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One more time before you go – for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend considering a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

With a history as an engaged RPG gamer you might have predicted that I was really excited when I heard that during last week’s Cyber Monday sale, Square-Enix was offering Final Fantasy 7 for a ridiculously low price. In fact, Square put pretty much their entire collection on sale at prices that were 60% off. It was crazy!

But you might imagine my surprise when I tried to purchase a few downloadable versions of some classic Final Fantasy games only to be met with an error screen on the Square website. I tried to purchase those downloads for about an hour and a half and just couldn’t get past the error screen.

It was the most frustrating experience you could imagine.

Or at least it was the most frustrating experience you could imagine until I contacted Square’s help line to see if they could help me with problem I encountered. And lucky for you folks, I’ve saved the entire back and forth conversation for you to read and most likely be disgusted by as I was disgusted. Here’s how the e-mail conversation started:

I tried to purchase both Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 PC editions during your Cyber Monday sale, but the order form on the website kept coming up with an error message. Is it possible to still buy those two games and the Cyber Monday prices? I’m a long-time Square fan and I hope that you understand my frustration when I could have gotten these two games at a great price, but your website wouldn’t work for me. Thanks.

I think I was pretty rational and calm in that query. Here is Square’s first awful response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience. We show that the Cyber sale already ended. Please attempt a new order. To place a new order, go to: http://store.na.square-enix.com/store/sqenixus/en_US/ResetShoppingCart

Ugh… talk about a useless, non-response. If I owned Square-Enix and I saw that this was the response that one of my customer service people sent back to the question that I posed, I’d fire them for not being able to comprehend basic English or customer intent. Here is my response to Square:

It appears that you didn’t listen to my concern. The items that I wanted to buy were on sale during your Cyber Monday sale. Your website did not work during your Cyber Monday sale. I tried to purchase the items several times during your Cyber Monday sale and your website would not work. This is false advertising and is against the law in America.

I’m asking that you recognize that your website – not me or anything on my end – but your website failed during the period that your sale was active. And as an act of repentance for your website failing during your sale, I’ve asked that you offer me the two games that I was attempting to purchase for the price that they were offered during the failure of your website.

The response you provided doesn’t address any of those points. Please try again.

I mean – I can’t be any clearer in that response, can I? Well, get ready for more useless help from Square. This was their response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to place an order for the price on the Cyber Monday promotion. You may need to complete the order at the current price that is showing online. However, we can submit a request to match the promotional price once the order has been completed. Please be reminded that this request is not a guarantee the the price will be matched.

If you wanted to place an order, you may do so. Once it is completed, please provide the promotional offer information that details the price you are referring to.

That’s right, folks – Square’s response to my request was to tell me to buy the products at full price and then request that I be offered the promotional price… after I made the purchases! In what world does that make sense? Well, I attempted to explain this to the dopes at Square:

This isn’t an acceptable resolution to the problem. You certainly wouldn’t accept my “conditional” payment and forward me the software with the condition being that I’m only sending you the money if I get the discount that your broken website wouldn’t allow me to get on Cyber Monday. You’d be fools to give away your product on the hope that I was going to pay in full just like I’d be a fool to pay you in full with the hope that you’d live up to meeting the sale price (which, let’s be honest, you absolutely wouldn’t do).

So this has been a useless interaction for me. I look forward to sharing it with my fellow gamers and folks who have generally been disenfranchised by a once-great company.

They haven’t/didn’t respond to my last e-mail, but that’s okay. The steep decline in the popularity of their now-craptastic Final Fantasy series speaks volumes to how far this company has fallen. People used to line up outside of stores to get the latest Final Fantasy games. Now? Well, fan backlash was so strong against Final Fantasy 14 that it forced Square to take the game off of the market and totally recreate the product. When your company has fallen that far, it’s no wonder that your customer “service” team isn’t able to meet the type of simple request that I asked in my question.

Oh how the mighty have fallen…

For example, the first project I contributed some funds towards on Kickstarter.com was a country music album from a female professional wrestler (eclectic, right?). She met her funding goal and is now in the final stages of completing her new album. Due to the level I chose to support her project at, along the way I’ve been given behind-the-scenes updates on the making of the album. I was also a member of a group of backers who qualified for a private online concert where she sang some of her new songs and covered some long-time popular hits. It was pretty cool.

Lately, I’ve been trying to put some money behind small video game developers because let’s be honest – without these small developers, the entire video game industry is doomed. Specifically, I’ve been trying to put money behind some action/adventure games and role playing games. The role playing games are really what I look for whenever I browse around Kickstarter.com. After Square Enix screwed up the entire Final Fantasy series by trying to make it too realistic, I began looking for better gaming experiences and the truth is that they’re really hard to come by.

And it’s not just the video game industry that I’m thinking about. Remember, video games are one of the primary training tools for a lot of our high-end military applications and one of the best hand-eye coordination tools that we have at our disposal. Also, more creative minds building, structuring, and restructuring these software applications can also lead to new breakthroughs in the medical field or in scientific research (like the Folding@Home project). There are a ton of great reasons to support these small, independent developers.

Oh – and I support these developers because video games are fun!

I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the latest projects that I’m helping to fund. I encourage you to check out some of these projects and, if you’re so inclined, why not throw them a few bucks to help them along their way? You can pay directly through PayPal (via Amazon) and you’ll get a great deal on a new video game (it usually just costs between $10 and $15 to qualify for a digital copy of a game). Check it out!

Are you active on Kickstarter.com? If so, are there any projects that you think I should know about? Feel free to leave a link in the comments section below. Thanks!

I suspect that there are many people out there just like me – people who used to be good at playing videos games, but try to play today’s video games and generally find themselves on the short end of the stick. If you’re one of those folks who has been passed by in the current generation of video games, then I’m here to tell you that there is hope thanks to the Nintendo Wii! More specifically, there is hope thanks to Nintendo’s Virtual Console – where you can download hundreds of old games from previous gaming systems.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - A Quick, Fun Way to Spend 10 Hours

Last weekend, I was flipping around the Virtual Console looking for a nostalgic way to spend a few bucks and there it was – Final Fantasy’s Mystic Quest. Frankly, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it on the screen because I didn’t think that Mystic Quest was the type of big-time game that you’d find on the Virtual Console. But there it was and a few bucks and a few minutes later it was downloaded to my Wii and I was ready to play.

Mystic Quest was originally released in 1992 and you’ll be able to figure as much as soon as you turn the game on. The graphics, gameplay, character movement, audio, and sound effects are all straight out of time warp when George H. W. Bush was still President and I was kicking butt playing on the recreation soccer team in Mount Arlington. Good times, but I digress.

It took me about 10 hours of playing the game in order to beat it. Now, I don’t specifically remember how much time I spent playing this particular video game back in 1992, but I have to imagine that it was a number greater than 10! So, while I tend to fail miserably at today’s video games, I think I’ve actually gotten better at yesterday’s video games. Ha! That’s improvement right there, people! And, honestly, I could have beaten the game a little bit quicker, but it took my some time to get my bearings about me (hey, it’s been almost 20 years since I last played the game – give me a break!).

Mystic Quest follows a tried and true formula for Final Fantasy games: something bad is happening in the world, a fabled hero appears, the hero defeats a series of lesser “bad guys” which lead up to fighting the major bad guy, and the world is saved. Hey, if the formula ain’t broke – don’t fix it, right? After you save a bunch of crystals, you’re faced with going through a tower and refighting a different form of each of the lesser bad guys before you come before the Dark King (creative name, right?). After you defeat a few incarnations of the Dark King, Square-Enix (actually, Squaresoft made the game, but since they’re now Square-Enix, I’m using that name) puts together a montage with the hero visiting all of the major locations in this very small land that the game takes place in. The hero gets an update from everyone, borrows a ship from his girlfriend’s father, and goes off sailing around the world with a treasure hunter named Tristam.

And that’s it – the game is over. There’s nothing else going on after you beat the game unlike some of the newer Square-Enix games where you can go through the game from the beginning with a powered up version of the hero. But hey – this game was made in 1992 and the idea of going back through the game at top performance was probably crazy talk back then!

However, better than actually beating a game again, I was able to take 10 hours of my time (broken into an hour here, two hours there) and feel like I was good at a real video game again. So if you’re on Nintendo’s Virtual Console, like role playing games, and are a fan of Final Fantasy and Square-Enix – go ahead and download Mystic Quest. You’ll love it!

Up next from the Virtual Console… Secret of Mana released by Square-Enix in 1993. Awesome!

But, even though I want to, I do not believe that I am going to go out and buy a video game. There’s no one, single reason that I can put my finger on as to why I’m not going to get one, but here are a few thoughts that keep crossing through my mind…

Cost. Even though I have a Nintendo Wii, the cost of a video game is still expensive! Sure, it’s not $60 to buy a new game like it is on the other consoles, but games range in price from $30 to $50 which really isn’t that cheap, either. Of course, if the right game came along, I would be willing to spend the money on it.

Difficulty Level. This is an odd qualifier for me. When I was younger, I could play games at the hardest difficulty and beat them. Now that I don’t really play games as much as I used to, the easy-to-medium difficulty level becomes a challenge – and that’s fine with me. I never had a desire to be a hardcore gamer, so I’m glad to play a game on easy or medium. But some of these games are just too easy or too hard. I could never get into the current Madden games on Wii because there’s no way I’d be able to understand what’s going on. At the same time, I’d never be into a lot of the downloadable games that Wii offers because they’re all too easy. There’s no happy medium these days.

Genre. My favorite type of game is a role playing game. The old Final Fantasy games are the best series in my view. Give me Final Fantasy numbers 1 through 10 and all of the sub-games that have come out of that series and I’m a happy gamer. But you don’t get that any more. Today, you get companies that try to make games in the Final Fantasy mold and they fall short. And for their part, Square-Enix (developer of the Final Fantasy series) has too many breakaway scenes in the beginning of their games – so much so that you could start a game and only play for maybe ten minutes of the first hour. It’s overkill. Plus, the only games they put on the Wii are these Crystal Chronicles games, which I have very little interest in. I’m looking for a game like Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy IX – games that take a while to get through. Which brings me to my next point…

Time. Yes, I want a game that takes some time to play, but one that also allows me to play it in intervals. I don’t want to sit in front of the screen for hours on end – I don’t have the time for that. I want to be able to play in 30 or possibly 60 minute intervals.

Fun Factor. Finally, I want a game that’s fun to play over and over again. My cousin and I used to play WCW/nWo video games because there were easy to control and a hell of a lot of fun (I would always whip his ass – isn’t that right, cousin?). I like the Final Fantasy games because they’re fun to play, same goes for the Mario Kart series.

So there are some of the problems that I’m facing as I try to figure out which video game, if any, I want to purchase. If you have any recommendations, let me know. If not, then no worries. I’m not that concerned, really!

The Wii still dominates the market with 48.5 million units sold worldwide which is almost double the nearest competition. XBox 360 comes in second with some 29.5 million units worldwide with PlayStation 3 bringing in the caboose at 21.3 million units worldwide. And in terms of handheld units, forget about it. The Nintendo DS has over 100 million units sold worldwide, which is more than double the PSP. It’s not even worth calling a competition any more in that segment of the market.

I read an update about the Wii now being able to handle up to 32GB smart disks and a change in the core technology to allow users to download software directly to their smart disks. That’s a welcome relief for many gamers who were running up against the internal limits of their Wii machines and other gamers who went out and purchased smart disks when they bought their system and have had yet to use them! It always seemed odd to me that the smart disk technology would be so ready available for use with the Wii, but that there would be no game-specific uses for it upon the system’s launch. Talk about a dumb move – but at least it’s been fixed now.

And apparently there are going to be more Final Fantasy downloads coming from the WiiWare system thanks to Square-Enix’s support for this feature. That can only be welcome news as there will always be a void in Nintendo’s line-up with no first-run games from the core Final Fantasy story.

Anyway, just thought I’d share some information that I picked up when running around the website linked above. Enjoy!

No, I didn’t play the game for 100 straight hours! I played an hour or two per day for about a month and a half until I beat it today. I have to say though, for a game that has some pretty innovative and fun game-play – the ending was a little anti-climatic.

Generally, a Final Fantasy game gets REALLY annoying towards the end of the game because you beat the final enemy and then you have a super-duper secret enemy that you have to beat…only to be followed by a mega-massive, super-duper, kill-your-face enemy that actually has the balance of the universe in its hands. Thankfully, Final Fantasy XII doesn’t have that type of a garbage ending sequence! Actually, if you’ve built your characters up enough, you can breeze through the end of the game. This is a nice, good change for the series. My take on it is that if you get your characters to a maxed out level (usually 99), then why should you NOT be able to destroy any “bad guys” in the game?

But in terms of the actual story, I felt like the ending was not what it could have been. That being said, it looked great! The graphics were just amazing for a PS2 (makes me want to buy a PS3 when the next Final Fantasy comes out). If only the story matched the graphics, this game would be an instant legend.

However, if you’re looking for a good way to blow some free time and about $50, I recommend going out and purchasing a copy of this game. When you come to the end of the game, though, don’t be surprised if the game is over before you even know it!