Comments 10

Re: Nasir Gebelli, The Elusive Programming Genius Behind Final Fantasy, Thinks Coding The Games Was "Simple"

Dr_Lugae

It was so simple that a bunch of the status magic spells literally didn't work, the intelligence stat did nothing, running away only used the agility of the 3rd party member and the critical rates for equipment were based on their item ID. Lol.

It was probably pretty difficult to make what he did at that time without knowing what an RPG was though. So it's still extremely impressive.

Re: Star Fox Studio Argonaut Is Back, And It's Remastering Croc

Dr_Lugae

@DirtyCasual Actually the first one got fairly good reviews but I think that's largely due to being the only non-broken alternative to Crash and Mario 64. But standards quickly rose.

Croc 2 was better but by 1999 there were so many even better platformers like Banjo, Spyro and Ape Escape, Sonic Adventure. Croc 2 got substantially worse reviews than the original despite being better, but ultimately subpar compared to the competition.

I think unless they've really retooled the controls, gameplay and the bosses reactions to damage this remaster is going to be savaged

Re: Yuji Naka Killed "Dreamcast's Star Fox", Says Former Sega Producer

Dr_Lugae

@TheRedComet Yeah he had a lot of talent in programming. But I think he and SEGA let him build himself up into a false Miyamoto-like game design figure...when he wasn't the game designer or director for the games you'd strongly associate with him. (Other than Balan Wonderworld lol)

He closer to Iwata coding genius. Except Iwata, before becoming Nintendo President, was using his skills to assist other teams e.g. Iwata stepping in to save Earthbound starting from scratch. Iwata creating compression tools for Pokemon Gold/Silver allowing Kanto to fit on the cartridge, porting Pokemon's Battle System into Pokemon Stadium while removing bugs in a week, helping debug Smash Bros Melee for launch. A lot of games that Iwata didn't design were better games (or saved like Earthbound) as a result of his assistance.

Naka was very protective of his work and pointlessly tried to compete against the rest of SEGA, instead of helping SEGA be more competitive with Nintendo or Sony.

It's not surprising that once Naka was put in the director's chair and given full creative control over Balan Wonderworld he'd sink because game design was never his speciality.

Re: We're Getting A New Shining Force Game, But Of Course There's A Catch

Dr_Lugae

It's a shame it's mobile Gacha game. I like SRPGs, and love Fire Emblem and buy the games full price (I even imported Fure Emblem New Mystery from Japan to play) but not even Fire Emblem Heroes has convinced me mobile microtransactions are worth it. So Shining Force certainly won't.

@KingMike I think the similarities between FE:Gaiden and Shining Force are so eerie even though due to release dates neither could have possibly copied the other.

Like Fire Emblem 1 had magic users attacking with tomes like any other weapon. Then for Gaiden characters had a personal list of spells as they levelled up and used from a separate menu just like Shining Force. Weapons were permanent without a durability system just like Shining Force.

Like every way that Fire Emblem Gaiden diverged from Fire Emblem:Dark Dragon matched something from Shining Force. Even the random skirmishes and monsters as enemies.

Re: We're Getting A New Shining Force Game, But Of Course There's A Catch

Dr_Lugae

"will focus on "the fun of cultivating unique and attractive characters,""

This seems like a really dubious for the state of Shining Force. A large reason Fire Emblem has seen success on mobile gacha is that they popularised the characters with Awakening (and the einherjar in it) and Fates in advance of the mobile game.

Having been out of the public eye for like two decades in the west and over a decade in Japan. Shining Force's characters aren't really going to be in gamers minds.

It's like Sega sort of want to skip the step of actually reviving the series and jump straight into milking the cash cow and I don't think that will work.

Re: Hardware Review: Sega's Heritage Deserves Better Than The Mega Drive Ultimate Portable

Dr_Lugae

I'm always wary of things like this. The problem with something quality like the NES and SNES classic generating interest in retro gaming products is that the alternatives get a benefit from it without actually requiring that quality.

Similar products will get attention regardless of how good they actually are. SEGA and AtGames don't actually have to bother improving quality and instead just ride the hype wave. Both times I went to Argos before Christmas I saw people getting some of these things.