What have you been up to lately with your Genesis / Mega Drive?

[Steven Pendleton]

Sonic 3D Blast is far better than all of the actual 3D Sonic games aside from Sonic R.

 

42 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

It still gets me how nicely they did that out of nowhere FMV when the game boots up, and despite the high a/v bar for quality surely that's most the storage.

Game's programmer made a video that explains how he was able to fit it on the cartridge:

 

[Tanooki]

I'd have to agree with you on that more or less.  Sonic R was quite well done once you got used to the handling.  Had that both on PC and Saturn.  That video should be interesting, might have a bit of a parallel to Angel Studious massive RE2 N64 release on a 64MByte cart.

[Steven Pendleton]

I should be clear about Sonic R; I don't think it's actually better designed than the other 3D games. By far better I mean that it is way more fun than those other games, even if the overall game design is not actually better than the others. Since games are toys and exist to be fun, I would consider a fun game that is poorly designed to be "better" than a boring game that is well-designed.

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, Tanooki said:

El.Viento: I was not going to pay 120+ for this so I avoided it despite thinking it looked amazing, and well I was right, it is, and it's also damned hard, not frustratingly cheap hard, just a challenge and you need to figure it out, and so far I've figured my way into around 2 stages(worlds?) of the game before I had to flip it off.  I like the mechanics here, so far, but I need to read up a bit with no manual as I think there's more to the magic attacks that would help.  That life bar is pretty generous and it handles quite well, really makes me want to still track down Earnest Evans.

I actually own this game because a friend gave his copy to me to keep Last Battle (that I asked for my birthday) instead. I think he made a huge mistake in retrospect. 😅

It's not that hard since I managed to beat it at the time, and I've always sucked at video games.

[Tanooki]

7 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

I actually own this game because a friend gave his copy to me to keep Last Battle (that I asked for my birthday) instead. I think he made a huge mistake in retrospect. 😅

It's not that hard since I managed to beat it at the time, and I've always sucked at video games.

Well I've only had about 20min with it, time isn't on my side.  I got slapped around the first few lives until I figured out you need to keep moving and fast, or you get chewed up by those cars in the first stage, and the second that rail system is death if you fall off with all those spikes.  At that rate I had to stop and try the SoR3 cart out which got little use so far too.  I'll get to them, it's just when it's this late coming off a 2nd job I really am not motivated and often nod off at my chair for a bit to wake up annoyed to go back to actual bed.  From what I did touch, Wolfteam did a solid, even that strange digital pinball Dino Land is kind of refreshing too.

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

Disaster struck!  I don't know how it happened (I'm playing on an Everdrive, not a PS2 cart)... but I started the game tonight and was met with the dreaded corrupted save error; sure enough, all the files were now blank.  Thankfully, I had backed the save up earlier this year when I switched from a Mega SG to the Everdrive, so I only lost a few hours of progress.  I'll have to be sure to back my save up now and then going forward.

[newtmonkey]

On a lark, I tried using a cheap SCART-to-composite converter to see if converting SCART RGB to composite would look better than the composite out of the stock MD.  It's one of these devices:

Sadly, it doesn't seem to work at all, and I just get a black screen.  I know these are not really meant for games, so I'm not too surprised.  Oh well!

 

---

 

Phantasy Star II

I mentioned earlier that my save had somehow got corrupted, but that I thankfully had a backup saved on my PC.  I only lost a bit of progress, and tonight in just an hour of playing I was able to get back to where I left off.  I'm seriously considering just downloading the dungeon maps for this game, instead of drawing them myself.  The game doesn't really have any mapping challenges like in Dungeon Master or Wizardry or the like, so I don't really get anything out of drawing maps... they're just giant and extremely annoying map.  I think what I will probably do is just refer to some maps online to get my bearings as I explore naturally, and then maybe check them once I clear the dungeon to see if I missed anything.  That would give me the experience of exploring the dungeons, without the start-stop annoyance of having to draw these frustratingly empty yet cluttered dungeons.

 

I've somewhat cooled on this game.  There is basically nothing to the combat.  Enemies are just HP sponges that smack you, and it's very rare for an enemy to use any special attack at all.  You have all these cool characters to choose from, but nearly half of them are useless or at least so situational that they are nearly useless.  You have a ton of techniques, but very few technique points and no way (normally) to recover TPs outside of town... so forget about using techniques in any of the massive dungeons.

 

There's still something very intriguing about PS2, possibly just the cool late 80s/early 90s anime art that reminds me of stumbling upon stuff like Vampire Hunter D and Robot Carnival on TV late at night and being awestruck at how cool and weird it was.

[Tanooki]

@newtmonkey What you might find most useful the Sega made Phantasy Star II paperback book guide.  It's all in color, quite useful and sold with the game when it came out as an extra.  It's not that cheap but it is scanned and the maps are very basic but get you through the dungeon stage maps just nicely.

[newtmonkey]

@Tanooki

Thanks!  I took a look and it seems like this is exactly what I'm looking for!  It has the maps, but nothing is labeled, so you actually have to find the treasures, etc. yourself.

 

I actually have the Japanese version complete in box, but all it comes with is a manual and a map of the first world with spells and items listed on the back.  

[Zoyous]

Started playing Granada, developed by Wolfteam and published by Renovation. Immediately I like it, because it's very reminiscent of Bolo for the Apple IIe. But I'm stuck at the stage 2 boss for now.

[Tanooki]

7 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

@Tanooki

Thanks!  I took a look and it seems like this is exactly what I'm looking for!  It has the maps, but nothing is labeled, so you actually have to find the treasures, etc. yourself.

 

I actually have the Japanese version complete in box, but all it comes with is a manual and a map of the first world with spells and items listed on the back.  

Exactly.  I actually have this guide of a paperback which came by a strange stroke of luck where I ended up with various little gaming books for the cost of shipping since they all had some form of damage.  This one the cover started to split off top and bottom and popped about 10 pages from the inside off the binding too, one I could re-attach well the other I had to secure with a little cut piece of packing tape but it held, so it has gone between my desk and game shelf so when you said that I thought of it.

 

There's a copy of it up on the archive org site if anyone (or you) want to browse it: https://archive.org/details/phantasy-star-ii-hint-book

 

Sword of Vermillion had one as well in the same format.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Tanooki

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

I finally completed the undersea lab.  It turns out I had mostly completed it on my last save (which got corrupted)... so once I got back to that point, it didn't take too long to finish it.  This dungeon contains the first boss encounter in the game, and it was surprisingly easy for my party (hero, hunter, huntress).  Once you defeat the boss, all the random encounters become robots.  I was tempted to use the one guy who has techniques useful against robots, but it turns out that my party already does plenty of damage to robots with their weapons... so I just added the medic back to my party.  I have her with two shields equipped and she just defends every battle, so I am using her as a dedicated healer (and occasional buffer).

 

Next up was a dungeon that is there solely to waste your time.  The control tower has just two levels, but something like 50+ elevators on each level, most of which just lead to dead ends.  Outside of the mandatory quest items, there isn't even any loot to find!

 

Next up is the four dams, which apparently can be done in any order.

 

Although I have a lot of complaints about this game, I do appreciate some things about it, especially after completing a string of mediocre or worse RPGs on the PC Engine.  The combat is pretty mindless in PS2, but you do have to pay attention, and the game defaulting to auto battle actually works pretty well.  I also like that the dungeons are not just linear paths to boss encounters... they are mazelike and your goal is often to find some quest item instead.  It also doesn't have the dull "town>dungeon>boss>town2... etc." structure that a LOT of 16-bit console RPGs have, which is a nice change of pace.

[Zoyous]

I've been continuing with Granada. I realized that in order to beat the stage 2 boss, I had to stop shooting at it long enough to let it reveal its weak spot. Then I was able to fairly easily proceed through stage 4. I do like this game, but the control scheme is starting to wear on me. Strafing requires holding down the B button, with a normal weapon on A and the more powerful weapon on C. So as a result it's a struggle to find a comfortable way to orient my right hand on the buttons.

 

I also tried Taito's Night Striker for the first time (I'm playing these on the Sega Genesis Mini 2). I love this era of Taito games. This is like their fusion of Sega's Space Harrier, After Burner, and A.B. Cop. The scaling is impressive but everything appears to be in a lower resolution mode. Even when objects are far away and scaled to their smallest size, the individual pixels look like clusters of 2 or 4 pixels, giving the game an appearance that reminds me of Atari Lynx games. A cool look but really unusual for the Genesis. The game itself is fairly easy to complete with the two continues available, but the branching paths and the pursuit of a high score provide a lot of replay value. The Zuntata sound team soundtrack is really good although in some regards the instrumentation has that 90s MIDI style rather than a full electronic rock sound that should have been possible with CD audio.

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

I completed the red, yellow, and blue dam dungeons.  These were actually pretty decent, with somewhat sensible layouts but still pleasantly mazelike.  They were also full of crazy powerful equipment, so it was definitely worth thoroughly searching around in them.  The combat has started to get a bit tactical, since you run into some heavily armored robots that are heavily resistant to bladed weapons (what's even better is that these robots even look heavily armored, so there's no need to guess).

 

I'm still using Hunter, Huntress, and Medic.  Medic is kind of worthless at this point.  She has the best healing spells, but she doesn't have many TPs and on top of that has the lowest speed stat in the party, so she always goes dead last in combat.  I'm almost tempted to replace her with a bunch of trimates and use Thief or Engineer in her place; they can use the same in-combat items as anyone, but have other benefits (Thief: really high speed stat, Engineer: Unique techs for destroying robots).  Not sure yet.

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

I completed the green dam dungeon, and got whisked away to space jail.  After escaping, I explored a big maze (not too bad by PSII standards) and finally ended up on the second planet.  I explored this quite a bit to seek out towns and upgrade my stuff; even without grinding, I actually had more than enough cash to get everything I needed, which was nice.

 

The next step seems to be to explore a crevice near one of the towns.

 

I'm probably going to stick with my current party to the end (Hunter, Huntress, Medic).  The robot enemies aren't too bad at all even without the techs that damage them.  Medic is pretty useless, but I think she's the least useless of the remaining characters, because she's got some nice utility techs (and great healing spells useful in an emergency).

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

I went through the crevice and then went and completed the first of the dungeons that appear after that, and found my first two pieces of Nei equipment.  Like the dams, you can go through them in any order.  I'm sure there's an intended progression through them, but it's nice to have the freedom to explore any of them... if you get annoyed with one dungeon, put it aside and explore another one.

 

This game is pretty awesome, honestly.  There's a somewhat lengthy section a few hours in where the game is a total slog, but once you get through that the game becomes a lot of fun.  My only real complaint so far is that the soundtrack, while good, is very repetitive and samey... though part of that is due to the overbearing snare drum instrument in the Japanese version (wisely changed in the US release).

[Billy2600]

I beat Vectorman 2. I give it a 7/10, definitely not as good as the first game.

Spoiler

 

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

Finished!  The four dungeons on Dezoris were all somewhat annoying, but not so bad... though Ikuto was indeed very tedious.

 

Just through normal exploration I ended up reaching level 31 or 32 for all characters by the end, and this was more than enough to win the final battles.  Between the three Star Atomizers I picked up along the way, Anne's healing techniques, the equipment that cast healing techs in battle, and an inventory full of Trimates, even Dark Falz went down surprisingly easily.

 

I ended up really enjoying this game, though I'd still rank it below Phantasy Star.  The biggest fault of the game is that combat is far too simple.  Very few enemies have special attacks, and techniques cost way too many TPs to really rely upon... so 99% of battles have you mostly just trading blows back and forth until you win.

 

I plan on playing Phantasy Star III, but probably not until 2024.

[newtmonkey]

Lunar: The Silver Star

So far this is pretty good.  It's much easier and has a much quicker pace than PSII so far, but I'm also only a couple of hours in so far.  I'm guessing this is gonna be pretty easy and linear, but we'll see.  The combat is pretty fun, and I like how you have to have your characters near enemies to attack with melee weapons, without going full SRPG and making you position characters all over the place.

[Tanooki]

I want to point out if you have an iPhone then you can join in with his run on Lunar Silver Star Story.

 

A TOUCH version of it was released back in 2012 and largely rotted with few updates, but in the last 2 years there has been a constant flow of updates, upgrades, and features added.  It had been $7 before the flurry of things being done to it, now it's $10.

 

The game is intact, and I'd say worth the effort if you want it on the go as it's cheap.

https://lunar-mobile.com/iphone/en

[newtmonkey]

Lunar: The Silver Star

Well, that was quick.  The game ended up being very linear and easy, and surprisingly short.  It's got a cool battle system where positioning it taken into account, but the game is just too easy and simple to really do anything with it.  It really only came into play during the final battle, because the boss can teleport around the screen, so you have to constantly tell your squishy mages to run away.

 

It's got a great CD audio soundtrack, many of the songs suffer from being too short, and because it's redbook audio they of course cannot loop seamlessly.  I honestly would have preferred a chiptune soundtrack during gameplay, with CD audio used only during the cinema scenes.

 

Although as an RPG it's not very exciting, it does have some great characters and a fun quest... and since it's so easy (absolutely no need to grind levels at all), you could probably blast through it over a long weekend.

[Dire 51]

Just found cheap copies of DJ Boy and Trampoline Terror! the other day, so I've been playing those.

[Vidiot1981]

I finally picked up a copy of Demons of Asteborg and I have to say it's ridiculously good. Easily one of the best games on the system. And I recently got the chance to play MUSHA. Wow, I can't believe I missed this one when it came out! It's amazing to me what they managed to pack in such a small rom size, AAA quality shmup.

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star III

I came in prepared for this one, and was still very disappointed.  It just feels like playing some generic PC Engine RPG that never got released outside of Japan.  It looks and sounds worse than Phantasy Star II (arguably worse than even Phantasy Star), the maps are all boring and empty.

 

The battle screen is a huge letdown, since you no longer get to see your characters on the screen attacking.  Also, why does the ground continuously scroll?  At first I thought it was a (poor) attempt at trying to make the grass look like it was blowing in the wind... but the ground scrolls like this even in caves.  It makes it look like you're fighting out of the side window of a car, against a bunch of rabbits and rats hovering in place.  What were they thinking?

 

The flow from event to event makes no sense.  You have to find your kidnapped bride, so you just decide to check at the nearest town.  Okay, fine.  Nothing there, so off to the next town.  Nothing there, so you need to ride a boat to keep searching.  The guy who owns the boat has some weird hang up about being alone on a boat with another man, so you have to go search for a girl.  None of the girls in town will do.  Instead, you have to follow the trail of towns until you end up at a lake, where there is this random robot that looks like a girl standing there, waiting to go with you.  This is exactly what the captain wants, even though its a robot and not a girl, but whatever.  Next stop is a cave for some reason... and there is a guy there that gives you a rock that opens some other cave.  Huh???  I assume I must have missed some NPC in the 100% identical and massive but mostly empty towns that explains this chain of events, because it makes no sense to me.

 

The game has been designed for ultimate annoyance.  You are constantly getting poisoned, which hides your current HP amount and prevents you from healing, and the antidote spell costs a ton of TPs and yet constantly fails!  It is simply worthless.  So instead, you have to stock up on antidote items at 10 meseta a piece... early on this is a significant drain on your wallet, since you also need meseta to cure poison in town, resurrect characters, and even save the game, never mind upgrading your equipment.

[Tanooki]

That seems to sum up things I even forgot about that one I saw complained about in the past and maybe some added pain going into detail of the long trail of wasted time going to places of nothing.  You see the term black sheep thrown around, this is more like the black sheep was road killed, turned into a game, from a popular franchise no less, and sold because people will buy it.  Much in a way like how Final Fantasy has gone from 7 forward with that huge swing in quality and care since.  I imagine they probably sold a LOT of those printed guides for the game in the day.  2-4 all had them, 2 was a packed in gimme more or less, but Sega knew they didn't have a good one I believe.  You got a sheet in the box saying call/write us, pay us money and we'll send you a way out of your suffering for $15.  Four was the better guide, but Sega didn't do that one like the older ones.

 

If this isn't allowed edit it out but here's the PStar3 mail order guide in PDF format maybe you did miss something and it only sucks slightly less.  https://archive.org/details/phantasy-star-iii-generation-of-doom-hint-book