Scarred by Time
January 2008 Issue
Features
- From the Editors
- Craft Check: Gaming Gloves
- Gaming in the Media: Women Working in Games - 5 Viewpoints, 2 Ways to Play
- Market to Me: Women as players
- Gamer vs Gamer: An old debate for the new year: casual vs. hardcore
Interviews
- Industry Interview: Naomi Clark
- Blogger Interview: Mighty Ponygirl [Feminist Gamers]
Articles
- Gender & Live-Action Role Play: Reality Repackaged
Author: Samara Hayley Steele
- Planning a Women-Only Gaming Group
Author: Robyn Fleming
- Celebrating women in the industry
Author: Andrea Rubenstein
- Choosing Imitation Over Innovation
Author: Richard Pilbeam
In this ongoing series, Samara shares her experiences as a female LARPer in a male-dominated LARP Organization.
Robyn outlines the trials and tribulations of organizing an all-women gaming group.
Andrea looks at some of the influential women in the video game and tabletop gaming industry.
Richard discusses ways in which imitation and a lack of innovation help to perpetuate sexist themes in games produced by the RPG Maker community.
Gamer Stories
Reviews
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Retro Review: Pitfall!
Odds 'n Ends
“Scars of Time”
To me, those three words symbolize the start of a serious gaming career. Sure I’ve played games all my life, ever since my older brother got a Nintendo Entertainment System with a copy of Super Mario Bros./Duckhunt and the original Castlevania for Christmas when I was five, but I never really considered it to be a hobby of mine. I wasn’t even very good at games so, more often than not, I was content to just watch him play.
Until I caught a whisper of “Scars of Time” drifting down the hallway back into my bedroom one summer night in 2000. Curiosity piqued, I came out into the living room and found my brother watching a demo of the upcoming game Chrono Cross on his beat-up old Playstation. The demo was non-playable, and consisted solely of the opening FMV sequence to Chrono Cross but, oh, that was enough. The video, accompanied by the track “Scars of Time” (Okay, technically the full title of the song is “Chrono Cross ~Scars of Time~” for accuracy’s sake) was absolutely mesmerizing. I was completely and utterly hooked. I took over the Playstation and replayed the demo over and over late into the night. I couldn’t get enough of the music. The haunting melody of the flute that played out with the storybook; the drums that pick up as the text fades away and the action starts…and the string instruments. The string instruments. That was what did it. I’m a sucker for violins, cellos, you name it. I love to just close my eyes and listen to the sounds they make and “Scars of Time” used them brilliantly. I pestered my brother about this game, Chrono Cross, wanting to know everything that I could. He assured me that he had the game pre-ordered and that it would be released within a month or two. I couldn’t wait.
Chrono Cross wasn’t even my first console RPG. I’d played Earthbound, Parasite Eve and Shadow Madness, all of which I’d really enjoyed (yes, even Shadow Madness), and I still consider Earthbound to be my favorite game, in fact, but for some reason those games hadn’t convinced me that I was a fan of RPGs yet. See, my brother had been playing console RPGs for as long as I could remember. He’d play games like Final Fantasy III (which we all know is really VI but this was back in the day of the SNES cartridge labeled with the III for the US market) and Chrono Trigger and try and convince me that I should play them too. I turned my nose up at them and said I simply wasn’t interested. When he’d decided to get a Playstation, for the sole purpose of playing RPGs, I couldn’t fathom why he wasn’t satisfied with what our Nintendo 64 had to offer. In my head, RPGs were synonymous with boring medieval-ish settings and stories. Games like Earthbound and Parasite Eve weren’t real RPGs because they took place in modern settings, and Shadow Madness, well, Shadow Madness was just quirky and fun. So I thought of these games as exceptions to the rule.
Chrono Cross, however, changed all the rules.
Because he’d pre-ordered the game, my brother got a soundtrack sampler and a Chrono Cross clock when he picked up the game (I would later appropriate both of these items–the clock still sits on top of my TV to this day as something of a reminder whenever I’m playing games). I was eager to play the game that had so captivated me with its teaser demo, and I tore right into it as soon as we got home. I hadn’t played its predecessor Chrono Trigger at the time but I couldn’t have cared less. Given Chrono Cross’s bizarrely constructed ramshackle plot, however, this didn’t prove to matter too much either. Like the story was actually gonna make any sense anyway. Pft. Though my favorite thing about playing RPGs has come to be getting caught up in the stories, this was the least important aspect of Chrono Cross. I loved the gameplay. The battle system, with equipable magic elements that could only be used in concert with physical attacks, was a blast to me and the game’s visuals were beautiful for their time. But first and foremost, it was all about the music. Composed by Mitsuda Yasunori, the game’s soundtrack was everything that the “Scars of Time” demo had promised it would be. From “Scars of Time” in the opening FMV sequence, to the Magical Dreamers performance of the “Song of Marbule” in concert, to the epic battle against the Time Devourer fought to the strains of “Dragon God,” to the ending credits theme song, “Radical Dreamers ~Unstolen Jewel~,” I was desperately addicted to the music of Chrono Cross. As soon as I beat the game, I started up a New Game+ file and played through again. From there, my RPG playing career was launched. I began pouring through my brother’s game collection, playing every RPG that I could get my hands on. Chrono Trigger. Xenogears. Threads of Fate. Final Fantasy VI-IX. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete. Super Mario RPG. Vandal Hearts II. The Legend of Dragoon. Whatever my brother had, I played it and when I’d beaten all the RPGs in his collection, I sought out more on my own, eventually purchasing my own Playstation 2 with the first paycheck from my first high school job to feed the habit (I was dying to play Final Fantasy X, and couldn’t wait for Xenosaga). I also got in the habit of saving my money to buy video game soundtracks off of eBay. My favorite games were always the ones with the best soundtracks. I adored (and still listen to) the works of Shimomura Yoko, Nakano Junya, and Uematsu Nobuo, among many other composers. Video games will always be defined by their music for me.
These days I’m usually too busy to really sink my teeth into too many time-intensive RPGs, but it continues to remain my favorite video game genre. I play lots of other games, of course, but I consider myself to be a console RPGamer at heart. Thanks to Chrono Cross and “Scars of Time,” my passing interest in video games developed into a full-fledged hobby, one that still keeps me up late at night, be it with a controller clutched in my hands, telling myself I’ll quit as soon as I get to the next save point, or just sitting quietly, listening to the sounds of a video game soundtrack.
