I just played Chrono Trigger for over an hour.

chrono trigger is secret of mana perfected

I disagree with this with the very core of my being. The basic reason that everyone can get behind is that CT has turn-based battles, which are tedious and fiddly. But there's more, and yeah, it comes down to atmosphere and other intangibles.

Maybe it's whichever game you played when you were 14. In my case that was SoM. Perhaps I was too old to be completely overwhelmed by CT when I played it.

well, they're close to neck-and-neck for title of most important game of my formative years, trust me, but i just thought CT was less drab and sad and also looked and sounded way better. but yeah, intangibles. also, the battles in SoM are still somewhat turn based - the fact that the game pauses when you open up the rotary menu kills any hope of frenetic zelda type action imo

did they have the rotary menu in CT? that was some totally crazy UI experimentation of the kind people get PhDs in.

no CT did not have it. but the rotary menu was a genius solution to a stupid problem (needing to go into menus too much). ct kinda eliminates the poblem by not sticking you in scenarios where you need the menu as much.

did they have the rotary menu in CT? that was some totally crazy UI experimentation of the kind people get PhDs in.

― caek, Monday, September 22, 2008 11:45 AM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark

i dont think so, it was normal JRPG menus w/the scrolling turn-bar. in retrospect that's the other thing that really delighted me about CT, at least at that age - it was so much simpler and easier than other games of its type. it's so scaled down, it was the first videogame i was actually able to BEAT on my own. i had to watch my older brother and my dad beat SoM and i would play using their saves, cuz they were so much better than me. there's a puffed-up fischer price, safety scissors quality to CT that really helps it out in the long run imo. i remember when i first played FF6, not long after i'd been playing CT for a while (96 probably), and i remember thinking how much DARKER and adult seeming it was (lol). which was definately appealing in its own way, but when i tried playing it - OOF, it was like the hardest game in the world to me. and the amano aesthetic is sorta unnerving and surreal to a kid - still is for me, really - and it was just such a mean and unforgiving gaming experience. you'd think i'd appreciate this stuff as i got older, but it turns out FF6 was just BAD at everything it was trying to pull off. it aimed for something higher, more grand and mature, but it was just retard-o drivel. meanwhile, CT just wanted to be a shiny, flashy experience that fleshed out a smaller, simpler world (gaming-wise and narrative-wise) and ended up succeeding on all the levels that that the FF games flailed and failed at.

imo~

terranigma dudes!!!

imo, FF games fail by being boring.

I am now googling about pie menus, which are a bit like rotary menus.

tell me abt terranigma tom

actually nm, i forgot u liked xenogears - our tastes in games could never possibly mesh

fuck you! terranigma is good, it is nothing like xenogears

also this ties in to my unifying theory of gaming that i decided upon while replaying FFT last year - turns out it's not v good btw - which is that the more intricate u attempt to make the gaming experience, the more u will just end up sabotaging ur own game (or at the very least, the more complex the battle system is in an RPG or rpg type game, the easier it is to 'break' the game). FFT is drowning in options, but it's also ridiculously easy to exploit and cheese your way through it. meanwhile take a look at the first zelda - there arent many ways to cheat at zelda, cheating is basically just playing it, cuz it's so simple.

hah - reading abt terranigma now - http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/quintet/quintet.htm - i guess it has something to do w/illusion of gaia????? that game was a big deal to me when i was a kid, i might be interested in this. sell me on it, my dude!

you start out on the inside of earth and all the quests/stages are basically you re-awakening the continents, the plants, the animals, the wind, the humans, then you get to go around and there's a fucked-up ghost town section plus you rescue christopher columbus and there's a big fire that fucks up chicago and on and on. it's a blast. my only problem was figuring out what I had to do at the very very very end, I had to read gamefaqs, something about giving a penguin a flower or some utter utter nonsense like that.

and it's not turn based, it's really more like zelda in fact

Soul Blazer/Illusion of Gaia/Terranigma is prob the darkest & creepiest SNES RPG trilogy

ya, illusion of gaia was genuinely chilling & desolate - pretty unique game imo - i remember it having a weird, isolated atmosphere that made u feel like ur character was a ghost trapped amongst the living. most of the gameplay was puzzle solving and hitting blobby things with a flute, and for the ending they basically just kill you and your girlfriend (iirc)

secret of mana was v sad. listing to the soundtrack now makes me tear up: http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com/soundtrack.html

yeah som bummed me the fuck out too - towards the end when you find out the blonde chick's boyfriend is dead or possessed or whatever, and then you fukkin KILL HIM. dang, that was heavy as hell for a 7 year old.

was his name dylock? i cant believe i remember that, i havent played this game in like 15 years

yeah cankles otm re: IoG. not being able to go back into earlier levels was kind of a bitch but also a reminder "you're not ever seeing home again"

http://secretofmana.planets.gamespy.com/images/screenshots/screen112.jpg

crank dat mode 7!!

Phanna, Thanatos, etc.

All those villagers who just said "..."

Oh man IoG. That's the only one of the trilogy I've played but Jesus it was possibly the most I ever "felt" for a video game. Main character with my name != help. That game was the loneliest feeling game EVER.

did anyone play phantasy star II?? i think that was the only turn-based RPG i was really obsessed with

That game was the loneliest feeling game EVER.

definitely do not dip your toe in Terranigma, then. there's a bit in the desert with a girl which is pretty much the most terrifying experience I've ever had in a game. And the castle with the evil queen is also mad creepy.

lol I sound like I have a problem with women.

Ku ku ku...

opening post of this is still some sort of masterpiece

everybody otm re illusion of gaia (illusion of time over here). i think the isolation cankles touches on stems from the fact that enemies didn't (or very rarely) re-spawned, so you'd end up killing everything and going through all these empty dungeons looking for missed items

it had a perfect difficulty curve as well, and some pretty tough bosses (the huge king and queen boss immediately springs to mind as a boss that took more than one go to defeat). i think the fact that you couldn't cheat with faeries made it more of a challenge than something like zelda, there's plenty of one-energy-bar-left-edge-of-seat victories and overall i think it was pretty stingy with life replenishment (though of course the fact that zelda and secret of mana were free roaming work in their favour). it felt a lot more arcadey than your usual non-turn based snes rpg.

and who can forget that cute little piggy.

i should really get 'round to terranigma, the premise sounds great.

any secret of evermore heads up in this?

the one that roasts itself on an open flame to save you xpost

xpost I have said many times on ILX that Secret of Evermore >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Secret of Mana

****SPOILERZ****

here's the boss i was on about (turns out they're vampires!)

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oh

http://www.youtube.com/v/djm5ypqWJKM&hl=fr&fs=1

oh tht didn't work either

i mean fuck that boss battle was like something out of super probotector or something, except harder because you don't have a gun

the fact that all the dungeons were real, recognizable places like angkor wat and the great wall of china added to the eeriness too, bcz the world that yr character lived in was like some kind of seperate bubble world that had no discernable relation to reality, and it's really jarring for the game to superimpose that onto actual history & geography - it was like in old movies when they were shooting ppl in a car and the background was a shitty lookin projection

and then at the end when they're plunked down into modern times (i think?), that is some fourth wall breakin ass shit imo

the section in the subway car in secret of mana

I played an hour of Chrono Trigger last night, jsut like GZeus did, only I haven't played my copy for like >10 years. Getting back into it was fucked up, because I've never really "memorized" a game like that, apparently. "SPINAL FUNCTION" indeed. I remembered where every treasure chest was, etc.

If you ask me, the things that made that game the best of its genre are:

- Battles are fast. The sheer lack of a "battle screen" (instead, the charactes just pull their weapons out and get to it) saves about 6 seconds per battle vs., say, FF3. It also stops the flow from being interrupted.

- You can avoid battles when you want to. You can't avoid them ALL, but you can avoid enough of them that it's awesome.

- This one's vital: the game feels split into "episodes," BUT doesn't sacifice flow to do so. Like, I played for 58 minutes last night. At the end of 30 mins, fake-Leene-Marle had disappeared-- in the first 30 minutes, you wake up, clsoe your curtains, meet your cat and mom, get an allowance, go to a fair, meet marle, meet lucca, lose marle, find marle and lose marle again. 30 minutes!!! if that doesn't get your attention get one (1) ritalin. in the next 30 mins, i met frog, saved real-leene, and got back to the castle.

in between that speedy pacing re: battles and perfectly metered episodic feel, you've got a game that is fun to play at all times. There's always something to do and there's always at least a mild sense of urgency and there's always new environments to explore (this game gets away with the "vastly different environments" thing really nicely) and the characters are better than other SNES jRPGs and and and and and am I GZeus now?

THAT'S INSANE.

The artful gamer guy seems to think that Pier Solar is potentially Chrono Trigger good... anybody wanna play the ROM and let me know?
http://www.piersolar.com/

Are they actually releasing a ROM of it?

There's a pre-release free rom on that site.

u guys ever walked through the Chrono Trigger beta ROM w/Game Genie hax? v. interesting stuff, missing levels and whatnot.

http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png
http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png
http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png

http://www.thejhohcableshow.com/pix/1185830937099.png

oh shit, chrono trigger ds comes out this week?

Next week (supposedly Nov. 25th). I'm looking forward to it, as I've never played Chrono Trigger before.