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Well, I'll never run out of these. ^^
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Potatoes are what we eat!
Okay, I've given up on Sword of Vermilion. Persistence took down that boss
with the fireballs, then I fought the EASIEST BOSS EVER (all he did was
summon skeletons, I whacked them and he went down with ONE HIT!). I
wandered around awhile, getting deeper into the game. Then I came upon a
flying boss. Yes, a flying boss when I cannot jump. Even though it's got a
pathetically easy pattern I just couldn't deal with the fact that my
character moved too slowly to get out from under the damn thing when it
attacked, and when it landed on him roughly 90% of my HP vanished from
repeated hits of the thing sitting on me. Then it got up, still hitting me,
into death. DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!!!!!!
Clearly I have to pick up LandStalker now. I wasted too much energy on
Vermilion. Ick.
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Josh
Tooooooolllllld you soooooooo. ^^
But...ouch, man...ouch. I'd say that sounds worse than Unlimited Saga, but...come on, let's be reasonable here! Hehehe...
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So I entertained myself with another action runthrough on the Genesis. I
put Revenge of Shinobi in, and it was awesome (took me so long to beat that
game back in the day, now I still lost about 6 lives doing it - but it
ROCKS). Then I popped Gunstar Heroes in, and everything you've heard about
its awesomeness is correct. The graphics are astounding for the Genesis
considering how much is getting blown up onscreen and the effects some of
the bosses show off (like one boss that morphs into 4 different forms, but
has a total of either 7 or 8 he can use - each one being a separate
challenge). And the cute moment of the 'Final Great Soldier' coming
onscreen with his special move 'Love Love Dancing.' The poor fellow is
bounced offscreen by the real boss. But, oh, you'll need a Genesis (or
simulacrum thereof) to play it - how about that? Go Treasure!
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Josh
Gunstar Heroes...that sounds oddly familiar. I know I haven't played it, but I think I may have seen it played...
Oh, I'd need a Genesis? Well, let me just go...hey! You...oh, you. I've got my eye on you. You're silly, that's what you are! Silly.
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I also played a game called Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Yep, I played it.
Every level begins with Michael Jackson uttering one of his trademark
sound bites - get ready for 'Hooooo!' and 'Ow!' to be heard. And of course,
the whole premise of the game; he is saving the children. Saving a child
causes Michael Jackson to regain some health. When all the children are
saved in a level, Bubbles comes along to guide Michael Jackson to the boss
(which is frequently just a lot of regular enemies). The dance attack of
making all onscreen enemies kill themselves trying to imitate Jackson's
motions is fun however.
I find it funny that the bad guy, the oh-so-cleverly named Mr. Big, comes
onscreen for every boss action just to laugh and say 'HA HA! YOU'LL NEVER
CATCH ME!' whereupon he exits and the boss encounter comes out. Not a very
good method of concealing himself, is it?
The music is good though - I don't care what you say, 'Bad' is a great song.
That's not just the 5-year old me playing it repeatedly speaking, I swear!
But could this game ever be made again? I very much doubt it.
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Josh
Sigh...I remember that game. I just tried to repress the memory. I actually feel sorry for you that you had to play it.
Of course the music was good! It was Michael Jackson! While I don't give two craps about his actual personality and home life, I did like his music.
I certainly hope that you didn't "beat it!" HAR HAR HAR...ok, someone kill me.
They could probably make it again. You would just start melting at the beginning of each stage, and have to rush to the end, where a plastic surgeon would be waiting. Also, the children would be replaced with lifelike dolls.
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Is Onimusha Tactics any good? I've never played an Onimusha title,
incidentally.
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Josh
Onimusha = good. I loved the first game, though I never played the next installments. Onimusha Tactics = Abominable. I don't know what it is about bringing other franchises into the tactical realm, but I haven't noticed them being any fun (existing franchies, with existing characters...so, Suikoden and Onimusha).
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Also: do I regard Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so highly because I have
never touched the original? You can read my review to get a good idea of
where I'm coming from with regard to the title, I think I scored it slightly
higher than anyone else on RPGamer.
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Josh
That may be the case. Most people I've talked to regard the original as a work of art (myself included, translation aside), and I really did not like FFTA. I still have it, and while I do like tactical games, there just wasn't enough...anything to keep me interested. Battles were standard fare, the Judge system was more annoying than strategic, the plot was lame, I honestly just found myself walking back and forth running into rival factions on the map, just for the hell of it. The micromanagement was also on a much lower level than that of FFT, which I thought did a marvelous job of it.
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Now here's a great game title: Revengers of Vengeance. It's a Sega CD game
I picked up for about $7 on eBay, although it was overpriced. Mixing an RPG
with a fighting game is a good idea, if it were executed better than it is
here. Go look it up to know what I'm talking about.
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Josh
Wow. That's like an MST3k title. Anyway, it doesn't look good at all, I agree. The best sort of fighting/RPG combo I've found are the Tales games (yeah, I know, it's not a TRUE fighting engine), and I haven't really found a game that properly creates a decent hybrid of the two genres, unfortunately.
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Awww - I'm flattered to think that you remember all those instances of my
mentioning obscure Saturn/Genesis/Super Famicom titles! So here's ANOTHER
one! Chaos Seed was brought out on the Super Famicom and ported to the
Saturn a few years later, although all indications are that the Saturn
version is greatly superior. I gather it's a different take on the sim-RPG,
in that you have to rebuild parts of the world but the people respond poorly
and think you're part of the problem. There's a Hardcore Gaming review if
you're curious. Unfortunately the game seems to have quite a bit of Kanji
to decipher.
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Josh
Crap, you got me on one. I've never heard of this thing. That might be due to the fact that it's in Japanese, while most of the other ones were at least ported over here in some fashion.
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I'm kinda curious as to your take on this subject. Remember how long the
PS1 remained viable after PS2 came out in North America? It was about 18
months as I recall. Will history repeat itself as it has done with most
consoles, giving about 18 months of further quality software for your PS2
before the PS3 dominates? Or will the PS2 keep attaining quality titles for
longer than that?
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Josh
I'm actually going to hold off on this question, just because I wrote an editorial that should be going up next week that retorts this editorial, which might clear up this question nicely, and I don't want to spoil the surprise...^^
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I have never played a Ys game, and I understand the best versions of the
early titles are actually on Turbo Grafx-16. Have you any experience with
Ys? Failing direct experience, what do you know about the series that might
entice me to play it?
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Josh
Since many of those titles never even made it over here (Ys III was the last one before Ys VI, but there were a bunch of versions of I & II), the only one I've even SEEN is The Ark of Naphistim, and that's only with screenshots and trailers. It got slightly above average reviews, and it looks like a fairly decent action-RPG. If I was to pick this up, I'd grab the PSP version, since I'm hurting for RPGs at the moment on that thing. Honestly, I don't see anything about the game that would lead me to believe it's not worth at least renting.
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I forgot, I did play about half an hour of PSO on Gamecube. It was playable
but nothing I'd seek out. Seems your experience on Dreamcast was about the
same. And does your Dreamcast annotation mean you have no playtime with
Skies of Arcadia?
A new Economist article got me thinking. Apparently game makers are wanting
to do far more installment titles; that is, bringing out the first part of
the game and then releasing the rest in pieces. The initial installment
would cost considerably less than a full game does now, and it could allow
for more development time on the subsequent parts along with giving people
less of a backlog (which everyone seems to be remarking upon nowadays). On
the other hand, it could devolve into paying $20 for a 10-hour chunk of an
RPG and then getting sucked into paying more than a full game would cost in
one chunk with shoddy development being obvious. So - your commentary upon
this potentiality, please.
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Josh
Good for business, so-so for us. By creating a quality initial product, they are able to rope us in, in hopes of us purchasing the next game. It's essentially free advertising for the 'sequel.' Then there's the problem of forgetting things inbetween playthroughs, and us getting irritated with the time inbetween games, and finally the potential cost for us, paying multiple times the cost of one game for one game split into X parts.
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Name for me the title you were most displeased at never making it into
English, if you would. If you cannot decipher what title I most desire, you
have to sit in the corner.
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Josh
Dragon Warrior V and VI. After playing IV, I was entirely too pissed that they didn't want to bring MORE over. That was a depressing time.
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Um - what does <3 mean? You used this to refer to TMNT IV. Sorry, but I
don't keep up very well with the new symbolism of the 'net. I had to have
someone tell me what 'ftw' means.
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Josh
It's a sideways heart! <3!
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I have Flashback sitting on the shelf (where it's been since I procured it
via eBay years ago) but haven't started it yet. Do you have advice here?
Just a thought: why didn't the other regular battle music in Chrono Trigger
get used? I like it better than the regular battle theme that gets used
100% of the time.
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Josh
Flashback! Woo! I recommend playing it! That game was a ton of fun, much like its pseudo-cousin, Out of this World. Go, go, go!
I've only heard the other battle music in MIDI format, but it was pretty good, and I don't understand why they didn't at least throw that in at, say, the halfway point or something. At least after you got the Epoch or something.
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Okay, I concede that the Saturn version of Symphony of the Night got rushed
and its graphics are not as good as the Saturn really could have done. But
defend THIS!!!
http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/castlevania-sotn/clip3.mp3 I'm serious
- defend that voice acting! Make me believe that you can take the ending
seriously after hearing this! I'm waiting....
Aaaand, the defense has no evidence to rebut the witness? Unfortunate. The
verdict: guilty. Saturn version superior. PlayStation version sentenced to
hard labor at acting college for 5 years or until superior actors are
recruited and used to redo the game, whichever is longer.
Is that stud coming toward us?
JuMeSyn
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Josh
Yeah. I know. The voice acting was terrible. But honestly, who on earth played that game for the voice acting? I'm sorry, my friend, but the gameplay wins, and the graphics were nicer. So nyah. ^^
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