/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9976519]

Is there any way to find accurate release dates of old games? This sounds stupid but I use video game release dates to place certain memories of mine and so many online seem wildly inaccurate.
For example, Kirby's Dream Land 3. EVERY source, including Nintendo Power seems to think it came out in late November in 1997. I VIVIDLY remember buying the game from a Target MONTHS prior that same year, like in the spring. If it came out THAT late in November, I would have asked for it as a Christmas gift. I remember there being nothing coming out I wanted that year so I asked for an old game (FF III - I didn't have a current gen system at the time). I feel like I'm going CRAZY here.

[Anonymous No.9976521]

Mandullah moment

[Anonymous No.9976545]

>>9976519
Newsflash: your memories are not reliable.

[Anonymous No.9976546]

>>9976545
No dude every source except this one guy is wrong, don't be a redditor

[Anonymous No.9976597]

>>9976519
I usually use GameFAQs but one person reprimanded me when I mentioned that the two Clockwork Knight games came out within months of each other based on both GameFAQs and Wikipedia. Maybe I'm just dumb

[Anonymous No.9976602]

>>9976597
I guess I should mention I was talking about the NA release though I guess the person just assumed otherwise

[Anonymous No.9976623]

>>9976597
OP here, going off my admittedly vague memories, but I remember those games being reviewed fairly close to each other in magazines. I thought it was surprising. It was definitely less than a year apart.

[Anonymous No.9976632]

>>9976519
Disappointing playing this and Kirby's Adventure as an adult, they were the perfect difficulty when I was 6-7 but now the easiness is simply boring. The "enemies" are so passive and non-threatening that I feel like I'm bullying them when I attack them

[Anonymous No.9976802]

>>9976632
I like Adventure, but KDL 3 is a major step down after Super Star which is just this overstuffed toybox of a game.

The biggest problem with Kirby in general is that they can end up feeling sort of braindead. Super Star is also pretty easy but the enemies tend to be more aggressive and take a few hits to kill - you at least feel like you're working harder.

[Anonymous No.9976803]

Gonna hijack this thread, but any other burgers remember seeing Melee out before the GameCube even launched? I know it was apparently not a launch day title, but I bought my copy before the GameCube was even available in stores and they had some of the launch games available to buy before the system was even on shelves. Got my copy and the players guide at a Wal-Mart, but had to wait at least a month, maybe longer for the system.

[Anonymous No.9976806]

>>9976802
I fucking love Kirby as a character, but honestly, the game design sucks with the potential they want to present. He has all kinds of cool ass abilities, proto-Smash bros move sets, but the enemies except bosses dont really let you do anything with them and the stages SUCK at letting you do anything neat with them. The only game that felt like your powers actually meant anything was the fucking bonus mode in the Wii collection where it has stages built around each unique abilities which is what the series needed from the start, but unfortunately I have no idea how they would when they built the games all around swapping abilities constantly and 1 hit makes you loose it. I think Kirby should be more Mega-Man-y where you keep powers as you get them or just try and focus more on enemies with specific powers for a stage and the levels built around your mastery of them.

[Anonymous No.9976816]

>>9976519
You can probably track down scans of old target ads/catalogs and looking through the year/month if you care that much.

[Anonymous No.9976817]

>>9976806
Milky Way Wishes in KSS does let you keep your powers and allows you to select them at any time as you get them, but AFAIK it doesn't do all that much level design-wise with that concept. There could most certainly be something cool to do here.

[Anonymous No.9976898]

>>9976519
This won't help you much but this contemporary Nintendo webpage also lists November 1997 as the release date:
http://web.archive.org/web/19980205055018/http://www.nintendo.com/snes/kdl3/index.html
The earliest date I've found online was October 1997 on MobyGames but it's without a source.

[Anonymous No.9976980]

>>9976802
kdl3's major drawback is its level design, the core mechanics are great but the levels feel so flat and copy paste-y at times, sometimes I feel like it was made with multiplayer in mind because oh boy its 2-player mode is super fun

[Anonymous No.9977050]

>>9976816
I found a few Electronics Boutique catalogs from 1997 and KDL 3 is only listed in the Christmas issue and has a big "NEW" sticker slapped on it. I guess I'm going to have to accept that my memories are...wrong!

Source of the scans, this is a good trove btw. Read the guy's memoirs about working at EB.

https://huguesjohnson.com/scans/

[Anonymous No.9977067]

Video game release date archival on anything before the year 2000 is awful. Only major releases have their dates preserved. Can you believe that no one knows for sure what the North American release dates of the original Super Mario Bros. or Sonic the Hedgehog are? The respective companies chose a commemorative date, but signs point to those dates being retroactive guesses rather than historical fact. It's pretty sad. According to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma3YXtpzTMI&t=745s some no-name, poorly-vetted organization called MVC is responsible for most of the shitty game date cateloging on the Internet. Sites like GameFAQs and MobyGames are unreliable because info like dates are user-contributed but don't display sources and any corrections can be undone by an idiot. The fact that Wikipedia accepts them as valid is a true testament to how hopeless gaming coverage is there.

[Anonymous No.9977698]

>>9976802
NTA, but I disagree. I feel like it's Dreamland 3 that actually makes use of what Kirby is. All the different in-level collectibles and things you have to do for them, alongside there being an incentive to no damage the boss rush (even if it's just an image after doing so) make the game more in-depth than Super Star, which can be generally blown through without thinking and even the Arena is mostly a joke (Twin Cannon and Meta Knight can be tough)

[Anonymous No.9977723]

>>9977067
you're a fookin' Paccie mate

[Anonymous No.9977745]

This guy's got it >>9977067

I have noticed in the past release dates of games online being wrong by A YEAR. And of course every site used that date because all it takes is one guy to input the wrong date on one site for every other site to use that a source, and then it's a never ending circle.

There was a dev a while back on social media who asked if anyone knew the release date of a game he's worked on. This should tell anyone how complicated this matter is.

Anyway the truth is I doubt release dates back then in NA and Europe were respected like they are today. As soon as a shop would get a game, they would put it for sale, whereas today they have to wait for the precise date, perhaps only for major games and even then. This is why I doubt anything more precise than a month wouldn't be accurate.

Only Japan kept trustworthy records of not only release dates, with exact days, but retail prices as well.

With that said OP probably bought the game in spring 1998

[Anonymous No.9977904]

>>9977067
The Super Mario Bros. thing sort of baffles me as the narrative is "This is the game that actually sold the NES, not the peripheral shit they used to Trojan Horse the NES into stores"...and they don't even know when it came out! It definitely was NOT a launch title, correct?
>>9977745
OP here, I am guessing that I got it in spring 1998 as well. KDL 3 is something I would have bought the instant I saw it in stores so I'm guessing that it just did not come to my area until then (much like release dates, distribution of old games could be a bit haphazard). I always associate KDL 3 with that Game Boy James Bond game which also came out in the Spring of 1998...so I probably bought KDL 3 around that time then Bond soon after.

[Anonymous No.9977920]

What else do we know about "MVC" >>9977067 and what dev was that >>9977745?