Coping with Nintendo fan boys/girls

[negative chill]

The "greatest console of all time" is so because it's the one with the most RPG's? Really?

I've never liked standard RPGs at all unless there's some kind of interesting hook like with Surgoro Quest: Legend Of Dice Heroes where the whole world is one big giant board game and attacks are based on dice rolls. I'm more of an Action RPG type guy and the SNES barely had any of those

[midnightrider]

I'll admit, I thought I liked RPG's at one point, because of how good Chrono Trigger is. I just wish I realized much sooner how much of an exception to the rule that game was. Random battles are what really kill the genre(well the Eastern side of it anyhow) for me, even if the combat is action. Never saw the appeal to Earthbound either, and I don't think I ever will.

[bultje112]

I'll admit, I thought I liked RPG's at one point, because of how good Chrono Trigger is. I just wish I realized much sooner how much of an exception to the rule that game was. Random battles are what really kill the genre(well the Eastern side of it anyhow) for me, even if the combat is action. Never saw the appeal to Earthbound either, and I don't think I ever will.

there are tons of great rpg's then. chrono cross for instance is even better than trigger imo and features no random battles. for me random battles are no problem though

[NeoVamp]

chrono cross for instance is even better than trigger imo

OH I'M SO MAD RIGHT NOW!!!!

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Going back and playing old SNES RPGs (I never owned an SNES in its heyday, so it's all after the fact stuff), I couldn't help but notice how "primitive" (for lack of a better word) most of them felt compared to the Genesis RPGs I've played (the Phantasy Star series, the Lunar Series, Sword of Vermillion, at least for ones I've finished). Yeah, the music was nice and the colors were pretty, but by and large the enemies were <i>never animated</i>. I mean, you see an elaborately drawn beastie in Final Fantasy III/VI and all it would do is flash black and white for a sec and, boom, you took 200 damage or whatever. The spell effects were pretty good, I admit, but the actual lack of animation in the monsters was disappointing. Even Phantasy Star III, with its "wiggle the ears to do damage" monsters were better than this (though admittedly not by much). The SNES RPGs felt like old 8-bit stuff with more colors and nicer sound, and even some 8-bit stuff often did it better (such as the original Phantasy Star's animated monster attacks).

Compare this to Phantasy Star II and IV, where monsters were nicely animated in both their "wait" poses (though some better than others) as well as when they are actually attacking. Lunar took this even further, especially in Eternal Blue, where the "wait" animation offered a hint as to what a monster was going to do and allowed you to take countermeasures, if necessary.

[FuturePrimitive]

Going back and playing old SNES RPGs (I never owned an SNES in its heyday, so it's all after the fact stuff), I couldn't help but notice how "primitive" (for lack of a better word) most of them felt compared to the Genesis RPGs I've played (the Phantasy Star series, the Lunar Series, Sword of Vermillion, at least for ones I've finished). Yeah, the music was nice and the colors were pretty, but by and large the enemies were <i>never animated</i>. I mean, you see an elaborately drawn beastie in Final Fantasy III/VI and all it would do is flash black and white for a sec and, boom, you took 200 damage or whatever. The spell effects were pretty good, I admit, but the actual lack of animation in the monsters was disappointing. Even Phantasy Star III, with its "wiggle the ears to do damage" monsters were better than this (though admittedly not by much). The SNES RPGs felt like old 8-bit stuff with more colors and nicer sound, and even some 8-bit stuff often did it better (such as the original Phantasy Star's animated monster attacks).

Compare this to Phantasy Star II and IV, where monsters were nicely animated in both their "wait" poses (though some better than others) as well as when they are actually attacking. Lunar took this even further, especially in Eternal Blue, where the "wait" animation offered a hint as to what a monster was going to do and allowed you to take countermeasures, if necessary.

Hey, "primitive" is a great word!

I agree with you on Phantasy Star and Lunar compared to Final Fantasy. That's an excellent example on the differences between RPG's on the Genesis/Mega Drive/SEGA CD and the SNES. As much as I love Final Fantasy, it has always felt sterile, dialed in, same old formula, and overflowing with boring random battles. I find the combat systems in Phantasy Star and Lunar are more fluid, exciting, animated, and timeless. In my opinion, the storylines and characters in Phantasy Star and Lunar are more endearing too. I'm also looking to step into the Shining Force series, which has always looked good all-around to me.

Popful Mail and Dark Wizard stand toe to toe and even exceed their competitors on the SNES. Popful Mail did get ported to the Super Famicom, but it just wasn't the same. Dark Wizard could be compared to Tactics Ogre, but Dark Wizard is more balanced both in gameplay and presentation. Tactics Ogre only offers deep gameplay. Guess which one I would choose...

[Bottino]

Going back and playing old SNES RPGs (I never owned an SNES in its heyday, so it's all after the fact stuff), I couldn't help but notice how "primitive" (for lack of a better word) most of them felt compared to the Genesis RPGs I've played (the Phantasy Star series, the Lunar Series, Sword of Vermillion, at least for ones I've finished). Yeah, the music was nice and the colors were pretty, but by and large the enemies were <i>never animated</i>. I mean, you see an elaborately drawn beastie in Final Fantasy III/VI and all it would do is flash black and white for a sec and, boom, you took 200 damage or whatever. The spell effects were pretty good, I admit, but the actual lack of animation in the monsters was disappointing. Even Phantasy Star III, with its "wiggle the ears to do damage" monsters were better than this (though admittedly not by much). The SNES RPGs felt like old 8-bit stuff with more colors and nicer sound, and even some 8-bit stuff often did it better (such as the original Phantasy Star's animated monster attacks).

Compare this to Phantasy Star II and IV, where monsters were nicely animated in both their "wait" poses (though some better than others) as well as when they are actually attacking. Lunar took this even further, especially in Eternal Blue, where the "wait" animation offered a hint as to what a monster was going to do and allowed you to take countermeasures, if necessary.

This.
I spent my entire life saying this. Now, i can finally die a happy man because i know i'm not alone in my quest...

Thank you sir.

[Kamahl]

Dark Wizard is horrible, can't even do proper battle animations.

[bultje112]

dark wizard is great for if you like dragon force type of games, although dragon force is a lot beter

[FuturePrimitive]

Dark Wizard is horrible, can't even do proper battle animations.

Horrible?? Aw, you make me sad I don't think it deserves that.

[tomaitheous]

Going back and playing old SNES RPGs (I never owned an SNES in its heyday, so it's all after the fact stuff), I couldn't help but notice how "primitive" (for lack of a better word) most of them felt compared to the Genesis RPGs I've played (the Phantasy Star series, the Lunar Series, Sword of Vermillion, at least for ones I've finished). Yeah, the music was nice and the colors were pretty, but by and large the enemies were <i>never animated</i>. I mean, you see an elaborately drawn beastie in Final Fantasy III/VI and all it would do is flash black and white for a sec and, boom, you took 200 damage or whatever. The spell effects were pretty good, I admit, but the actual lack of animation in the monsters was disappointing. Even Phantasy Star III, with its "wiggle the ears to do damage" monsters were better than this (though admittedly not by much). The SNES RPGs felt like old 8-bit stuff with more colors and nicer sound, and even some 8-bit stuff often did it better (such as the original Phantasy Star's animated monster attacks).

Compare this to Phantasy Star II and IV, where monsters were nicely animated in both their "wait" poses (though some better than others) as well as when they are actually attacking. Lunar took this even further, especially in Eternal Blue, where the "wait" animation offered a hint as to what a monster was going to do and allowed you to take countermeasures, if necessary.

While I ~do~ like the animation of enemies in PS2 and 4 as well, it ~is~ just dressing at the end of the day. If comes down to the animated enemies between FF2/3 (US) and PS2/4, as what sets the games apart or the deciding factor, then I highly doubt JRPGs are your thing. There are many jRPGs, for many systems and small home computers BITD, where it's quite common to have non animating enemies. It's not due to system hardware or such. Even the NES could do animating enemies (with a vrom mapper). I think it more boils down to what the developer wanted to spend their 'rom space' on (that also goes for CDRAM in cd setups). Animating enemies or more space for tiles/sprites/graphics/more enemies, levels etc.

Even Phantasy Star III, with its "wiggle the ears to do damage" monsters were better than this (though admittedly not by much).

Heeellll nooo. PS3 animation was a straight up JOKE. I was laughing my ass off (way before the internet and LMAO was termed) at that animation. What a waste. I remember thinking BITD that they should have just cut all that silly animation out of the game. If they didn't have enough rom space for animation, then they should have concentrated on saving the little bit of space they had - to animate just the important bosses (or more cinemas).

[Bloodreign]

If you deal with Nintendo fanboys and girls, and you try talking them into liking Genesis, but they still will sit there and lick Nintendo's taint, give them this.

Thanks Kamahl, I knew someday I'd get to use this.

I try to like stuff Sega, Nintendo, and Sony had on their systems, there's a reason I own several consoles/handhelds between these 3 companies (because they all have games I like). I know people who will sit there and bust a nut over any and everything Nintendo puts out, I'm sorry, Nintendo lost me ages ago, if not for a friend I'd have no Wii or DS. I'd still have a GBA, NES, and SNES, but this person swore up and down that I needed these Nintendo systems (the Wii has been good for hard to find games that got put on the VC, nothing more other than Mega Man 9 and 10 on Wiiware).

[Dragonmaster Lou]

While I ~do~ like the animation of enemies in PS2 and 4 as well, it ~is~ just dressing at the end of the day. If comes down to the animated enemies between FF2/3 (US) and PS2/4, as what sets the games apart or the deciding factor, then I highly doubt JRPGs are your thing. There are many jRPGs, for many systems and small home computers BITD, where it's quite common to have non animating enemies. It's not due to system hardware or such. Even the NES could do animating enemies (with a vrom mapper). I think it more boils down to what the developer wanted to spend their 'rom space' on (that also goes for CDRAM in cd setups). Animating enemies or more space for tiles/sprites/graphics/more enemies, levels etc.

Hey, I'm not saying that jRPGs that lacked animated enemies were crap -- they often were very good (plot, characters, music, static graphics, etc.) outside of the lack of enemy animations. It just seems like the Genesis jRPGs (at least the ones I've played) tended to have animated enemies whereas the SNES ones didn't. I still remember people hyping one of the exciting "new" features of FFVII being "animated enemies" and I was like, "Been there, done that, albeit not in 3D, on the Genesis."

However, when I hear people arguing over the technical superiority of SNES RPGs vs. Genesis RPGs (the games themselves and not the systems), they seem to conveniently forget that a lot of the SNES RPGs didn't even bother animating their enemies. While you are right in that it's not due to hardware limitations and it may come down to different priorities on what the developer wanted to spend space/time on, it still made the game "feel" more "primitive." I mean, PS2 came out within a year of the Genesis's launch and had fully animated enemies whereas even some of the RPGs that came out near the end of the SNES's lifetime never bothered with animation.

Now, I never viewed the lack of animation on SNES RPGs as due to technical limitations of the system itself. I damned well knew that the SNES could easily animate enemies if the developers spent the time and effort to do so. However, I felt the the lack of animated enemies made the developers look lazy and/or less technically skilled when compared to their Genesis counterparts. I would've felt the same way had I come across a Genesis RPG that also lacked animated enemies. However, again, I concede that the lack of animation may be a conscious decision on the developers' part to prioritize something else due to limitations such as deadlines, ROM/RAM space/etc. Especially since I work as a software developer myself (not for games, but a lot of the same rules apply no matter what kind of software you're working on), I can recognize the need to prioritize different features when operating under various limitations. Still, given how frequent palette swap enemies/tiles/etc. were in many SNES RPGs, I wonder if the lack of animation was really due a conscious decision to dedicate ROM/RAM space to something else or because at some point the developers (or their managers) were like, "meh, RPG players don't care about animation, so let's not even bother trying to do any of it."

Heeellll nooo. PS3 animation was a straight up JOKE. I was laughing my ass off (way before the internet and LMAO was termed) at that animation. What a waste. I remember thinking BITD that they should have just cut all that silly animation out of the game. If they didn't have enough rom space for animation, then they should have concentrated on saving the little bit of space they had - to animate just the important bosses (or more cinemas).

Heh, I guess I feel that even lousy animation is better than no animation at all.

Again, barring interviews with the developers (or somehow getting our hands on development spec/design documents), I suppose we have no way of knowing if the lack (or poor quality) of animations in any particular game, whether FF or PS3 or whatever, was due to ROM space limitations or due to the developers just choosing not to bother with implementing them for whatever reason.

[midnightrider]

Grown men and their fairy tales .

[sheath]

Dragon Force's battles are too easily exploited by spamming battle formations around projectiles. I pretty much flank every battle and then swarm them from the top and bottom and win even with far inferior forces. Dark Wizard is what I would call a hard-core turn based strategy game. I haven't made it past the third scenario because you can actually run out of resources and lose the game. Doing the due diligence of searching towns while on campaign is absolutely necessary and I still don't know exactly what to search for. Ogre Battle is a lot more detailed in this respect, but not in a good way for my gaming enjoyment. I do eventually turn off the battle animations in Dark Wizard though just to avoid the load times.