/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6732702
It depends on the game. Some titles like Dragon Force, they mostly just added shortcut buttons to previously unmapped buttons, which was nice, but other times like with PS Lunar, they adjusted the numbers and situations to being a bit annoying. For instance, just at the beginning a player who decides to fight every monster in the first cave will have to go back to the first town to heal once or twice, but every time you leave the cave to heal, all the monsters respawn and their damage is scaled to the level of the player's average party dealing more damange forcing another trip back for healing/supplies. Conversely, in the Japanese Saturn version, the player can make it through that first tutorial dungeon facing every enemy inside and meeting the white dragon in one go. I feel it is better paced on the original Japanese version where you get to the story and are freed to continue on quicker, opposed to how it is handled on the US Playstation version which is more of a grind, and forcing repetition.

I do like that WD puts great effort into their packaging. That is a very welcome change. It makes the game feel more special. It's not so simple to print covers with foil and ebmossed relief details, it shows they cared for the artwork and it really stands out with the added features. The small extras they can include gives the feel of the old PC games where the documentation and items are from the game itself which is a subtle layer of immersion into these fictional worlds. Its those small details that I do appreciate from Working Designs.

>>4167543
That's one of the problems with Sega. They did make some quality games like Dragon Force but refused to put in the effort to localize for the US market. If not for Working Designs, the game would have stayed in Japan and very few outside would like the game.

I like the shiny and bump relief of their packaging/manuals. Adds a layer of difficulty in counterfeiting. Back in the dya, Working Designs were willing to localize games no one else would for my Japanese gaming fix.

I actually do appreciate the packaging efforts Working Designs had for their releases. All the extra relief, foil, glossy full color pages, and additional bonus items made it so one cannot just make a reproduction/bootleg on the cheap to be worthwhile. Back in my day, reading instruction manuals and finding what was inside packages (like big box PC games) alongside a game was part of the experience of a game to me. Sure, it is meaningless, and wasteful in terms of space and effort eaten up, but I do enjoy the feeling.

However in terms of balance changes, I do prefer the Lunar games in the Japanese form because I felt they flowed much better being "easier" where one isn't desperately needing heals/MP and go through the dungeon keeping the story moving, instead of making the risk/reward decision to leave an area for a full restock at the expense of the area repopulating with standard mobs numbers readjusting to "challenge" the player. Translation and localization will have their issues in not being able to please many. Some references will get dated faster, they were pretty proud of themselves adding a personality trait in "flatulence" to a guy in a tower, but I guess that was their take, and I do see some charm to what WD does sometimes. My rudimentary Japanese does open up some options, and I can respect the difficulty in localizations, however, I do lean a bit to the side of a closer, more faithful option to be available (like how I wish the Disney Blu-ray discs of Ghibli films use "dubtitles" where they pretty much transcribe the dub script as the subtitle for what is said in Japanese, as if that localized script is how it should be) at least an option.


>>3556537
I have not played the Playstation version of Silhouette Mirage and I keep hearing about game balance issues, but I liked the Saturn version a lot and I do not recall it running like shit as described, it seemed to run just fine and I had fun with it.

>>3375940
This guy gets it

Yeah, Working Designs would have that foil shine and bump relief (embossing?) even on standard releases. Treating the game's art well, like actual works of art in the manual, makes me wonder why would anyone throw those things away with the case.