Video Games

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Localization Strangeness in the Super Mario RPG Remake

2024-01-08T16:15:56-08:00January 7th, 2024|

"In this post, I will list off some of the notable localization changes made in the remake of Super Mario RPG as well as some of the changes that seem like they should have been made but were not. In general, the remake swaps out certain choices Ted [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Hard Hats in the Mushroom Kingdom

2024-01-08T14:34:07-08:00December 31st, 2023|

"Sometimes things are a lot like other things! This is one of these — and despite the thumbnail image telling you that there is some Mega Man content here, this is, alas, also a Mario-related post. In an early post on this site, I wrote about Pac-Man’s name [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Nintendo’s First Playable Female Protagonist Isn’t Female in Japan

2023-09-08T18:10:31-08:00August 21st, 2023|

Technically speaking, the first Nintendo game to feature a female protagonist is Clu Clu Land, but she’s only specified as being female in localizations outside Japan. Released for the Famicom on November 28, 1984, Clu Clu Land can be broadly described as a response to Pac-Man, though a good [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Bahamut and Behemoth: One and the Same?

2023-01-12T21:37:17-08:00January 9th, 2023|

"This is not an etymology blog. This is a video game history blog. However, in looking into the histories of things, we often end up examining the roots of the language we use to describe them. I think the intersection of the Final Fantasy versions of Bahamut, Behemoth, Leviathan and Kujata [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Sea Hag or Sagahin? A Quick History of an RPG Water Monster

2023-01-02T21:46:00-08:00December 26th, 2022|

"This is the first installment of a series I’ve wanted to do for a while, whether as its own blog or as a podcast, but I’ve decided it’s going to live here. In my head, I was calling it Questing Beast, and it was going to focus on the histories [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: Meet Mega Man’s Brother, Bruce

2022-12-09T20:10:05-08:00December 9th, 2022|

To set the scene, I was a regular reader of video game magazines, so I was fairly well-versed in titles I hadn’t actually played yet. I tried to be cool and say that I knew that this new Mega Man adventure introduced a new character who was Mega Man’s brother, and [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: The Story Behind Super Mario RPG’s Valentina

2022-11-29T21:40:13-08:00November 28th, 2022|

This is not a Mario blog, even if this is the third Mario-related post in a row. There’s actually a much bigger one coming in the not-too-distant future, but I’m only offering up so much of this one franchise because I happen to know a lot about the Mario games — [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: A Parade of Princess Peach Prototypes

2022-11-15T03:48:34-08:00November 14th, 2022|

The prettiest pink princess in video games did not always look how she looks today, it turns out. She wasn’t even always pink. In doing research for the previous post on how the Goomba might have gotten its name from a language that’s not Italian, I found an early design for [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: What Is the Etymology of ‘Goomba’?

2022-11-15T03:41:52-08:00November 9th, 2022|

I’ve already written about the origin story of the Goomba, the lowliest enemy in the Super Mario games, and how and why there’s confusion about whether the Goomba is a mushroom or a chestnut. But this site exists to explore the origins of things and also to revisit the accepted stories [...]

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games: The Extended Capcom Darkstalkers Universe

2022-11-04T17:42:16-08:00October 30th, 2022|

When I started this project earlier this year, people saw what I was doing and responded with something along the lines of “Oh, it’s a blog.” And every time I heard that word, I could tell that it struck me wrong. Not that there’s anything wrong with blogs or blogging; after [...]

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