059 - THE 3-D BATTLES OF WORLDRUNNER

THE 3-D BATTLES OF WORLDRUNNER

Episode 059

Show Notes

More on Nasir Gebelli | Hidden Features | VERY long interview with Nasir about programming

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OUR THOUGHTS

MIKE

Everyone who likes video games has heard of Square Enix. Those who are big on video games know that Square and Enix used to be separate, but still awesome companies. Few know that Square made games before Final Fantasy and other JRPGS. Very few know that The 3D Battles of WorldRunner is one of them.

But if you ever played a Final Fantasy game there should be two very familiar names: Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu. Sakaguchi is the creator of the Final Fantasy Series and Director of Final Fantasy II-V. He continued to play a role in the Final Fantasy Series all the way to X-2. Nobuo Uematsu hopefully doesn’t need an introduction, but he is the main composer of the Final Fantasy series, working on everything from Final Fantasy I-XIV. Now for the shocking part, those two also worked on The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner, but you would never notice it. There is nothing that resembles any of the masterpieces these two would go on to create. The “3D” gimmick is cute for a few minutes before completely losing it’s charm and actually being a hinderance to the gameplay. The stages are repetitive and boring, the concept is incredibly simple with few variations, and the soundtrack (if we can call it that) is a high energy track that immediately gets muted after a few minutes of play.

What I’m getting at here is that a lot of people try this game out because it has Square, Sakaguchi, and Uematsu’s names on it. The problem with that is that this game just wasn’t there calling. Keep in mind that Final Fantasy is called such because Square until that point was completely failing and only had one “final” chance left to redeem the company.

THE VERDICT - NOT ESSENTIAL

Look at how much crazier the bonus world is from the other worlds…

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