Bernie Stolar passed away this week (at age 75). He is best remembered within the world of video games for his exploits as Sony Computer Entertainment of America’s Vice President during the PlayStation’s early days and as Sega’s President of the American branch during the late Saturn early Dreamcast era. He successfully laid the groundwork…
Category: Opinion
The Never Ending Realm features video game reviews, fan-fiction, fan-art, and more! Since 2003. Read all of our opinion pieces here!
Games That Will Cost You a Kidney: Dragon Force
When we think about old classic turn-based Japanese Role-Playing games, Final Fantasy Tactics and the Shining Force series come to mind. A game that is not often mentioned, and it should be (mentioned) among those great titles, is Dragon Force. Dragon Force is a tactical Sega RPG. It was published by Sega in Japan, but…
The Best Games of 2009 According to GameRankings
As we approach the end of the 2000s decade, we begin to see some of the most refined games from the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 era. As always, we took off the list games with less than 20 reviews to their name, and games that had multiple versions on the list. We have removed versions…
Games That Will Cost You a Kidney: Revelations: Persona
The original PlayStation was the home to many great Japanese Role-Playing games. Some of these games (Wild Arms, Suikoden) were modestly successful on their PS debuts and spawned franchises before dying off in the mid 2000s. Today’s subject in the weekly “Games that will cost you a kidney” series is a game that didn’t have…
Best Games of 2008 According to GameRankings
2008 was a great year for gaming. Big titles from major franchises such as Metal Gear Solid and Grand Theft Auto arrived on “new” console hardware. For the first time in years, a JRPG managed to break into the top ten best games of the year. The game of the year was GTA IV,…
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: Fully Embracing its Sequel Role to the Original Game?
As part of the celebration for Final Fantasy VII’s 25th anniversary, Square Enix finally unveiled details of Final Fantasy VII Remake “Part 2” which will be called “Rebirth”. The game’s title and trailer seem to “officially” confirm what was obvious to those of us who had played the original game before the “Remake”, which…
Games that Will Cost You a Kidney: Shining Force III
The Sega Saturn is, at least to me, the most legendary of the 32/64-bit era machines. The reason? I didn’t own one, and I only know a single person who did. Furthermore, this person lost the console two decades ago. As a JRPG fan, it was painful that the Sega Saturn was also the home…
The Best Games of 2007 According to GameRankings
Greetings Friends! We have, after 17 weeks, reached the 2007 GameRankings.com’s best games of the year list. As we have done recently, the lower scoring version of a game that is featured twice or more on the list is removed to allow for other titles to enter. This time, PS3 versions of BioShock and COD4…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Street Fighter II
The 1990s were a good time for everything related to martial arts. Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Van Damme movies were all the rage. Kids shows like the Power Rangers and movies like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles drove younglings all over America into Martial Arts schools. Before the wired special effects shenanigans turned…
Games That Will Cost You a Kidney: Vanguard Bandits
Another week, and another ill-fated Working Design’s PlayStation 1 release. Vanguard Bandits was a decent JRPG/Strategy game based on stereotypical anime mech troupes. Vanguard Bandits had a little more ‘flash’ than most Japanese strategy games of the time. It featured multiple story events with different ramifications given the choice of the protagonist, and consequently, multiple…