Introduction by Mike Salbato

For our final batch of features, this week we're highlighting our Music of the Year feature from 2016 (more on that feature's fate below). We also have the companion piece to our Best Male RPG Characters feature here, showcasing the best (and some unfortunate) female RPG characters, and our straight-to-the-point Best RPGs of All Time lists (all 13 of them). And while we intended to cap this anniversary celebration at 20 features, we're making a special exception for our holiday-time Fabula Nova Anniversaris feature. A massive undertaking, this mega-feature came together to celebrate Final Fantasy's 30 Year Anniversary, so there's no way we could leave it out of this list.

You can, of course, find everything we highlighted this month and more in our Features section, so please browse and look forward to what comes next!

One of the larger collaborative features we've run — aside from the last thing on this page, of course — we really wanted to publish a feature that was simply, bluntly, "The Best RPGs of All Time." That kind of list is trendy and sure to be controversial at times, but... wow, it's just a hard thing to do when you have diverse tastes and 40+ team members on your staff. There's always someone who ends up being the only person who played a hidden gem, and those get lost in "group" lists. Instead, we had 13 people each write their own Best RPGs of All Time. You're certain to find your own favorites and possibly future favorites across these lists.

This feature wasn't inspired around Mike Salbato's innate need to find an excuse to talk about Samus on RPGFan, but believe that he took advantage. Aside from that, this was a fun feature to run in 2011. We had input from so many team members, and covered the gamut in RPGs: Both Western and Japanese games made the list, as did characters as recent as NieR's Kaine, and as far back as Alis Landale from the original Phantasy Star. Like with our Best Male RPG Characters we featured earlier this month, there's been countless new worthwhile heroes and heroines in the RPG world since this feature ran, so we're nearing a point where a feature sequel makes sense.

Yes, 2016. No, we did not run one for 2017 due to being short-staffed in our Music department this year. We know a lot of you wanted to see it, and we wanted to do it, but it wasn't in the cards. So while we encourage you to check out any of the Music of the Year or other music features we have, for now we're highlighting our most recent year-end celebration. Know that Music of the Year will indeed come back, and we're hoping it was worth the wait. Luckily, good RPG music never goes out of style.

Every year — at least in recent years — we run Complete Coverage for E3. Let's face it, here in mid-2018, RPGFan's structure is still not as modern as newer websites, so we don't have easy ways to tag and group information around a single event like E3. So we sit down and get dirty... with HTML. After the show wraps, we pour every relevant link we can, from hands-on previews, hands-off previews, interviews, tons of media updates, and noteworthy news, into a big hub page. It's easy to miss things during the onslaught of information during the show, so Complete Coverage lets you see it all in one place, and we hope it's made your media consumption easier!

Members of the RPGFan staff almost always attend MAGFest each year. Sometimes we run features on it, but more often, we're using it as a vacation and decide not to work. Still, in 2013, Bradley sat down with legendary composer Yuzo Koshiro and talked about music. We can already hear your first question once you've finished, and yes, we hope to get back into composer interviews, as well as Music of the Year. Stay tuned!

We can't overstate the work involved in this one. Thirty-six articles, a full month of Final Fantasy-themed Retro Encounter podcasts, and nineteen pieces of amazing, exclusive artwork from one of our own, Fabula Nova Anniversaris became our largest feature ever. Stressful to put together, but rewarding to show off, we hope you enjoyed our celebration. Maybe we should prep for the next anniversary... now.