The sense of speed was probably the biggest change, though: even now, 20 years later, this game feels incredibly fast. The GameCube’s horsepower meant the courses were longer, more complicated and visually stunning.
The basic concept is the same: high-speed futuristic hovercraft battling it out in wild, creative courses where one mistake can lead to disaster. A decade later, F-Zero GX hit the GameCube and showed just how far racing had come. While the futuristic space racer only had 15 courses, they were beautiful and challenging, and even when I did well, I always felt like I could do a little better. The original F-Zero for the Super NES is one of those games I wore out as a teenager. Igor Bonifacic, Contributing Editor F-Zero GX Path of Radiance was my first Fire Emblem game, but it’s the one I keep coming back to because of just how much I enjoyed my first playthrough as a teen. Even when the game was at its most punishing, I wanted to see what would happen to Ike and his band of mercenaries. It’s that story that made me fall in love with Path of Radiance when I first played it more than 15 years ago. It has one of the best stories in the series, with an English script that captures a lot of the nuances of the Japanese original. And it did, making for a game that’s still fun to play to this day.
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We take a lot of it for granted now, but back then series developer Intelligent Systems had to figure out the mechanics for the first time. They exist in a sort of prototypical form since this was the first game in the series to make the jump to 3D. But in Path of Radiance you’ll still find many of the elements that came to define later Fire Emblem games. Nearly two decades later its presentation looks stiff and dated, and the game is missing the relationship mechanics beloved by newcomers. Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor Fire Emblem: Path of RadianceĪfter the runaway success of Awakening and Three Houses, it’s hard to see what made Path of Radiance, Fire Emblem’s only GameCube release, so special back in 2005. It's almost fitting that a game about millennia-old evil may end up being lost to the sands of time. There was an attempt at a spiritual successor, Shadow of the Eternals, that fell apart after failing to raise enough money via crowdfunding. But it was never re-released outside of the GameCube, and hope for a direct sequel was squashed when developer Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy in 2014. It was the first M-rated game published by Nintendo, and the company kept the trademark alive for a decade. Like many GameCube titles, Eternal Darkness was clearly an attempt to attract an older audience.
Most notably, it had a sanity meter that would change the gameplay and environment and even throw simulated system errors to freak out players. While there's combat, it was more about psychological trauma than the survival horror of Resident Evil. Its century-spanning story covered a dozen characters, all connected to an ancient Lovecraftian god. Eternal Darkness puts you in the shoes of Alexandra Roivas, a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her grandfather's horrific death.