Direct, dug into The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and oogled MachineGames flamin’ hot digital dupe of ‘80s Harrison Ford. These are the week’s most important previews, reviews, and takes.
As Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion enters its final content stretch ahead of Dawntrail’s highly-anticipated release this summer, Yoshi-P and his team at Square Enix have decided to commemorate the legacy of the decade-long arc of Hydaelyn and Zodiark with yet another incredibly impressive statue for players to collect. Furnished once again by the adept hands of those at Meister Quality, this bust features none other than Zodiark and Hydaelyn themselves, the two all-powerful entities at the center of the epic clash between the esteemed Warrior of Light and the Ascians.
As amazing as it looks in the photos on Square Enix’s product page, and as surreal as it feels to potentially get the last noteworthy piece of merchandise from Endwalker, there seems to be hesitant divide amongst the player base over it. One would initially think it’s entirely over the very hefty price tag of $360 USD (before taxes and shipping), which makes it the priciest FFXIV statue released to date. The hilarious irony of these figures is that they’re often referred to by the game’s community as “expensive emotes with a free statue included”, because the Meister Quality statues always come with an exclusive in-game emote as a bonus for ordering it.
Image Source: Square Enix
Hands down probably the most popular example of this, which actually ties in to the truth behind the player divide over the newest statue, is the “Omega Simulations” emotes that were obtained when purchasing the Meister Quality Omega figure back in late 2020. This statue became the most infamous in XIV’s entire lineup (which dates back to Shiva in ‘A Realm Reborn’), for both good and bad reasons.
First off, the design of the statue itself was an immediate hit among fans, who clamored to the Square Enix merch website to get their pre-orders. It cost $229.00 USD, which was indeed costly but the quality of the statue seemed entirely convincing and justified for many. Not only that, but it came with a pair of very attractive in-game emotes that allows players to have their characters mimic the classic poses of both Omega-M and F from the iconic Omega raids released during the Stormblood expansion.
Not only are they flashy and stylish, the emotes are “persistent”, meaning that they don’t end until the player moves their character. On top of being a very rare type of emote, this made for some very enticing new afk poses that had people floating midair all over the place from Limsa Lominsa to Eulmore.
However, while the emotes were an absolute hit with the community and remain some of the best ever released for the game, the same surprisingly couldn’t be said for the statue itself.
Image Source: Reddit via Twinfinite
Those who were a part of the initial pre-order wave for the Omega statue, and were undoubtedly thrilled when their delivery finally came, instead found themselves saddled with a physical product that didn’t remotely meet expectations. While other statues such as Shiva and Ultima the High Seraph all came out as exquisitely fantastic as intended, Omega fell far, far short.
As pointed out by these photos from ‘tuxed0mat’ on Reddit, the focal point of the problem (as seen above), was the facial design. While the initial product photos from Square Enix depicted pristine expressions of the characters, the final result was something borderline horrific, particularly from the view of anyone who collects figures like these. People took to Reddit and other forms of social media to show what they had paid over two hundred dollars for, which turned out to be crudely drawn at best, something you’d sooner see on a $30-40 dollar figure.
It was a first if there ever was one, and the avalanche-level backlash prompted a thorough and sincere apology from Yoshi-P and Square Enix for the severe lack of proper quality control over this particular figure in the XIV series. To make up for it, they sent a replacement statue to everyone who had initially placed an order at no extra cost. However, many of those who received their replacements still complained that the original problems still weren’t fixed, as the facial design was slightly better, but still didn’t justify the cost.
Image Source: Square Enix
This brings us back to the newly released Zodiark-Hydaelyn statue, which went up for pre-order late last week. Along with its record-breaking $359.99 price tag, it includes yet another exclusive in-game emote called ‘Sundering’ (i.e. – Ballroom Etiquette – Apocalyptic Charades).
This allows your character to wield the sword brandished by Hydaelyn herself in an incredibly flashy show of, well, sundering strength, before floating back down and hovering with the sword in hand. In fact, it’s actually quite similar to the Omega emotes of yore. However, in a very sad turn of events, this emote is strangely not a “persistent” one, as your character simply drops back to the ground afterward. What the heck, Yoshi-P??
Not only that, this particular emote is NOT account-wide for some reason, which understandably has people absolutely baffled. That is a first for this type of product, and we do hope it doesn’t set a precedent going forward with figures released for Dawntrail.
Beyond that, however, the main source of hesitation expressed among players on Reddit comes from the sticker shock mixed with the proverbial burn caused by the Omega statue catastrophe. With a more than $100 increase in price, some people are wringing their hands on whether to pull the trigger this time. The statue itself is a nearly foot-tall statement piece, there’s no doubt about that.
There’s apparently still plenty of interest regardless, as the statue has actually since sold out on Square Enix’s US website. As of this writing, it’s still available for pre-order for those in the UK.
The statue is due to ship for everyone just under a couple months from now in March, so we’ll see at that point if the fears are justified, or if opening up the wallet that wide is well worth it.
About the author
Stephanie Watel
Stephanie Watel is a freelance writer for Twinfinite. Stephanie has been with the site for a few months, and in the games media industry for about a year. Stephanie typically covers the latest news and a variety of gaming guides for the site, and loves gardening and being the bird lady of the neighborhood. She has a BA in Writing from Pace University in NY.
The announcement that Nintendo Switch Online’s Game Boy Advance range is to receive RPGs Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age is incredibly welcome news. But there are still some absolutely colossal gaps, some all-time great GBA games that we’d love to play on our Switches. Nintendo! Hear our pleas!
Until very recently, I’d thought that Alan Wake 2 would reside in the #2 slot here, while Tears of the Kingdom would remain my personal game of the year. However, a chance encounter recently with writer Cole Kronman (who wrote this great piece on Xenogears and the games of Tetsuya Takahashi for us) helped me clarify my own feelings. I realized that for me, these two games are in close conversation with each other, strange mirrors of each other’s greatness, and that together, they define the best that 2023’s games had to offer in my mind. I’m not going to spoil plot points for either game, but to engage with why and how this is the case, I need to mention a crucial line of dialogue from the end of Alan Wake 2, one that mirrors the first game’s climactic mic drop of “It’s not a lake, it’s an ocean.” If you haven’t yet finished Alan Wake 2 and want to discover this line for yourself, turn back now.
In the final moments of Alan Wake 2 (and potentially earlier, depending on how thorough you are in exploring and absorbing Remedy’s metaphysical horror odyssey), a character says, “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” Alan Wake 2 explores the difficulty and anguish many artists find in the creative process, the way it can sometimes feel like you’re just banging your head against the wall and not making a damn bit of progress, seeing no way out whatsoever as that blank page continues to taunt you.
And yet, sometimes at least, a way out does eventually reveal itself. Sometimes, after we’ve been spinning our wheels for what feels like forever, something in our subconscious will finally crack, a bit of light will shine through, and we will see, at long last, a path forward, knowing that we had to go through all of that internal turmoil to find our way out. What felt like a pointless, exhausting, excruciating loop was in fact a spiral all along. Before spotlighting this at the end by having a character speak the line, Alan Wake 2 hides this idea in plain sight, repeatedly putting you in environments that feel like loops that you have no choice but to run through again and again. Eventually, your persistence pays off, something suddenly changes, and a way out reveals itself. You thought you were going in circles but you were actually moving forward all along; it just took a lot of energy and grit to see that.
I don’t have any particular insight into what the struggle to get Alan Wake 2 made was like for creative director Sam Lake and the other folks at Remedy, but it’s no secret that this is a game the studio had been hoping to make for a very long time. I have to imagine that at times, the setbacks and struggles were crushing, that they felt like defeat. And yet, it’s undeniable that if Remedy had been able to make a sequel to 2010’s Alan Wake some 10 or six years ago, it would not be the game that it is today. Alan Wake 2 is extraordinary in no small part because it is a game that took 13 years to get made, and because, in its creative energy, you can feel the restless struggle, the accumulation of ideas, the desperate search for a way out. Alan Wake 2 is about many things, but perhaps none of them is more crucial to its identity than being about the struggle to make Alan Wake 2.
It was a big week for the scantily clad at Kotaku this week, with both GTA 6 and Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth giving players plenty of skin. We’re also feeling veryexcited about the new Fallout show, but decidedly less enthusiastic about the minimal focus on the actual awards at this week’s Game Awards.
Grand Theft Auto 6 Comments: A Dramatic Reading
These are the week’s most interesting perspectives on the wild, wonderful, and sometimes weird world of video game news.
Grand Theft Auto 6 looks gorgeous. Unless its debut trailer this week was faked, it might end up being one of the best-looking games of this console generation when it comes out in 2025. By that time, my Xbox Series S will be five years old. I shudder to think of that sleek little white box trying to play Rockstar Games’ latest open-world blockbuster. – Ethan Gach Read More
I’ve played about six hours of Ubisoft’s new Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandoraand my big takeaway is that Avatar sickos will love this game, Far Cry Primal fans will get a kick out of Ubisoft returning to this formula, and everyone else, well… uh…dang, the game sure is pretty, huh? – Zack Zwiezen Read More
An intimate moment in GTA 6.Screenshot: Rockstar / Kotaku
Good news, everyone! Unless you’ve been living in a monastery, you’re likely aware that 2023 is the year that video games got horny again. And no, I don’t mean tastefully Hades frisky, I mean Leisure Suit Larry and Night Traplevels of unhinged lust, the likes of which “mainstream” gaming (whatever that means) hasn’t seen since the 1990s. – Jen Glennon Read More
Historically, TV and film adaptations of video games don’t have the greatest track record. The last few years, however, have started turning that around. Pikachu, Sonic, and Mario have all starred in successful movies, and earlier this year The Last of Us got a proper prestige adaptation that certainly left a mark on fans. – Claire Jackson Read More
And so that’s that. The Game Awards 2023 are over. 32 awards were handed out over three and a half hours. You might think, with that much time to spare, the show took its time and truly celebrated all the creators and games nominated for what the show calls “Gaming’s Biggest Night.” Nope. Instead, more so than before, the show sped through them at a rapid pace, making me wonder why it still pretends to be an award show at all. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the best games Square Enix ever produced, and it’s not available anywhere on modern consoles or PC. A remaster is an obvious way to fix that problem, and it seemed like all signs were pointing to one getting announced any day now. So it’s an especially cruel twist of fate that the original game’s director, Yasumi Matsuno, keeps toying with fans’ emotions about whether a remaster is actually happening or not. – Ethan Gach Read More
Cyberpunk 2077 is in a pretty good spot these days. After a dumpster fire of a launch, the next-gen update, 2.0 patch, and Phantom Liberty expansion have gotten CD Projekt Red’s open-world RPG to a respectable state. The 2.1 patch that launched this week adds a nice little bow to the game as its “last big update.” It has long-requested features like a working subway you can take across Night City, and it also lets V, its mercenary protagonist, spend a little time with their lover in their apartment. The results are an adorable stay-at-home date with your paramour, but for as sweet as it is, these hangouts underline something that felt left out of the Cyberpunk 2077 redemption arc: the romance. – Kenneth Shepard Read More
The first trailer for Rockstar’s next Grand Theft Auto game, likely to be named GTA VI, comes out December 5. What can we expect the trailer to reveal? Well, based on Rockstar’s past GTA trailers, which are fantastic, there’s a pattern that can help us predict what we might see during GTA VI’s official debut. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Earlier this week, we asked you all to give us your choice for the best video game sequel. Any sequel would count and everyone was free to suggest any game they wanted, no matter how old, obscure, or divisive. And we tallied up all the answers, crunched the numbers, and figured out your top ten sequels. – Zack Zwiezen Read More
Sultry singlets everywhere, oh my!Screenshot: Sega
The secret is out: the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series has great minigames. Whether you enjoy playing retro arcade brawlers like Virtua Fighter, dumping dozens of hours into becoming a real-estate tycoon, or chatting up bodacious babes at the hostess club, Sega’s goofy action series has plenty of pleasant timesinks to wile away the hours. Though it’s still several weeks away, it’s already clear that the upcoming Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is no exception to that rule. – Jen Glennon Read More
It’s been 15 years since the last proper game in the Mana series, and that one wasn’t even any good. The Final Fantasy action-RPG spin-off’s legacy has been marked by more downs than ups, but the peaks still burn so brightly in fans’ memories that it’s hard to believe the franchise won’t one day make good on its earlier promise. Visions of Mana is being pitched as exactly that. I hope it doesn’t let us down.
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Officially revealed during last night’s Game Awards ceremony, I initially mistook Visions of Mana for a Dragon Quest game. The trailer looked very pretty without being overly busy, and showed open environments and real-time combat that found a nice balance between barren PS2-era 3D zones and modern arenas bursting with too much detail. Not quite a big-budget blockbuster or a bold retro HD-2D reimagining, it seems to be charting a humble new beginning for the verdant fantasy franchise.
Mana series illustrator Airi Yoshioka’s designs sported glow-ups befitting the current PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S console generations, while snippets of a score by returning composers Hiroki Kikuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito and Ryo Yamazaki sounded promising. The action, meanwhile, centered on the massive Mana tree and a handful of fights bookended by familiar Rabites and a Mantis Ant boss.
Visions of Mana will come to PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and PC sometime in 2024, at a time when Square Enix has been dipping into the back catalog more than usual. We recently got Star Ocean: The Divine Force and Valkyrie Elysium, fine games that were nice for longtime fans but didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Will the return of Mana be any different?
The series began as Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy in 1991 before getting its own title and a breakout hit on SNES called Secret of Mana. The top-down action-adventure was like The Legend of Zelda with an RPG twist, including a leveling system, weapon combos, and a varied magic system. Instead of traveling alone you were accompanied by two AI companions, and like Final Fantasy there was an overworld map you could eventually traverse via a flying dragon.
The pixel art was gorgeous. The music was beautiful. To this day it has some of the best scored environments of any RPG. And despite a clumsily localized script, the dungeons, destinations, and pacing made it an unforgettable journey. The series continued with a Japan-only sequel (Trials of Mana), an experimental PS1 game (Legend of Mana), and a fantastic Game Boy Advance remake of the first game (Sword of Mana). Then things quickly unraveled.
Screenshot: Square Enix
The 2006 DS game Children of Mana was a randomly generated dungeon crawler that felt unimaginative and repetitive, and 2007 PS2 game Dawn of Mana took the series into 3D with a clumsy targeting system and character progression that reset after every chapter. A 2007 real-time strategy game for the DS called Heroes of Mana was overly simplistic and bland. The series’ identity fell apart outside of its unique art-style, pretty music, and familiar monster designs.
To rebuild, Square Enix returned to basics by remastering and porting the original games. In recent years fans were blessed with the Adventures of Mana remake, Collections of Mana ports, a Secret of Mana remake, a Trials of Mana remake, and the HD remaster of Legend of Mana. The series’ highlights have been assembled and modernized on every platform. The only thing missing was a new Mana game to rival the ones from 20 years ago.
“The development team have been working hard to ensure that Visions ofMana remains faithful to the series that players know and love while also offering fans and newcomers a fresh new experience with an all-new story, characters, and gameplay mechanics,” Mana series producer Masaru Oyamada said alongside the game’s announcement. It’s a promising start. But Mana fans have been burned plenty of times before. Please don’t let this be one of them.
Wish, the 62nd film released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, is a bad movie. The film is meant to celebrate the studio’s 100th anniversary, but instead, its incoherent story and reliance on millennial cliches for cheap jokes come off like it was fed into an AI generator and spat out onto the big screen. And the music, always a staple in Disney films, has some really lovely parts that are sadly weighed down by terrible lyrics.
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Overall, Wish is a hot mess, but for Kingdom Hearts fans, its core premise could have significant implications for Square Enix’s Disney and Final Fantasy crossover—that is, if Tetsuya Nomura and friends decide to incorporate it into future Kingdom Hearts games.
What is Wish about?
Wish is set in the kingdom of Rosas, where King Magnifico, a sorcerer with the power to grant wishes given to him by the common folk, hoards wishes as magical orbs and refuses to grant ones he doesn’t believe will be good for the kingdom. When a citizen turns 18, they give Magnifico their wish for “safekeeping” in his study until the day he decides to grant it. While he might believe himself righteous, as protagonist Asha points out, Magnifico has created a system in which he controls the fate of everyone in Rosas, rendering the townsfolk hopeless as they wait for their wishes to be granted. As the film progresses, the king’s true nature as an egomaniacal bastard becomes apparent and Asha leads a rebellion against his tyranny.
But what does this have to do with Kingdom Hearts? As Asha learns more about the wishes in Magnifico’s clutches, it becomes clear that some of these wishes have to do with events that lead into various Disney movies. One Rosas civilian wants to fly, wears a green tunic, and is named Peter like Peter Pan. Valentino, Asha’s pet goat who gains the ability to speak because of magical shenanigans, wishes for a place where all mammals live equally, referencing the idyllic vision of 2016’s Zootopia. Asha herself becomes a Fairy Godmother and dons a cloak similar to the character from Cinderella.
Disney
There are other references, like Asha’s group of friends all dressing and acting similarly to the seven dwarves from Snow White. And when Magnifico is defeated, he’s trapped in a mirror, basically becoming the Magic Mirror from the same movie. There’s even a split-second frame in which his face is outlined to look like the mask that inhabits the mirror in the 1937 film.
What does Wish mean for Kingdom Hearts’ Disney universe?
All of this (and the 90 minutes of other Disney movie references) is part of the purpose of Wish—to celebrate Disney’s history—but there’s a larger implication here: Rosas is the center of a connected Disney universe. According to co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, as well as co-writer Jennifer Lee, Wish isn’t hardwired as a multiverse launch pad, but it does imply characters like Peter Pan, places like Zootopia, and songs like “When You Wish Upon A Star” are the dreams of the citizens of Rosas. Prior to this, Disney has featured the occasional crossover detail before, like Frozen featuring characters from Tangled in a crowd shot, which Disney has mostly acknowledged as cute nods. But Wish makes an entire plot point out of Disney’s most beloved characters and worlds having an inception within its kingdom.
This raises questions as to how that world would function in a potential Kingdom Hearts’ crossover. Will Kingdom Hearts play with the abstract ideas Wish hints at? In Square Enix’s RPG series, protagonist Sora and his friends Donald and Goofy travel to various Disney worlds on a spaceship. But before these worlds were separated, they originated from Scala ad Caelum, which featured heavily in Kingdom Hearts Union χ and in the final section of Kingdom Hearts III.
Image: Square Enix / Kingdom Hearts wiki
Incorporating Wish and Rosas into Kingdom Hearts’ world would require a great deal of retconning, as Square Enix has already been building out its own connected lore for 20 years. It’s unclear if it will even have to reckon with it anytime soon given Kingdom Hearts IV has been in development concurrently alongside the movie, and Disney began work on Wish in 2018, a year before Kingdom Hearts III launched. While we don’t know what Disney worlds will appear in the next game, we can reasonably assume Disney and Square have been talking about Kingdom Hearts IV while Wish was in production.
Kingdom Hearts has released plenty of prequels and midquels in between its numbered entries that help recontextualize story beats or fill in gaps, but Scala ad Caelum’s place as the root of Kingdom Hearts’ Disney crossover is pretty well-established. So it might just be easier for Square Enix to ignore Rosas and Wish’s Disney cinematic universe entirely. However, the series is no stranger to tweaking characters, worlds, and relationships to fit its own narrative. On top of weaving the existence of the shadow-like enemy Heartless into Disney movie plots, Kingdom Hearts has continued to fold new movies into its storytelling.
The first game made the Seven Princesses of Heart (which included Alice, Snow White, Jasmine, Belle, Cinderella, and Aurora) into a unified, magical force that affected the entire known Kingdom Hearts universe. Kingdom Hearts III made sure to add newcomers Rapunzel, Anna, and Elsa as part of the New Seven Hearts meant to take up the mantle. So Rosas could realistically be molded to fit the needs of a new story arc—perhaps it could be the origin point of the new worlds Sora will explore in Kingdom Hearts IV, further explaining the expanding lore without stepping on the toes of the story the series told before.
Image: Disney
Wish attempts what Kingdom Hearts pulled off over 20 years ago
Kingdom Hearts’ interconnected Disney universe was a pretty novel idea back in 2002 when the first game was released. But nowadays, crossovers are so common they’re having diminishing returns. Take a look at recent Marvel Cinematic Universe box office numbers and you’ll see people are less infatuated with the concept of everything they watch and play weaving into one another. A shared Disney universe is a core theme in newer games like Disney Dreamlight Valleyand Disney Mirrorverse, but Kingdom Hearts is one of the few examples where those worlds feel cleverly woven into each other, rather than thrown together in a disconnected pocket dimension. Now that Wish is at least toying with the idea of Rosas as the source of characters and ideas seen in previous Disney films, Kingdom Hearts is in an interesting position. It has to either reckon with one of the movies it may feature eating its lunch—albeit with its hands instead of a perfectly good fork and knife and just generally making a mess of the table—or find a way to wiggle out of the bind it’s put the series in.
I do wonder if, given Wish’s middling reception and box office performance, Square Enix might opt not to touch the movie or its characters at all, as it would complicate things in ways that are probably not worth the trouble. But Kingdom Hearts has put some mid-ass Disney movies in its games in one way or another, so who knows? Yes, I’m looking at you, Chicken Little. In the meantime, let’s hope whatever Disney is cooking for 2024 doesn’t read like it was written by ChatGPT.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth isn’t out until early next year, but ahead of the game’s launch it’s been rated and reviewed by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). Turns out the Teen-rated RPG will contain a “bodacious beach bod.” The question is: Who’s rocking that body?
Three Things We Learned From The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Demo
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, coming exclusively to PS5 on February 29, 2024, picks up after the events of 2020’s Final Fantasy VII Remake and is the next entry in Square Enix’s three-part Final Fantasy VII remake project. We’ve already seen a few trailers for the upcoming RPG, but we’ve learned a bit more about Rebirth thanks to a newly posted rating description on the ESRB’s official website.
The ESRB’s rating description explains that some women in the game are “designed with revealing outfits” including “deep cleavage.” The ESRB also states that Rebirth contains “suggestive dialogue” and close-up shots of characters’ bodies. It points to one example where the camera pans to someone, presumably wearing a revealing outfit, who then says: “Just admit it. You’re obviously captivated by my bodacious beach bod.”
Now, the way the ESRB describes this makes it impossible to say who has (or thinks they have) a bodacious beach bod. So who, among the cast of FF7 characters, seems the most likely to say they have a bodacious beach bod? Place your bets now!
Other secrets revealed by the ESRB
The ESRB’s rating description of Rebirth also confirms that at least one character will be “impaled” by a sword in slow motion. Famously, and beware spoilers for a game released in the ‘90s, Aerith was killed by sword-wielding Sephiroth in the original game. You could describe what happens in that original sequence as “slow motion,” too. It seems the new remake sequel will do the same. The question is, who gets stabbed this time around?
In October, Rebirth director Naoki Hamaguchi promised a “big surprise” during that famous, iconic death. But he didn’t elaborate beyond that tease. Does he mean that someone else will get stabbed in slow motion? Perhaps nobody gets stabbed and Sephiroth just misses and runs away embarrassed. Or would it be really surprising to stab Aerith and trick everyone into thinking you wouldn’t do that this time around? Maybe someone just has a vision of a slow-mo stab. I’m not sure, really.
Oh and finally, the ESRB confirms that some characters get drunk and slur their speech and you’ll hear people say shit, asshole, and prick. I can’t wait!
Here’s the full ESRB description for FF7 Rebirth, coming February 2024 to PS5.
This is an action role-playing game in which players follow the story of a mercenary (Cloud Strife) on a quest to save the planet from evil. Players explore fantasy landscapes, perform missions, and battle monsters and soldiers in frenetic melee combat. Characters use swords, staffs, guns, and magic spells to fight monsters and human soldiers; combat is highlighted by impact sounds, cries of pain, and explosions. Cutscenes depict further instances of violence, sometimes with splatters/pools of blood: characters impaled or slashed by swords, sometimes with slow-motion effects; an assassin throwing a spinning blade at a targeted figure; characters shot by soldiers.
Some female characters are designed with revealing outfits (e.g., deep cleavage); suggestive dialogue sometimes accompanies camera panning/close-ups of characters’ bodies/outfits (e.g., “Just admit it. You’re obviously captivated by my bodacious beach bod.”). The game contains some alcohol content: as Cloud, players can drink a version of moonshine while at a bar; cutscenes sometimes feature drunk characters slurring their speech. A handful of scenes depict characters smoking cigars or out of hookahs. The words “sh*t,” “a*shole,” and “pr*ck” appear in the game.
Despite what the creative team at Square Enix would have us think, Destiny and Fate probably still have a major role to play in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and beyond. Even though SOLDIER Zack Fair seems to have escaped death and joined the rest of the cast in a new timeline, the most likely outcome is a totally different—but equally tragic—twist of fate.
Three Things We Learned From The Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Demo
Spoilers for the original game and FF7 Remake follow.
In the original Final Fantasy VII timeline, Cloud and Zack are wounded by Sephiroth following what’s known as “The Nibelheim Incident,” five years before the events of the main game. The mad scientist Hojo kidnaps and experiments on them for four years, enhancing Cloud’s strength but scrambling his brain. After Zack breaks them out, they travel around for about a year until Shinra catches up to them on the outskirts of Midgar. Originally, Zack dies fighting Shinra troopers, but because the party defeats the Whisper Harbinger at the end of FF7 Remake, events in the past, present and future are altered.
Remake’s ending cutscene shows that Zack survives the battle and helps Cloud make his way toward Midgar. It’s plausible these events happen in an alternate timeline distinct from the new continuity. However, it’s totally possible that when the party entered the Singularity at the end of Remake and destroyed the Whispers, they didn’t return to their original world. Instead, they were taken somewhere different: a timeline created by the destruction of the Whispers in which Zack is alive.
Producer Yoshinori Kitase has confirmed already that Zack plays a bigger role in FF7 Rebirth than the original game.
“Within the original Final Fantasy 7, Zack Fair doesn’t appear as much,” Kitase told IGN in a September 2023 interview. “As for Rebirth, there will be a new episode with Zack that will contain even more of him than the Remake. I’m not able to say much more than this as I would like for players to play and experience this with it in their own hands.”
Image: Square Enix
How is all of this going to shake out exactly? Well, Rebirth Creative Director Tetsuya Nomura confirmed on the official PlayStation blog in September 2023 that the second part of the trilogy ends at the Forgotten Capital, which is where Sephiroth kills Aerith while she’s trying to the White Materia to summon Holy.
“The future — even if it has been written — can be changed,” Aerith says in the June 2022 First Look Trailer for Rebirth. The original timeline has already been “written,” so to speak, which is why the Whispers strove to preserve this specific future. In other words, events can and should play out as they originally did except for in instances where characters make different choices.
The Whispers may not be around anymore to ensure that everything goes exactly according to plan, but it’s all but certain that Aerith will still try to summon Holy herself and be threatened by Sephiroth. Assuming everybody exists in the same continuity, what will Zack be doing while Cloud and friends pursue Sephiroth? In all likelihood, after arriving at the Sector 5 Church in the post-credits scene of the Remake Intergrade INTERmission chapter starring Yuffie, he’ll try to track Aerith down.
A fittingly tragic culmination of all this could be for Zack to finally catch up to Aerith at the end of the game in the Forgotten Capital just in time to push her out of the way and take the hit himself. The Whispers may not be around to ensure that Zack dies, but his continued existence in the timeline presents all sorts of cosmic continuity issues. This could be the perfect tragic ending to Rebirth that inspires Aerith and Cloud to continue their mission to stop Sephiroth in a way that thematically echoes the original without getting too convoluted. In this fashion, Aerith could successfully summon Holy to stop Meteor earlier than in the original, but who knows what kind of repercussions all of this would have.
Is it fair for him to make the ultimate Zackrifice? Probably not, but something about it feels fitting nevertheless.
We’ve known for some time now that IO Interactive, the studio behind the fantastic Hitman games, is working on a new James Bond game. And while that team seems like a perfect match and a new Bond game seems long overdue, according to IOI, the team had to assure the folks who own the spy franchise that it wasn’t going to make another FPS in order to convince them to hand over the rights.
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GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 is one of the most famous and beloved video games in history. It popularized FPS games on consoles, sold over eight million copies, and led to dozens of similar James Bond FPS games. I’d argue the games helped grow the franchise’s audience. With all that said, you’d think Eon Productions—the folks who own the Bond franchise—would be excited about a new game based on its popular spy. But according to the devs behind it, that wasn’t the case—and you can blame GoldenEyefor that.
In the newest edition of Edge magazine, as reported by GamesRadar, IO Interactive co-owners Hakan Abrak and Christian Elverdam talked about the still-in-development 007 game, detailing their vision for the project. But the two also explained that it took a lot of convincing to get Eon Productions to sign off on the project, as the Bond owners didn’t want yet another “action-oriented” FPS.
“Our impression was clearly that [at the time] they were not looking for a game,” said IO Interactive CEO and co-owner Hakan Abrak. “And I think it’s fair that they might not have been super-happy with some of the later games.”
The co-owners of IO Interactive pitched Eon Productions on a James Bond game that was less GoldenEye and more about being a globe-trotting, stealth-oriented spy. Elverdam explained that its pitch to Eon focused on how its 007 project would be about getting in and out of a location without causing much collateral damage or engaging in violence unless needed. In other words, IO Interactive’s project won’t be Bond running down endless corridors carrying 20 guns and shooting everyone he encounters, which is how I would describe the vast majority of 007 games made in the last 20 years. Instead, it sounds like it will play a lot more like the Hitman games, where violence is often a last resort and stealthy gameplay is king.
Elverdam told Edge that this approach “helped [IO Interactive] convince Eon that there’s a sophistication in how we treat the agent fantasy.” This seems to have been enough to get the green light and let IO make its Bond project. And honestly, after playing far too many Bond shooters, I can’t wait for a more stealth-oriented spy game. I’ve said before that IOI is the best developer to make a modern 007 game and I can’t wait to see what the studio is working on when it finally reveals more about Project 007.
At the start of the 1980s, video games were mostly relegated to coin-gobbling arcade machines, but their surging popularity prompted a Time Magazine cover story in January 1982 with a cringeworthy warning: “GRONK! FLASH! ZAP! Video Games are Blitzing the World!”
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If this sounds like Big Boomer Energy, that’s because Baby Boomers were between 20 and 40 years old at the time and represented the dominant group of consumers. Media panic about gaming addiction depicted arcades as depraved places for lowlifes. Meanwhile, an oversaturation of at-home consoles and a parade of middling games led the entire American game industry to crash in 1983.
Nintendo pretty much single-handedly saved gaming with the NES (see on Amazon) back in 1985, and pop culture has never the same. Originally released in Japan as the Famicom (“Family Computer”), the NES is a redesign specifically tailored to western markets. Instead of a video game console, it was branded as an “Entertainment System” with a “Control Deck” that used “Game Paks.”
A risky bet
“It started with a phone call in 1981,” NES creator Masayuki Uemura told author and reporter Matt Alt in 2019, “President Yamauchi told me to make a video game system, one that could play games on cartridges. He always liked to call me after he’d had a few drinks, so I didn’t think much of it. I just said, ‘Sure thing, boss,’ and hung up. It wasn’t until the next morning when he came up to me, sober, and said, ‘That thing we talked about—you’re on it?’ that it hit me: He was serious.”
Uemura, who had originally been poached from Sharp to develop light-gun technology for toys at Nintendo, then spent six months deconstructing and reverse-engineering rival consoles like the Atari 2600 and Magnavox to study the circuitry. The 8-bit Famicom he designed proved more powerful than its competitors, and the toy-like color scheme was hand-picked by a scarf that Nintendo President Yamauchi liked (the same red and white Mario wears on the cover of Super Mario Bros.). It helps that in 1984, Japanese legislators modified an act regulating entry to places like bars and casinos to include arcades out of concern that it impacted “public morals.” Younger Japanese had to resort to home consoles instead, so the Famicom came at the perfect time for it to boom.
Famicom games on display at Tokyo used game store Super Potato.Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg (Getty Images)
To capitalize on the American market, however, required a totally different approach—one that would pay off big-time.
In a lecture at New York University in 2015, Uemura said the front-loading design of the NES was inspired by VCRs, a booming form of at-home entertainment in America at the time. The Game Pak cartridges are 5.25 x 4.75 x 0.75 inches, with a considerable amount of heft to them, and the simple, boxy grey design is nothing short of iconic. They slide into the front of the system, and then the user has to press the cartridge down so its brass-plated nickel connectors hit the cartridge slot’s connector pins. Frequent use actually wears down the pins, which can lead to a flawed connection.
For years, gamers propagated the myth that blowing in the Game Paks to clear out dust would solve this problem, which instead exacerbated it due to the moisture in their breath. Still, sliding the paks in, pressing them down, pressing them again, pulling them out, blowing in them, and repeating the process felt like a game unto itself.
The console’s most memorable and successful accessories was the NES Zapper, a light gun that launched alongside the console in America. “America loves guns,” Uemura said when talking about how Nintendo marketed the NES in the west. Most of us had the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt dual cartridge and delighted in blasting ducks while that gleeful dog retrieved their bodies. For your typical millennial gamer, the Nintendo Entertainment System served as the primary gateway into a lifelong hobby that never let up. I have fond memories playing The Legend of Zelda with my grandmother. She would’ve loved Tears of the Kingdom.
The origin of the classics
Take one look at Nintendo’s biggest releases in the last couple years, and you can trace many of them all back to the NES: Super Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Fire Emblem.
By 1990, Nintendo had seized more than 90 percent of the U.S. video game market, thanks in no small part to a rigid third-party licensing agreement that still serves as a major industry precedent. Game developers that wanted to publish games for the NES had to agree to an exclusive licensing deal that restricted them from porting games to other consoles. Nintendo also directly approved each game to ensure a certain standard of quality.
Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Namco all participated in this and remain prominent developers even today. Castlevania fan? Thank Nintendo and the NES for that. Even Square and Enix saw great success putting Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on the NES. Now, 20 years after the companies merged into Square Enix, both franchises are still going strong.
Photo: Reddit
Despite all its success and rapid sales over a few short years, the NES doesn’t even break the top 10 best-selling video game consoles of all time at roughly 62 million units to date — even the widely panned PlayStation Portable sold more over time — but Nintendo’s breakthrough home console remains arguably one of the most important pieces of tech ever created.
“When console games were popularized and presented to everyone, it felt like we were all exploring a new frontier of dreams together,” Masayuki Uemura told Used Games magazine in 2000. “Although some people may occasionally have wasted their money on a bad game here or there, both creators and players were obsessed with games then. I believe there’s still wonder to be found in that older generation of games.”
He was right. The NES Classic Edition — a dedicated emulator featuring 30 NES classics — rolled out from late 2016 into 2017 with many of the 2.3 million units selling out immediately. The 2018 relaunch saw similar demand.
The lasting legacy of the NES, however, lies with the Nintendo Switch which has sold more than 129 million units to date. With patents for what could be the successor to the Nintendo Switch, now’s as good a time as any to remember and appreciate what the Nintendo Entertainment System did for gaming 38 years ago.
