/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5458637]

Why have I never heard of this?

[Anonymous No.5458646]

you're deaf? it's quite popular

[Anonymous No.5458694]

You should lurk more.

[Anonymous No.5458698]

>>5458637
It's Illusion of time in europe, maybe you know that one OP

[Anonymous No.5458704]

>>5458637
Maybe you're 12?

[Anonymous No.5458723]

>>5458694
Too bad we never saw the SNES Dragon Quests and they weren't that good anyway, just NES games with more color.

[Anonymous No.5458793]

>>5458723
Reportedly Enix dropped the idea because JRPGs just were not big sellers in the US back then. During the SNES era only Square were still trying, everyone else had given up.

[Anonymous No.5458796]

>>5458723
>they weren't that good anyway
There were some QoL changes, I appreciate the dedicated interact button instead of menu/talk, menu/open, etc ..

>just NES games with more color
Not a bad thing.

[Anonymous No.5458797]

Consider that FF7 might not have been the success it was had Square skipped over international releases of the SNES games.

[Anonymous No.5458807]

>>5458797
FF7 benefited from Sony giving it a massive promotional push. They wanted to exploit to maximum advantage both this and the game being a tech demo for the PS1.

[Anonymous No.5458813]

>>5458723
That might have been true of DQ5. The game was primitive from a technical standpoint and barely made any use of the SNES's capabilities. Compared against FF4 it would have looked embarrassing.

DQ6 however...that was sad that we missed out.

[Anonymous No.5458824]

>>5458813
Big deal. FF4 was the same way. Still just a NES game with a bit more colors.

[Anonymous No.5458836]

>>5458637
Because you just got out from under a rock

[Anonymous No.5459117]

>>5458637
More like Illusion of GAYa.
Play Terranigma, it's way better.

[Anonymous No.5459260]

Didn't play this. I loved Terranigma though.

Should I bother with Soul Blazer?

[Anonymous No.5459276]

>>5458793
Enix withdrew from the North American market completely between 1993 and 98 because they failed to get anywhere with their NES titles outside DQ1.

[Anonymous No.5459331]

>>5459260
I’ve been wondering the same lately

[Anonymous No.5459339]

>>5459260
>>5459331
If you like overhead hack n slash games. Yes. I prefer Soul Blazer over IoG and Terranigma for repeat playthroughs, it's straightforward and plays at a brisk pace.
Replaying through Terranigma again reminded me how annoying it can be, and IoG has a few parts that grind the pace to a halt. I'd still recommend everyone to play through all of the games at least once, but Soul Blazer easily has the most replay value

[Anonymous No.5459361]

>>5459339
>Replaying through Terranigma again reminded me how annoying it can be
Annoying in what way?
As for Soul Blazer, the gameplay is addicting one you get into it (spent about an hour and a half or so on it when all I wanted to do was test whether the cartridge works or not) and it's very fast paced. But there's little about the game that makes me want to go back to it and replay it, strangely.

[Anonymous No.5459401]

The Famicom had a lot of RPGs, every Japanese dev had one. Only a few ever made it out of Japan, namely the DQ series, Faxanadu, Hydlide, and FF1 (not counting console ports of WRPGs like Ultima or StarTropics because that was always intended as a US exclusive). Since none of them except DQ1 were very successful, it scared off everyone but Square so that international releases of RPGs practically disappeared during the SNES era.

[Anonymous No.5459417]

NOA pulled the plug on the planned FF2 localization because its projected release date was late 1991 and they disliked the idea of a AAA NES title coming out at that point to distract attention from the SNES's launch.

[Anonymous No.5459515]

>>5459417
As for FF3, Square considered that it was too late for an NES release and they were more interested in FF4 instead.

[Anonymous No.5459527]

>>5459401
King's Knight, but it sucks.

[Anonymous No.5459706]

>>5459260
Yeah soul blazer is great. Strangely my favorite of the three

[Anonymous No.5459851]

>>5458637
>Why have I never heard of this?
It was from before you were born. You must be 18 to post on this site.

[Anonymous No.5459883]

Quintet used to be a big deal in magazines and then they disassociated from Enix, its founder got involved in fraud and they just disappeared. Shame. They nailed the nostalgic JRPG feel really well, kid-friendly stories that pull on your heartstrings but doesn't take itself too seriously, excellent music, addicting arcade gameplay with leveling up, puzzles and inventory management.

[Anonymous No.5459903]

>>5459401
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom

[Anonymous No.5459914]

>>5459903
Forgot about that. A very strange pick for US localization.

[Anonymous No.5459915]

Never played it, but there was a writer that did a piece about Illusion of Gaia that I always found to be quite moving.

http://www.whatever-dude.com/posts/110.shtml

[Anonymous No.5459939]

Most of Hudson's more important Famicom games were released internationally, only a small number weren't and they're largely skippable. Momotarou Densetsu has been translated, its sequel Peach Boy Legend still hasn't.

[Anonymous No.5459970]

Going down the list of what Hudson games didn't get released outside Japan...

Binary Land: Nuts & Milk with penguins
Challenger: Looks pretty fun. Dunno why they didn't release this one internationally.
Championship Lode Runner: Lode Runner but 5x harder. Pointless.
Doraemon: Looks fun but obviously nobody in the West knew about Doraemon back then.
Mickey Mouse: Fushigi no Kuni no Daibouken: Very nice game, I guess it didn't get released internationally because Hudson had already earmarked Mickey's Mousecapade.
The Momotarou Densetsu games: Like mentioned before, a lot of JRPGs didn't get an international release for projected low sales or cost.
Ninja Hattori-kun: An early and not very good side scroller.
Nuts & Milk: This is one I've never figured out why it stayed in Japan, maybe they thought the name sounded obscene.
Seirei Gari: Survival horror adventure game. Maybe too scary for NOA?
Shin Jinrui: The New Type: Mediocre Ikari Warriors clone. Not much reason to release this outside Japan.
4-nin Uchi Mahjong: Self-explanatory

[Anonymous No.5460258]

>>5459914
Shadowgate was a huge success on the NES, so they probably figured point and click adventures wouldn't do too badly.

[Anonymous No.5460260]

>>5459970
>Championship Lode Runner: Lode Runner but 5x harder. Pointless.
This was an American game to begin with. The NES port stayed Japan-only, but it was released in the west on a ton of other platforms.

>Shin Jinrui: The New Type: Mediocre Ikari Warriors clone. Not much reason to release this outside Japan.
This was released in North America as "Adventures of Dino Riki". Not in Europe, though.
And "mediocre Ikari Warriors clone" my ass, it's way more fun than Ikari.

[Anonymous No.5460263]

>>5458694
>no technomage for ps1

[Anonymous No.5460264]

>>5459401
DQ1 was so succesful they had to start giving away copies for free to get people to play it. FF1 was the first actual JRPG success story in the west because it wasn't as dated when it came out in and Nintendo were able to learn from their initial experience with DQ for its commercial push in Nintendo Power

[Anonymous No.5460265]

>>5459970
>>5460260
And
>Mickey Mouse: Fushigi no Kuni no Daibouken: Very nice game, I guess it didn't get released internationally because Hudson had already earmarked Mickey's Mousecapade.
I have no idea what you're on about, this IS Mickey Mousecapade.

[Anonymous No.5460346]

>>5460263
bad list, Technomage is fucking awesome!!

[Anonymous No.5461135]

>>5459970
>Ninja Hattori-kun: An early and not very good side scroller.
This was also based on an anime nobody in the West had heard of.

[Anonymous No.5461142]

>>5459970
>Challenger: Looks pretty fun. Dunno why they didn't release this one internationally.

Looks just enough like Zelda that NOA would have probably rejected it.

[Anonymous No.5461153]

>>5460264
>FF1 was the first actual JRPG success story in the west because it wasn't as dated when it came out in

DQ1 was three years old when it got an international release, same as FF1 and they did significantly improve the graphics and replace the password save with a battery save.

Hydlide however was just embarrassing. It was a three year old port of a five year old JPC game that was not altered or improved at all for the international release outside minor changes to the title screen and prompts/messages.

[Anonymous No.5461159]

>>5460260
>This was an American game to begin with. The NES port stayed Japan-only, but it was released in the west on a ton of other platforms.
In either case it was just a challenge to veteran Lode Runner players just like SMB2j and no real point to releasing it here, computer versions notwithstanding.

[Anonymous No.5461173]

Will Wright stated that his original version of Raid on Bungeling Bay for the C64 sold 20,000 copies but the NES port sold 800,000.

[Anonymous No.5461246]

>>5458694
>no lufia

[Anonymous No.5461271]

>>5461246
>ARPG list
>why is this game with turn-based combat not on it?
Every time.

[Anonymous No.5461287]

This is why I love the Mega Drive. Excepting PS, it's nearly free of the cancer of JRPGs.

[Anonymous No.5461303]

Like someone else said, fan translations mostly try to translate the original dialog as directly as possible barring some expressions/puns that have no exact English equivalent. Official translations were done to time pressure, ROM space limits, and NOA censorship, also they often expunged Japanese cultural references.

>Want me to make you some mochi?
>Want me to make you a hamburger
etc, etc.

[Anonymous No.5461384]

>>5458694
>Alcazar: the FOrgotten Fortress
Thank you, I had that as a kid on an Apple II and couldn't remember the name.

[Anonymous No.5461561]

>>5461287
>dude, I swear, less games on a console is a great thing!
>can't just ignore the genre he doesn't like

you act like somebody forced you to finish a Jarpig while holding a knife to your throat.

[Anonymous No.5461565]

>>5461303
>Want me to make you a hamburger

yes please

[Anonymous No.5461574]

>>5459970
Wild how the Doraemon and Ninja Hattori Famicom games didn't get released outside Japan because nobody had heard of the source material at that point when a decade later brand recognition alone would've gotten those games released in the West. What they did with the Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest games is even funnier.

[Anonymous No.5461582]

>>5458694
>>5461271
i really prefer the versions of these without the bizarre arbitrary color borders

[Anonymous No.5461589]

>>5461271
Does something look off on the color palette on FF 2 and 3?

[Anonymous No.5461591]

>>5459361
Terranigma's status ailments are really obnoxious for one, and while you get a big roster of melee moves, most of them are impractical on 90% of the enemies you face. Magirocks are cool but again, a lot are impractical and often boss fights will lock you from using them.
There's some really annoying monsters too, the little girl zombies that throw their explosive heads with super accuracy, the frogs that send you flying, the poisonous wolves, the fish miniboss that swim away unless you attack at them in a very specific way. The mech boss that can weaken your attack power.
Goddamn there was a lot of annoying moments

[Anonymous No.5461595]

>>5461287
They weren't really cancerous in the 8-bit era, that wasn't until FF4 onward started introducing all the weeb/Hot Topic/emo garbage that ended up causing FF to have a fanbase that was almost Sonic tier of bad.

[Anonymous No.5461614]

>>5461574
None of the Famicom Dragon Ball games got an international release either. Again it's pretty hard to grasp that in the late 80s the franchise was nearly unknown outside Japan.

[Anonymous No.5461625]

>>5461614
The second one got released in the US and (some years later) in a couple of EU countries. But in the US release they renamed it Dragon Power and basically erased all mention of the source material.

[Anonymous No.5461628]

>>5461595
What's emo in Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest or Earthbound faggot?

[Anonymous No.5461693]

At least a dozen Sailor Moon games, mostly for the SNES, that were never released outside Japan either.

[Anonymous No.5461707]

>>5461693
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exdbs5qRPYo

They're mostly variations of the same sub-average beat-em-up. At least one game in the series is an RPG though.

[Anonymous No.5461715]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVnRRj1lXEU

I hate weebs, I really do.

[Anonymous No.5461732]

>>5461135
I think it aired in Latin America, actually.

[Anonymous No.5461739]

>>5461614
>Again it's pretty hard to grasp that in the late 80s the franchise was nearly unknown outside Japan.
It was popular as hell. Why are Americans so up their own ass that they think that just because English-speaking countries didn't have the series, no other countries did either?

[Anonymous No.5461748]

>>5461715
That game looks kind of fun actually.

[Anonymous No.5461760]

>>5461739
France, who was pretty much the biggest market for anime outside Japan at the time and always got shit first, only started airing Dragon Ball in 88. Not to mention that the NES wasn't as widespread in the EU as it was in America, so I don't know what market you think you were going to sell the NES Dragon Ball games to.

[Anonymous No.5461769]

Wait, how come French kids could see Bulma's tits after school but we couldn't?

[Anonymous No.5461807]

>>5461769
The French are notoriously lax with nudity, even for European standards.

[Anonymous No.5461973]

>>5461807
Y'know, for kids!

[Anonymous No.5462046]

>>5461591
I agree. I can see why people love terranigma but i just replayed the trilogy and it doesn't resonate with me. Feels like a slog that is always hard to finish

[Anonymous No.5462049]

For reasons unknown, they saw fit to release Fist of the North Star here even though Americans had never heard of the anime it was based on.

[Anonymous No.5462059]

>>5462049
I guess they felt like HnK looked American-ish enough to release as is, they're not completely wrong.

[Anonymous No.5462158]

>>5462046
Like I said before though, as much of a pain in the ass it can be, I still recommend everyone plays all three games at least once. There's some pretty memorable moments in Terranigma, and the credits scene always gives me feels.

[Anonymous No.5462165]

>>5461769
They have a long running children's comic book series about kids that are obsessed with boning down

[Anonymous No.5462257]

>>5462165
They have tons.

[Anonymous No.5462810]

>>5462165
What? What's it called?

[Anonymous No.5462821]

>>5461271
Why are not action RPGs included in this list? A Japanese Action RPG is still a JRPG?

On a different note, I would appreciate these more if only good games were listed, as voted by the majority. Otherwise the awful games inflate these lists.

[Anonymous No.5462883]

>>5458637
It sucks.
Soul Blazer and Terranigma are both much better.

[Anonymous No.5462886]

>>5459260
>>5459331
Soul Blazer and Terranigma are good.
Illusion of Gaia is a piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.5462898]

>>5462886
Never tried Illusion of Gaia, but watched a friend a few years ago play it and he had a laugh or two about how dumb some parts of the game were. I think I recall some girl just randomly turn into a flower and fucking off.

[Anonymous No.5462902]

>>5462883
>>5462886
You are fags, they are all great

[Anonymous No.5463184]

>>5461591
Fair enough. I feel the same way about some other often highly-rated games (getting tossed around whenever an enemy tickles you in Evermore, holy shit. But some would say the game isn't even good anyways. Also Secret of Mana, but it's also become fashionable to hate on it more than it deserves in recent years.)
>>5462821
I think the ARPG list was done first by collecting a bunch of games that had a similar top-down playstyle and RPG elements. There was no curation process, anons here on /vr/ just pitched in games that fit the criteria. The list posted in >>5458694 just has ratings based on popularity added in by a single anon if I remember correctly.
And unless I am mistaken, the JRPG list came after that as I said.
If taken literally a japanese action RPG is also a JRPG (=japanese rpg), but people usually take "JRPG" to roughly define its own genre of games, with a key feature being turn based combat.
You might argue that's stupid, but the terms were chosen for the list for the purpose of convenience.

[Anonymous No.5463195]

>>5462902
I grew up with the first two and emulated Terranigma a couple years later, and Illusion of Gaia is definitely the worst one in the trilogy. It's got an interesting theme and atmosphere but the game itself is way too on rails to really be fun

[Anonymous No.5463459]

>>5459260
Soul Blazer is a great NES action RPG.

[Anonymous No.5463564]

>>5461582
Is not arbitrary, it is based on popularity. You can suggest a better approach to hint this information.
>>5461589
The original weights above the max allowed in 4chan, reduce the size of the file some colors had to be removed. This is specially noticiable in the psx section.
>>5462821
- The list is already too big, it is not possible to make a big list of jrpg/arpg and post it here.
- There are already dozens of lists that selects popular entries. Everybody hates them. You won't find agreement .
Besides, everytime I have requested suggestion I've been ignored. You might think making these things is easy, but it is not. People want to enjoy things but not work for them.