Altercate TV

Screenshot from Dragon Quest IV, showing the character Ragnar, a royal soldier, receiving his quest from the King of Burland.

Starting a new journey! For my next project, I'll be continuing my series of Dragon Quest retrospectives with Dragon Quest IV. Very excited to see the direction Nakamura and Horii took the series after realizing their original vision with Dragon Quest III!

#dragonquest #retrospective

Of course, this isn't meant as a criticism. It’s just a lesser known part of the series’ history that I personally think is really cool. In the words of Akitoshi Kawazu, who designed the game's battle system: “I tried to make it as close to Dungeons & Dragons as possible. That was my goal.”

The North American version filed a lot of the serial numbers off, but the evidence is still pretty damning: Vancian magic; otyughs, rakshasas, and mind flayers; the Sun Blade and the Defender; and even the idea of black, white, and red mages probably came from Dragonlance.

A scene from the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Famicom. The four Warriors of Light (a Fighter, Thief, Monk, and Red Mage) face a Beholder in battle.

A lot of people might not know this, but Final Fantasy basically started as an unlicensed D&D game. 90% of the weapons, spells, and monsters in the original game are straight out of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks of the ‘80s. At one point in the Japanese version, you even fight a Beholder.

Final Fantasy - The game that saved a company | Retrospective Review YouTube video by Altercate TV

After a final burst of bone-crunching effort, my updated Final Fantasy retrospective review is now live on YouTube. It's twice as long as the old version, and (imo) a much better take on what this classic console RPG meant at the time.

Find it here:
youtu.be/a-BD_qrmzLc

Screenshot from the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo Entertainment System, released in North America in 1990. Image shows the four heroes - a fighter, two black belts, and a thief - engaged in combat with three zombie minotaurs and a troll.

Currently working on an updated version of my retrospective of the original Final Fantasy. I've learned a lot about what I want my videos to be like since 2021, and I don't feel my original retrospective came close to doing the game justice.

Don't worry, I won't make this a habit lol.

Control video game cover - Protagonist Jesse Faden in a dramatic pose wielding a gun against a backdrop of an inverted triangle filled with reddish-black smoke and the word "CONTROL" printed in white letters at the top.

Just got done with Control, Remedy's mind-bending 2019 third-person shooter, and it's sailing right up among my favorite games of all time. Gameplay is probably a 7/10, but the story/lore is a perfect 10, and I would rate it even higher if I had less regard for the literal meaning of words.