Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Hirayuki
Mar 28, 2010


Ledneh posted:

I always enjoyed the Actraiser episode because it felt like I finally found a kindred spirit in someone who really likes the creation mode as much as I do.
Same here. I was really bummed when Actraiser 2 came out. Twice the action, none of the sim! :sigh:

quote:

Also, "Fightin's gone." :unsmigghh:
I think Actraiser was my first episode, and this part had me laughing until I cried. He was so blase about it! I put that little snippet of video on my phone for a quick pick-me-up on the go. And then when he receives the gift of music in a later town and we see the light go on...

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SLUM KING
Nov 16, 2011

Man, kinda surprised to see so many people naming Fatal Fury as worst episode. I remember that one being really funny, what with Nakayama coming out as a fightmans lover, the fat fighter that looked like Tani, Arino pining for Dhalsim, Arino making the entire TV setup violently vibrate from all his insane button mashing, Arino breaking the joystick...Now that I think of it it's one of my favorites. I wish they'd do more fighters. Both FFS and SF2 had this more relaxed, goofin' around vibe that I really dig.

And yeah, creation mode in Actraiser was the best. I had the Super Famicom import as a kid and I somehow beat the game despite not knowing a lick of Japanese. I know at one point I got stuck and called the store my grandmother got the game from to ask for help. They didn't know what the hell I was talking about, and in retrospect I have no clue how I beat it. Maybe it's way easier than I remember?

I never played Actraiser 2. No god mode, no sale.

cronox2
Jul 24, 2010



woah, you look
REALLY pissed off...
It's still amazes me that no one ever ripped off Actraiser 1's sim/action combo. There's not even a faux-retro indie game that does it from what I've seen.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



cronox2 posted:

It's still amazes me that no one ever ripped off Actraiser 1's sim/action combo. There's not even a faux-retro indie game that does it from what I've seen.

I think it's because they didn't really run together well. Actraiser's action bits were the crappy parts in between the sim mode.

Bocc Kob
Oct 26, 2010
I wonder what happened in Shiren. :ohdear:

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Random Stranger posted:

I think it's because they didn't really run together well. Actraiser's action bits were the crappy parts in between the sim mode.

Great music to the action bits, though. Anyone who's played this and says they don't remember Filmore act 1 is a drat dirty liar. :colbert:

Erebus
Jul 13, 2001

Okay... Keep your head, Steve boy...

cronox2 posted:

It's still amazes me that no one ever ripped off Actraiser 1's sim/action combo. There's not even a faux-retro indie game that does it from what I've seen.

The closest you'll get is Dark Cloud 1 and 2, which had dungeon crawling action sections where you'd find pieces of a town that you could then take out of the dungeon to rebuild the town in the sim section. They're both good games, but 2 in particular was excellent as it fixed the problems of the first while adding a billion more things to do.

Box of Bunnies
Apr 3, 2012

by Pragmatica

Bocc Kob posted:

I wonder what happened in Shiren. :ohdear:

Find out in September, when Discotek Media present Retro Game Master™!

King Vidiot
Feb 17, 2007

You think you can take me at Satan's Hollow? Go 'head on!
Not trying to play kiss-rear end, but I'm totally serious when I say the best episodes are all of the ones translated by SA Team, and the worst are the ones translated by anyone else.

Although I could do without all the word apostrophe-in', you know what I'm sayin'? It's just really distractin'.

rdbbb
Jul 26, 2011

Hot Poppin Bunnz posted:

Man, kinda surprised to see so many people naming Fatal Fury as worst episode. I remember that one being really funny, what with Nakayama coming out as a fightmans lover, the fat fighter that looked like Tani, Arino pining for Dhalsim, Arino making the entire TV setup violently vibrate from all his insane button mashing, Arino breaking the joystick...Now that I think of it it's one of my favorites. I wish they'd do more fighters. Both FFS and SF2 had this more relaxed, goofin' around vibe that I really dig.

I think part of it was that it was just kind of redundant. SF2 satisfies any desire to see Arino play a fighting game (unless you want to see something really unique and outlandish), and there's really not that much that's different/wacky in FFS to make it seem worth it. It was also pretty much a vanity choice from Nakayama.

rdbbb fucked around with this message at 03:42 on May 4, 2012

cronox2
Jul 24, 2010



woah, you look
REALLY pissed off...

Erebus posted:

The closest you'll get is Dark Cloud 1 and 2, which had dungeon crawling action sections where you'd find pieces of a town that you could then take out of the dungeon to rebuild the town in the sim section. They're both good games, but 2 in particular was excellent as it fixed the problems of the first while adding a billion more things to do.

I loved Dark Cloud 2 and enjoyed 1. I'd say they feel more like Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia though but with the added puzzle element of figuring out where the parts in the town actually fit. With how good Cel Shading looks now (see Borderlands and The Walking Dead) I'd love to see Level-5 some day come back to that series.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



rdbbb posted:

It was also pretty much a vanity choice from Nakayama,

I wonder if Kan was mad about having to buy a Neo Geo for the show for just that one episode.

They really should break it out again and play some Metal Slug. I don't think that has ever turned up on the show. :v:

Bo Steed
Apr 12, 2012

Kacho: ON

Authorman posted:

Well you're a crazy person because SOS is probably the best episode of the whole series. The amount of despair when Arino's party jumps one by one to their death as he frantically tries to reset the arrow is glorious. I drink his pain.

My favorite part was when Arino was looking for one of his lost companions and was like "Where did XXXX go?" *Guy falls past the screen on the other side of the wall* "Oh, there he is."

Tewratomeh posted:

Although I could do without all the word apostrophe-in', you know what I'm sayin'? It's just really distractin'.

You get hung up on some weird stuff.

cronox2 posted:

I loved Dark Cloud 2 and enjoyed 1. I'd say they feel more like Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia though but with the added puzzle element of figuring out where the parts in the town actually fit. With how good Cel Shading looks now (see Borderlands and The Walking Dead) I'd love to see Level-5 some day come back to that series.

I guess I'm weird, cuz I always kinda preferred the first.... Good games, though, and would definitely love to see more of them. Not sure where you get a connection to Illusion of Gaia or Soul Blazer....

Snackmar
Feb 23, 2005

I'M PROGRAMMED TO LOVE THIS CHOCOLATY CAKE... MY CIRCUITS LIGHT UP FOR THAT FUDGY ICING.

Son Ryo posted:

I love them all, so I won't say 'worst', but my least favorite episode (at least of the translated ones) has gotta be SOS.

I loved the S.O.S. and Clock Tower episodes because they featured SNES games that I was completely unfamiliar with. Definitely want to try them out myself sometime.

cronox2
Jul 24, 2010



woah, you look
REALLY pissed off...

Bo Steed posted:

Not sure where you get a connection to Illusion of Gaia or Soul Blazer....

You're fighting through dungeons to unlock parts to a town that you must restore? I didn't think there was that much of a stretch unless you meant if there was developers who worked on all of the games.

Talking about the games now makes me wish Arino would play Soul Blader (Blazer), Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma.

cronox2 fucked around with this message at 02:12 on May 4, 2012

Bo Steed
Apr 12, 2012

Kacho: ON
I don't remember much town restoration in Illusion of Gaia.... I remember a very linear, story oriented dungeonfest. Most of the time once you left a city you'd never see it again.

I'll admit less experience of Soul Blazer, however.

cronox2
Jul 24, 2010



woah, you look
REALLY pissed off...

Bo Steed posted:

I don't remember much town restoration in Illusion of Gaia.... I remember a very linear, story oriented dungeonfest. Most of the time once you left a city you'd never see it again.

I'll admit less experience of Soul Blazer, however.

Yeah the concept goes away in Illusion of Gaia, I guess I'm just mixing the two together since they're both by Quintet. Soul Blazer's towns all start as completely blank fields that you slowly fill up with buildings, people, animals, etc from battling through the dungeons.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Yeah the town restoration thing didn't happen at all in Illusion of Gaia, and in Terranigma it was more of a story hook than an actual mechanic for the most part.


... drat, now I want to see Illusion of Gaia on GCCX too. :(

(edit) Then again maybe not; it would probably end up like Link to the Past did: too much content (in this case story rather than gameplay) to fit into an hour and do the game service. But I'll dream anyway. :shobon:

Ciaphas fucked around with this message at 02:18 on May 4, 2012

Bo Steed
Apr 12, 2012

Kacho: ON
That would explain it. And I did know it was part of the same series, I just only played Illusion of Gaia as a kid, so I wasn't seeing the progression. Although as a side note, it always kinda amuses me seeing how widespread the sound effects used for IoG were through Enix games.

I'm not sure how good Gaia would be for GCCX, though.... It's reeeeeeally narrative driven and not really all that much fun to watch. It's a bit on the long side, too.

Crotch Bat
Dec 6, 2003

Much like with everything else in life, the Euros seem to have more sense on how to do things in a fun atmosphere without sucking the soul out of the event.

cronox2 posted:

Yeah the concept goes away in Illusion of Gaia, I guess I'm just mixing the two together since they're both by Quintet. Soul Blazer's towns all start as completely blank fields that you slowly fill up with buildings, people, animals, etc from battling through the dungeons.

Funny you mention it because ActRaiser was the first game from Quintet and Soul Blazer was second, hence some familiar gameplay of sorts.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

cronox2 posted:

It's still amazes me that no one ever ripped off Actraiser 1's sim/action combo. There's not even a faux-retro indie game that does it from what I've seen.

Actually, I would argue that Dark Cloud/Dark Cloud 2 did exactly that, if not 100% identical.

cronox2
Jul 24, 2010



woah, you look
REALLY pissed off...
They're not really the same series (the only crossover is the first boss of Blazer shows up in Gaia), just all made by the same developer, Quintet. As Crotch Bat said, their most known games are in order: Actraiser, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma (never released in US).

Also according to their Wikipedia they made Legacy of the Wizard?

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!
^ The weirdest game I've ever played has definitely got to be Robotrek. Just, what the gently caress.

Bo Steed posted:

I'm not sure how good Gaia would be for GCCX, though.... It's reeeeeeally narrative driven and not really all that much fun to watch. It's a bit on the long side, too.
Soulblazer would be good, though. It's actiony like Zelda, a lot of the bosses have patterns that you can trick them into but by and large they're very unfair, dying is very forgiving, and the town-building would have that same "Arino playing Actraiser" feel, I bet. It's kinda short, too, so it's not a stretch to see Arino finishing it in a day.

Bo Steed
Apr 12, 2012

Kacho: ON

cronox2 posted:

They're not really the same series (the only crossover is the first boss of Blazer shows up in Gaia), just all made by the same developer, Quintet. As Crotch Bat said, their most known games are in order: Actraiser, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma (never released in US).

Also according to their Wikipedia they made Legacy of the Wizard?

There's more crossovers than that. Naturally I can't recall offhand what they are, but I firmly remember Illusion of Gaia being part of the Soul Blazer/Act Raiser series, though all of them are only loosely tied together (Illusion of Gaia especially so).

(I want to say Dark Gaia is from other games in the series, but I simply can't remember for certain. Possibly even Freedan and Shadow.)

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



cronox2 posted:

Also according to their Wikipedia they made Legacy of the Wizard?

They ported it, actually. Legacy of the Wizard was part of a long running series of computer RPGs and the only one of the main series to go to the famicom.

Davzz
Jul 31, 2008
Legacy of the Wizard is Falcom (more well-known as the guys who did Ys... if known at all)

Erwin Tuwonwon
Oct 30, 2011
I'd say the only episodes I got bored with were Kid Icarus (though I adore the game), Goemon (ditto; shame on me), and Genpei Tōma Den. I feel kinda bad because Team SA provides me with so many great episodes, BUT most of my favorites were translated by other teams. TokiMemo, Takeshi's Challenge, PuchOut...

Of course, SA provides the trivia and fighting games and everything else awesome, so you gotta love 'em.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


Actually, Punch Out is probably my favorite episode so far, mostly because of how in to it he and the crew get when the game throws him a total fuckin screwball (Piston Honda and Great Tiger's specials, primarily). Very WHOA WAIT WHAT WHOA stuff. :v:

Edison Carter
Mar 26, 2010

The White Dragon posted:

^ The weirdest game I've ever played has definitely got to be Robotrek. Just, what the gently caress.


If it helps put it into perspective at all, the Japanese name for the game was Slapstick. Always loved that game. It was Pokemon before Pokemon.

Corridor
Oct 19, 2006

Bo Steed posted:

My favorite part was when Arino was looking for one of his lost companions and was like "Where did XXXX go?" *Guy falls past the screen on the other side of the wall* "Oh, there he is."
I laughed so hard at that part. SOS wasn't a good game or really a great episode, but it had so many laugh-out-loud moments for me.

cronox2 posted:

Soul Blazer's towns all start as completely blank fields that you slowly fill up with buildings, people, animals, etc from battling through the dungeons.

Soul Blazer is one of the few SNES games I discovered as an adult but still like to play regularly. It doesn't need that nostalgia factor.


Erebus posted:

The closest you'll get is Dark Cloud 1 and 2, which had dungeon crawling action sections where you'd find pieces of a town that you could then take out of the dungeon to rebuild the town in the sim section. They're both good games, but 2 in particular was excellent as it fixed the problems of the first while adding a billion more things to do.

Dark Cloud is fun but the grind is terrible. The monster suits have a bug in their levelling that makes it impossible to get their levels up unless you're some crazy sperglord. I really liked the monster suits. :(

Also gently caress that stupid golf game.

Dominic White
Nov 1, 2005

cronox2 posted:

It's still amazes me that no one ever ripped off Actraiser 1's sim/action combo. There's not even a faux-retro indie game that does it from what I've seen.

Oddly enough, A Valley Without Wind was actually pretty like a procedurally generated Actraiser while it was in development. And then about two months before release, they cut out the entire sim/town-management side of the game to focus entirely on the platforming. That's about where it lost my interest.

Plasquatch
Mar 21, 2007

Yo, PM3:00 desu ka?
Are there any episodes that are "translation-proof?"

The one I'm thinking of is #113, with that Night of the Sickle Weasels game (Kamaitachi no Yoru) that they featured as a read-aloud in the Pac-Man 2 episode. It's a sound novel in which the visuals (mostly static, but with occasional motion effects) are almost entirely covered in Japanese text. It seems like that would be a subtitler's nightmare.

I'd post a video, but all the ones I found either
a) didn't really demonstrate what I'm talking about, graphics-wise,
b) spoiled an ending, or
c) were of a remake or sequel.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



Erwin Tuwonwon posted:

I feel kinda bad because Team SA provides me with so many great episodes, BUT most of my favorites were translated by other teams. TokiMemo, Takeshi's Challenge, PuchOut...

Tokimeki Memorial was one of our episodes. Our third one, as a matter of fact. Doing all of those overlays was a massive headache.

Plasquatch posted:

Are there any episodes that are "translation-proof?"

The one I'm thinking of is #113, with that Night of the Sickle Weasels game (Kamaitachi no Yoru) that they featured as a read-aloud in the Pac-Man 2 episode.

The only GCCX stuff that is translation proof are the full length of the live specials because of the raw length. Without the immediacy of watching them live sitting through hours of Arino screwing up just isn't interesting for most people.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Plasquatch posted:

Are there any episodes that are "translation-proof?"

I'd say more "translation-resistant". Honestly I think the more difficult episodes are ones that require Japanese cultural context. Quiz games are notorious for this and I had to make a few minor in Quiz: The Feudal Lord's Ambition because a literal translation wouldn't have worked. Text-overlay hell is really just a question of patience and perseverance.

Random Stranger
Nov 27, 2009



univbee posted:

I'd say more "translation-resistant". Honestly I think the more difficult episodes are ones that require Japanese cultural context. Quiz games are notorious for this and I had to make a few minor in Quiz: The Feudal Lord's Ambition because a literal translation wouldn't have worked. Text-overlay hell is really just a question of patience and perseverance.

Ain't that the truth.

Yu Yuu (or is it Yuu Yu) and Quiz My Angel are the two remaining episodes that I'm dreading the most but there's plenty of others that will be tough on the timing. All of season 14 is going to have a sticky spot because of the Catch a Copy segment (hopefully the huge, formatted blocks required to make the segment comprehensible can be copied and pasted between the episodes). Similarly, Jinguuji Saburou is probably going to be rough.

At least someone else has to deal with Shiren. :v:

zari-gani
Sep 6, 2004

How much do you want it? ;-*
If a game has a lot of text, text overlays are only necessary if Arino doesn't read enough parts out loud.

The quiz episodes need a lot of overlays because Arino doesn't read the entire question out loud, and it's in the viewer's interest to know what his options are for the answer.

For Clock Tower, overlays were needed at some parts because he would react to the dialogue without reading along.

With Shiren, most of the text is redundant and needs no translating ("Shiren did 8 damage to Mamel! Mamel was defeated."), and he also reads out the relevant parts ("Stepped on a trap?" "I'm getting hungry.")

In the case of Night of the Sickle Weasel, there's a lot of prose on-screen but Arino reads out loud everything the viewer needs to know to understand the story/what he's reacting to. That's the only episode I can completely follow while listening to it, not looking at the visuals once... it's practically an audio book. The stuff he doesn't read is just extra details to add atmosphere. Therefore this ep needs very few text overlays.

zari-gani fucked around with this message at 18:37 on May 4, 2012

Sailor Goon
Feb 21, 2012

Man, I have to go against the popular opinion in this thread and say that S.O.S. is my absolute least favorite episode. Watching the family ignore Arino and leap to their deaths is hilarious, but for some reason I get so aggravated watching the first half or so where he just keeps timing out and failing because he fell. It's weird, too, because I often enjoy the episodes where he fails. (Speaking of that, I love the "Shadow Lands" and "Adventure Island" episodes because of how ruthlessly cruel the game mechanics and level designs in those games are to poor Arino. And then there's his repeated continue fails in "The Wing of Madoola," which had me in hysterics the first time I saw it. :allears: Arino messing up or forgetting to continue is pretty much always funny.)

Strangely, it isn't S.O.S.'s genre that bothers me, because "Clock Tower" is one of my favorites, too. I also enjoy all of the "Arino takes a trip" episodes; not just the USA ep, but also the Hokkaido arcade visit series, the Korean episode, and the Cannes episode. Tamage is my favorite non-challenge section, so getting to see episodes centered around that concept is great.

GidgetNomates
May 6, 2010

I love this hobby:
stealing your mother's diary
I'd really like to see Arino play more games like Clock Tower and S.O.S., I get kind of bored with all the platformers.

IShallRiseAgain
Sep 12, 2008

Well ain't that precious?

My favorite is when he does dating games, both of the episodes where he has done one have been hilarious.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

DiscoJ
Jun 23, 2003

IShallRiseAgain posted:

My favorite is when he does dating games, both of the episodes where he has done one have been hilarious.

I'll take pretty much any excuse to post this again:

Only registered members can see post attachments!

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply