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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

50 Eroge, 50 Games:

Fed up with lacking clean round numbers, I decided to add games of whatever worth just to get to the round number of 50 in each category.  For my visual novel post, I now have 50 game companies, not 49, by adding in FlyingShine, who are notable for their creation of Cross Channel.  For the video game post, I added in Fire Emblem in the tactical rpg department, Dune II in the realtime strategy department, and Heroes of Might and Magic, Warlords, Alpha Centauri and Master of Magic into the strategy rpg segment.

None of these games are by any means weak additions.  Cross Channel is famous (and available in English for anyone who's interested.)  It was written by the same guy who wrote Kanon for Key, so it obviously has the talent necessary to be worthwhile.

Heroes of Might and Magic is a famous brand that originally came out in 1995 and extends all the way to the present day, with a planned Might and Magic VII release in 2015.

Dune II is a really interesting game that came before even the original Warcraft, in 1992.  This game was the origin of almost all subsequent strategy game features like base construction and resource gathering mid-battle.  It also had a fantastic soundtrack that really got you into the heart of the mood based on how the battle was going.

Fire Emblem began in 1990, and has extended all the way to the present with a game being produced as we speak.  There are already fourteen main line entries into this gigantic franchise.  The most famously good version of the game were the releases for the gamecube and the Wii, 'The Path of Radiance' and 'Radiant Dawn,' which together tell a fantastic story of gods and generals.

Warlords began in 1989 and stretched until Warlords IV in 2003.  It's a game of empire instead of lowly base construction, with the goal of conquering whole continents worth of cities and either razing them to the ground or having them produce yet more units for your war engine.  A variety of magic and magical creatures also feature in this game.  The title has basically been abandoned, but it's still a fan favorite to this day in the strategy rpg genre.

Alpha Centauri is a sci fi version of Civilization again made by Sid Meier.  It came out in 1999.  Critics loved the game and it won several awards for its stand-out quality amid the genre as a whole.

Master of Magic was a 1994 game released by Microprose.  Its most unique and standout feature was the use of two concurrent planes, reverse mirror worlds with different factions and abilities that only interacted with each other at set points or via powerful spells to transport your group from one plane to the other, which was later copied by Heroes of Might and Magic and others.  In Master of Magic, you could choose which spell books your avatar studied and thus create your own unique faction bent on world conquest.  The game eventually was inducted into the Hall of Fame, described "as a visually stunning game with "enduring replayability", due to its randomness and large variety of spells."  Master of Magic finally got a sequel, 21 years later, in March 2015 titled 'Worlds of Magic'.

Fifty, in the end, is a small number.  It's a lot less than the 170 quality anime series I keep going on about.  As a result, it was quite easy to find respectable titles for all the remaining slots in both the visual novel and gaming community.  With this, two of my hall of fames should be done.  Unless a radically good new game appears, in which case I'll probably just kick out one of the previous entries to make room for the new one, rather than expanding the list any further.  I like the number 50.  I'm sticking to it.

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