Well as the crackers are pulled and the mince pies run out I hope that everyone looks back at Christmas and finds happy memories, I will I got my hands on a Game Boy Advance. As I played on Mario Super Circuit I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed playing a game that is so old, just goes to prove……. This year also saw a PS2 come in to the house. I told my mum “wait for the Gamecube” but she wanted to give a console to the family and the PS2 was the only choice. (I wonder how many times that was repeated up and down Europe). To be fair it’s not dreadful and I enjoyed Jack and Dexter but it was nothing really special. However there was one series of games that I ran out to buy and they were not even PS2 games, it was of course Final Fantasy.

Now beside the fact that I discovered you can’t save PSOne games on the �25 PS2 memory pack I really enjoyed playing it. FF9 is in my opinion one of the best games ever. What ever you think about Sony you can’t deny that it has Squaresoft firmly on its side. I went on to the Cube Europe forum and discovered an interesting thread discussing whether the Snes FF games were better than the PSOne FF games. I think that one could go on until next Christmas, no doubt that FF3 (6 in Japan) was a damn fine game. It is possible to get a translated rom so you can play on FF5 which was never released on the Snes outside of Japan. I think that it is a good game with a good story as is FF2 (4 in Japan). Yet as much of a Nintendo fanboy as I am even I can’t help but weep at Square being with Sony. Just for the record I think Chrono Trigger was by far and away the best Snes RPG and frankly is up there with FF9.

Where does this leave Nintendo, no matter how hard we try and deny it the future of the RPG for Nintendo is a rather bleak one. Yes there is Zelda but it’s a bit unclear if good old Shig has lost his marbles with that one and Zelda and FF while sharing the Genre of RPG’s are two completely different games. FF is all about telling a good story while Zelda is about an epic adventure with lots of sword fights and while the story is by no means a bad one it’s not the core of the game in the same way as FF. May I just say this is by no means a bad thing, Zelda OOT was one of my favourite games of all time. The point is anyone looking for an epic story on the Gamecube is going to be disappointed. Already there seems to be a couple of great RPG’s on the PS2 (Dark Cloud and the fantastic looking Shadow hearts, not for getting FF10) but as far as the Gamecube goes there are at the moment none.

It is then left to the GBA to save Nintendo. I simply can’t wait for Golden Sun, it looks very old school and yet it is published by Nintendo in fact it reminds me so much of the old Snes days. Only a fool would deny that the Snes were the glory days of the RPG. Is Nintendo actually being very clever? It strikes me that many people rate the old school RPG’s over the new ones. So are they throwing catering for these people with the GBA while conceding defeat with there big console, why bother to try and beat Square head on? The future of the RPG on the GBA looks good (please release Mario RPG) and I really really hope that Zelda on the GC is good but still I sure wish that FF was on the GC.

Gary Samaden (Princeoftheyolkfolk)

This article reflects Gary's opinion and does not necessarily represent the opinion of the rest of the GameCube Europe staff