Hey reader(s), None of us at videolamer (that I could get a hold of) recalls the Quantum Link service, although many of you no doubt remember its successor America On-Line with no small amount of fondness. This is a pretty darn cool article about the Quantum Link worthy of attention: https://www.tinytickle.co.uk/quantum-link/ We're not really in a state to reincarnate at the moment, but we do fondly recall the times we would write several articles a week, some of which were worth reading. We'll keep them online as long as we can. Keep on keeping on.

Many, many years ago I was an avid reader of Nintendo Power.  I had already developed a taste for RPGs, although they were a bit less numerous back then.  A bunch of them were bad — and often, even Nintendo Power was willing to admit that. Regardless, I would read each article about an RPG with fascination.  When it was a game I knew, I would enjoy flipping through the various artwork and reading about the tricky parts.  Otherwise, I’d quietly file it away in a hidden corner of my mind, to play later. I’m finally working my way through the last few of those games I filed away — recently Paladin’s Quest and 7th Saga, and ...

A few days ago I lost about five hours of time to the notoriously buggy Age of Empires DS. I'd waged a long war of attrition against the Taira and it was roughly round 80 when mid combat the game just froze. Majesco did put a piece of printing paper in the game's case that warned of bugs, so really it was my own fault. Ten minutes ago I got permanently stuck in Grandia for the PS1. A river of poison was just too magnetic for my four member party to escape and so no matter what direction I pushed, they simultaneously ran in place. We have written about bugs and glitches many times before, but this ...

Continued from the previous article, this is a set of mini-reviews from stuff I didn't get the chance to actually write about in 2012. Diablo III (PC) Because impressions from the beta were somewhat divided, I held off on picking up Diablo III until early summer, when the hype for the game had died down to “acceptable dungeon-crawler”. Unfortunately, I commit the ultimate sin now by (mini-)reviewing it without having actually beaten it. After the wealth of customization, strategy, and randomness that was in Diablo II, its sequel came as a huge disappointment. Despite more than two hours of gameplay, I had yet to make an actual decision for either character I ...

Since I didn’t get the chance to write about many of these games on videolamer, this is sort of a 2012-as-reviewed. Apologies if it’s a bit much; I’ll try to keep my impressions brief. These are all games that stand out to me, in either a good or a bad way. Some of them were released in 2011, but as a fellow gaming peon (no review copies for videolamer) I didn’t acquire them until this year. Games appear in rough chronological order. Overall, 2012 has been a really great year for video games. Personally, I’ve been trying to limit the growth of my backlog while completing as many new and interesting games as I have the ...

Continuing my trend of catching up on PS2 RPGs, I picked up the Shadow Hearts series a few months ago. Since a recent spate of games (including Demon's Souls, which seems to be a videolamer favorite) has kept me busy, I'm just now making my way through the series. The PS2 may have an impressive spread of RPGs - as I've discovered, still playing games I had barely heard about - but Shadow Hearts really stands apart, despite being an early game on the system that hasn't really aged well. By far the most impressive part of Shadow Hearts is the atmosphere. Set a little over a year before World War I and ...