Like a disturbingly high percentage of today's young adults, I looked through a lot of Nintendo Powers as a child. One of my favorite parts of the magazine was the annual spate of "Nester" awards, in which a Nintendo-crazed readership chose its favorite games in selected categories. But I didn’t really care what had the Best Graphics, the Best Sound, or the honor of Best Overall. I was far more interested in the fact that Ninja Gaiden had the Best Ending of any NES game from 1989, or that Mega Man was the Best Hero among 1990's Nintendo stable. The less important the distinction was, the firmer it was lodged in my memory.

That’s why I’ve attempted the least relevant awards session imaginable. Annual retrospectives typically invite memories of only the year’s best and worst; rarely does someone point out the pointless, the aesthetic flotsam that few notice and fewer still care about. Yet half of the fun of being a geek lies in documenting the obscure and meaningless, and that’s a path I’ve never shied from. So if you’re looking for something of value below, I suggest visiting The Straight Dope instead.

Still here? Good.

Fun Fact: Poppy was renamed "Puppy" in ADV Films' release of the original Samurai Shodown anime. Which sucked.

One of the best-known members of the Samurai Shodown cast is Galford, a blond and historically inaccurate American ninja accompanied by his faithful dog, Poppy. Figuring prominently in Galford’s attacks and win poses, Poppy (proved female by her puppies Papa, Pipa, and Pupa, if you must know) is an undeniable icon of the series, so much so that she was one of three characters shown in test renders for Samurai Shodown 64. Yet Poppy could only be controlled through Galford, and she never quite made it as an individual character. Samurai Shodown 2 featured Kuroko, the game’s masked referee, as a bonus combatant, but not Poppy. The injustice of it all.

Samurai Shodown V, however, gives us Poppy. With a untaxing code, she’s fully playable and surprisingly effective at first, as a lot of standard attacks pass right over her. Of course, most opponents wise up and deflect Poppy's assaults, but it’s not important if Galford’s canine sidekick is good in a fight or not, just because her presence is a much-appreciated nod to series fans. Say what you will about Samurai Shodown V: that it rehashes older stuff, that it lacks in personality, that the English version is boring. You may be right. But at least it's got Poppy.

Here we observe Kaylie, armed with her partly serrated sword and combat-ready dress, facing down a zombie. Yet only the creature’s fleshless, grasping hand is visible, and judging by the position of said hand, the ghoulish monstrosity trying to get at something other than Kaylie’s brains. This has apparently come to the attention of the priest standing on the left, aghast at the unvarnished carnal desires displayed by the walking dead. Then again, he might also be shocked by Kaylie’s grossly impractical attire. The Vatican would not approve.

The artist responsible for the illustration might not have intended this. Putting the ghoul’s sinewy hand elsewhere would have obscured Kaylie and her immodest wardrobe, after all. It’s probably just an accident. And that makes it all the more amusing.

OMG RARE NEW MINT HTF OOP SPECIAL HENTAI RARE OH WAIT NEVERMIND

With this in mind, some predicted that Squaresoft’s PlayStation games would someday be just as sought-after, but any visions of holy grails in game form were undone by “Greatest Hits” releases of Final Fantasy Tactics, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy VII through IX. Tactics saw the greatest drop in price, fetching somewhere around $100 on eBay before it was reissued for fifteen bucks. While the odd buyer will occasionally pony up for a sealed Tactics without the ugly green stripe of the Greatest Hits label, present auctions for the original game seldom run past thirty.

However, not every Square title hit the budget circuit, which prompted speculation that future collectors would pay quite a bit for first-string Square creations that didn't join the Greatest Hits club: Vagrant Story and Xenogears were often mentioned as "collectible," as were the compilations of Final Fantasy Chronicles and Final Fantasy Anthology.

Well, that dream is as dead. In November, the recently merged Square Enix decided that all four games should join the Greatest Hits lineup, retailing for around twenty dollars each. Don’t feel bad, oily eBay speculators. You can still scour flea markets for Tactics Ogre, Valkyrie Profile, and Suikoden II.

And Einhander. Einhander’s amazing.

Though it contains artwork and a video clip of the full game, the disc does more than pimp Armed and Dangerous. Included with these promos is a complete version of Sam and Max Hit the Road, a classic LucasArts adventure title starring cartoonist Steve Purcell's trenchcoat-wearing dog and clothes-free rabbit. Like most well-made games of the point-and-click variety, it has aged decidedly well, with plenty of the fun commentary, clever puzzles, and humorous charm that won LucasArts a cult following. That following was subsequently squandered on countless mediocre Star Wars games, but we'll always have Sam and Max Hit the Road. And now, with this preview disc, we have a version “fully updated to run in Windows.”

The disc also contains footage of a new Sam and Max game, Freelance Police, which will apparently feature the duo in fully 3-D form. Whether such an endeavor will work or not is open to speculation, but it could ask for no hype better than Hit the Road, a reminder of why Sam and Max were associated with great games in the first place.

(Addendum: Days after this article went up, LucasArts announced the cancellation of Sam and Max 2: Freelance Police, stating that it was “not the appropriate time to launch a graphic adventure on the PC.” Damn.)

Here Albedo pauses for breath between long-winded cutscenes.

With its proclivity for esoteric details and convoluted backstories, Xenosaga Episode I is sometimes bogged down by scenes of confusing, leaden exposition. But it’s never dull on account of Albedo. Arguably the most recklessly insane video game villain since Final Fantasy VI’s Kefka, Albedo’s seldom at a loss for some bizarre turn of phrase or nasty revelation to hurl at the other characters. And though he has yet to poison entire castles or shove goddess statues around, he does manage to tear off his own head (and yes, it’s a doll revolution) in preface to a scene unsettling enough to belong to the Silent Hill series. If Albedo’s sometimes too maniacal to take seriously, it's still easy to appreciate the tension injected into Xenosaga by this space-opera Mephistopheles.

Yet Albedo wouldn’t be half as interesting without his voice actor, Crispin Freeman. Recalling his performance as the sadistic Alan Gabriel in the second season of The Big O, Freeman gives Albedo the perfect over-the-top panache, whether he’s screaming bizarre Nietzschean metaphors or uttering a creepy pun involving the French words for “sinner” and “peach.” (Random references abound in Xenosaga, but this is the coupe de grace.) Despite the game’s often spastic lip-sync, Albedo has all of the elegant, inscrutable fervor he needs. And for an apt twist, Freeman also voices the sedate Guinan, who forms an id-ego-superego triumvirate with Albedo and the seemingly young Junior.

It remains to be seen if the next Xenosaga game will resolve Episode 1’s tangle of plot threads to any degree of satisfaction, but even if Monolith Soft and director Tetsuya Takahashi can’t pull it off, there’s at least the likelihood of Freeman reprising his role, and thus the assurance of a detestable yet engaging villain in Xenosaga Episode 2. Expect puns in Swahili.

The Awards Continue