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A boy and his bots


Last weekend, I managed my most amazing and miraculous gaming feat yet: conning my boy into playing Robotrek. The trouble with Robotrek, aside from its many, many translational errors and almost entire lack of worthwhile plot, is that I love it. Absolute, 100% devotion to it. But I have trouble explaining just why, or what it is about Robotrek that should put it within a court order's distance of anyone's need-to-play list.



The previous three statements can apply to almost any Enix game, (especially of the SNES era), yet they remain my favorite game developer. Besides the issues their games share, they all have a quirky charm and some uniqueness that prevents you from saying "Oh, it's just another ___ game," because there is always an "...except that !!!" at the end.

Robotrek is just another turn-based RPG...except that you build robots to battle for you! And you have to invent many other devices throughout, such as a relay that lets you talk to animals and an umbrella that controls the weather. The Song of Storms was way behind the times.

Everyone in the game, even the villains, are likable. I don't even remember who was bad vs. good because I'm just buddies with all of them. We still meet up at Denny's for omelets on Saturdays.

For some reason these vague, and often blurted out at inopportune times, reasons for playing the game don't seem to woo many a player. The Boy only agreed to play because I mercifully released him from a commitment to the end of Final Fantasy VIII, on the grounds that he would owe me the entirety of some other game of my choosing. I guess if I want the world to play the unexplainable awesome that is Robotrek, I'll have to make more serious demands upon it, and then relinquish to its lesser threat.

"You have to play through Taz-Mania without cutting your hands off. Or, you could just play Robotrek."
"Deal."

There