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Post by shelverton on Aug 15, 2020 14:56:28 GMT -5
There's also an attempt to remake it...
Why is that more 3D than anything I’ve ever seen? It’s positively psychadelic.
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Post by windfisch on Aug 15, 2020 18:48:32 GMT -5
The fish-eye-lense optic in early Sonic Xtreme builds seems like an attempt to accomodate for Sonic's signature speed, since it shows more of the surroundings than a traditional perspective could. It looks pretty cool, though I doubt it'd have been "mass-market-friendly". It could've worked very well for special stages, though. Speaking of "traditional" perspective, there is also another fangame called Sonic Z-treme:
That would be a fun experiment, indeed. Another question would be, if said person had played other shoot'em ups before. Gradius has been so influential that its DNA can be found in most games of the genre - R-Type, Darius, Thunder Force (except the first one) etc. In that case my guess would be that, yes, you'd probably get something close to Gradius. Otherwise it'd probably just be about whatever weird shit the author was into, like dragons, camels or postage stamps.
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Post by shelverton on Aug 16, 2020 5:16:59 GMT -5
I’m about to put in some money on Eiyuden Chronicles but is it me or are the stretch goals unusually strange? I mean, there’s nothing wrong per se but ”New Sound Effects”? What do they mean by that? Was there ever a risk of it having ”old sound effects”? ”Hot springs”? I mean, this is fun and all but are you telling me they would’ve left this feature out hadn’t the stretch goal been reached? I doubt it. Also, all these individual stretch goals to get the cast up to 108 sounds strange too. It seems they’ve already written a lot of these characters so the intention was probably always to do this. I dunno, am I being picky? All I’m saying is there are good stretch goals that make sense (Console ports! Orchestral soundtrack! Localization into different languages!) and then there are some that are just gimmicky or vague Anyway, enough rambling. I’m going to back it now
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Post by kaoru on Aug 16, 2020 5:29:25 GMT -5
Wow that Sonic X-treme video is wild! Looks more like a proof of concept or something similar to show off that the Saturn can indeed do 3D after all tho, not like something that is particularly playable as a full fledged game xD
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Post by dsparil on Aug 16, 2020 6:54:16 GMT -5
It's worth keeping in mind that SXU doesn't have the limitations that the Saturn has so the real draw distance would have been much closer, and the PC version likely would have stuck to it. I cued up the video below to a part (I think from E3 '96) where you can see that, and a tiny bit of the menu since it's the PC version. I think most period footage of the game was of the PC port as that was actually the "primary" platform with the Saturn version being ported from that. For all the mindshare that X-treme gets, the announced version didn't even see a full year's worth of work despite the project technically starting in late '94.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 16, 2020 7:01:45 GMT -5
I’m about to put in some money on Eiyuden Chronicles but is it me or are the stretch goals unusually strange? I mean, there’s nothing wrong per se but ”New Sound Effects”? What do they mean by that? Was there ever a risk of it having ”old sound effects”? ”Hot springs”? I mean, this is fun and all but are you telling me they would’ve left this feature out hadn’t the stretch goal been reached? I doubt it. Also, all these individual stretch goals to get the cast up to 108 sounds strange too. It seems they’ve already written a lot of these characters so the intention was probably always to do this. I dunno, am I being picky? All I’m saying is there are good stretch goals that make sense (Console ports! Orchestral soundtrack! Localization into different languages!) and then there are some that are just gimmicky or vague Anyway, enough rambling. I’m going to back it now I know what you mean in that the messaging is a bit confusing but these are all budget related. With the sound effects for instance, perhaps they are otherwise using stock effects or they don't have a dedicated sound effects person who they could employ with enough funds? For the 108 characters, yes, it seems the idea is for 108 characters but writing them is really the easy part. Doing all the work in adding sprites, stats, dialogue is going to be a lot of work. Basically though, it seems like they have a particular vision for the project which won't be met until stretch goals are reached, rather than the stretch goals being additive, which I think is what you were getting at.
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Post by lurker on Aug 16, 2020 11:31:24 GMT -5
Well that's an interesting surprise...
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Post by toei on Aug 16, 2020 11:44:57 GMT -5
I’m about to put in some money on Eiyuden Chronicles but is it me or are the stretch goals unusually strange? I mean, there’s nothing wrong per se but ”New Sound Effects”? What do they mean by that? Was there ever a risk of it having ”old sound effects”? ”Hot springs”? I mean, this is fun and all but are you telling me they would’ve left this feature out hadn’t the stretch goal been reached? I doubt it. Also, all these individual stretch goals to get the cast up to 108 sounds strange too. It seems they’ve already written a lot of these characters so the intention was probably always to do this. I dunno, am I being picky? All I’m saying is there are good stretch goals that make sense (Console ports! Orchestral soundtrack! Localization into different languages!) and then there are some that are just gimmicky or vague Anyway, enough rambling. I’m going to back it now Maybe they weren't satisfied with the sound effects they made and thought it'd be nice to hire somebody to make better ones? That's the kind of thing I can see a company sacrificing if they don't have the budget; maybe they made a bunch of sound effects functional enough for release, but the director thought they could do better with more time (or even hiring a freelancer known for that). And even if they've already written the characters or planned hot springs or whatever, it doesn't mean they've programmed that content. The more they put in, the more time and money they need to invest. It's very common for planned content to be cut for those reasons. So what they were saying is, "we'd like to throw in those extra characters, but if we don't have the budget, we'll leave them out." There's really nothing strange about it.
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Post by jorpho on Aug 16, 2020 16:40:22 GMT -5
Check it out: someone has amassed a collection of original art from Nintendo Power. Featuring the never-used FF3/6j cover! twitter.com/ArtofNP
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Aug 16, 2020 17:35:42 GMT -5
I finally got started on Phantasy Star 1 this week. Had it installed on the Switch for a while, but the post-game of Etrian Odyssey 4 was taking a while. Now that I finally got that out of the way (that makes it sound like it was a drag, but it was excellent), I got a chance to play some of it. And ooh boy. I went in about as blind as I could, which was rather easy, since it doesn't seem to be a much discussed game online. I'm about 10-12 hours in now, but that's slow hours because I'm mapping the dungeons on graph paper (which is surprisingly easy to fuck up) and sketching out the overworld(s). So far, the battles have been very, very monotonous. Even with Noah in my team, it's pretty much just attacking, with no option to use any strategy. Enemies don't do anything except attack and none of my spells beside the healing ones are worth using the TP yet. I mean, why would I use 2 TP to do a tiny bit of extra damage if I can use that 2 TP to heal someone the equivalent of like at least 5 encounters (enemies are very weak, generally) Damage values are also all over the place. An enemy can sometimes do 1 damage to a character and the next turn like 30 to the same character. Speaking of randomness, running away chance also doesn't seem to have anything to do with which enemy you're facing. I can still sometimes not run away from some of the starting enemies, the rate seems to be the same as with harder enemies. Just a very weird game so far, but I'm enjoying the mapping and I'm interested to see where it goes. The Switch port is also pretty nice. You get a bestiary and (most crucially) a list of items, gear and spells so you don't have to look up what everything does online or in the manual (which doesn't work!!!). Being able to see who can equip what weapons/armor is a huge help for an old RPG. The FM soundtrack is also nice to have. That would be a fun experiment, indeed. Another question would be, if said person had played other shoot'em ups before. Gradius has been so influential that its DNA can be found in most games of the genre - R-Type, Darius, Thunder Force (except the first one) etc. In that case my guess would be that, yes, you'd probably get something close to Gradius. Otherwise it'd probably just be about whatever weird shit the author was into, like dragons, camels or postage stamps. That camel game is more the parodius version of the Star Wars game. More games need a parodius equivalent, I think. Gradius feels like such a random game to spoof.
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Post by retr0gamer on Aug 17, 2020 3:42:08 GMT -5
Finally, fianlly beat FF13-2 and the post game and DLC. Really enjoyed it especially the DLC.... except some of the super bosses. It's a much better game than FF13 but unfortunately it's saddled with the awful FF13 world meaning the story is complete horseshit and you just can't be invested in it. It goes for a chrono trigger thing, especially with the alternative endings but it's hard to care about the serious ones because the whole FF13 world just isn't grounded in reality unlike Chrono Trigger.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2020 3:50:39 GMT -5
Finally, fianlly beat FF13-2 and the post game and DLC. Really enjoyed it especially the DLC.... except some of the super bosses. It's a much better game than FF13 but unfortunately it's saddled with the awful FF13 world meaning the story is complete horseshit and you just can't be invested in it. It goes for a chrono trigger thing, especially with the alternative endings but it's hard to care about the serious ones because the whole FF13 world just isn't grounded in reality unlike Chrono Trigger. I gave up on Final Fantasy after the PS2 since I found after 9 the worlds, characters and stories were similarly unrelatable and off putting. I'm guessing 13 is even worse?
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Post by windfisch on Aug 17, 2020 3:53:59 GMT -5
🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 Excactly, Attack of the Mutant Camels is a goofy version of The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari VCS. It was made by Jeff Minter who would specialize in taking existing concepts and making them weird and psychodelic (Tempest 2000). He also has a huge fondness for animals like llamas and sheep, which tend to show up in his games.
I'd imagine Parodius came to be because someone at Konami took a long look at both, Twin Bee and Gradius and though: "What if...?"
Mutant Camels was a relatively early parody game, but since it was unofficial and basically a rip-off, playing loose with the source material is to be expected. Does anyone know if Parodius was the first official parody/cutified game? It seemingly did kick off a number of others like Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti, Star Parodier (Star Soldier), Space Invaders '95 and Cosmo Gang The Video (Galaga).
edit:
Speaking of Minter:
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Post by dsparil on Aug 17, 2020 4:42:20 GMT -5
Damage values are also all over the place. An enemy can sometimes do 1 damage to a character and the next turn like 30 to the same character. That's one of the weirdest things about the game and it never stops. The Switch version is very nice, and I wish the other games in the series get one. Weird that they haven't to be honest. I don't think III and IV really need much changing, but the grinding in II is so excessive.
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Post by retr0gamer on Aug 17, 2020 5:51:23 GMT -5
I gave up on Final Fantasy after the PS2 since I found after 9 the worlds, characters and stories were similarly unrelatable and off putting. I'm guessing 13 is even worse? Well FFX was a bit out there but not the worst. FF12 I felt was quite grounded until it fell apart in the final third. The FF13 games though, they are next level unrelatable. I've been through 2 of the games and there's all this nonsense about cocoon floating above a world called Pulse, falcie turning people into la cie which gives them magic, then they add time travel into the second game. There's reams and reams of codices to read through that give detail on the world and all of it makes no sense or makes the world and characters anything you should even care about. Oh, and to make matters even more frustrating the ending of the first game is basically explained away as the 'sheer force of everyone's will stopped something inevitable happening'. To be fair FF13-2 and especially FF13-3 kind of have fun with the whole thing and just get more outlandish but play it lightheartedly in most situations but it doesn't stop the fact you have no idea what is going on and therefore have zero investment in the world. It's just so ridiculously over designed. It's like the scenario writers played mass effect and saw the codices in those games and decided to do the same without anyone explaining to them that the mass effect codices are badly written guff and most importantly, you don't need to read them to understand what is going on in the world and story.
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