/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.1937579]

What are some games with really interesting stories behind them? I was just reading about all the problems that cropped up when Working Designs was localizing Magic Rayearth, and I'd love to read some more retro game stories.

[Anonymous No.1937630]

>>1937579
What problems?

[Anonymous No.1937706]

>>1937630

Slowdowns and bugs IIRC, that's why the game was released 3 years after the japanese release.

[Anonymous No.1937715]

>>1937630
Original source code was lost and they had to rewrite a good chunk of the game.

[Anonymous No.1937721]

>>1937630
In addition to what was already mentioned, part of the source code was lost, there were legal issues with the anime, and Working Designs was denied booth space. It was delayed so long that it was the last Saturn game released in the US, and Working Designs had to publish it at a loss.

Stuff like that is fascinating to me, and I was just hoping to read some more cool retro game stories.

[Anonymous No.1937738]

>>1937579
A pretty well known story is the porting of Maniac Mansion for the NES. BTW I only recently found out you can actually play the rom on ScummVM (with a MOUSE).

'The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion'
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html

[Anonymous No.1937750]

>>1937579
Another must-read is the in-depth, multipart article on the development of Crash Bandicoot; it's a great read even if you don't like the series (lost of very interesting technical information, and some thoughts about the N64 in comparison to the PSX)

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/02/making-crash-bandicoot-part-1/

[Anonymous No.1937846]

The development of the Elder Scrolls series is interesting to me.
With Arena, the game was originally a game about fighting as a gladiator, traveling from arena to arena and ending in the Imperial City. They started adding different things, thinking "what if the player could go on quests in between battles" and such. It turned into a RPG, and was going to be party-based.

I remember reading somewhere that Daggerfall was supposed to be "Mournhold" and take place in Morrowind. Not sure why they changed it, but important characters from Mournhold such as Barenziah and Helseth have big roles in Daggerfall. Bethesda has just always had a boner for Dark Elves.

[Anonymous No.1937851]

Maybe a little different from what OP is looking for, but slowbeef's story on how he got involved in Policenaut's fan translation is a nice read:

http://lparchive.org/Policenauts/Update%2042/

[Anonymous No.1937934]

>>1937579
Gauntlet for the NES is kinda interesting. Tengen(Atari) had approached Nintendo during the early days of the NES, looking to get a better publishing agreement than the standard one NoA was pushing at the time. NoA declined, and so Tengen went ahead and signed and released three games or so under Nintendo's official license, while going to work on reverse engineering the NES and the cart PCBs. The Official Nintendo version of Gauntlet is somewhat unique, in being the only game released in the US that used a NAMCOT 109 MMC(which was used alot for the famicom). Once Tengen finally got everything figured out, they created their own MMC called MIMIC-1, which was little more than a copy of the NAMCOT 109. The NAMCOT 109 and by extension the MIMIC-1 are both similar to the later MMC3, if a little gimped. This all happened before the MMC1 started getting used.

As such, the NES version of Gauntlet was a PCB years ahead of it's time, in comparison to the other US released games.

The NES version is also unique, in that the game can actually be beaten, it isn't just a high score game. All you need to do is find all the hidden rooms and get all the parts of the code. Then after level 99, you input the code, and if you got the code right you go on to the final level, otherwise you instantly die. Beating the final level will give you the ending and ending credits.

Whole lot of drama and strangeness for what should have been a simple arcade port.

[Anonymous No.1937984]

All the internal politics between the US and Japanese division of Sega between the Genesis and Dreamcast is so interesting you could make a movie out of it. Highly recommend you start reading up on that if you never have before, it really gives you a good insight on why Sega mainly just focuses on Sonic outside of Japan these days.

[Anonymous No.1938236]

>>1937934
I find it interesting how they got so fed up with Nintendo they basically went around the NES10 chip with a small shock from their games. Nintendo tried to say it would destroy the NES but I haven't had any problem with it.
>>1937984
Did you know Sega of America had more say in how Sonic would look than Japan? Japan wanted it more dangerous looking while America thought a more cute look would be better.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27373587

[Anonymous No.1938579]

>>1937579
never forgive working designs for wasting so much resources on this shitty game. so many other saturn games could've been translated in it's place.

[Anonymous No.1938586]

>>1938579
>so many
Like one or two tops

[Anonymous No.1938594]

>>1938586

this game is SO text heavy and it sounds like they put a shitload of effort into all these issues that came up with it.

dragon force 2
shining force 3 ii and iii
black/matrix
wachenroder
solo crisis

those are just a couple that would've been 100 times better than this cutesy bullshit.

[Anonymous No.1938604]

>>1938594
Yeah well it's not on them to translate every single saturn game, if you want to be mad at someone, be mad at sega. And the games you listed came out late, already when the saturn was quite visibly dying, so it makes it even less likely that would happen

[Anonymous No.1938629]

>>1938236
>Japan wanted it more dangerous looking while America thought a more cute look would be better.

Things that never happened: the revisionism.

Sonic went out of his dangerous punk concept art really soon, with hints remaining on the manga they used to advertise the game. Not to mention assface Sonic is anything but the epitome of cute.

>the first video game firm with a core demographic of goths

This is ridiculous. Sonic was never going to be some edgelord, he was meant to be one huge tribute to American pop culture, full on westaboo culture if you want.

>but the Americans saw the risk in allowing the company's mascot to have a split-personality, and they ultimately prevailed.

Yeah because the way Sonic's personality was portrayed in American media and Japan are TOTALLY alike.

[Anonymous No.1938759]

>Princess Maker 2
>Gainax's premier computer game was set to come to the US. So what happened?

http://softegg.com/products/pm2/pm2.php

[Anonymous No.1938790]

Sanic autists representing

[Anonymous No.1938797]

Camelot Software Planning wasn't very happy with the direction Sega took with the Saturn. In the ABSTRACT.TXT file in the SFIII Premium Disc(rare bonus "game" for people who sent Camelot the spine cards of all 3 scenarios) Yasuhiro Taguchi included his development diary, which included his disdain for the Dreamcast's release date, which was 6 months earlier than expected.

In the end, Scenario 3 was released only a month before the Dreamcast's launch in Japan. Camelot permanently left Sega shortly afterwards and would work with Nintendo as a second-party developer, where they would eventually create the Mario sports and Golden Sun games.

[Anonymous No.1938803]

>>1938797
*2 months before the launch.

[Anonymous No.1938828]

http://www.nintendoplayer.com/feature/the-man-behind-captain-nintendo/

Second half of Chapter 8 covers the creation of Power Blade.

[Anonymous No.1938845]

>>1938604
I'm just saying it's a shame they chose to translate this sailor moon-esque shit when there were plenty of other better games they could have worked on. pretty sure wachenroder was a release title too

[Anonymous No.1938848]

>>1938845
>pretty sure wachenroder was a release title too
Nope, along with most of the games you mentioned, 1998

[Anonymous No.1938880]

Sega of America didn't want to have anything to do with Sonic. After SoJ told them they didn't have a choice, they tried to fuck it up as much as possible.

[Anonymous No.1938908]

>>1938880
Also related:

http://info.sonicretro.org/Mark_Cerny_interview_by_Sega-16_(December_5,_2006)

>At one point when I visited Sega headquarters, Naoto Ohshima, the Sonic Team character artist, showed me some sketches of potential player characters for the game. He asked me what I, as an American, thought of the characters. There were a number of them, including an early Sonic, Robotnik, and a character with a heavy Simpsons influence. I believe that he was really trying to get my opinion of Sonic, and that the other characters were decoys.

>My feeling was "well, I'm just a random American, let's ask the Sega of America marketing people," as I was under the impression that they should have a much better feeling of what would or would not appeal to the U.S. market than I would. So I made some color copies, attached a note saying that this was the work of the Tokyo headquarters' "top team," and could they please give some feedback.

>A month or two had passed, and no feedback had arrived from Sega of America's marketing group, so I asked if they had any comments for the team. I heard, I kid you not, that the characters were "unsalvageable," that this was a "disaster," and that "procedures would be put in place to make sure that this sort of thing would never happen again." These "procedures" included a proposed "top ten list of dos and don'ts" to follow when making products for the American market. Additionally, I was told that the marketing group would be contacting a known character designer (I won't reveal the name, but it made me cringe at the time) to make a character that showed exactly what the American market needed. Needless to say, this character designer would have been totally inappropriate for the Japanese market. Not that great for the American market either, I suspect.

I mean, I don't condone SoJ hissy fits during the mid-90's, but what the fuck, the ego on these fucks. Crash Bandicoot also faced these kinds of cunts.

[Anonymous No.1939547]

>>1938594
the shining force scenarios have been translated. pretty goddamn good.
the dragon force sequel is in progress.
i always wanted a sakura taisen translation, personally

[Anonymous No.1939919]

"The Story of Daikatana," a 36-page feature by Geoff "Doritos" Keighley

http://web.archive.org/web/20000619155817/http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/index.html

>"What I didn't predict was that the artists didn't understand the technology," says Romero.

>This problem was highlighted in late 1997 when Romero received a huge piece of art for the small arrow that is fired from the bolter weapon in the third Episode, the Dark Ages.

>"We had a skin for a little arrow," remembers Romero, "and it was 1300x960 pixels. It was out of control." An artist inexperienced with games had drawn the arrow, which would never take up more than a few pixels on the screen, at a higher resolution than most monitors could display at the time.

[Anonymous No.1942341]

>>1938880
Wait is that real?

[Anonymous No.1942349]

>>1938880
Is that real?

If it is, no wonder Sega fucking died.

[Anonymous No.1943081]

>A Sunsoft Famicom development disk included sprites for Yacopu, the hero of Trip World, which suggests that Trip World might have been originally planned for the Famicom/NES rather than the Game Boy.