Retro Reviews from Memory
Welcome to a new segment where I review my favorite childhood games from memory, go back and play the game. Then revise my opinion because, let’s face it, some of those games from the 80’s and 90’s just don’t hold up. The Score above is provisional. I’ll be back (probably, maybe, like… solid 25% chance)* after I play the game again and write a new review and link it to this post.
Enough of the preamble… on with the review!
Yeah. So. Like…. I loved this game. Also the second one, fortress of doom, which i’ll try to review at a later date. In fact. I might actually have rise of the sinestrals and fortress of doom confused. I can’t remember which came first**, but we’ll call it rise of the sinestrals. Because, honestly…. I am really struggling to remember why I loved this game. I think it was because it was peak jrpg material. I recall having multiple people on your squad, clever puzzles (sort of like Brain Lord… which is one i rented then never beat because I could never find it again. Not even in a bargain bin. So, yeah, if anyone wants to send me a copy of Brain Lord for my retro room, then I won’t say no to retro reviewing it from memory.) Am I rambling? You betcha I am. Sometimes that’s the best way to find the memory you’re looking for.
What else do I remember… I liked the story. My girlfriend and I played it together in highschool(?) maybe college but I think we played all the way through the first one, then tried to do the same with the second but her class schedule and mine didn’t line up often enough. So yeah… never beat the second one…. Hmm I guess the review is:
Had fun playing the first one with my girlfriend even though it was a pretty standard jrpg with better than average puzzles. Never beat the second one cause life happened.
Disclaimer(s)
*We should probably keep in mind that, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for games. Where others may have experienced the “rent before you buy” phenomena… that wasn’t really a thing in our house. I saved up babysitting money for an entire summer to buy the SNES. If we were doing well, I might get a single game for Christmas or my birthday, but they were almost always used from the swap meet or new from the discount bin. We didn’t have gamestop or many used game store options at the time. In any case, a LOT of my historical game memories are based on a rental window period that had to align with money, time (I had school, sports, occasionally a girlfriend, and a few part time jobs to juggle with my gaming habit), and whether my save file still existed when i rented the game a second time (assuming it was even available). Some games I didn’t play in their entirety until I got to college and had a tiny bit more money and a teensy bit fewer obligations. Which is to say, these reviews are patchwork at best. But let me know in the comments if you want me to replay any of these games and do a revised opinion review!
**I already found out I’m wrong here while looking for a header image for this post. Oh well, I’m not changing the text. The point of reviews from memory is to find out how much I actually remember. The revised version will be better!
