The First Hour

For years, Japan was the dominating force in the games industry. Ever since Nintendo blasted onto the scene in the eighties, it's always been my opinion that the developers in the land of the rising sun have had the edge on everyone else. The Atari age has long since given way to names like Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Capcom, Konami, Square, and so many others. If I made a list of my hundred favorite games, I'd be willing to bet that seventy or more of them come from Japan.

These days, however, the tide has shifted. The worldwide yearning for platformers and action games and traditional RPGs has been eclipsed by the first person shooter and sports game markets, two genres that Japanese developers are woefully unfamiliar with. Only the top games in each genre outside of Halo clones and Madden wannabes can make bank anymore, and developers are starting to play it safe with what they bring to the table. One genre affected by this trend is the JRPG, which has always had a focus in Japan, but also branched out to the world stage more often than not. These days, however, it seems Japan's favorite genre seems to be transforming more and more into Japan's shyest genre, rarely coming out to say hi to the rest of us.

In a rather shocking revelation, I've actually managed to find a hearty list of JRPGs that I pine for. I've never been the genre's biggest supporter, which doesn't surprise me in retrospect considering I never owned a SNES, Playstation, or Playstation 2 during their primes. However, I hereby pledge to buy any of the following games that come to America. I said the same thing about Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, thinking it would have no chance of arriving; I made good on my promise, bought TvC: Ultimate All Stars, and loved it. So it's on you now, localization teams. Make it happen.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game and honestly felt sad that the developer was no longer around, but that’s exactly what happened after I beat Pandemic Studios’ swan song, The Saboteur. I had an honestly great time with a flawed game, which is the opposite experience I’ve had with similar games in the genre. 

The Saboteur is pretty much the quintessential First Hour game: I played the first hour of the game a few months back, loved it, but had to send it back to my brother-in-law. A few months later I had the opportunity to borrow it again and jumped at the chance. When I said I wanted to keep playing, I really did.

Without much further ado, The Saboteur was released on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows, and while the game seems to hint at future sequels, with the studio closing it is doubtful those will ever appear.   But you never know, I’m assuming EA owns the license to the game and characters so they might trudge up good old Sean Devlin again someday.

My full review is on the Xbox 360 version.

So there's absolutely nothing nostalgic about discussing the latest issue of Nintendo Power, but since I haven't subscribed to the magazine in over five years, I thought I would talk about how much has changed.  Apparently, a lot has, or I just changed.  Either way, a year subscription just $5 on Amazon a few weeks ago, so I figured for less than 50 cents an issue I would be a fool not to sign up.  My last issue of Nintendo Power before this was from May 2005, issue 191.  The Nintendo DS was on that volume's cover as the second big round of games was rolling in including Nintendogs and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow.

But this article is about the August 2010 issue featuring Dragon Quest IX on the cover.  Being a Nintendo published game this isn't much of a shock, but there were both pleasant and unpleasant surprises on just about every page.  I'll cover a few I consider noteworthy.

I will probably never do such a new magazine ever again as I much prefer to reminisce about old school stuff, but this should be fun either way.

This is a new series of articles I originally planned to cram all in one, but it's much easier to complain one at a time, unleashing my disgust for one popular game all at once.  I will admit this is intended to be a bit flamebaitish, but I hope it brings in some comments!

Spore is back in the news after the completely uninspired named Darkspore was announced as some sort of multiplayer action title.  I really don't know anything about the new game, but it did remind me how much I loathed my original Spore experience.

I could go on again about how Spore was one of my most anticipated games ever and how much it let me down, but I'd rather talk about what appears to be my disconnect from the rest of the video game review industry.  The game has a Metacritic score of 8.4 aggregated from 75 reviews while I gave Spore a 5 out of 10.  Two reviewers gave it a perfect score (including my personal much-hated G4TV) and there were only five sites that gave it a score under 70 (including Destructoid which I seem to line up with more often than not).  Spore was an uber-hyped, blockbuster game published by Electronic Arts and devised by the mastermind of Will Wright; were reviewers afraid to trash the game or did they honestly like it?  And if they liked it... what happened to me?

In a bit of sad news, Kyle Orland's original one hour gaming blog, Games for Lunch is on official hiatus.  Kyle started Games for Lunch about a month or so before I founded The First Hour (to both my surprise and dismay at the time, complete independently) and has just written his 500th first hour review before heading into limbo.  Kyle relied on other gaming sites to pay for his five(!) reviews a week and that has all dried up.  We here at The First Hour were never quite as ambitious, so going from making nothing to making nothing wouldn't affect us as much.

With Kyle finished, The First Hour is part of a very small group of sites still writing anything like a first hour review.  Game Trailer's Hour One only made it through five videos before seemingly giving up, but Kotaku Australia still publishes them periodically.  Here's hoping a few other sites give it a try in the future.

We still plan to chug along though as I have no plans to quit.  I've got a couple of games in my queue to write first hour reviews for, and our team of seven other writers always have things cooking up.  If you have any suggestions on games to play, drop me a line at greg@firsthour.net

Every Monday morning since the Wii craze began in November 2006, the Wii Shop Channel has been updated with new downloadable titles to purchase. The Virtual Console, one of the Wii's few enticing tidbits to core gamers at launch, promised to make all our favorite classic games through the N64 era available on one piece of hardware. Things started out strong for the VC, which reached the 100-game milestone just over six months after launch. It seems Nintendo just couldn't keep that pace, however, as the first seven months of 2010 have seen less than twenty new retro titles. With obvious Nintendo classics like Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, Pilotwings 64, and Excitebike 64 still waiting to be let loose -- in addition to the many unseen third party games worth revisiting -- it seems far too early for the Virtual Console to receive less than one title a week.

The future of the Virtual Console was looking bright in 2007, however, when Nintendo decided to make the N64 import classic Sin & Punishment available outside of Asia for the first time. It seems Treasure always planned a western release, as all the voice acting was performed in English (with Japanese subtitles), even in the original Japanese cartridge. The rumor is that a dried-up N64 market in 2000 made the niche developer think twice. In a rare showing of extra effort on Nintendo's part, Sin & Punishment was the first of a small collection of games formerly exclusive to Japan to make it to the Americas. It probably didn't take that much effort, though, since the only translation required was in the main menu and tutorials. The original Japanese subtitles persist even in the localized version.

I'd always planned on putting down the $12 to try Sin & Punishment at some point, but I figured the recent release of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor for the Wii makes this as good a time as any. Might as well snag the N64 game for some context, right? I downloaded the game with the intent of completing a first hour review for our readers, but it seems there isn't a whole lot to talk about beyond that first sixty minutes, so this has been upgraded to full review status. Lucky you!

Alpha Protocol is Obsidian Entertainment’s first original title after a history of picking up series where BioWare left off, including Knights of the Old Republic.  Released about two months ago and published by Sega, Alpha Protocol is subtitled “The Espionage RPG.”  Definitely an enticing combination of words for fans of Western RPGs.

Critics rewarded the game a very wide range of scores, from 20% to over 80%, so it sounds like we have a love/hate game on our hands.  There’s obviously something in Alpha Protocol that appeals to some gamers, so I’ve decided to give it a try myself.  I’m a huge fan of the Mass Effect series, and from a distance, Alpha Protocol appears to be an attempt to replicate its success.

Word has already come out that the cold reception the game received has scrubbed any chance for a sequel, but Obsidian shouldn't complain too much since they're currently responsible for developing Fallout: New Vegas and Dungeon Siege 3.

So let’s not waste any more time and get into the first hour of Alpha Protocol for the Xbox 360.

Episode 6 is finally live! Paul chats with Greg, Mike T. and Ian Bagley; it's guaranteed* to be a fun time.

We take a look at getting good deals on older games, discuss retro gaming goodness, and take a look at Greg's review scoring system. Also talk about Fallout 3, Cave Story, NBA Jam and more!

*guarantee does not extend to any who may not enjoy this episode for any reason.

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Theme Music

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island '2001 ElasticNewYear' - djpretzel

I can't name a lot of puzzle games I've honestly enjoyed.  Tetris Attack, the Professor Layton series if those count, World of Goo?  As you can tell I'm not a huge fan of the genre.  I might play a puzzle game for a few rounds before I become bored, but Picross 3D was different, really different.  I've already managed to beat over 200 levels and was becoming so obsessed with the game I was carrying my DS to work in case the opportunity came up over lunch.

Picross 3D is not a typical puzzle game, it's slow moving and requires a lot of careful thought.  There is little guessing involved and it does an excellent job of driving you on from puzzle to puzzle.  As someone who had never played a Picross game before, I really had no idea what I was getting into until I read Nate's half hour review of the game.  The game is cheap though so there's little investment for a chance of tons of hours of gaming.  Plus it reminds me of my Kakuro obsession during my senior year of college.

Get ready for my shortest review ever!

Video games came into homes more or less in the mid 1980's. Sure there were games before then, before the crash, but I'm considering the NES as the start of what we now know (and love) as gaming.  Because of this, my generation is the first that have grown up entirely within the era of videogames.  This holds a lot of implications, and I'd like to look at a few of them over time.

I was born shortly after the NES debuted.  Even though I wasn't an avid gamer until I was a teenager, I do remember video games always having a presence in my life.  When I was about 5 years old, we lived in an apartment complex that had a janitor named Mario.  Even though my family didn't own any video game systems at the time, I remember thinking it was funny that his name was the same as the guy from that one game.  One issue this brings up is this: what becomes of gamers when they "grow up?"