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 (Thanks to our friend Courtney Stevens for the artwork.)  03/30/13 Part 6 --- Digital Monster, or Digimon, was Bandai's boy-targeted follow up to their massively successful Tamagotchi virtual pet. Just like Tamagotchi, Digimon was an electronic keychain toy with three buttons and an LCD screen that could display various monsters. If fed and cared for properly, these virtual pets would thrive and evolve into higher forms of digital life. If neglected, they would languish and die. Over and over and over again.   Where Digimon differed from Tamagotchi was the ability to connect two of the keychains together to allow the creatures inside to fight each other, a feature advertised in America as (get ready for this) "Dock 'n Rock technology." Yes. From these cockfighting keychain toys came Digimon World for the Sony Playstation. It retained all of the creature raising simulation elements and branching evolutionary paths of the original virtual pet toy and placed them into the world of an RPG adventure game. Players travel across File Island making friends, vanquishing foes, and ensuring that all of their digimon buddy's excrement lands safely in a toilet.  Also, there's a meat farm.   Digimon World is a slow game. There's a lot of downtime. Episodes with an '*' denote " Part 1* Part 2 Part 3* Part 4* Part 5 Part 6* --- 19LettersLong fucked around with this message at Mar 30, 2013 around 17:57 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 03:45 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 11:08 |
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Yeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssss, truly the best game. I played the poo poo out of the game as a kid because Digimon was the poo poo, and followed the last LP all the way. Just like I will be with this one. Nothing like games with nigh on impenetrable character progression and what feels like forced repetition to make your day. I am still that obsessed kid deep inside. Just looking at the box art makes me consider putting the old disc back in for another run. Edit: poo poo, part one is an hour. Welp, time for an hour of Digimon. Also, one realisation that this game taught me is that heavily pronounced walking sound effects in RPGs or games with a lot of walking is a TERRIBLE idea. Digimon World 2003 did not learn from this flaw. Edit 2: Oh yeah, I am pretty sure the Digivice question does jaaaaack poo poo other than change the question. It is odd. Another Person fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2013 around 04:03 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 03:50 |
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Kyle hasn't been able to shut up about this Digimon poo poo on my stream for weeks now, and I'm skeptical. Looking forward to finally checking this out and seeing how wrong I am. edit: I'm ready to dock 'n' rock.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 03:54 |
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I own three copies of this game; each time it refused to run I bought another. I think the third one still works but I haven't played it in a while. My monsters would never use the portable toilet.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 03:55 |
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Man, I loving love Digimon, and this reminded me that I need to rewatch the show. I never really played this game though, I have some vague memories of it, but I never owned it. I'm excited to see this though.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 03:57 |
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This game was a giant pain in the rear end when I was younger, and I remember there being some pretty big jumps in difficulty (or I just had no idea what I was doing). It'll be nice to see it done to completion. Also, I think you forgot to credit your friend for the sweet artwork in the OP. 
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 04:15 |
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Love seeing this game LP'ed so many crazy details and its so openly structured (in part due to how many sequence brakes the games less than stellar programming allows) that each play through ends up really unique, also that's an absurdly adorable picture in the op.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 04:22 |
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Oh, yeah, your question. The DS games supposedly have mechanics akin to this game, Dawn and Dusk specifically. I always meant to check that poo poo out, but never got around to it. However, there has since been another step towards returning to this, with Digimon World: Redigitized for the PSP, which so far has only been released in Japan. Apparently, it is very much like this game. Edit: Oh, overfeeding is not a care mistake. The game would be nigh on impossible otherwise, haha. Another Person fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2013 around 04:56 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 04:52 |
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Wait, how does not having friends end you up with the Digimon most commonly associated with Matt, who was given the Crest of Friendship in the anime series? Also, how did that thought immediately occur to me?
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 05:08 |
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This game came out before the show so there aren't any references to the crests, its also the reason there's a couple of digimon absent that you would expect to be in it.
Monk E fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2013 around 05:21 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 05:18 |
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I watched like a season and a half of Digimon back in December. I'm totally pumped for this. P.S. Lemon is a beautiful Digimon name.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 05:43 |
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I never understood why it took them over a decade to make another Digimon World and not some mediocre rpg
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 06:22 |
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darealkooky posted:I never understood why it took them over a decade to make another Digimon World and not some mediocre rpg Digimon World was not a massive seller and generally reviewed as being mediocre, probably for how impenetrable it was. Might have a strong fan following, but if you are a business you follow the money, not the fans, sadly.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 06:25 |
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That's understandable, but did a bunch of mediocre dungeon crawlers with digimon really sell that much better? Did none of them sell, so they just kept trying new ideas?
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 06:39 |
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darealkooky posted:That's understandable, but did a bunch of mediocre dungeon crawlers with digimon really sell that much better? Did none of them sell, so they just kept trying new ideas? The latter pretty much explains it. Digimon hasn't really been a juggernaut franchise for years, especially here in the west, when compared to its competition such as Pokemon, or other monster raising games. If one idea doesn't sell, try something new. If that doesn't sell, try another. It is such an insignificant franchise by now that they don't even bother releasing some games over here, a la Re Digitize. Really, looking at it, every iteration of the Digimon series of games has actually been pretty different to the last, they all have some nuance that makes them worth looking at to the fans. I guess there just aren't enough fans for them to stick with one successful idea for long, or, as fans have long called for, to revisit a past idea. For a business it is always slightly dangerous to revisit a past idea that didn't fly too well then just on fan following, you never know how it is going to go down. Even Re Digitize only went down as an 'eh', with Famitsu giving it a 8/8/7/8, which sounds good at first, but is what seems to be the average/slightly above score for games of its kin because game reviews are inflated. People like us might play the poo poo out of them, but we are invested fans who are willing to file down the rough edges. What reason does an outsider have to look into an old franchise which was only second best in its day and has only gotten worse since? Another Person fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2013 around 07:29 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 06:55 |
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Monk E posted:This game came out before the show so there aren't any references to the crests, its also the reason there's a couple of digimon absent that you would expect to be in it. To be more specific Digimon World is based on the old-school Virtual Pets which predated the anime by a year or two. That's why there's an emphasis on raising your partner over fighting, and indeed most of the evolution trees are taken straight out of the first 4 virtual pets. As for the anime it probably was never expected to take off like it did. Supposedly Digimon Adventure was only planned for 13 episodes and the prequel movie but early responses were good enough they continued their initial plot to go for 54. The sudden and surprising success might also explain the overcooked mess the sequel was, but I digress. Basically I very much doubt that when someone pitched to Toei an anime adaptation for their Tamagotchi for Boys that it would wind up spawning 6.5 seasons worth of anime plus a couple of manga and a slew of movies.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 07:19 |
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I've never seen any of the Digimon anime or played any of the games, so you can imagine my confusion. I realized that it was probably similar to how it felt to be a parent with children who were super into Pokemon at the height of its popularity.  ("Poky-man? Some Japanese thing. There's this yellow one that they seem to like the most, but I can't remember its name...")I was way into Tamagotchi when they first came out, though, so it's hilarious to see the same sort of evolution paths and weird poo poo like praise/scold and dealing with digimon poop in an actual video game. I don't think I ever saw anyone with a Digimon, but all the COOL girls in my class had Tamagotchis. 
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 16:53 |
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Jon Joe posted:I own three copies of this game; each time it refused to run I bought another. I think the third one still works but I haven't played it in a while. I always liked it when they did this, because immediately after you can Scold them and it raises Discipline a lot but doesn't drop Happiness. It's useful if you're trying to do stuff that has requirements for one of both of those bars. Either way, I adore this game. It was the first one I played again when I got my grubby little paws back on my PS1 last year. I'd love a do-over of this game with some of the new awesome digimon from later series, and about ten times the length. I didn't like that the later games always seemed to be pushing the new digimon on you ("Oh here's Kotemon, isn't he cooooooooooool?! No, there's no option to start with only old digimon, why would you want that, you have to use one of the awesoooooooooome new ones!") And four guides seems about right. They all have different data. 
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 17:25 |
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From what I remember, World 2 is a dungeon crawler where you're in a tank or something, I never touched World 3 but according to Wikipedia it's more or less .hack before .hack. World 4 was a pretty good action RPG dungeon crawler with the most chill menu theme ever. As for the DS ones? Well, there was at least two RPG games halfway in between Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!, and there was also a really bare bones raising sim where you trained your digimon to win fights to get money to raise it better to win more fights. It was a fun enough distraction. That new PSP one though is just a remake of the original show but in RPG format with some new side stories that are either canon, written by the original team, or both. I can't remember. Maybe it's none of those. Too bad we'll never see it over here, it sure looked interesting.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 18:10 |
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JetGrind posted:From what I remember, World 2 is a dungeon crawler where you're in a tank or something, I never touched World 3 but according to Wikipedia it's more or less .hack before .hack. World 4 was a pretty good action RPG dungeon crawler with the most chill menu theme ever. DW2 is super grindy. DW1 is super grindy, but DW2 is super super grindy; you could spend several hours just getting your low leveled digimon back into fighting shape since you had to fuse together your digimon all the time, which gave you a new digimon with a low level. It was a lot like Dragon Warrior Monster, actually. DW3 was bullshit; it had the difficulty curve of DW1, but artificially through enemies having huge stats in certain areas. It probably required a ton of grinding too, but I never got very far in it because it wasn't very good. The card minigame was fun, though. The best Digimon game is, and always will be, Digimon Rumble Arena.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 18:31 |
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Jon Joe posted:DW2 is super super grindy; you could spend several hours just getting your low leveled digimon back into fighting shape since you had to fuse together your digimon all the time, which gave you a new digimon with a low level. It was a lot like Dragon Warrior Monster, actually. DW2's super super grindyness comes from your mons having level caps. Then when they hit the level cap, you fuse them together, which makes the resulting mon level 1 and you have to repeat the evolution and fusing over and over. DW3 is also very grindy, since you need to grind each evolution level to unlock other evolutions (like getting Kotemon to Lv5 will unlock Dinohumon, but then you have to get him to Lv20 to unlock his Perfect form of Kyukimon.) DW2 is at least a bit simpler than this game in terms of understanding it. I did an LP of it almost two years ago that you can see on the archive
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 18:43 |
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Jon Joe posted:DW3 was bullshit; it had the difficulty curve of DW1, but artificially through enemies having huge stats in certain areas. It probably required a ton of grinding too, but I never got very far in it because it wasn't very good. The card minigame was fun, though. I actually liked DW3. I guess I'm some sort of mutant? It was kind of unfair at times, but if you picked a fast partner and boosted their speed and... spirit, I want to say, but I don't remember the stat name, it served as magic evasion anyway -- beyond all reason, they'd dodge or block like 80% of everything that came their way. That deflated a lot of the challenge. On the off-chance one of your partners took a bad hit and got KO'd, you had two more similarly annoying-to-hit beasties waiting.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 22:13 |
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Fun fact: Saying that you don't have a digivice actually makes the game very slightly easier. Mostly just makes it easier to get digivolutions, if I recall correctly. ETA: The original Japanese was probably closer to "Do you own a Digimon V-Pet?" Emong fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2013 around 22:38 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2013 22:19 |
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Oh man Digimon World, I always want to play this but I never had it as a kid. Can't wait to see what kind of crazy crap happens in this game. I had Monster Rancher 2 growing up instead, and this game looks way more fun then that one. Although this thread is making me want to bust out my copy of MR2 and see how far I can get without a guide.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 22:27 |
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Well, since you asked. One of my favorite PS1 games. Can't wait until you get to the shop minigame. 
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| # ? Feb 15, 2013 23:46 |
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I rented this once as a kid. I thought it was super cool and I really wanted to get into it but I just couldn't figure it out and kept getting killed. This'll be a fun watch!
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 01:50 |
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My early childhood experiences of this game in a nutshell.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 02:59 |
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This game is honestly some of the most fun I've had in an LP, which I never would have expected.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 03:50 |
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You haven't collected your starter pack of items, guys.  Try actually... y'know, talking to the NPCs. (What are the odds that'll appear in an already-recorded video, I wonder...)I'm not the biggest fan of semi-blind stuff, but I think I'll hang around for a bit. Perhaps one of you should skim OFS' LP sometime, though. That song was great, you heathens.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 04:17 |
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Oh man, I remember renting this game as a kid, getting incredibly pissed at how hard and impenetrable it was ( I'm pretty sure the only digimon above rookie I saw were Numemon on the other terrible one). Not sure if this is a spoiler or not, since I may be mis-remembering, but did Numemon actually eat the poo poo that had accumulated from not getting your digimon to a toilet, of was that my kid brain adding things from the TV show into the game?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 08:10 |
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Sartorius posted:Oh man, I remember renting this game as a kid, getting incredibly pissed at how hard and impenetrable it was ( I'm pretty sure the only digimon above rookie I saw were Numemon on the other terrible one). He did. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 08:11 |
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I love this game and consider myself a digimon expert. If you need any tips or clarifications, go ahead and ask. The first episode was great, I can't wait for the rest. e: Both Numemon AND Sukamon will eat poo poo that has been left on the field. The poo poo-eating is only cosmetic. Interestingly, they both have very powerful ultimate forms, and Numemon is even required for a certain event... Captain Arab fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 11:29 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 11:26 |
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I've dabbled in Digimon World 2 and have played the poo poo out of World 3, Card Battle, and DS*, but I've never even seen this one being played. My friend told me he rented it when he was a kid and thought it sucked so I guess I just took it to heart and we never bothered going back to see if he was right or not. I watched the Run-Off video yesterday and I'll be looking forward to seeing just what the hell this game even was. *I suppose "played the poo poo out of" is a bit strong for Digimon World DS since that one I only played once and ended up cheating to mitigate some of the grinding for high level digivolutions.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 13:53 |
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Captain Arab posted:I love this game and consider myself a digimon expert. If you need any tips or clarifications, go ahead and ask. The first episode was great, I can't wait for the rest. Sign me up for help if needed too. I remember a lot of poo poo about this game, more than the guides. The guides are kind of all unreliable, as I found playing this. I've pretty much done everything in this game except getting three of the ultimates the proper way, Etemon, Vademon and Digitamamon. I've even gotten to 80ish prosperity off the very first Digimon without using life extending items. To do this, you kind of have to use an optimised run, with a path that opens a lot of the game early. Oh, and the poo poo eating is more than cosmetic, it actually adds weight onto the Digimon too. Keeping virus high on a new Digimon is a tactical position I find, because sometimes weight can be hard to keep up. If your desired digivolution does not have very strict care mistake requirements, then you can dump on the ground, digivolve into Sukamon , eat all the waste on the ground to up your Digimon's weight dramatically and then transform him back using KingSukamon. Some of the weight is lost, but most of it should be retained. With this idea in mind, it might be useful for beginners to have a lot of poo poo laying around in the gym from accidental Digivolutions or care mistakes, so if you are trying to raise a Digimon with serious weight requirements like MetalGraymon and are not quite heavy enough near digivolving time, you can do it at last minute. I think Digivolving to Sukamon then back can also extend life expectancy a tiny bit. Another Person fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2013 around 14:13 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2013 14:10 |
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I loved this game as a kid. Digimon World and Monster Rancher were awesome. My parents wouldn't let me have any of those little keychain things since I tended to lose things all the time. Ahhh memories 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 14:57 |
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I've LPed this game twice. I've stared at its mechanical guts. I have no will to ever even look at it again. But good luck with this highly random and extremely buggy yet still somehow charming game!
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:04 |
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:I've LPed this game twice. I've stared at its mechanical guts. I have no will to ever even look at it again. Your second LP was immense, and one of the best things to come out of this subforum yet. Few LPs take a game apart and stare into its very soul like yours did. And it still didn't clear things up too much, haha! Credit where credit is due, man. And sorry for sounding like some sad sperg at times in your thread for it, ha. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:29 |
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I was kind of annoyed when I found out that the European version had a bug, which basically prevented any further progression at some point.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 15:45 |
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So you guys tries out Bonus Try for a bit in the video and it really is worth a try to figure out how to get good at it. The slots are never randomised so you can remember the timing or the layout of the symbols and even if you only get the correct symbol every forth try you will get more out of it as if you had done normal training. Once you get the hang of it you can give your Digimon some insane stats just by winning the bonus try every second try or so, making it much easier to get the requirements for evolving your Digimon. If you need a strategy, I found one that works for me which I can post if you want to. As for Kunemon, that guy is pretty hard for how early you can fight. His attacks do a lot of damage so he can wreck you pretty easily at the beginning of the game. Good job defeating him this early though,the item shop is mighty useful especially this early on.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 16:43 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 11:08 |
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JetGrind posted:That new PSP one though is just a remake of the original show but in RPG format with some new side stories that are either canon, written by the original team, or both. I can't remember. Maybe it's none of those. Too bad we'll never see it over here, it sure looked interesting. There's actually another PSP Digimon game called Digimon World Re-Digitize which is basically DW1 but with fancier graphics and Megas. It was only released in Japan but there's a group doing a fan translation somewhere.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2013 18:17 |
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