E is for E.V.O.:Search for Eden.Created by Almanic in 1993 and published by Enix, EVO is, by far, one of my favorite games. It's an rpg that works like a side-scrolling platformer. Basicly, think Secret of Mana meets Super Mario with the theory of evolution thrown into the mix. The game begins near the beggining of life, where life forms have evolved into aquatic creatures with fins and scales-fish, as they're more commonly called. You start off as a rather weak fish-weak in comparison to many of the latter fish, but still strong enough to take on, oh say, jellyfish. The gameplay goes like this: Eat fish, evolve, travel through stage, wash, rinse, repeat. The entire point of this game is to evolve, and become a more powerful species in order to defeat creatures that have unnaturally evolved and threaten to take over the planet, exhausts its resources, and eventually kill off all life on it. (Sound familiar?) They evolved this way due to strange crystals found about the planet, which you can also find and use. One of my favorite aspects about this games is the evolution/level up system. Rather then having you level up when you reach a certain amount of exp and having your stats increase, you can choose specific parts of your body to change, and there's no set order you have to change in. The only thing that limits you is the number of evolution points you have when you shoose to evolve. You can upgrade various parts, such as fins, body, neck, wings, jaws, horns, and some others that I can't be bothered to look up right now. Of course, you can't have access to all of these parts at the same time during certain ages-there's no real use for wings as a fish when all of your food is under water and there isn't any oxygen in the air for you to breathe. When you fight other animals, when you kill them, they drop meat which you eat for health and evo points. Plants only give health, not evo points. The game takes place over five ages: The Age of Fish, Age of Amphibians, Age of Dinosaurs, Age of Mammals, and Age of Eden. Eventually you can evolve into a human, but it isn't required. One last thing I have to say about this game: the music is done by Kōichi Sugiyama, who worked on the music for Dragon Quest. It's wonderful, so see if you can get a better qualityversion of it-or better yet, see about playing this game for yourself. You might just get hooked on it like I did.

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