What are you playing?

[marurun]

Grand Knight's History scored really well in reviews in Japanese publications. It didn't ever have a US release, right?

[Exhuminator]

Grand Knight's History scored really well in reviews in Japanese publications. It didn't ever have a US release, right?

It got a complete English fan translation which I spent about 12 hours playing. The game has fantastic 2D graphics that look beautiful on the PSP screen. Interesting concept for a fighting engine. Highly decent music. Bad stuff? This game was designed with online multiplayer in mind. As such single player suffers and is filled by incredibly monotonous gameplay. This boring grind-centric single player is only meant to level up characters for further online play. If you're not playing online it's ultimately pointless to play this game as such. Overall GKH is worth playing for a little while just to experience the awesome graphics, but as a single player SRPG Grand Knights History is a waste of time.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I'm definitely going to need to go back to Youkai Watch 2 and put some time into the Youkai Busters mode in it. I'm very very curious on how much is changed between that and the dedicated game release. It will likely change my opinion on the overall presentation of the dedicated game, methinks. There aren't any new maps, or at least that's what I can tell from the couple levels I've played so far. The cute little Ghost Busters-style firehouse they made for this is really cute though! And the writing is funny and clever as ever. The Youkai Watch Busters car they have can even do a Back to the Future-style teleportation thing, just to add one more thing to potential copyright infringement that kept this game from coming Westward XD

[pierrot]

pierrot, the release order was:
Legends 1 (took me ~9 hours casual and doing some side quests)
Tron
Legends 2 (13 hours)

Maybe try Legends 1 first. It's a 10/10 and Tron was awesome in it, but she was noticeably different and way less cool in 2. Those lame ducks hijacked Bonne time.

Yeah, I had basically always planned to start with Legends, but I have an N64 cart of it that has some severe corrosion damage that's kept me from playing it for a few years now. It could potentially be repaired, but I don't really want to bother with it. At one point I was looking at trying to find a donor cartridge to just swap ROMs with, but after considering the cost of the donor game, and my time (like 15-20 minutes, if something went wrong, but still enough that it matters) I'd almost break even just buying another copy. Also I started to feel guilty about destroying another game for it. Ideally, I was hoping I might stumble upon one of the games with the same board rev, with a mangled shell or something, for peanuts. Unsurprisingly that hasn't happened.

Anyway, I was really just wondering if I'd be seriously missing out by skipping over Legends. Mega Man games aren't really ones I tend to worry about playing chronologically, but since these ones are more story focused, I thought it might not be a great idea to break the order. I suppose I could actually play the PSP version of Legends, but I just don't really feel like doing that for some reason.

Grand Knight's History scored really well in reviews in Japanese publications. It didn't ever have a US release, right?

It got a complete English fan translation which I spent about 12 hours playing. The game has fantastic 2D graphics that look beautiful on the PSP screen. Interesting concept for a fighting engine. Highly decent music. Bad stuff? This game was designed with online multiplayer in mind. As such single player suffers and is filled by incredibly monotonous gameplay. This boring grind-centric single player is only meant to level up characters for further online play. If you're not playing online it's ultimately pointless to play this game as such. Overall GKH is worth playing for a little while just to experience the awesome graphics, but as a single player SRPG Grand Knights History is a waste of time.

I put a few hours into Grand Knight's History when it was released. I was pretty stoked to play it because I had played the crap out of Muramasa not long before, but it was such an aggressively different style of game. Tough to really keep with it for very long. I had to muscle through a bit of Princess Crown to get the "all clear" on that one, but I don't think there would ever be enough piss and vinegar in me to play a substantial amount of Grand Knight's History.

I do really wonder what Dragon's Crown would have been like if it had been actually been released on the Dreamcast, though.

[harper]

Played a good bit of "simple 1500: the gun shooting" earlier. Which for anyone who doesn't know is one of those budget ps1 games that only came out in Japan. It's a light gun game that is surprisingly interesting and visually appealing. Definitely recommend it to anyone who likes light gun games. Even though there is some sort of story entirely in Japanese that I can't begin to comprehend, it takes nothing away from how graphically charming and playable it is. The music actually comes off like they put some effort into it, and the graphics are nice. It makes me want to explore more of the 1500 games. Any recommendations are welcome.

[Exhuminator]

Played a good bit of "simple 1500: the gun shooting" earlier. Definitely recommend it to anyone who likes light gun games. It makes me want to explore more of the 1500 games. Any recommendations are welcome.

You might enjoy the sequel Simple 1500 Series Vol. 63: The Gun Shooting 2.

Other good shooting games in the 1500 series:

Simple 1500 Series 35: The Shooting released in the USA as Shooter: Space Shot
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 56: The Sniper
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 75: The Double Shooting: RayStorm x RayCrisis
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 90: The Sensha released in the USA as Mobile Armor

A couple PS1 light gun shooters I recommend trying:

My personal favorite 1500 games:

Simple 1500 Series Vol. 10: The Billiard (JP) released in the USA as Billiards
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 28: The Dungeon RPG
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 50: The Billiard 2
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 53: The Helicopter released in the USA as RC Helicopter
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 68: The RC Car released in the USA as RC de GO!
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 69: The Putter Golf released in the USA as Putter Golf
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 70: The War Simulation - Nin no Tsukurishisha-tachi
Simple 1500 Series Vol. 89: The Power Shovel released in the USA as Power Shovel

[BoneSnapDeez]

Yeah, forgot BS Zelda has a damn time limit.

Because when I think of games that need time limits The Legend of Zelda comes to mind.

Still kind of fun to derp around in the game.

[Segata]

Dragon's Crown is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Honestly feel it's the best game Vanillaware has ever made. Helps that I also adore the nod to the D&D Arcade games. I'm just a big fan of Vanillaware in general. I still consider Princess Crown as part of Vanillaware. Now I wonder what is going on with that mech game they were making. Been a while since we heard anything.

[Exhuminator]

Yeah, forgot BS Zelda has a damn time limit.

Because when I think of games that need time limits The Legend of Zelda comes to mind.

Still kind of fun to derp around in the game.

There's a bunch of hacks of BS Zelda that make it better, like full English and no time limits. This page has many prepatched ROMs:

http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/bs1files.shtml

You might like this one:

http://bszelda.zeldalegends.net/zips/thirdquest.zip

"This rom makes BS Zelda to a "regular" Legend of Zelda - you play without a timer and with classic characters and triforce symbols. The game is in full English. Difficulty: Easy (no timer at all) - the concealed week skip is Triforce related. It is recommended to begin with this rom if you play BS Zelda the first time. "

[BoneSnapDeez]

Good to know. I've played so many variations in the past, and all had niggling flaws. Nice to see it seems to be shaping up into something truly playable these days.