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Post by dsparil on Mar 18, 2021 14:44:18 GMT -5
I'd even narrow it even further to you needed to be there in September and October '95 because it was all over for it as a series once Tekken came out in November. Not literally since the first game did sell comparable to Tekken although less (1.3m vs 1.6m). Soul Edge a year later buried it by removing whatever novelty the weapons had. Namco just came in and ate their lunch.
Toshinden is a really good example of how first mover advantage is great and all, but you still need a good product for that to be meaningful in the long run. The gap between Toshinden and Soul Edge was much greater in Japan, and they seem to have rested on their laurels with 2 instead of actually trying to push forward since SE was still only an arcade game a year or so out from getting a port. 3 did make big changes, but it had no chance when having to directly compete with it.
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Post by Snake on Mar 18, 2021 17:03:43 GMT -5
Geez, I didn't even know there was a Toshinden 4. I barely knew they got up to Toshinden 3.
Speaking of Playstation 3-D fighters, while not an "early" guest character, I'm reminded of Toriyama Robo (Akira Toriyama's art avatar for manga blurbs) in Tobal No.1. Granted, Toriyama was commissioned to do the character designs for Squaresoft at the time, but it's a nice Easter Egg.
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Post by toei on Mar 18, 2021 19:15:41 GMT -5
I'd even narrow it even further to you needed to be there in September and October '95 because it was all over for it as a series once Tekken came out in November. Not literally since the first game did sell comparable to Tekken although less (1.3m vs 1.6m). Soul Edge a year later buried it by removing whatever novelty the weapons had. Namco just came in and ate their lunch. Toshinden is a really good example of how first mover advantage is great and all, but you still need a good product for that to be meaningful in the long run. The gap between Toshinden and Soul Edge was much greater in Japan, and they seem to have rested on their laurels with 2 instead of actually trying to push forward since SE was still only an arcade game a year or so out from getting a port. 3 did make big changes, but it had no chance when having to directly compete with it. I just don't think they had the competence to make those changes. 3 tried to adopt more of the mechanics of 3D fighter, but it still plays very awkwardly. There were plenty of other 3D fighters out by then beyond Sega and Namco's, and a few other developers had shown they could make one that was at least competent, but Tamsoft didn't know how. They had good composers and artists (the character designs are pretty good, especially in the 2D illustrations you'd find in the manual), but their game designers didn't know how to make a decent fighting game. I did like Guardian's Crusade, though. That was their one legitimately good game. They probably should have made more RPGs.
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Post by spanky on Mar 18, 2021 19:36:19 GMT -5
The hype behind Toshinden was real. I used to read Game Players back in the day and they seriously thought it was the greatest game ever for a number of months. The Game Boy conversion is probably more fun to play than the PS1 version tbh
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Post by toei on Mar 18, 2021 21:11:54 GMT -5
That cover's hilarious. Toshinden's interesting to me because it's the perfect example of game critics (and the public, but that's more understandable) getting completely blinded by graphics, to the point of ignoring the gameplay entirely. I still have a vague nostalgia for the game - I was a little kid then, and I thought the game was cool because of the 3D and the characters and setting and the Saturn version's enigmatic story mode, with its weird dialogue (I've heard of you, Fo Fai... Magician. Killer.) I've wanted to do a replay for nostalgia's sake, but it's just so tedious to play. And I'm someone who has no trouble going back to other fighters from that same era. Also, I've never heard of that magazine. I don't think any of the stores I frequented carried it, and they even imported obscure UK game mags like the Sega Saturn Magazine. I guess they decided it was too redundant with EGM, GameFAN and so on around. I first read about Toshinden in a special issue EGM did that came with 3D glasses. It had a whole feature on the recent Japanese launch of the PSX and Saturn, and the games out so far. I think it was this issue: (If that's not the one, then I definitely owned it too, cause I remember that cover very well). EDIT - I'm skimming through a scan of that Game Players issue and they take it even further. Actual quote from page 38: "Let's say it one more time - Toh Shin Den is one of the best games ever made." Page 40: "The only bad thing about Toh Shin Den is that after playing, all your other fighting games might as well go right in the trash."
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Post by dsparil on Mar 19, 2021 7:07:03 GMT -5
I definitely agree that Tamsoft didn't have the skill to actually make a good fighting game considering they never returned to the genre. I don't think there's any realistic scenario where Toshinden actually succeeds as a series, but maybe if they had tried a little harder with 2 it wouldn't be so forgotten. I can find local commercials for mid 80s Kansas, but there's a commercial for 2 I remember seeing that's not even on YouTube.
Game Players has some minor historical significance in gaming magazine history to the extent that it's even a thing, but I don't think it's all that notable otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't available outside the US.
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Post by spanky on Mar 19, 2021 7:22:41 GMT -5
Yeah, I have some vague nostalgia for Toshinden as well. It did look mindblowing at the time and had great music. Sometimes it's fun to let yourself get caught up in the hype of something.
I always enjoyed Game Players as a kid. Despite some wacky opinions on certain games, it was one of the few magazines where you really felt the writers "voice" in their reviews. Compare it to GamePro where the reviews read like ad copy. It was definitely a B-tier magazine though. They eventually developed their own identity by incorporating a bizarre sense of humor and "canon" for the magazine with lots of fake editors and a letters section where they posted absolutely insane shit from 15 year olds hopped on Surge.
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Post by toei on Mar 19, 2021 9:18:23 GMT -5
dsparil I see a Canadian price on that cover next to the US price, at least. Also, Tamsoft did make another fighter, but it's easy to miss; it's the Simple 2000 game Fighting Angels. Probably inspired by Dead or Alive in the way that most Simple games were thematically inspired by a popular game (all the fighters are women in skimpy outfits), but the battle system was completely different. It's pretty awful. The other two Simple fighters I've tried, All-Star Fighters and Hard Knock High, aren't amazing or anything, but they still play significantly better. --- Out of the big magazines, I felt like EGM's reviewers did have a voice, even if sometimes it just meant they played a game for 10 minutes and said a bunch of dumb stuff about it (since multiple people were supposed to give opinions for each game). But the Sega Saturn Magazine took that way further. They would make fun of each other constantly, and even talk shit about other magazines occasionally. I didn't get to read a lot of other UK mags, but it seems like that tone was more common over there.
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Post by jorpho on Mar 23, 2021 21:29:09 GMT -5
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Post by toei on Mar 23, 2021 23:37:37 GMT -5
That's an intra-company crossover, though. Also, the sequel to Fighter's History was literally Karnov's Revenge, so they really integrated him into the series.
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