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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 4, 2006 10:42:40 GMT -5
You need to post this picture.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Oct 4, 2006 11:23:32 GMT -5
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Post by kal on Oct 4, 2006 19:25:35 GMT -5
For that story/pic Neorsa you get a nice round 20. Hilarious.
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grad
Full Member
Enlarge my avatar, yea or nay?
Posts: 129
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Post by grad on Oct 5, 2006 3:44:52 GMT -5
This type of article is exactly why I like HG101. I had never heard of Dinosaur before, and now I have. Thanks!
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Post by necromaniac on Oct 5, 2006 9:10:29 GMT -5
"Iiiiiim a dinosaur, somebody is digging my bones!" ...erm sorry, that song keeps poping up in my mind because of the topic and this awesome game. And a nice one neorasa! Exalt for probably ruining any future relations we westerners could have had with Falcom ^^
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Post by Dais on Oct 5, 2006 18:32:40 GMT -5
I keep forgetting to check up on this board (maybe that's a good thing - I tend to kind of make a mess), but I faithfully read the articles as soon as they appear. This continues to be one of my favorite sites on the internet.
But, but, but - as you might expect, my appearance means that I have a nit to pick, and it concerns one of the concluding statements:
"The closest successor might be Arcana, a similar game that was released on the SNES, with a sequel coming only in Japan for the Saturn"
Unless you're referring to something other than Arcana Strikes, I'm pretty sure you're wrong (sorry). Everything I've read about the game (scant as it is) indicate that the only thing they share is cards as a theme. I could build up a whole case about whey they aren't related (aren't I special?), but I'm trying to tone down on the "jackass who hyperfocuses on obscure game trivia" part of my personality. Just a bit.
Believe me, an Arcana sequel is the kind of thing I'd go absolute nuts over - grinding to catchy music sits well with me. Maybe, someday, Hal will revisit some of their older works....Arcana DS would be nice, or some kind of 3D, combat-heavy update of Alcahest.
Anyway, thanks for the articles. I have a passing interest in Japan's reactions to Western RPG design (like the ten billion Wizardry games they've made). And it's nice to finally see the video that accompanies "The Lost Ones", since I really like the song.
Oh man, I sound so neurotic when I post here.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 5, 2006 19:14:13 GMT -5
Actually you've given me more information about Arcana Strikes than I've ever heard.
It's only like 1200 yen at Japangamestock, I guess I should grab it.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Oct 5, 2006 21:27:49 GMT -5
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 5, 2006 22:26:00 GMT -5
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Post by Dais on Oct 5, 2006 22:50:04 GMT -5
At first it I thought it was likely some fortune-telling game like Res Arcana for SNES/SFC, but this NCSX entry for a related PSX game indicates it's something more of a boardgame. Remember that "Arcana" generally refers to the two sets involved in Tarot: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_arcanaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_arcanaSo games with cards, especially cards influenced or directly based on the Tarot, run the risk of featuring "Arcana" in their name I mean, there's some strange-looking C64 game that isn't based on cards, but I think that's it. Of course, the one overwhelming thing that I have to remind people of is that the Japanese version of Arcana was called Cad Master. Okay. And it was made by Hal, and Hal doesn't do Sega. EDIT: Whoops. Uh, beaten. :\ Wow, where'd that French review site come from? Hmmm...then again, Google can't seem to find whatever site I read the brief opinion and saw a page of screenshots of Arcana Strikes on.... Man, this site even has a review of Maten Densetsu and everything. Which is also made by Takara. Huh. Speaking of which, you might want to check that out, Kurt. It's.... kinda SMT-ish. DOUBLE EDIT: Okay that French site says the character design for MT was done by Katsuya Terada, whereas I previously have read it was done by Yoshitaka Amano. This whole series of tangents, starting from the original article, has simply been a conspiracy to make my head hurt.....hasn't it?
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 5, 2006 23:33:02 GMT -5
Holy crap you're right, I'll definitely check it out.
I fixed the article removing the reference to Arcana Strikes, though it seems that the French site made the same mistake I did. Unless they are related in a strange way, in the same way that the PSOne Blaster Master was called Blaster Master in Japan instead of Meta Fight. Doubtful, though.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Oct 6, 2006 10:36:41 GMT -5
If that's a dinosaur then I'm a Chinaman.
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Post by wyrdwad on Mar 20, 2010 7:30:11 GMT -5
Why hello there, 3 and a half year-old article posting! Sorry to resurrect (get it? GET IT?) such an old topic, but I've actually been playing this game a lot lately (Resurrection, not the original), and figured I'd give you a bit more material for your article, as it seems to be missing some pretty pertinent information (not that I can blame you, given the obscurity of this title, and I'm grateful you even WROTE an article about it - but I figure you're going to want your article to be as thorough as possible, no?). First, a note about the gameplay: While the encounter rate IS high, it's probably not as high as you thought, as it varies based upon how exposed your party is. If you're in the middle of a large room, for example - able to move in any of the four cardinal directions, and thus exposed on all 4 sides - you'll notice that the little orbs on the bottom-left and bottom-right side of the display are colored bright red. This means that you're fully exposed, and the encounter rate will be MUCH HIGHER than if you were hugging the wall (exposed on 3 sides), walking down a corridor (exposed on 2 sides), or best of all, standing in a dead-end (exposed on only 1 side). The less exposed you are, the more blue the orbs will become, and the lower your encounter rate will be - which makes all those dead-end rooms scattered around every map absolute LIFE-SAVERS, since you can generally rest in there over and over again with little to no threat of random encounters. I'm betting this was added for Resurrection, which is why you noted an improvement in the encounter rate from the original to the remake. Of course, if you're OCD like me, you'll want to fill in every last square on every last map, so you'll traipse through the center of rooms anyway, nullifying this whole system. Also, story-wise, I think the reason Dinosaur is classified as a "serious" RPG is because... well... it is! There's absolutely NO humor in the game, and the story and dialogue is all very dark, serious, and kind of morose in a lot of cases. In fact, I'd even go so far as to call the game a "horror RPG" - the narrative text you encounter before each cutscene generally tends to describe horrific, nightmarish scenes in GREAT DETAIL, to the point that if the game were translated, it'd probably make your skin crawl! It's honestly really creepy, and I think that's part of the game's charm, for those who can read Japanese - horror RPGs are pretty uncommon even today, and this is a horror RPG from 1989, which is PARTICULARLY unusual. It's kind of awesomely ahead of its time! The game is also pretty surreal, and kind of oddly self-aware, too. The mayor of the starting town, for example, has a lot of dialogue throughout the game that outright SAYS he and the townsfolk exist solely for your benefit - basically, that the town and everyone in it are there entirely to help you in your quest, and that no one from the town can ever leave (because then they'd no longer be fulfilling their purpose, and I guess would cease to exist!). And when one of your party members asks him why there are no children in the town, he laughs, and says something like, "We had children here once... long, long ago. But what purpose would children serve for us now?" And finally, the game's also got a surprisingly intricate plot, for 1989. There's still a lot of very random things happening, which the player just kind of has to accept (like most games of the era), but the game manages to brush them off pretty nicely - not really explaining them away, per se, but at least addressing how weird they are, and showing how the characters react to them. This added sense of awareness that the game is oddly convoluted actually adds to the creepiness of it all, giving it kind of a dream-like quality. And the characters, too, are actually surprisingly well-developed, with the budding relationship between Wazz and Elis kind of stealing the show - they start out hating one another (Wazz is a selfish thief, cursed to change into an animal whenever he's exposed to magic; and Elis is a magician who's devoted her life to selfless pursuits), but over time, they kind of begin to understand one another, and there's a bit of romantic tension there... it's all very subtle and well-written, and assuming it's not any different from the 1989 version, it would've been pretty damn gripping back then. All in all, it's a really neat game, with a lot more depth to it than you probably realized, in terms of gameplay, story, and atmosphere alike. Definitely a much better game than I'd expected it to be - and considering that I've never liked first-person ANYTHING, the fact that I'm as into it as I am says a lot about how well-made it is. (Sorry if this is written kind of sloppily, BTW - I haven't gotten a lot of sleep, and it's beginning to catch up with me!) -Tom
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Post by megatronbison on Mar 20, 2010 8:56:13 GMT -5
I remember reading this article hoping there was a translation patch for Resurrection somewhere, of course, given how long it's taken for some more popular games to be translated I won't hold my breath.
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Post by wyrdwad on Mar 20, 2010 9:35:42 GMT -5
I'm enjoying it enough that I've considered translating it somewhere down the line... but I'm currently working on a Xanadu Next translation patch... plus, it looks like I might be getting a job as a professional game translator next week (hopefully), which would probably make fan-translating a less desirable hobby... plus, Dinosaur Resurrection's script actually uses some surprisingly difficult Japanese that's likely to be a little more time-consuming than normal to translate properly... so in other words, I'm not committing to ANYTHING right now! (: But it's still very much a possibility! EDIT: BTW, since this game has so little English-language information available on it, I've been taking Fraps footage while I play, and uploading some of it to YouTube with annotations and/or captions to translate and/or explain what's going on. If anyone's curious to see this game in action, feel free to give them a look: Footage from the very beginning of the game, before I really knew what the hell I was doing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzkg2flo5toTranslated cutscene from about 1/4 of the way through the game, showing off a bit of the game's creepiness (yes, she was just struck blind; and yes, she's taking it almost disturbingly well!): www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT2uO03zVyA"Typical" gameplay footage from about 2/3 of the way through the game, with annotations explaining things like avoiding exposure to cut down on encounter rates, resting at dead-ends to recover health and TP in relative safety, budgeting TP for the map spell, etc.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pv83vfvQHUI've also uploaded a bunch of my favorite music tracks from the game as YouTube videos, which should all come up as links from the above three videos, and can be easily found by searching YouTube for "dinosaur resurrection." Enjoy! -Tom
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