Random Gaming Thoughts

[noiseredux]

Majora's Mask > Ocarina.

[Forlorn Drifter]

That may still be the case, so take it with a grain of salt. Info on Japan-only PS1 stuff has always been spotty, and I guarantee there are some crazy obscure variants and titles no one thought would interest the West that will be tough to find any info on. PS1 also just doesn't illicit the second response from the fanbase that other consoles do.

Yeah, that's the idea I was getting. Well, I hope I can at least find some interesting stuff. I wasn't planning on digging super deep, just stuff with English patches and stuff that's no-reading necessary import friendly. I've been watching a lot of PS1 survival horror stuff, most of which I couldn't play, but it got my mind going.

[prfsnl_gmr]

That may still be the case, so take it with a grain of salt. Info on Japan-only PS1 stuff has always been spotty, and I guarantee there are some crazy obscure variants and titles no one thought would interest the West that will be tough to find any info on. PS1 also just doesn't illicit the second response from the fanbase that other consoles do.

Yeah, that's the idea I was getting. Well, I hope I can at least find some interesting stuff. I wasn't planning on digging super deep, just stuff with English patches and stuff that's no-reading necessary import friendly. I've been watching a lot of PS1 survival horror stuff, most of which I couldn't play, but it got my mind going.

There were some pretty odd games released for the PS3 in NA by Hamster and MonkeyPaw Games. Stuff like Finger Flashing, The Firemen 2, Lucifer Ring, Money Idol Exchanger, etc. None of them are translated, but none of them really require knowledge of Japanese either. Have you looked into those yet?

[PartridgeSenpai]

Thanks partridge! No idea you could do that.

Hopefully everything is on Wikipedia, there was apparently a time even recently where there was a lot of Japanese PS1 and Saturn stuff that was really unknown in the west. Or at least, that's what a lot of things I found suggested.

I don't even remember what article I discovered it on, but it was completely by accident that I found that you could sort not one but several columns in a Wikipedia table.

There were some pretty odd games released for the PS3 in NA by Hamster and MonkeyPaw Games. Stuff like Finger Flashing, The Firemen 2, Lucifer Ring, Money Idol Exchanger, etc. None of them are translated, but none of them really require knowledge of Japanese either. Have you looked into those yet?

I had no idea that Firemen 2 had a US release! I wonder if it's on the US PSN store like it's on the Japanese PSN store :O

[Forlorn Drifter]

That may still be the case, so take it with a grain of salt. Info on Japan-only PS1 stuff has always been spotty, and I guarantee there are some crazy obscure variants and titles no one thought would interest the West that will be tough to find any info on. PS1 also just doesn't illicit the second response from the fanbase that other consoles do.

Yeah, that's the idea I was getting. Well, I hope I can at least find some interesting stuff. I wasn't planning on digging super deep, just stuff with English patches and stuff that's no-reading necessary import friendly. I've been watching a lot of PS1 survival horror stuff, most of which I couldn't play, but it got my mind going.

There were some pretty odd games released for the PS3 in NA by Hamster and MonkeyPaw Games. Stuff like Finger Flashing, The Firemen 2, Lucifer Ring, Money Idol Exchanger, etc. None of them are translated, but none of them really require knowledge of Japanese either. Have you looked into those yet?

I haven't, but I will now!

[Markies]

I love it, but I think I'd hate it if I tried to play more "legitimately." I've always power-leveled my way through. It hard.

There is a ton that I love about Zelda II. There are so many games that owe itself to Zelda II and some aspects of it are incredibly fun and exciting.

However, the guy who decided where the enemies are placed, is a sadist. The enemy placement in Zelda II is some of the meanest on the system. It is just this barrage of screw you points that don't test anything but your patience.

I was able to beat Zelda II for the second time. NES took 40 deaths while the GameCube took 36. I just don't know if I have the desire to try again.

[prfsnl_gmr]

[

There were some pretty odd games released for the PS3 in NA by Hamster and MonkeyPaw Games. Stuff like Finger Flashing, The Firemen 2, Lucifer Ring, Money Idol Exchanger, etc. None of them are translated, but none of them really require knowledge of Japanese either. Have you looked into those yet?

I had no idea that Firemen 2 had a US release! I wonder if it's on the US PSN store like it's on the Japanese PSN store :O

It is!

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/pro ... 0000000001

[Forlorn Drifter]

They've announced a Way of the Samurai spiritual successor/spin off... nothing but the name yet, but I'm already excited. I love those janky, stupid games. I kind of hope we get a collection one day...

EDIT: Also, a thread idea- looking at the PS360 gen and current gen, maybe also sixth gen, and thinking about how they and their games will be viewed niece they are third and fourth gens age.

[RCBH928]

I think GTA transition from 2D to 3D is the greatest game transition in videogame history. It could be challenged by Metal Gear Solid though...

[isiolia]

I don't think it's really much of a contest there. Metal Gear Solid has a lot of similarities to Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. There's definitely the shift to 3D and push towards cinematic presentation, but relative to some other 2D to 3D jumps like Mario, Metroid, etc... it's not really reinventing itself. Especially with the relatively limited 3D implementation in the original release, and MGS kinda-sorta reusing some characters and setups from MG2.
Additionally, you're looking at around 8 years between MG2 and MGS. For as great a return as MGS was, quite a lot of series were jumping to 3D in that generation. So, that sort of transition was almost going to be expected. What impresses me more there is just how ahead of its time MG2 was, and in turn how odd it was we didn't see it localized at the time (or even later in the 16-bit era).

GTA, on the other hand, had a far more compressed time scale. Figure, the first game came out in '97, second in '99, and then 2001 for GTAIII. Going from a sort of odd 2D overhead view (odd for the PS1 era at least) to practically defining (or redefining) the sandbox game two years later. I'd say it was a more dramatic change in style.