Update 5/17 - Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Nightshade, Cave Noire, Magician Lord, Generation Xbox, Driller Tanks, Quest for Glory interview

Do you like Final Fantasy? We've already covered the main series, and SaGa, so our big feature this week looks at the Crystal Chronicles series offshoot. It goes in-depth with 8 different entries, the main cast of characters, plus a look at some of the merchandising. Still following the RPG theme, we've also got a feature on Cave Noire, a neat little roguelike for the monochrome GameBoy. It's fast-paced and great for those new to the roguelike genre, plus it's been fan-translated. Since it's a monochrome GB title, we should also introduce you to this page we made on the subject of GB filters - since the system had its own screen and distinctive visual appearance, there's been some debate among staff and readers for a while, about how best to showcase GB games. Have your say in our forum topic too.

There's been a lot of NeoGeo re-releases over the years, on digital download services, so it's about time we had a look at Magician Lord. It's an awesome but tough as nails action-platformer, and a refreshing change from the abundance of shmups and one-on-one fighters available for the system. For something with a slower pace, there's Nightshade on the NES, one of the few adventure games to find Western release on the system. It's full of charm and deserved to be better known.

For our regular pieces we have one of the last few Metal Gear interviews, with Ryan Payton from MGS4. A couple more and the collection will be finished. Ryan just last week succeeded with a Kickstarter for his new indie game project, so check that out too. There's also the next part of iOS Shooters, looking at Shmup, ISUD: Bullet Hell Action!, Techno Trancer, and Mortal Skies. Your Weekly Kusoge is Driller Tanks by Hudson, back when they still existed. It's not the worst maze game you'll find from around 1983, but significantly it shows how Hudson were able to learn from their mistakes, refine their designs, and go on to produce countless excellent maze games - until changing market forces killed them. We've also added a review of the new book Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood, which tells the intertwining saga of books and videos games, starting with E.T. for the 2600 and ending up with motion capture's influence on James Cameron's Avatar. Please do check out the rest of our book section, since we still receive random Tweets from readers only just discovering that we also cover books. Recent additions are: Game Over, The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual, plus Video Kids.

Our featured article is on the Quest for Glory series, since the games were recently released bundled together for about $10 on Good Old Games. It also featured the interview with one of the developers, Corey Cole, which was previously on published in the adventure game book, which was published roughly a year ago from today!