/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.2760309]

How about a PS1 era Square thread /vr/?

[Anonymous No.2760968]

>>2760309
Pretty much the Zenith of Square.

[Anonymous No.2760992]

>>2760968
nah bra.
>Pre-FF1 NES era

[Anonymous No.2760997]

>>2760992
>>Pre-FF1 NES era
I said Zenith, not Nadir.

[Anonymous No.2761006]

>>2760309
Look at all those amazing games. We had it so good. Man.

[Anonymous No.2761051]

>>2761006
Indeed

[Anonymous No.2761061]

>>2761006
Hay guyz what's going on in this thread?

[Anonymous No.2761064]

>>2761061
Awww, pure hubris captured on film. Square never recovered from that one.

[Anonymous No.2761068]

>>2761064
Yep, it's what marked the beginning of the end by creating the need for the merger.

[Anonymous No.2761070]

>>2761006
The thing that always impresses me is how Square branched out, or rather, went back to its root and made or published games that aren't just turn based JRPGs while also further improving their biggest series.

FF got its biggest seller game in the franchise

FF Tactics which is basically Tactics Ogre 2.0

Racing Lagoon as a racing game with RPG elements and Chocobo Racing for kart games

Parasite Eve and Vagrant Story as a fusion of real time and turn based RPGs, both with mature MCs and rather dark storylines

Bushido Blade and Ehrgeiz as fighting games experiments

Chocobo Dungeon as Roguelike

SaGa Frontier returns to the GB roots and SaGa Frontier 2 which together with Legend of Mana is the best 2d looking game on the system

Threads of Fate

Xenogears

Front Mission 2 and the release of the old Front Mission with a new side of the story, Front Mission Alternative as a real time RTS and the rather lackluster but good looking FM3

Einhander for SHMUPS players

Internal Section, a tube SHMUP which predates REZ by a few years

Brave Fencer Musashi

And I like my SNES Square, but it just can't compare to PSX Square, and I even like their minor games like Alcahest or Treasure Hunter G.

[Anonymous No.2761072]

>>2761068

Yup, like >>2761070 points out. All that creativity and freedom they had in the PS1 era was amazing. Then *poof!* financial ruin, no more leeway for creative ventures it was the merger and then doubling down on remakes and sequels.

I would love to visit the alternate dimension where that film never got green lit.

[Anonymous No.2761082]

>>2761072
Pretty funny but worth noting is that in the Square and Enix merger was that Enix was the surviving company.

[Anonymous No.2761109]

>>2761082
Evidenced by the Dragon Quests getting lovingly crafted remakes and the Final Fantasies having shit ports and terrible remakes.

[Anonymous No.2761112]

>>2761082
>>2761109

Enix got the short end of the stick though in the merge though.

Basically Square-Enix is just Square with a contract with Yuji Horii's Armor Project company to release Dragon Quest.

Square was always a bit overrated IMO.

[Anonymous No.2761115]

>>2761109
So honestly, how bad is the FF7 remake gonna be? I mean it's already bad enough that they're going with the Advent Children aesthetic for it, but how else can/will they fuck It up?

[Anonymous No.2761126]

>>2761112
Those DS DQIV-VI remakes are so much better than the FF III and IV ones, that was my point.

Square is pretty hit and miss in my opinion, but I generally liked their games better than Enix.

>>2761115
I think the train at the beginning is just plain going to crash into midgar and be the biggest trainwreck in history.

Seriously though, what are they going to do with the Honeybee Inn section? They can't well cut it entirely, but remaking that in a game these days would cause an insane shitstorm. Hell just Cloud putting on a dress will trigger people for all kinds of reasons now.

[Anonymous No.2761170]

>all this revisionist history

1. Studios paid for the majority of Spirits Within, so most the money that was lost wasn't Square's to begin with. A great deal of that finance came from Sony and Columbia Pictures.

2. Enix was on the verge of bankruptcy pre-"merger. "

3. Square knew this and suggested a merger not because they were weak financially, but because they could negotiate from a position of dominance without having to outbid other companies when Enix loses the rights to their IPs in an attempt to pay their debts.

4. Enix, knowing that they were going to be fucked over, negotiated the best deal they could, which was retention of 20% of their staff and some executive powers and positions with the new company. SE otherwise was essentially Square with access to Enix's IPs. The new board of directors has only one Enix employee on it and no Enix employees have ever been promoted higher than vice president.

It was masterful corporate assfuckery, not this "Square begged with hat in hand" shit people claim happened. It was basically one step up from a hostile takeover, Enix got absolutely gutted after the merger.

[Anonymous No.2761221]

>>2761170
Well said. And what we have now is a great example of what a lack of competition does to creativity and quality.

[Anonymous No.2762148]

>>2761221
The death of an industry? Because that's was JRPGs basically are now. Dead.

[Anonymous No.2762931]

>>2762148
JRPGs have always been the same, if you can't find good ones you literally aren't looking hard enough.

A VP spiritual successor was recently announced together with a new mainline SaGa, a successor to GKH was announced as well and we had great games like The Last Remnant, Elminage which is just like classic Wizardry but more vast and with great customizability, little fun games like Cladun or ZHP, Metal Max games and new experiments like Frontier Gate.

If you're gonna whine about shit like moeshit, garbage RPGs, three thousands FF and DQ flooding the market, I'm sorry to break it to you but it has always been like that, the only difference is that now moeshit and garbage get out of Japan whereas in the past it had no market.

[Anonymous No.2762953]

>>2762931
Hell Fucking Yes Princess Minerva.

[Anonymous No.2762969]

>>2762953
It was more fun than it deserved to be really, and cute as fuck too.
Still have to find a better mahou shoujo RPG than that.

[Anonymous No.2762992]

>>2762931
Okay, you can't use that many fucking abbreviations and assume I know what they all stand for.

[Anonymous No.2762993]

>>2762969
>Still have to find a better mahou shoujo RPG than that.
The SNES Rayearth, maybe? Though even that is still more a traditional fantasy adventure than anything else.

[Anonymous No.2763001]

>>2762992
So you say that JRPGs are dead and yet you didn't play Valkyrie Profile or Zettai Hero Project? I could kind of understand that you didn't play Grand Knights History but all of these are all successful games that were discussed even on /vg/.
You don't seem to really have the rights to make such statements.
>>2762993
>The SNES Rayearth, maybe?
Too serious, Princess Minerva had great humour and cutscenes and it was campy enough to keep you entertained despite the mediocre gameplay.

[Anonymous No.2763108]

>>2761170
>Enix got absolutely gutted after the merger.

If Square didn't loose out horribly on Spirits Within and made out like a bandit in the merger, then why did the company go to shit so quickly after all that happened?

[Anonymous No.2763116]

>>2762931
Aside from Etrian Odyssey which are more dungeon crawlers, what are the decent JRPGs being made these days?

[Anonymous No.2763123]

I believe this would be relevant to this thread.

"Let's clear up the reason for Squaresoft's "demise" and why Square and Enix merged"

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=744184

[Anonymous No.2763131]

>>2763123
Gee thanks because reading neogaf is just what I was looking forward to this morning.

[Anonymous No.2763248]

>>2763131
Even a dump can have its diamonds every now and then.

[Anonymous No.2763251]

>>2763248
True. I was in a very salty mood when I replied, but did end up reading through a bunch of that and it was actually pretty interesting. Thanks for posting it after all.

[Anonymous No.2763285]

No racing game? It would've been rad.