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Post by wyrdwad on Jan 31, 2015 15:23:05 GMT -5
I know most people don't care about splitting hairs over definitions, but I don't understand how they're calling it an "official sequel" to Wonderboy / Monster World when they don't have the rights to the name or permission from Sega. (it irks me that somebody already updated the Wikipedia page for Wonder Boy and called Monster Boy an "official sequel.") It's more of a spiritual successor like Tear Ring Saga, Cannon Dancer, Child of Eden, Mighty Number 9, and The Evil Within. I'd consider it to be less related to Monster World than those other games are related to their predecessors since it began life as a tribute from an unrelated developer and only one person from the original team is involved with the new game. (that being said, there have been plenty of terrible "official" sequels that had nothing in common with their predecessors besides having the rights to the title, so being "official" isn't particularly important to me.) Yeah, that's why I call it "semi-official." It's kind of like how NightCry is going to be a "semi-official" sequel to Clock Tower, since the original creator is involved and it's basically a Clock Tower game -- as opposed to Haunting Ground, which is what I'd call a "spiritual sequel," since it's also basically a Clock Tower game but the original creator is NOT involved, and it's not called Clock Tower. It is, though, as others have said, splitting hairs. -Tom
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Post by Scylla on Jan 31, 2015 17:35:23 GMT -5
I know most people don't care about splitting hairs over definitions, but I don't understand how they're calling it an "official sequel" to Wonderboy / Monster World when they don't have the rights to the name or permission from Sega. (it irks me that somebody already updated the Wikipedia page for Wonder Boy and called Monster Boy an "official sequel.") It's more of a spiritual successor like Tear Ring Saga, Cannon Dancer, Child of Eden, Mighty Number 9, and The Evil Within. I'd consider it to be less related to Monster World than those other games are related to their predecessors since it began life as a tribute from an unrelated developer and only one person from the original team is involved with the new game. (that being said, there have been plenty of terrible "official" sequels that had nothing in common with their predecessors besides having the rights to the title, so being "official" isn't particularly important to me.) But by that logic, would you then consider all the PC Engine versions entirely unrelated games just because they couldn't use the Wonder Boy/Monster World titles? Even though they are literally the exact same games, minus some cosmetic differences? I get what you're saying but this series is an exception and has always had weird things going on with licensing and naming. Westone always owned the games themselves and could port them to whatever they wanted, but Sega owned the Wonder Boy title. So if those who created the old games and own the license to them say that Monster Boy is in the same series, whatever you want to call it, that's about all it takes to be official. It's not a necessity that these games had to be published through Sega and use the Wonder Boy name. Theoretically, I suppose Sega could hire any random developer to make a game and slap the Wonder Boy name on it, but I would consider that less of a real sequel myself because, again, all they own is the name and nothing more. If we were to compare the situation to Tear Ring Saga, Mighty Number 9, etc., it would be as if when Shouzou Kaga left Nintendo, he took the entire Fire Emblem team with him and all rights to the games, minus the titles, and could re-release them if he wanted to under new titles. And if he had all those rights all along. Not leaving with nothing but his own game design ideas. So yeah, apples and oranges.
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Post by Sturat on Jan 31, 2015 18:55:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I suppose this is a unique situation if the developer owns the game design but not the name. At any rate, I'm not particularly excited about this. I believe Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap is the best video game of all time, but I have very little faith in the new developer. Aside from Ryuichi Nishizawa's involvement, this game fails almost every question I ask myself to judge whether to get excited about a sequel or remake. (Okay, I'd be less excited if it were a Free to Play game that used 3D graphics and motion controls, but I try not to think about those possibilities.) I imagine this game will be like Magical Drop 5, where I buy it to see what it's like but I don't enjoy it.
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Post by wyrdwad on Jan 31, 2015 19:45:11 GMT -5
Did you watch the Flying Hamster II trailer I linked, though? Because with The Game Atelier at the helm, what you see is what you get -- if the game LOOKS fun to you from the trailer, chances are it will be exactly as fun as it looks.
-Tom
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Post by vetus on Feb 1, 2015 4:50:20 GMT -5
I was already very hyped from the original trailer but now my hype has been doubled after hearing the news with the changes. As about the renaming I actually like it and it sounds much better than the original name.
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Post by KeeperBvK on Feb 2, 2015 4:49:45 GMT -5
You know I've never thought about how I actually never cared that we didn't get some Genesis games. Mostly because even while I'm beginning to not like them, I still like JRPGs. And we got the best one for Genesis here as opposed to missing out on the best ones for SNES. And even better we do seem to get some of the ones people really liked, like MW4, and I thought we had Pulseman. Maybe I'm wrong I guess. I meant during the original release cycle. Pulseman and GleyLancer did get VC'd in NA, but those are obviously way after the fact. Pulseman did in fact cross the Pacific "during the original release cycle". It could be downloaded in NA via the Sega Channel. So it was a pretty limited release, but there was an official and legal way for Americans to play the game on their Genesis back in the day.
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Post by Ike on Feb 2, 2015 12:47:15 GMT -5
Flying Hamster looks(looked?) pretty good but I wish it didn't have that weird sliding animation style that so many games have. Braid put me off for the same reason.
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Post by Kid Fenris on Feb 2, 2015 14:52:25 GMT -5
I know most people don't care about splitting hairs over definitions, but I don't understand how they're calling it an "official sequel" to Wonderboy / Monster World when they don't have the rights to the name or permission from Sega. (it irks me that somebody already updated the Wikipedia page for Wonder Boy and called Monster Boy an "official sequel.") It's more of a spiritual successor like Tear Ring Saga, Cannon Dancer, Child of Eden, Mighty Number 9, and The Evil Within. I'd consider it to be less related to Monster World than those other games are related to their predecessors since it began life as a tribute from an unrelated developer and only one person from the original team is involved with the new game. (that being said, there have been plenty of terrible "official" sequels that had nothing in common with their predecessors besides having the rights to the title, so being "official" isn't particularly important to me.) Yeah, that's why I call it "semi-official." It's kind of like how NightCry is going to be a "semi-official" sequel to Clock Tower, since the original creator is involved and it's basically a Clock Tower game -- as opposed to Haunting Ground, which is what I'd call a "spiritual sequel," since it's also basically a Clock Tower game but the original creator is NOT involved, and it's not called Clock Tower. It is, though, as others have said, splitting hairs. -Tom Monster Boy has the same wink-wink, probably-won't-get-sued aura as Mighty No. 9, and I imagine Sega would make far less a fuss than Capcom. I almost wish this had stayed Flying Hamster II; as much as I like the Monster Wonder World Boy series, Monster World IV is such a superb wrap-up that it never needed another game. Flying Hamster II looked enough like Wonder Boy without actually being the same. But hey, Monster World IV's new translation hinted that it wasn't quite the end... One question: does Monster Boy benefit Westone at all? Or is Nishizawa just overseeing it by himself?
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Post by Feynman on Feb 2, 2015 15:05:48 GMT -5
Flying Hamster looks(looked?) pretty good but I wish it didn't have that weird sliding animation style that so many games have. Braid put me off for the same reason. Flash-style animation? Yeah, it's usually really bad. A handful of really good developers can get away with making use of it effectively (games like Odin Sphere and Dragon's Crown for example), but a lot of games that use it do so very poorly. Most of the time flash-style animation looks really cheap and bland compared to hand drawn animation frames.
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Post by wyrdwad on Feb 2, 2015 15:06:57 GMT -5
I really liked the animation in that Flying Hamster II trailer. It was cute. -Tom
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Post by Ike on Feb 2, 2015 15:28:49 GMT -5
It's not the animations themselves so much as how smooth and slippery they look in motion.
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