They are mockups as the game only existed on paper. I don't know if the mockups are made on Famicom hardware though, probably not.
DRW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm
Frozen in time, chocobo egg, pirates, Team Rocket:
...
That's the very thing: The egg is hatching as you're approaching it.
It hatches after you approach it as far as I can remember. So there is no differences between the egg and Bikke the pirate.
DRW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm
"Ninja Gaiden" story:
...
And the inside and outside are connected by a door, not by a level change, so yes, even if the overall way would be longer than the literal number of tiles, the connection is still literally there:
You leave some factory and end up high above the ground. Irene told you to escape, but you literally approach the boss. Which also means that Irene chose a hiding place within the vicinity of the boss.
No it doesn't. The boss could still have placed himself within the vicinity of Ryu and Irene like I said. There is nothing in the game implying that the boss room is some kind of hideout. Approaching the boss is normal if he is hidden and waiting to ambush you. That's my personal impression anyway as there is nothing in the game that tells exactly the circumstances of how the battle starts other than that it happens after you enter the room. There could be any infinite number of reasons things turns out as they do, but my theory goes well with the cut-scene.
DRW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm
The fact that you have to do mental gymnastics to make sense out of the story (he tried to escape the enemies and they "trapped" him and he "ended up" fighting the boss in the ruins by chance, even though nothing of this is seen in the gameplay) only confirms my statement that story and gameplay isn't well-connected.
I have never argued against that. Ideally there should be a cut-scene before every boss fight to fill these gaps. But that would probably take away from gameplay by having too frequent cut-scenes. The final levels does this though.
DRW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm
If you have to fill in the gaps of things that should otherwise be mundane plot details, then, by definition, the story isn't presented well.
By what definition? It's just your own subjective opinion. And I don't think all of the holes are bad ones. Leaving holes in the story to be filled out by the consumer or by later material is a very common plot device.
DRW wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm
And if they're bound by the gameplay, why didn't they design the story around it in the first place?
"We drove you 50 miles out of town and are now in the mountains. We took you here because we're close to one of Jaquio's henchmen. The exit of this factory leaves to his hideout. You need to go and kill him."
See? Perfect alignment of story and gameplay.
You say it like it's a very easy thing to do. If it was, every game would be perfect.
Your example also seems to give a bit "too much" information to the player IMHO. The original author seemed to want things to be a mystery to make the player intrigued, and which I think worked very well. By telling Ryu that time is running out it adds excitement, which fits well with the fast-paced gameplay. If you just send him on a killing mission like that he would probably want to know more why he should kill Bomberhead, and you would probably want the whole sequence with Foster here, which they don't want to introduce yet. I know it was just an example, but I wanted to point out that changing the story introduces new problems when trying to balance everything.
That said, criticizing the fact that everything doesn't align perfectly is still fair criticism, I'm not arguing against that.
Nikku4211 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 7:44 pm
It's not that the game looked too easy. I didn't actually look at the gameplay, but I'd look for gameplay improvement patches just in case the game turns out to have that characteristic 80s-early 90s difficulty so many games had. I'm sure a lot of people love arcade-style difficulty, but I'm more casual, so I prefer my games easier.
I already knew the game was actually Secret of Mana 0.
Also, my (1366x768 LCD) TV has no headphone jack. I've only seen one TV that does, and it's a late 2000s 1080p HD LCD TV.
Oh you don't have to worry about it being too hard. It's a classic RPG, meaning it gets easier the more you play it. And since it's an action-RPG, grinding is also fast. Besides this game doesn't really require any grinding anyway. The difficulty is more about not getting lost in dungeons, which can get repetitive. Especially for young and impatient players used to be spoon-fed constant action.
If your TV doesn't have any kind of audio output connector, I guess the only choice is to get it out of the SNES. There are SCART-adapters for extracting the stereo sound output from the SCART-RGB cable, but I'm not sure if it's safe to connect a headphone directly to the audio output designed to go to the TV. People here should know.
Bregalad wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:22 am
Also the story is only told through dialogue boxes, there's no animation whatsoever (neither Ninja-Gaiden style cutscenes nor in-game graphics cutscenes), the only action is sprites disappearing when someone lets you through some place or dies.
You shouldn't expect a story as complex as FF6, FF7 or FF8, but the plot is more complex or dynamic than about any previous RPG I can think of. And there are definitely in-game cut-scenes using the sprites, even if they don't include much sprite animation, but I don't think FF Adventure had much of that either.
Bregalad wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:22 am
It's so sad this game turned out being a GB game instead of the 5-disk FDS game it was initially going to be !! Imagine that music with a nice triangle channel and a possible extra FDS channel. And the game in colour with much better resolution. For me the GB was always a terrible platform which nevertheless generated great games but that seems too much limited by the platform, especially in terms of animations. And the "Sword of Mana" remake, while great is too diferent for me to consider this being the same game.
I agree, on the other hand it turned out to enrichen the GB library with an outstanding action-RPG and giving birth to a fantastic series.
Bregalad wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:22 am
I had the bug happening on my GBC (channel #3 would suddently stop playing) but not my GBA.
Right, I think this bug was fixed in the GBA (though the GBA introduced other bugs instead). If you have a GBA or Game Boy Player that may also be an alternative to play this game.