Emulators

It’s 1999, my old broken down Super Beetle is sitting in the driveway, probably waiting on another rebuilt part for its underpowered engine, and Volkswagen wants me to know that it’s about to release brand new Beetles, and I could get one. My first car, actually. Picture taken with a Kodak instant camera my mom got me for Christmas. If I were rich, maybe. I had a Nintendo64 and enough cash to buy Beetle Adventure Racing. The kids and I spent many days racing pixel Beetles around. I never did get a new Beetle. By the time my financial picture improved, I could afford a VW GTI. ...

Epic battle in my kitchen There’s one game series that stands above all the others, to me. It’s the game series that continually redefines itself in each new game and is always willing to take risks and try new things. Final Fantasy III/VI for the Super Nintendo blew me away. I’m not sure if it was the first Final Fantasy I played – the chronological list I found suggests that Final Fantasy Mystic Quest would have been the first. But it was the first that really redefined for me how great stories and great characters could combine with great gameplay to make something truly obsessive. ...

This is part four of a four part playthrough of the 2004 PlayStation 2 hit, Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest. All four parts will be available at this link. As Pelys’ blast from the Horn of Ill Omen sends us hurtling through planar barriers, Firiona Vie contacts us once again to tell us just how very close we are to rescuing her. She calls us her champion, and says that win against Innoruuk or lose to him, this new age will become called the Age of Hate. ...

This is part three of a four part playthrough of the 2005 PlayStation 2 hit, Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest. All four parts will be available at this link. Before we get started, I’m just going to put my notes up here. I’ve been trying to fit the geography of this game to the known geography of Norrath. Remember, we know what the whole of Norrath looks like, as we see it entire from the moon of Luclin in that expansion. There are no lost continents. This game came out during the time of EverQuest’s ninth expansion. Kunark, Velious, and Luclin were old expansions at that point. ...

I vahnt your cleecks We left off with King Leithkorias of Kelethin ordering us to follow the Black Scroll (a map that could not be understood by even the great Mayong Mistmoore) to the Underworld and there confront the orc commander that was fomenting so much Unrest (heh heh) in Faydwer. (In EverQuest, the subterranean realm is known as Underfoot, not Underworld, in another of the puzzling lore issues that should have been fixed.) ...

My post yesterday made me want to play EverQuest again. But one of the last things I want to do in gaming, is to play EverQuest again. Maybe that doesn’t make sense. In order to play either EQ1 or EQ2, I’d have to get really deep into it, and for a long time, because neither EverQuest is a game you play lightly or casually. I’ve done my time and waited out my parole. I did say I would be first in line for a new EverQuest and I wasn’t lying. I’ll dive deep into the next one to come out (and maybe that will be Pantheon, though with Aradune’s death, who knows if non-streamers will ever be allowed to play it?) ...