Julian “SiliconNooB” Taylor

2010.05.30

Greetings gentlemen (and KJew), Well might you wonder what nefarious happenstance has led to my appointment to the vaunted position of Lusipurr.com tenured columnist, happily that is not your concern. Suffice it to say money changed hands, reputations were tarnished, and a number of vastly more qualified applicants were in one way or another utterly destroyed. Such is life.

Worry not though friends, I have been thoroughly vetted by one Mr S.P. Lusipurr to ensure that I harbour no anti-Lusipurrian ideas, and have been subsequently determined as clean (I shall be spared the great purge, how many of you can say the same?). And am thus well positioned to tirelessly espouse the Lusipurr.com company line, in the hopes that it facilitate and hasten our transition towards a worldwide absolute monarchy, free from the tyranny of waggle controls (HRH won’t stand for it!).

As far as pedigrees go, mine is a conventional one. I was thrust headlong into the world of console gaming one sunny Xmas morning, at the tender age of five (I think?), obtaining a NES replete with Zelda II and Super Mario Bros. A SNES was to follow, whereupon I would discover the joys of Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II Turbo and Super Street Fighter II (with lashings of Champion Edition). While subsequent generations would see me furnished with a N64, PS1, PS2 and currently a PS3, PSP, DS, Wii and a broken 360.

My introduction to the world of JRPGs did not occur until the halcyon days of 1997, with the sublime Final Fantasy VII, owing to the fact that the shifty Japanese RPG development houses were too conceited and untrustworthy to trade their wares with PAL gamers until economic reality demanded otherwise. The PS1 was good to JRPG fans, allowing for developers to express concept art in ways which simply were not possible on the sprite based consoles. Squaresoft, as we well know, became quickly renowned for using this medium particularly well, creating sweeping flights of whimsy and imagination which would see their branding alone sufficient to imbue products with the status of compulsory purchase, long after they ceased to be worth playing.

These days I am more of a reformed JRPG fan following the industry’s decision to target their titles towards fans of the shitty game genre. Sadly this seems to be a microcosm of the game industry as a whole, and thus it falls to me gentle readers, to chronicle the demise of our beloved industry, so that future dystopian generations might pinpoint the moment that it all went horribly wrong (namely the retirement of the PS1). To this end I shall prosecute my duties with equal measures spite and glee.