I was doing some spring cleaning over the weekend and dug up some old video game drawings I did when I must’ve been right around 13 or 14 years old. Back then, I had subscriptions to magazines like PSM and OPM, and I would skim through and find ads, artwork and screenshots to use as references to draw from.

Below are some choice works of art I produced back in the day when the original PlayStation was the cool new kid on the console block. (I also remember doing a Xenogears sketch across a larger piece of poster board, but I haven’t been able to find that masterpiece yet.) So come join me on my trip down memory lane!

This reminds me to beg Sony to bring Tomba! back. (Sadly it’ll never happen.)

Blasto’s always been one of my all-time guilty pleasure cult favorites. The voice work of the late Phil Hartman was magical!

Love, love, love Brave Fencer Musashi, and wish Square Enix would revisit it someday.

Of course I had to do a Cloud Strife drawing at the height of Final Fantasy VII’s popularity.

Croc is another underrated series that could never quite get out of the shadows of mascot platformers like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro.

Holy shit! Remember Thrill Kill? It was so overhyped for its gratuitous violence and then got cancelled and bootlegged and used as the engine for games like Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style.

Here’s a watercolor painting I did of my PS2 for some art class I vaguely remember taking.

From the moment I popped Nostalgia into my DS, I felt all warm and fuzzy inside, recollecting similar feelings from when I first played classic JRPGs like the early NES/SNES Final Fantasy games and PS1 favorites like Wild ARMs and Suikoden. Whether you grew up playing console RPGs like me or not, though, this game will grab you all the same.

Tag-team-developed by Red Entertainment and the DS RPG whizzes at Matrix Software (Final Fantasy III and IV remakes, Avalon Code), Nostalgia is a traditional-style JRPG telling the story of a young adventurer named Eddie who initially embarks on a quest to find his father (who happens to be a famous adventurer himself) but quickly forms his own ragtag bunch of adventure buddies and becomes embroiled in an epic conflict against a sinister organization seeking seven magical tablets stashed away in secret temples and dungeons around the world.

I know, that all must sound incredibly cliché, but somehow the game makes those clichés seem fresh and exciting all over again. A large part of that is the setting, with the game world taking place in sort of an alternate history steampunk-themed 19th Century and the storyline placing you aboard an airship bouncing around the globe to real-world locales like New York City, Tokyo, Egypt, Siberia and the Amazon. The game doesn’t take itself too seriously, either, so it’s easy to just kick back and enjoy the whimsical ride.

All told, the story takes around 20-25 hours to complete if you blitz through the main quests without much deviation (as I did), but as in any good JRPG you can spend tens of hours level grinding, discovering hidden World Treasures in your airship, completing optional side quests for extra loot, and filling out your Adventurer’s Notebook to 100% completion long after the story has ended. Throughout those many hours of play you won’t find any gimmicky features, touch-screen mechanics, voiced dialogue, or extravagant anime/CG cutscenes (Matrix once again did a phenomenal job producing appealing 3D visuals on the DS, though, and the soundtrack is great as well), but what you will discover is a highly satisfying and thoroughly entertaining slice of retro role-playing that’ll bring back fond memories of all of those great console RPGs of yesteryear.

The gameplay will feel very familiar to anyone who has played a JRPG within the past ~20 years. You travel around a world map, explore dungeons, open treasure chests, hit random encounters, slay monsters with weapon attacks, spells and special abilities in conventional turn-based battles (your party is on one side, the enemies are on the other, and the turn order is listed on the screen), earn experience and skill points to level-up your characters, visit towns to chat with the locals and buy new gear, and, well…I think you get the picture. Again, we’ve seen this all many times before, but through proper pacing and sense of progression, a balanced random encounter ratio, fun turn-based battles and interesting level designs, Nostalgia captures all the old stuff console RPG fans grew up on and gives it a satisfying new flavor.

One thing Nostalgia does emphasize more than most other RPGs, however, is overland combat and exploration. Rather than slowly trudging across the terrain to your next destination, you take to the skies in a mighty airship and engage in many tough battles with flying critters and sky pirates. During airship battles, each of your party members represents a different weapon on the airship (it’s outfitted with a frontal spear/blade for melee attacks and machine guns, cannons and lasers for ranged attacks), and from the airship hanger in the nearest town you can buy new weapons and shields to upgrade your ship with (all weapon upgrades reflect graphically on your ship/characters in battle too). Also, when you are distributing your skill point pool each character has both land and airship abilities for you to develop how you see fit.

Airship battles are great fun, but they do lead to really my only complaint with the game, and that is the difficulty balancing. For the majority of the game, the standard dungeon encounters put up enough resistance to be worthwhile, but are fairly easy overall – I died a few times, but generally always felt in command of every battle. However, airship battles are the complete opposite. Early on they aren’t too tough, but as your ship gains the ability to fly higher into the atmosphere you become bombarded with unexpectedly difficult random encounters that feel almost like boss battles. I don’t know, it just seemed strange to me to go from somewhat easy-going dungeon crawling to punishing aerial battles. And I’m not sure if it was just bad luck or what, but I found escaping airship battles nearly impossible, while running from land encounters was relatively easy. I died quite a few times trying to flee from powerful sky pirates I just wasn’t prepared for in certain situations, which led to some frustration-fueled cursing on my part as I loaded my last save.

But even through these occasional bouts of frustration, I loved every second of my time with Nostalgia, and frankly, I’m feeling a little sad now that I have to put it down and move on to other games that need finishing up. Nostalgia doesn’t reinvent the wheel here by any means, folks, but in a lot of ways that’s what makes it so great. Oftentimes gamers (myself included) become too swept up in the demand for innovation, but sometimes games are best left focusing on and perfecting the basics. A game like Nostalgia successfully proves that point.

Pros:
+ Good, old-fashioned JRPG gameplay done right
+ Fun mix of dungeon crawling and airship exploration
+ Cool steampunk 19th Century setting
+ Beautiful 3D graphics and soundtrack

Cons:
– Difficulty balancing and flee rate seem off between land and air battles

Game Info:
Platform: DS
Publisher: Ignition Entertainment
Developer: Matrix Software/Red Entertainment
Release Date: 10/27/09
Genre: RPG
ESRB Rating: E10+
Players: 1
Source: Review copy provided by publisher

Ignition Entertainment, Tecmo, Matrix Software and Red Entertainment have teamed up to bring steampunk DS JRPG “Nostalgeo no Kaze” to North America as Nostalgia. Created by an all-star team of Japanese game designers whose collective credits include games like Tokobot, Fatal Frame, Dragon Quest V, Thousand Arms, Gungrave, Grandia and the Final Fantasy III and IV DS remakes, Nostalgia is said to be an RPG that “hearkens back to the classic glory days of Japanese role-playing games.”

In Nostalgia you will as young hero Eddie, taking to the skies in his steampunk zeppelin and exploring an alternate-reality representation of 19th-century Earth in order to save the world from an “unfathomable evil,” as you would expect to do in any JRPG.

According to Nostalgia producer, Keisuke Kikuchi, “I knew this game had such potential when I saw Mr. Morita’s project book. It is an adventure game set in another Earth, offering an enjoyable story that involves various different cultures in many diverse locations. The key element that brings the game together is the airship, the conveyance which fits its game system and world-view. I wanted to make this idea into a product for everyone to play.”

“We feel deeply honored for the opportunity to bring Tecmo’s esteemed Japanese Nintendo DS role-playing game “Nostalgeo no Kaze” to an entirely new audience as Nostalgia,” said Shane Bettenhausen, New Business Development Director of Ignition Entertainment. “Amid a sea of remakes and rehashes, this endearing adventure blazes its own unique path with deeply engrossing gameplay systems, but it also hearkens back to the classic RPGs of yesteryear with its unforgettable characters and universal narrative themes.”

Nostalgia is scheduled to arrive on US shores this September exclusively for the DS. Check below for an overview of the top features that should make this a JRPG for the ages.

Nostalgia Key Game Features:

• Ambitious, fully 3D polygonal graphical engine offers dramatic, sweeping camera angles and impressive vistas rarely seen in a DS title.

• Cohesive, anime-inspired art direction that effectively captures the game’s turn-of-the-century charm.

• Travel to incredibly unique, non-traditional RPG locales via airship including London, New York, Cairo, Africa, and Russia.

• Features two distinct combat engines: One is a brisk, turn-based close-quarters melee between your party members and monsters; while the other offers thrilling, large-scale airship battles. In addition, your battle skills are scored at the conclusion of each conflict, inspiring strategic mastery.

• Handy in-game notebook feature keeps track of people, monsters, airships and items you’ve run across.

• Plenty of user-defined customization, allowing the player to trick out his or her airship with various weapons, armor types, and special skill attacks. The player can also choose character-specific skills from a branching tree for a more personalized experience.

• Explore a variety of diverse, engaging dungeons that include brain bending puzzles and tricky Indiana Jones-style traps.

• Optional quest system inspires players to approach the adventure from a less linear perspective, extending the life of the gameplay experience.