/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9699397]

Why did TND never get released in the West? It sold almost 1 million copies in Japan alone. Did no publisher think that was a good enough gamble, especially when barely anyone knew what roguelike was at the time?

[Anonymous No.9699405]

probably because it was all in japanese and most people in the world at that time couldn't understand the language. nowadays we have anki and tae kim so a lot of people speak japanese

[Anonymous No.9699423]

>>9699397
>especially when barely anyone knew what roguelike was at the time?
What did the zoomie mean by this?

[Anonymous No.9699427]

>>9699397
Only possible on a console that didn't treat its audience like shit

[Anonymous No.9699440]

>>9699397
Enix's American branch was closed in the second half of the 16-bit gen. This is why games like Terranigma were localized only in Europe.

[Anonymous No.9699559]

>>9699397
We didn't even get DQ5 and 6 and you wonder why we didn't get a spin off?

[Anonymous No.9699708]

>>9699423
Roguelikes were even more niche back then than they are today. Especially among console players. And even the few console ones that got released back then (Torneko 2, Chocobo Dungeon 2, Azure Dreams, Time Stalkers, etc) got trashed in reviews at the time for being "too hard" and "too confusing"

[Anonymous No.9700421]

>>9699708
Ah. So a kid who wasn't even born yet didn't know about something so it didn't exist. You're "one of those"

[Anonymous No.9700482]

>>9700421
No one said roguelikes "didn't exist". Just that they were extremely niche (and several orders of magnitude more niche on consoles that on PC). Contemporaneous western reviews of the aforementioned Torneko 2, Chocobo 2, and Azure Dreams didn't even refer to them as "roguelikes", as the concept was foreign to the reviewers trashing those games.

[Anonymous No.9700735]

Why would they localize the spinoff of a DW4 character? No one really cared, and Western console gamers would have found the design puzzling. Hell, even Baroque got trashed in reviews near the end of the 00's. People (talking mainstream) hated this genre till it became normie steam filler.

[Anonymous No.9701069]

>>9700735
>Why would they localize the spinoff of a DW4 character?
Several reasons:
>introduce roguelikes to western console players that otherwise never heard of them (I think the only other 4th gen console roguelikes at the time were on Sega: Fatal Labyrinth and Dragon Crystal), using a familiar IP to boost awareness via brand recognition
>the story is minimal and secondary to the gameplay anyway, so it's not like you really need to have played DQ4 to understand it
>since the story is so minimal, there's not that much work translating what little text there is
Apparently an official translation of Torneko 1 was already complete, but got shelved.

[Anonymous No.9701087]

>>9699397
first off, this >>9699440
second, you do realize that most Japanese companies thought releasing JRPGs in the West was a bad idea? they didn't sell too well, and for how long it took to translate them, both Square and Enix likely thought it wasn't worth it. when those games were selling in the order of 1-3 million copies in Japan (picrel), in the US they generally only sold 300-400k copies—even ones like FF6 and Chrono Trigger. remember how Earthbound was considered a failed game? it also sold in that 200-400k copies range in US.
and not only that, remember that Square even made FF Mystic Quest, because they thought RPGs were too complex for the Western audiences.
now put all these together, and you'll likely understand why we didn't get FFV, Romancing Saga, Live A Live, Front Mission, Seiken Densetsu 3, and any of the DQ games past IV. perhaps also the reason why Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre were never brought over to US.
so, to answer your question about Torneko: not only the West didn't get DQV & VI, because the previous ones didn't sell well on NES; but we're talking a spinoff of DQIV here. AND also it's meant to be a harder game for more "hardcore" RPG fans. of course they wouldn't have any hopes for it selling in the West.

[Anonymous No.9701097]

>>9700421
Fuck off, you retarded faggot. How disingenuous can you possibly get? You're the worst kind of subhuman plauging this board.

[Anonymous No.9701121]

>>9699708
>And even the few console ones that got released back then got trashed in reviews at the time for being "too hard" and "too confusing"
this always gets me
>JRPG gets released in the West
>"oh it's like a babby RPG lol. this is too easy. here in the West we have REAL RPGs"
>release a dungeon crawler
>"NOOO what the fuck is this?? why is it so hard and confusing??"
>release a SaGa game, deliberately abandoning every cliche of a "standard JRPG"
>half the people screech about how it's the worst Square game

[Anonymous No.9701129]

>>9700482
How the fuck could it be foreign when Rogue was a western made game? Lol, anon, c'mon now.

[Anonymous No.9701153]

>>9699708
>>9700482
I get what you're saying and you're right. Those types of games weren't very popular on consoles in the West. Roguelike wasn't as popular of a term back then either, and the people who did play games like Azure Dreams on consoles rarely called them that.

[Anonymous No.9701156]

>>9701129
"The concept was foreign to them" doesn't mean foreign as in another country.

[Anonymous No.9701165]

>>9701129
>Roguelikes were created in the West, so everyone and their mom played them
yeah, just like everyone and their mom played Wizardry back to back. Mario, on the other hand, was foreign

[Anonymous No.9701910]

>>9701087
>second, you do realize that most Japanese companies thought releasing JRPGs in the West was a bad idea? they didn't sell too well,

This isn't entirely true. The initial release of Final Fantasy on NES sold more in the US than in Japan (of course if you count the FF1+2 re-release in Japan, it's probably more, but we have no data for that) and was constanlty in the top 10 of Nintendo Power, along side Dragon Warrior games, and also FF games on Game Boy.

The blame is more with US publishers who wouldn't want the extra hassle of translating + huge manual when they can sell instead games with little words to translate and smaller manuals.

[Anonymous No.9701983]

>>9699708
>Western children weren't playing the Japanese knockoff of a western game genre and so therefore Westerners didn't know the genre existed
Your mom needs to loosen your bike helmet timmy, its cutting off the circulation to the few braincells you have left.

[Anonymous No.9701987]

>>9701121
t. born in 1998
reviewers made fun of jrpgs for having weird shitty art direction and retarded plots, and they were right.

[Anonymous No.9701996]

>>9701987
Not even that anon, but
>listening to reviewers
>literally ever

[Anonymous No.9702114]

>>9699423
The real answer is probably that they thought the people who were playing roguelikes as they existed back then would have little interest in that take on it it was probably a good call and wish in many ways they had kept all of them there. The Mystery Dungeon series is one of the biggest culprits in roguelikes getting casualized and the roguelite genre taking over.

[Anonymous No.9702245]

>>9701983
No one said "westerners didn't know they existed". But it is an objective fact that the genre was beyond niche. Unless you were a college comp sci student/grad and frequented Usenet and was a Unix nerd (in a time where DOS had like 90% market share, Macintosh had just under 10% market share, and Unix derivatives has less than 1% market share), you likely didn't play roguelikes. Especially so if you exclusively played console games rather than PC games.
Mind you, indeed DOS ports of roguelikes existed. No one is saying they didn't. But it would be revisionist history to pretend the genre was popular.

[Anonymous No.9702257]

>>9699397
Westerners didn't want to play as some fat old guy back then. Even now I still don't want to and I'm a DQ fan, I'll take Shiren any day over this.

[Anonymous No.9702276]

>>9699423
>>9702114
>>9699423
Most console and arcade players in the 90s had no idea what a "roguelike" was back then. Don't forget most people didn't even have computers in their home back then, and the games were rare on consoles. And even PC gamers back then weren't all playing roguelikes. The terms roguelike and roguelite got a lot more popular after a million indie roguelikes started getting released. It wasn't that common before the mid-2000s or so, and it used to be a more narrowly applied term. Usually for games that were more closely similar to Rogue.

Not to say nobody knew about the genre, or that nobody was calling games like Chocobo's Dungeon 2 roguelikes. Obviously self-proclaimed roguelike fans still existed as a smaller group back then. But it wasn't as widely recognized among the average gamer. Old reviews of console roguelike games were unlikely to call them roguelikes.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/c/Nf8xrb8--MY/m/r6g7uYmzK0UJ
https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/01/25/chocobos-dungeon-2-2
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/chocobos-dungeon-2-review/1900-2547000/

The GameSpot review does compare it to old computer RPGs, but doesn't use the term roguelike.
>In the beginning, electronic RPGs were little more than simplistic dungeon hacks. Gamers sat before their neon-green terminals, guiding their ASCII hero through randomly generated, maze-like dungeons, collecting items, weapons, and armor as they went. The RPGs of Square, however, brought plot and narrative to the forefront, seasoning the battles and quests with emotion, character development, and epic stories. Given this reputation, it's slightly surprising that Square's own Chocobo's Dungeon 2 is little more than a simplistic dungeon hack.

[Anonymous No.9702294]

I miss when "roguelikes" still resembled the game "Rogue", instead of today's bastardized interpretation of the term that basically means "game of any genre that we were too lazy to design levels for and we also balanced so you can't beat it first try to hide the fact that there's only an hour or two worth of content anyways"

[Anonymous No.9702326]

>>9701983
Roguelikes were fucking niche in those days though, Diablo is probably the first Roguelike which actually hit it really big, and it strayed considerably from the established formula.

[Anonymous No.9702338]

>>9701910
I'm not sure about the Dragon Warrior games. I read that the first game was given for free with Nintendo Power subscription (see: https://www.oldschoolgamermagazine.com/howard-phillips-speaks-on-dragon-quests-initial-performance-and-nintendo-power-giveaway/)), because it never really caught on otherwise. That's how it got its 500k copies figure. but I've never seen the figures for 2-3-4. I highly doubt that they'd want to risk with V after the pretty awkward run on NES.
FF allegedly did way better, 700k copies, which is admittedly impressive for NES (btw, FF1 wasn't all THAT huge in Japan at 600k copies, but the series eventually got as big as DQ by FFVI). but after that, FFIV sold just 300k units in US, which is pretty underwhelming, considering that in Japan it sold 1.44 mln copies. it seems that after that Square didn't risk it it with other games, and I already mentioned that even the sales for Chrono Trigger / FFVI were somewhat low as well, in that 300-400k range.
So really, I'm only sure that FF1 did really well, but everything else wasn't very successful.

[Anonymous No.9702345]

>>9702326
Yeah, this. I don't recall people calling Diablo a "roguelike" back then either. Fans of Rogue probably did, but not the average person into games at the time. Just talking about the terminology, not the actual similarities.

[Anonymous No.9702537]

>>9702276
I am 49 and grew up playing both consoles and computer and I was nowhere near uncommon. Rogue specifically was one of my favorite games as a kid, but also by the 90's most schools had computer rooms and those rooms were loaded with hidden games. I discovered there was more than just rogue by discovering other kids playing nethack.

My statement was more in reference that the people who made torneko knew what they were making which was an ultra simplified rogue clone that wasn't going to appeal to the types who played those. Fatal Labyrinth had already come out over here to a very cold reception.

[Anonymous No.9702678]

>>9702537
>I am 49 and grew up playing both consoles and computer and I was nowhere near uncommon.
I didn't mean to imply people like you weren't common, just less common than other types of gamers.
>by the 90's most schools had computer rooms and those rooms were loaded with hidden games
That's true, I remember playing cooler stuff in the computer lab too (like some wireframe tank game like Battlezone that I've never been able to find again). You were already in your late teens in the 90s, so your experience with computer rooms was different than mine. For me (34), 90s computer room was mostly Putt Putt and Oregon Trail.
>My statement was more in reference that the people who made torneko knew what they were making which was an ultra simplified rogue clone that wasn't going to appeal to the types who played those. Fatal Labyrinth had already come out over here to a very cold reception.
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I was mostly just talking about roguelikes not being recognized as "roguelikes" by the average person playing Playstation back then.

[Anonymous No.9702685]

>>9702678
*cooler stuff than Putt Putt I mean

[Anonymous No.9702796]

>>9702678
>I didn't mean to imply people like you weren't common, just less common than other types of gamers

That is fair and my experience was influenced by liking rogue originally so I really jumped on Nethack when I found out about it. And I agree most people playing Playstation back then didn't know roguelikes were a thing, but those who did probably wouldn't have been very interested in torneko

[Anonymous No.9702828]

> but those who did probably wouldn't have been very interested in torneko
That's probably true. I think it was a combination of what you said here >>9702114 and this >>9699559. So many RPGs didn't get translated back then, so releasing a DQ spinoff when the mainline SNES games weren't translated, especially spinoff with more niche gameplay, would be strange. Especially considering that it wouldn't likely generate much interest from existing fans of those types of games either.

[Anonymous No.9702880]

>>9702257
I know it came like a decade later, but in Torneko 3, you can play as his son, who has different mechanics (the only weapons he can equip are claws, he cannot use scrolls, he cannot use bows, but he can recruit monsters and give the AI different parameters to abide by).

[Anonymous No.9702908]

>>9702828
Actually yeah, that is a very good point.

[Anonymous No.9703210]

>>9701165
right? How many roguelikes were on the SNES anyway? I can think of a few on genesis, but it seems like a genre that was missing for nintendo.

[Anonymous No.9703220]

>>9702880
is that a gba emulator? how does it look so fluid?

[Anonymous No.9703254]

>>9703220
It's Retroarch running mGBA. Using the "dot" shader.
>how does it look so fluid?
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.9703287]

>>9703254
i'll try that on my computer later

>What do you mean?
i didn't knew gba emulators could run with 60fps (i assume it is that), in my memory the animations weren't as pretty as they are in your videos

[Anonymous No.9704004]

>>9703210
>How many roguelikes were on the SNES anyway?
Torneko 1
Shiren 1
BS Shiren (Satellaview. I don't think anyone preserved the complete rom of it, so it's lost media)
Milandra
Monstania
Lufia 2's Ancient Cave
Final Fantasy 5 Ancient Cave romhack
Secret of Mana Ancient Cave romhack

[Anonymous No.9704240]

>>9701069
>picrel
If the scrapped Enix USA translation proto carts start to get dumped, I hope the better translation of DQ6 finally gets leaked, but it's unlikely with WATA actively hunting and destroying these carts.

[Anonymous No.9704254]

>>9702338
Someone from Enix USA gave an interview a while ago.
They spent a lot of time trying to translate V but it was a technical mess with outdated graphics, then VI came and they translated and finished that effortlessly (the engine is much more localization friendly indeed) and it would have been released as Dragon Warrior V, however Enix USA closed down.

This situation is partly caused because Nintendo was too dumb with the minimal cart order situation for the SNES and didn't care about causing huge losses to publishers (on top of the carts themselves being expensive) so some SNES-exclusive publishers like Taito USA, Hudson USA and Enix USA ended up going bankrupt and a shitton of planned third party support for the second half of the 16-bit gen was gone just like that. Other bigger publishers weathered the storm but it was then that they got pissed off and started cancelling projects (Squaresoft), asking Nintendo for compensation and they RELENTED (Capcom, with the Street Fighter Zero cart surplus), jumping ship to PS1/Saturn discs (basically everyone), or telling Nintendo to get someone else to localize the games. Nintendo still used carts on the N64 and GBA/DS, but the ordering process was much more painless: no sizes gated away (Nintendo had a stupid inferiority complex with the SNES and only some publishers could order bigger carts - this led to some carts being effectively unused like the 64Mbit cart confirmed to internally exist, and some being rarely used - this alone caused a lot of bad blood with Squaresoft which had to redevelop and cut down content in Romancing SaGa and Secret of Mana just because Nintendo was too stingy to give them one extra 8Mbit rom bank like Enix/Bandai/Infogrammes was getting without even asking), no "i know better than you how much sales you deserve", no "order double your initial order and then ask for refunds later, if you can survive the financial hit", and they even learned to price them sanely and offer good dev tools

[Anonymous No.9704265]

>>9704004
Which of these are good

[Anonymous No.9704272]

>>9704254
I see, that's quite informative. Though I still think that the sales of FF4, FF6 and CT were a bit mediocre. Maybe companies realized it was more profitable to simply churn out more RPGs in Japan, because they did exactly that. With how much time it took to translate FFV, it would still sell in that same 300k range—pretty decent for some average game in SNES era, but maybe not worth huge effort.

[Anonymous No.9704273]

>>9699397
Idk wtf a rogue like is but this is a dungeon RPG you stupid fuck.

[Anonymous No.9704334]

>>9704254
source?

[Anonymous No.9704368]

>>9704254
>This situation is partly caused because Nintendo was too dumb with the minimal cart order situation for the SNES and didn't care about causing huge losses to publishers (on top of the carts themselves being expensive)
>"order double your initial order and then ask for refunds later, if you can survive the financial hit"
where can I read more about this?

[Anonymous No.9704429]

>>9704334
>>9704368
Scattered info, biggest one was a very informative french blog (can't find it in my bookmarks anymore) about how various 8-bit and 16-bit distributions were handled, and some scattered developer rants from these individual situations.

But yeah, CD adoption over carts was as much about avoiding Nintendo's bullshit as the bigger storage medium.

[Anonymous No.9704446]

>>9704272
>With how much time it took to translate FFV
About that, one of the German Nintendo translators at the time threw a bombshell that Nintendo of Europe was to handle Final Fantasy VI in Europe at some point (just like Secret of Mana, FFA, FF USA, and Secret of Evermore), and the German/French translations were fully finished. But it all fell through. Nintendo had no issue giving the red carpet to Lufia, Harvest Moon and Enix properties.

It was more like Squaresoft scaling down their SNES support. Then they rushed the development of Super Mario RPG (which didn't work out too well because the development team was upset and quit Squaresoft to Love-De-Lic or Alphadream or Camelot or even Nintendo) and under-ordered copies for the NA market which irritated Nintendo enough to take over publishing duties and scrub Squaresoft from the cover art.

At that point, Squaresoft jumping ship to Sony was confirmed as soon as late 1993-1994, Final Fantasy PS1 was shown behind closed doors with CGI cutscenes to Famitsu representatives and other developers to convince them to jump ship, which they did. And Nintendo deserved every single part of it - Squaresoft was basically a second party developer and they received nothing but second-class treatment by Nintendo, snubbed at every turn even for lesser developers, and ultimately their attempt to mend ties with SMRPG backfired. It took a merger and a CEO change to change that.

[Anonymous No.9704454]

>>9704446
>Squaresoft was basically a second party developer and they received nothing but second-class treatment by Nintendo, snubbed at every turn even for lesser developers
worth noting that nintendo had a serious ego issue about its own in-house teams in particular being seen as unquestionably the standout. i know the microcode drama about the n64 came down to that and there were other cases i can't recall right now.

[Anonymous No.9704471]

>>9704446
Nintendo business practices were real scum, also did dirty tricks to push out sega.

Interesting read, thanks for that.

[Anonymous No.9704642]

>>9704446
>At that point, Squaresoft jumping ship to Sony was confirmed as soon as late 1993-1994
But then why did Square still make Rudra, Bahamoot Lagoon, and other games in 1995-1996?

[Anonymous No.9704720]

>>9704642
I don't know about Rudra, but Bahamut Lagoon started development in 1994 so it was probably they were far enough along when the change was decided that they finished them.

[Anonymous No.9705152]

>>9704454
>i know the microcode drama about the n64 came down to that and there were other cases i can't recall right now.
first party nintendo games on the gamecube had broken sound on emulators for the longest time because they used a unique rendering (with reverb and stuff) exclusive to nintendo teams that was undocumented everywhere else, because they didn't want to look too bad.
Which backfired. Devs cited that, and having to compete against nintendo games, as reasons to shareholders why they systematically skip the Wii despite it being the market leader. They got their act together with the Nintendo DS and the Wii u (yes)

>>9704454
>>9704720
A lot of those were asset swaps, and milking scrapped projects (like their sega-cd project) to the bone, as late as Chrono Trigger. Dynami Tracers quite literally is a dump of all sorts of sprites from different styles in one game. Super Mario RPG was rushed. Bahamut Lagoon was called Final Fantasy Tactics at one point (explaining its big budget). Just two weeks after their final game safely made it to shops, they announced they were going PS exclusive.

>>9704471
Sega is no better, they kidnapped and threatened developers to get their "third party support".

[Anonymous No.9705296]

>>9704240
Torneko 1 was allegedly done by Nintendo of Europe. Enix USA wasn't even aware of its existence.

[Anonymous No.9705304]

>>9704240
> I hope the better translation of DQ6 finally gets leaked

That would be nice considering the fan translation is still unfinished. Related, I hate how people consider a translation not a priority because a shitty remake has been translated.

[Anonymous No.9705308]

>>9699397
this game only appeals to dq fans and people that know about shiren-likes, anyone else would be dismayed by the fat fuck mustachiod man

[Anonymous No.9705976]

>>9705308
torneko is the original shiren, get ur facts straight kid

[Anonymous No.9706108]

>>9705304
>Related, I hate how people consider a translation not a priority because a shitty remake has been translated.
I hate how some retards are pushing modern DQ style localization even in romhacks of older games.

The original official translation conventions blow out of the water everything Plus Alfa did: less censored, does the accents right, isn't insufferable to read, spells and items are consistently named in a clear pattern with a sense of progression, it even does LATIN PLURALS right. It's an affront to good taste not only to avoid following that style for new translation patches, but to retroactively patch the older NES/SNES games to have the shit translation.

The most infuriating thing is that the older NES/SNES/GBC/PS1 English DQ games, despite being technical marvels, will never get proper rereleases because they conflict with modern Plus Alfa localizations that played a huge part in kneecapping the franchise's potential to this day.

[Anonymous No.9706329]

>Japanese game with tons of text
>Dragon Quest was not popular in the States
>MC is a fat old man in the middle of the PLAY IT LOUD era
>It was still believed in the Japanese half of the industry that Americans were too retarded to read
>rougelikes were considered to be a crusty old PC genre at that point

[Anonymous No.9706378]

>>9705308
Yeah, we all know nobody would want to play a video game starring a fat mustached man.

[Anonymous No.9706384]

>>9699397
>TND

[Anonymous No.9706476]

>>9706329
>Japanese game with tons of text
Torneko 1 doesn't have tons of text. It probably has the least text of any Dragon Quest or Mystery Dungeon game.

[Anonymous No.9706595]

>>9703287
You've probably never seen it so clearly. The GBA has some amount of ghosting across all models

[Anonymous No.9706637]

>>9706329
are you being sarcastic or not? can't tell
anyway, the #1 reason is that it's a hard game for hardcore auditory. does it have great graphics? no. is it easy to get into? no. this would already make it way less popular than FF6/CT that didn't even sell that much.
sure enough, it could have been released on SNES, the prototype posted above proves that. but given the franchise's history in the US, and without DQV/VI, it would likely flop even among RPG fans.
I just checked some info on the sales of DQ-related games in USA that I could find. Torneko on PS flopped hard: if you trust VG Chartz (for lack of better source) then it sold around 20k copies, which is laughable. DQ7 did ok for what it was, but still just 180k, that's nothing next to FF7/8 that sold around 2 million each. Chocobo Dungeon 2's projected sales were around 35k copies, another disappointing performance (and that's at the time when FF was all the rage, too).
all I'm saying is they COULD have released it, but it would never get big, very likely it'd flop and sell a fraction of what other RPGs sold, when the genre wasn't even big at all, and when DQV/VI didn't even get released, there was no chance it'd ever get popular. it'd get released and forgotten immediately. and yeah, I know how ""popular"" DQ was according to Nintendo Power that shilled these games. somehow the PS1/GBC games are remembered by literally no one in the US.

[Anonymous No.9706665]

>>9706637
To be fair, Torneko 2 and DQ7 both launched after the PS2, so probably not a lot of people checking for PS1 releases at the dawn of a new gen. Also, as previously mentioned, both Torneko 2 and Chocobo's Dungeon 2 got terrible reviews by people getting filtered by them, so people reading those reviews probably took them at face value and refrained from buying the games as a consequence.
>somehow the PS1/GBC games are remembered by literally no one in the US.
Most people that are aware of monster catching games outside of Pokémon are quite fond of Dragon Quest Monsters. It's just that Pokémon effectively monopolized the monster catching market, to the point that 99% of westerners think it's the only one, and any attempt to compete with it is considered a "ripoff" (despite Megami Tensei and DQ5 pioneering monster recruitment in JRPGs. Somewhat justified, considering neither of those got western releases).

[Anonymous No.9706704]

>>9706665
>To be fair, Torneko 2 and DQ7 both launched after the PS2, so probably not a lot of people checking for PS1 releases at the dawn of a new gen.
Probably fair for DQ7. But Torneko came out in the US on November 15, 2000—around the release of FFIX, Driver 2, THPS2 and Dino Crisis 2. all these games still sold very well.
>both Torneko 2 and Chocobo's Dungeon 2 got terrible reviews by people getting filtered by them, so people reading those reviews probably took them at face value and refrained from buying the games as a consequence.
yeah, that's pretty sad. and I guess the SNES Torneko would get the same treatment.
>Most people that are aware of monster catching games outside of Pokémon are quite fond of Dragon Quest Monsters.
the question is, did it get attention because it was a DQ game, or because it was a monster catching game. I think it was the latter.

[Anonymous No.9706764]

>>9699708
>>9700482
Roguelikes are niche now.
The modern meaning of the word is so broad it applies to games like Hades and Dwarf Fortress, making it completely fucking meaningless because permadeath and individual protag based gameplay isn't even a core feature anymore.

[Anonymous No.9706825]

>>9701121
>>"oh it's like a babby RPG lol. this is too easy. here in the West we have REAL RPGs"
>>"NOOO what the fuck is this?? why is it so hard and confusing??"

are you sure the people saying these things were the same people?

[Anonymous No.9706839]

>>9706825
my point is, in general people like to say JRPGs are too easy and all style with no substance; but the moment the games became a bit harder and with a bit less tinsel, journos started literally seething like in the pic in >>9706704 .
so no wonder companies didn't bother bringing harder RPGs to the West. I can imagine how retard journos would call Megaten "ugly", "unfair" and "stupidly obtuse".
and same with SaGa, here's a review page for SaGa Frontier.

[Anonymous No.9707759]

>>9699427
should lose some weight will all the skull bashing he does on his own

[Anonymous No.9708007]

I've never played a "Roguelike" but I love Dragon Quest. Should I try TND?

For the record I didn't like Dragon Quest Monsters and the randomized dungeons was probably the main reason

[Anonymous No.9708028]

>>9708007
Yeah, it's enjoyable, and a simple enough introduction to the genre's core concepts and mechanics.

[Anonymous No.9708118]

>>9706637
I think you need to stop speed reading. The post you're responding SPECIFICALLY say "Dragon Quest was not popular in the States". Torneko on PS1 most likely didn't sell well for the exact same reasons he gave for why the first one would have.

It is a game from a fairly unpopular series, in a genre considered old and outdated by Americans familiar with roguelikes and started a fat old man in a era obsessed with being hip, young, and edgy.

[Anonymous No.9708135]

>>9701069
>I think the only other 4th gen console roguelikes at the time were on Sega: Fatal Labyrinth and Dragon Crystal
Forgot the first Toejam & Earl

[Anonymous No.9709439]

>>9708118
>in a genre considered old and outdated by Americans familiar with roguelikes
Roguelikes were considered outdated by the handful of people that knew about them in 1993? Strange that Diablo was an overwhelming success that spawned a franchise.
inb4 "Diablo isn't a roguelike". It may not be, but it was directly influenced by Rogue, Moria, Angband, and NetHack. Just with real-time gameplay.

[Anonymous No.9709473]

>>9709439
Yup, Diablo was originally designed as a roguelike in real-time.

[Anonymous No.9709520]

>>9704240
>WATA actively hunting and destroying these carts
FWIW prototypes haven't really gained much traction with the Heritage/WATA crowd. They still slab them but they don't seem to have generated the hype that they'd hoped. If anything you can blame Frank Cifaldi for hyping up listings on his social media.

[Anonymous No.9709614]

>>9708118
>I think you need to stop speed reading. The post you're responding SPECIFICALLY say "Dragon Quest was not popular in the States".
that's why I was asking if he's sarcastic or not. his picture seemed to be mocking all those statements
>>9709439
>Diablo
>roguelike
retard. see >>9706764

[Anonymous No.9709671]

>>9709614
Diablo was literally conceived as a ripoff of Angband, but with graphics.

[Anonymous No.9709745]

>>9709671
>Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels
not Diablo
>turn-based gameplay
not Diablo
>grid-based movement
not Diablo
>and permanent death of the player character.
not Diablo
even if it was based on something that was considered more or less roguelike, the whole argument looks retarded. saying that Torneko would sell because Diablo sold? really?

[Anonymous No.9709778]

>>9709745
>dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels
>not Diablo
You're retarded.
>>9709745
>permanent death of the player character.
>not Diablo
Hardcore mode (admittedly introduced in the sequels, not in Diablo 1).
>saying that Torneko would sell because Diablo sold?
That wasn't the point I was arguing. The point I was arguing against was the claim that roguelikes were outdated in 1993. I'm not gonna pretend Torneko 1 would've been a generation-defining sales success in the west had it released here, but acting like it was guaranteed to flop is a misrepresentation of the factors at play. It would've, at the very least, introduced console-only players (that weren't idorts with access to Fatal Labyrinth or Toejam & Earl) to the roguelike genre. It may have taken off, it may have been a cult classic, or it may have flopped. We'll never know. But pretending that it was guaranteed to flop is bad analysis.

[Anonymous No.9709859]

>>9709778
>>dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels
>>not Diablo
I thought they were semi-random with some repeating general templates.
>acting like it was guaranteed to flop is a misrepresentation of the factors at play
how so? I have stated many times already that even the top of the line RPGs sold only "okay" in the West.
you seem to have no clue what kind of games ACTUALLY sold on consoles. picrelated is the best estimate I've found (though there are errors like FF6 having combined sales of SNES and PS1 version, and that error with Nobunaga no Yabou: Haouden). note how few RPGs were there. note how all of them are easy JRPGs. note how you don't see any WRPG ports here. because, again—they didn't sell. and guess what—neither did the dungeon crawlers on PSX I mentioned above.
that's because largely, the auditory for consoles was still kids. what sold was platformers, action, a few fighters, and in general the kind of games like Ninty's 1st parties. everything else sold less and less the more complex it became.
btw—roguelike is not a console genre, it's a PC genre. different auditory, different demographics. PCs had more adults playing them. consoles were largely for kids and teens only.
>that weren't idorts with access to Fatal Labyrinth
no one even fucking played this game. this is what you don't really get. you seem to be under assumption that when people "had" a game in a genre, that means everyone had played that game. in reality, many games just passed unnoticed. hell, even games like Phantasy Star hardly were very popular, and the whole JRPG hobby was somewhat niche (especially prior to FF7), but you name some fucking Fatal Labyrinth that no one even remembers.
maybe you think it would sell TODAY, and yes, that might be the case. but back in the day, would you buy Torneko if you were an 8yo? you'd probably get filtered by it in seconds. with all the other games available, no kid would buy it.

[Anonymous No.9710125]

>>9709745
Diablo itself is not strictly a roguelike. Technically it falls into the roguelite genre, though that didn't exist when it was made. The idea behind the design was to see what kind of game a real-time action based roguelike would make. There was a quite interesting talk on Roguelike Radio some time ago for anyone interested.

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/05/episode-35-diablo.html?m=1

[Anonymous No.9710587]

>>9709859
>how so?
Because Torneko is streamlined (borderline casualized) compared to what existed in the PC space. Looking at vibrant animated graphics as opposed to ASCII text characters makes it several orders of magnitude more accessible. Having controller-oriented actions and menus as opposed to remembering keyboard commands makes it more accessible. Having a reduced pool of equipment, consumables, monsters, status effects, etc, in the game makes it more accessible. Not having to roll stats or choose a class makes it more accessible. Making it more accessible increases the likelihood that it'll have broader appeal, and that may translate into more sales. Again, it probably wouldn't break a million sales in the west. But I don't consider everything that doesn't match Mario's sales numbers to be a commercial failure.
>you seem to be under assumption that when people "had" a game in a genre, that means everyone has played that game
This is such a gross misinterpretation of my point, that I genuinely cannot tell if it's intentionally bad faith or if you're just retarded. I, in no way, shape, or form, implied Fatal Labyrinth was a popular game. Just that it existed on Sega, and if you had a Sega, it was an available game to play (as opposed to not being able to play it if you only had a Super Nintendo).
If anything, I could use that same greentexted excerpt to criticize the idea that someone floated earlier that everyone on PC knew about and played Rogue, NetHack, Angband, etc.

[Anonymous No.9710679]

>>9701087
Fire Emblem likely had more to do with the NES games releasing too late to be worth the effort of localizing and marketing (like with Mother). The SNES games were likely too dark to fit within Nintendo's content guidelines. I don't know how you could translate Genealogy of the Holy War's story while removing all references to death, blood, sexually explicit content, and religion.

[Anonymous No.9711723]

>>9705304
It's not the remake so much as the "unfinished" translation. You can play through the SuFami version from beginning to end, there's only a small % of occasions you run into broken text and you just have to remember to never go into that one menu that crashes the game.

That's enough to deter people who are talented from making a better translation because there are plenty of other games untranslated. The Tengai Makyou games for example are sorely lacking.

Wish something would convince retards to stop retranslating Final Fantasy games for the 18th time.

[Anonymous No.9711825]

>>9699427
>the famous slime aint smilin