While Virtua Striker 2 holds onto the top spot in arcade gaming (and remains, unfortunately, out of my grasp as far as finding a site for playing it), but I had plenty to occupy my time in getting a start in Dragon Quest VII, known in North America as Dragon Warrior VII, which was the top-selling console game of the year (on the PlayStation).
At this point I think to myself: hold up, does that mean this is a descendent of this NES favourite of mine?
Yup! I didn't know that Dragon Warrior had gone by another name elsewhere in the world, and I'd certainly never kept up with the series to know about its sequels. I did love this game, though.
It was a nice treat to get back into the world as I explored, gave my dad a fish sandwich, spoke to a king, and maybe performed some kind of dark magic with his edgy son? I made it far enough to kick a storyline into motion. The movement (and some character design) felt very Zelda-esque, but the mechanics of the gameplay are somewhat more complex and that's exactly what I remember about the original game.
Also coming back, sort of, is Pokémon with new versions of the game with Gold & Silver. Times have changed from its previous iteration: it's again the number-one handheld game, except this time it's on the original Game Boy and Game Boy Colour. There are new Pokémon to find, battle, and capture, a new region to explore, and a phone interface to call people because, you know ... kids and their phones.
I battled my way around a bit, learned some information from Professors Oak and Elm, and said farewell to my mother ahead of an adventure while also agreeing to let her to manage my money for me. Dang, was this game meant to prepare kids for growing up?
Finally, for the number-one seller on home PCs, I unfortunately (and interestingly) couldn't find a playable version of The Sims and had to again check it out via some gameplay footage.
I never would have imagined that I'd have as much trouble finding ways to play games from the turn of the millennium as I did from the 70s, but I think I can guess why: while it's obvious that I was never going to find a full cabinet version of Wild Gunman from 1974, it also makes sense that, because The Sims is recent and popular enough that it's still for sale as a downloadable game, I can understand why it's not readily available to play for free on retro sites. I'm hoping this doesn't become a routine issue.
I don't recommend watching this entire hour-long video unless you loved this game and are craving nostalgia, but as I skipped around through it I admit that it was entertaining. I would like to get my hands on a playable copy sometime, but for now I was amused by the Civilization-style unintelligible muttering by the characters, the fun interactions you set up as puppet master of the people, and the clever interface of the see-through house.
I've written in previous posts about how wild it is when two properties, like a pair of movies or, in this case, a game and a TV show, can come out at about the same time after months to years of development. I'm talking about Big Brother, of course, which came out only months after this game. Would that have given TV execs enough time to throw together a real-life version of the game, or was it coincidence? No matter which it was, both correctly banked on the interest viewers had in a house of people with see-through walls.
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