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Post by Discoalucard on Jan 27, 2014 22:45:01 GMT -5
www.hardcoregaming101.net/marvelous/marvelous.htmA Super Famicom action-adventure game, which seeks to have been built on the Link to the Past engine, but also has some adventure game elements. What I'm trying to figure out is how this is related to Tetra's Trackers, that minigame on the Four Swords disc for the Gamecube that was cut out of the international releases. Apparently it was based on (and was originally supposed to be a remake of) one of the Satellaview supplemental games. However, the author said these were unplayable on emulators, so it's hard to tell. I did find some clean screenshots somewhere, though.
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Post by Scylla on Jan 28, 2014 2:31:35 GMT -5
Oh man, I love this game so much and always thought it was the type of game that needed to be covered on HG101. It's always felt like one of my own little secrets, since practically no one in the West has heard of it, let alone played it.
Although... I gotta admit, I'm a little disappointed with the article. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the author doesn't even like the game very much? Basically all the criticisms laid against it I feel 100% opposite about. I think the game is immensely creative, especially the puzzles. I think the gameplay is so inventive and fun, I love the system built around each boy's strengths and figuring out how to make them work together. And I adore the world that was crafted here, all the characters are so charming and the areas so atmospheric, and there's a fabulous sense of humor about it all. I would never change the game's relatively small scale, that's one thing that I love about it. It's no stereotypical gotta-save-the-universe-from-the-evilest-evil-to-ever-evil nonsense, just three cute kids going on an adventure, searching for treasure, dealing with pirates, meeting all sorts of interesting characters. I wish the article went into that more, about how you play matchmaker for lovesick penguins, play jankenpon with monkeys, figure out an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style mystery, poke your camp counselor's boobs to make her blush, all sorts of wacky stuff. Even the screenshots don't do much for showing all the interesting stuff in the game.
I think it could also use a mention or scans of the Nintendo Power article. It was really nice coverage of the game and probably the most attention Marvelous ever got in the Western world. I probably wouldn't have even bought the game if not for that coverage. It really captured my imagination and I'm so very glad for it because it brought me to discovering this hidden gem. Call me crazy, but I honestly like Marvelous a lot more than A Link to the Past, I think it has an infinite greater amount of personality, and whenever people bemoan the wacky things in more recent Zelda games, I just remember all the goofy stuff in Marvelous and think to myself "What do you expect from Aonuma? Look at Marvelous." If anything, I think the Zelda series is holding back his creativity.
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iwant
Full Member
erotic enka funk breaks
Posts: 225
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Post by iwant on Jan 28, 2014 6:56:04 GMT -5
In all honesty, I really found the puzzles to be dull and unimpressive overall. These quirks you mention (about the penguins and all) indeed are the game's redeeming qualities though, which is also why I didn't talk about them too thoroughly - I didn't want to spoil the reader too much. But you're right, maybe I should insist on these details - I understand the article might look a bit harsh as it is right now.
Regarding the Navi Trackers stuff... I didn't know there were clean screenshots of these BS games around, and that definetely means there has to be a way to play them on an emulator. It's strange, though, because I could never get them to run.
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Post by Malev on Jan 28, 2014 9:59:56 GMT -5
BS Marvelous Time Athletic: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdbC6X5CphETetra Trackers gameplay: (TV) www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2yxdK57O5E(GBA) www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVm4QqhfSVoThe Stamp Relay stuff shared in both games is basically running around the map to talk to others in order to obtain as many stamps as possible in the included time. The thing is, you have to get them in order, so you have to find who has Stamp #1 in order for the holder of Stamp #2 to give his to you. BS Marvelous Time Athletic accomplishes this by giving clues in the game as well as voiced clues and rule changes and bonuses set with the broadcast voice over. Tetra Trackers, having enough storage space and technical prowless, can perform this and change things up more on the fly without a static linked broadcast. The action itself takes place on the players' GBAs, where it acts sort as a Zelda-fied take on the Marvelous TA map(s). Tetra Trackers is different on a handful of accounts: -It's built for multiplayer. Even if you don't have friends with you, you play against a CPU Tingle. -Instead of switching kids out for their special abilities, the Links can find and switch out with special item they have in their possession like in Four Swords/Four Swords Adventures. -The TV shows where the stamps are on a map. This takes away the clue-searching aspect of Marvelous in exchange of players scrambling and fighting over who can get to the next stamp first. -Many characters from Wind Waker pop in during bonus or special periods of the game. Tetra herself serves much like the counselor in Marvelous and is the main announcer. zeldawiki has artwork and screenshots: zeldawiki.org/Tetra_TrackersAs for Nintendo Power's article on Marvelous: Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Marvelous is also one of the late SNES era titles to use the system's higher res 512x448 settings, though it only uses it for dialogue to make it crisper much like Seiken Densetsu 3 used it for (outside of the occasional hi-res menu)
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Post by ReyVGM on Jan 28, 2014 21:59:27 GMT -5
Of course you can play the BS Marvelous games. Just don't use zsnes or snes9x for that. Either use BSNES or SNESGT. I like using SNESGT best because you can modify the broadcast start time to avoid waiting the 7 minutes once you boot the game.
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Post by chronotigger65 on Jan 30, 2014 20:44:39 GMT -5
About time! I've been wanting to see an article on this game. For one I forgot what it was called. In the past I recall the name but forget it later on. Also wanted to play it through emulation but they said somewhere that the game has not been translated. (but does it now have one?)
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jjc14
Junior Member
Posts: 73
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Post by jjc14 on Feb 16, 2014 11:42:44 GMT -5
Never heard of Marvelous before! The character-specific items give me a bit of a Wild Arms vibe, but I'm not sure if the puzzles alone would be enough to hold my interest... Minor corrections: "A large number of Japan-only obscurities often followe this pattern." "However, it seems three American-looking boys - Deon, Max and Jack - going on a school trip on Camp Island may be close to uncovering the treasture without even knowing it." "You can use that Search System any time." (... the Search System?) "At first you can only do this as long as they are on the same screen, buta bit later this can be accomplished anytime with the help of a set of walkie-talkies." "Cut imagea from Navi Trackers"
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 17, 2014 19:56:38 GMT -5
The article has been updated to include some of the things noted, along with some extra pictures. Thanks for the feedback!
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Post by Malev on Mar 4, 2014 1:44:59 GMT -5
The Cutting Room Floor mentions a few more tidbits about Tetra's Trackers: tcrf.net/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Four_Swords_AdventuresThere was an E3 demo for it in I believe 2003/2004, but all the content was cut entirely in the final Four Swords Adventure release, with only a few text strings leftover in the PAL version. The game also could call out inputted player names in Japanese, easy enough to accomplish in their phonetic language. Unsure how the Korean version does it, if it has localized actors or not. The English E3 demo changes this to just using a chosen letter and gender, with the navigators calling you like "Mr. B" or "Ms. Q" or whichever. www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/e3/zeldatt.htmI wonder who did the voices for the E3 demo, and how far along it was before being axed.
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Post by ghanmi on Mar 23, 2014 10:34:28 GMT -5
The Korean version of Four Swords Adventures included Tetra Trackers, but they left both the text and the audio completely untranslated, in Japanese.
The BS episodes were indeed preserved, the ROMs for Time Athletic and Camp Arnold are perfectly playable from the start to the ending. The unemulated bits are the voice acting (actually more of a controls tutorial and some dialogues between characters) and chunks of the intro and the ending. It just skips the intro and plays just fine on emulators. An update to the article would be nice.
Also, besides the Tetra Trackers game, the second Tingle DS game draws some inspiration from this one, it has the "3 heroes with different abilities" gimmick almost intact. Both really deserve their own sections.
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Post by TheChosen on Jan 4, 2016 9:19:41 GMT -5
Good news everyone, there's a proper translation now available. www.romhacking.net/translations/2558/"Translated intro. Translated title screen. A new font. Translated “event graphics” scattered throughout the game. Dialog is now fully translated and edited. Team naming screen has been hacked to keep the user from scrolling to different character sets. And more."
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Post by Scylla on Jan 4, 2016 11:14:40 GMT -5
That's great that someone translated the remaining bits and pieces, but I wish they hadn't gone and changed the font. The new font may be more "normal", but the old font used was both more aesthetically pleasing and matched the game better (and was more similar to the original Japanese font; I wonder if that Roman alphabet was actually in the game to begin with since I can't remember if the game included Roman letters as an option for name entry). I also wish they had just subtitled the title screen. There was plenty of room to do so without obstructing anything important, and the English logo is blegh compared to the original.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jan 4, 2016 15:46:16 GMT -5
Fortunately even with those changes, the game is still Marvelous!
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Post by Malev on Mar 19, 2017 15:51:29 GMT -5
Youtube series Region Locked discussed the title:
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