/vr/ - Retro Games

Good. Pokemon is shit and I prefer Mario

Companies had a nasty habit of keeping really good games in Japan instead of releasing them. For example, the only decent Back to the Future game from the NES/SNES era was released in Japan.

Most people don't understand these games well enough to become hooked, they play in a super simple way and then leave. You can win vs AI with just a really good gun and some timing, shooting first coming around corners, etc, but what you're actually supposed to be doing and what everything from arena layouts to half your moveset are about, is zoning. Bombs and pods are for forcing the opponent into a disadvantageous position. The entire art and intention of the gameplay is lost on the majority of people who picked it up.

>>8607234
There was another robot game with massive boober they didn't either. Also, we got the series in the GC era, which was toolittle too late.

ALSO Nintendo fucking published this, do you really think they'll let some stupid shit dev compete with them?

>>8607243
Remember, japanese old men think like this:
Japan market 1st, Overseas market 2nd. Which is awful because they stand to make 7x~10x the amount overseas.

>>8608320
That's fine, because it's still a fun game to play casually. I know I would have liked it as a kid. How many people really have a deep understanding of any game's mechanics?

Speaking of, I don't know why they haven't made a Pokemon game like this. Where you have the top down RPG style world to explore, but when you go into a battle, it morphs into a little action game where you get to control your pokemon in real time. That's exactly what I wanted as a kid.
I guess the challenge is designing and animating all of the different characters, but you could do it with a limited roster, if need be.

If you want a Pokemon-like robo collector, Medarot series is actually much closer to that than this, it has random battles and you randomly get parts from those. Collecting all the parts you can in a playthrough feels a lot more like Pokemon completion.

Custom Robo games have an overworld, but there aren't random battles and generally you follow a story sequence of battles - you can choose to battle a small selection of optional opponents for cash and those just depend on where in the story you are. Parts collection is either through shops or automatic depending on the game. Arena probably has the widest range of repeatable battles because for most of it, you have access to every area prior and that'll be populated by optional battles. Most of the rest of the time, overworld progression is simply to direct you to the next battle and in that sense the RPG-like appearance is largely superficial.

At least the gamcube game made it over. The first Custom Robo is lots of fun and very unique but the story/campaign can get pretty boring at times. Gameplay itself and the collecting parts is fantastic though.

>>8609385
I'm inclined to agree with this guy, and to begin with I'm a huge Medarot fan. Collecting parts in Medarot was also more fun to me than catching Pokemon because it doesn't rely on luck, you just need to beat the Medarot you want four times (one for each body part). Medals were the harder part to get since some of them you had to find by looking everywhere in the world but it was also pretty satisfying.

>>8607234
>Were they fucking stupid?
Kinda.
If you want something similar, you could try SD Gundam Gashapon Wars for GC/Wii. It's a hybrid of mostly a turn-based strategy game where the battles become like this with around 100 characters to unlock. There are also missions where the turn-based strategy element is taken out. The Wii version just adds a labyrinth mode where you can go through a 100-floor, randomly generated maze as one of the characters. I managed to get every mech without understanding any Japanese, lol.

>>8610374
>Gundam
nice
>SD
nope

>>8610374
Gundam games (just like the franchise itself I guess) are such a huge thing that I've just barely scratched the surface of. I definitely want to check some of them out someday though.

>>8607234
>don't translate a late-N64 game with a shit fucking ton of text
>do translate it when it comes to GameCube when they want to push sales of the new console in America
>retards on /vr/ decades later go 'what did they mean by this???'
I honestly think a lot of you are legitimately unintelligent.

>>8610429
that was a different game, and this came out in 99. N64 still had two years to go.

>>8610494
>N64 still had two years to go.
You're underestimating the amount of translation. By the time that would be finished it would be late 2000 if not early 2001, Nintendo did not think it was worth the effort.
>that was a different game
I am aware that it is "a different game", the point is it's a Custom Robo game with a shit ton of text and the same Nintendo deciding which games to have localized based on their context in the American video game market

>>8610504
Not that dude you were arguing it, but Custom Robo 64 doesn't have a lot of text at all. The story is very barebones.

>>8610504
I think you're weighing the amount of time and work translation takes based on how long it takes fan translators, who have to hack entirely new lettering formats and scripts into a finished rom's completely opaque assembly. The official devs with the actual unassembled code, graphics tools and script can do it fairly quickly for games that aren't enormous, and CR/CRV2 aren't so expansive despite all the menu items that it would have been an unusually big job.

>>8607239
I mostly prefer SMT.

>>8607234
Then they bring over the even better gamecube game and nobody fucking bought it despite it being an incredible game with multiplayer and tournmanet potential out the ass. Smash got big and everyone forgot about this series altough the ds game was also really good and seems recognized here

>>8607234
This game is very easy to get through in japanese but im pretty sure it finally got translated or maybe thats the 2nd game i think theirs two n64 custom robos

>>8614787
>the even better gamecube game
It's the worst in the series by a lot unless counting the GBA trash, you seriously have to play 1, 2 and Arena dude.

>>8614787
I owned it as a kid, I honestly don't know if I sold it or if its sitting in my parents basement because I've seen it go for a decent price as of late.

>>8607234
What year did this come out again? Because it seems especially weird to me with the mid 90s/early 00s having a huge increase in mecha and anime popularity in the west. Could have done very well with the right marketing.

>>8607234
Was the localization for the GCN game some wacky meme translation or was the original Japanese that way too? Custom Robo 1 and Arena are such straight anime games that the 2nd being written like a webcomic just seems bizarre

>>8614795
Yes, there's a translation patch out for the first, which is why I'm playing it now.

>>8615595
Speaking of, Last Legion UX got passed over too, and that game's cool as fuck. It could maybe use a little more gameplay depth, but I know I would not have cared if it meant I got to play a really awesome robot game when I was 10.
Then there's the Evangelion game, even Sin and Punishment up to a point. They didn't want us Westerners playing their cool robot games.