Homebrews with female characters

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Bregalad
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Bregalad »

DRW wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 3:53 pm "Final Fantasy II":

Looks like the plot is relatively complex. It's a pity that it's a turn-based RPG and not an action adventure, otherwise, it might have been something for me.
To be honnest, while FF2's story line was complex by 1988 standards, seen from today it's lame and uninteresting. You're a bunch of rebels fighting an "evil empire" and your 4th character dies regularly until Leonheart finally joins the party - which is not a big surprise since you had to name him in the begining.

They introduced character deaths in plots, but since the characters are totally non-developped in the game (they might be in the manual I don't know), it's hard to have any feeling for them, unlike what will happen in later FF games. Also the way the characters dies is usually pathetic to say the least, not like what will happen in later FF games where your character actually dies in heroism.

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. It goes to the point where I suspect they made the plot with characters dying because their game engine in the overfilled 256kb ROM didn't support them walking arround, jumping, opening doors or whather woud be a "normal" animation for a cutscene, it only supported removing sprites from the screen.
For additional effect, couple the scenes with the following songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wKlnEb-ZEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGkQLzRuh08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKtMph0MkfM

Then you might understand why "Oh no, I lost the Pokémon championship. Well, fair enough. Guess you're the winner now" or "Help. A single, unmoving pirate sprite has been standing in the same spot forever. Please defeat them in a duel and make them go away" cannot hold a candle to FFA's story.
Indeed, Final Fantasy Adventure has a very good soundtrack ! That I remembered well, the story less. But looking at the longplay it seems you are indeed right, the story seems developed by 8-bit standards ! That being said I play the games in German and French so it was most probably ruined by the awful translations in both cases. That's why I didn't care all that much when I played through the game.

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.
DRW wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 9:33 pm Shouldn't you at least check out the game yourself for 10 minutes before you decide that you don't want to experience it in the authentic way the developers intended, but that your experience shall be based on the way some random person on the internet modified the ROM file?
Definitely. Exept for bugfix hacks who doesn't have any side-effects, you should probably never play a romhack before playing the original.
Pokun wrote: Sat Nov 28, 2020 2:03 pm BTW if you play this game, make sure to not play on a GBC or GBA, as I think it's one of the games affected by an APU bug in those systems. The title screen music is one of my top favorite BGMs in any game, and this BGM is affected by the bug.
I had the bug happening on my GBC (channel #3 would suddently stop playing) but not my GBA.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by DRW »

Bregalad wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:22 am To be honnest, while FF2's story line was complex by 1988 standards, seen from today it's lame and uninteresting.
Well, I don't judge story by today's standards, simply by "Final Fantasy Adventure" standards.

Bregalad wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:22 am That I remembered well, the story less. But looking at the longplay it seems you are indeed right, the story seems developed by 8-bit standards ! That being said I play the games in German and French so it was most probably ruined by the awful translations in both cases. That's why I didn't care all that much when I played through the game.
When I played it, it was in German as well. In my opinion, the German translation isn't anymore awful than the English one.

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 !!
I would have preferred an actual NES cartridge game. If it had come out on five FDS disks, who knows if we had ever gotten it in the west. (For a Famicom-only cart game, you have at least the chance to get it as a ROM hack.)

However, judging by their mockup screenshots, the game wouldn't have been the same as it is now:
www.unseen64.net/2008/04/14/secret-of-mana-nes

So, it looks like they didn't take their FDS game and converted it to the Game Boy. But they simply used the already registered trademark name and built a new game around it. So, the FDS game wouldn't have been "Final Fantasy Adventure GB - The NES Version", but something completely different. And FFA either wouldn't have been developed at all or it would have had a different name.


Oh, wait. No, I was wrong. According to our top game developer Alp, the Game Boy game is a direct port and was even finished:
Alp wrote: Mon Apr 04, 2016 4:30 pm
DRW wrote:It wasn't "ported". Since the Famicom game was probably never started at all, the Game Boy game shares nothing but the name and is therefore a completely different game than what the Famicom version would have become.
On the contrary, the Famicom game was completely finished, but, due to cost and timing (late FDS), it was shelved. The games share both the story, and overall game mechanics.
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 15#p167685

He can even quote a source:
Alp wrote: Tue Apr 05, 2016 3:39 pm
DRW wrote:Do you have any source for that?
Well, I did a few months ago, but I can't seem to locate it, at the moment. The source is from a Japanese website that was bookmarked on my previous computer, not this new one.

I had made a public post about it, after those "Did You Know" clowns omitted the facts about the game's existence. Many laughs were had.
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 30#p167747

So, maybe we will unearth it one day.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Bregalad »

Well, I don't judge story by today's standards, simply by "Final Fantasy Adventure" standards.
OK so FF2 is probably simplest because it came first. The very idea to have "complex" storylines in games was an old idea of Hirobonu Sakugachi and he progressively introduced it in Final Fantasy games as technology allowed to come closer to the idea he originally had.
When I played it, it was in German as well. In my opinion, the German translation isn't anymore awful than the English one.
The french version is entierely in all caps and is basically shit to a whole new level that people complaining about bad English translation can't even imagine. The German version might be better but my German is lacking. Both are based on the already lacking English translation rather than the japanese original.
DRW wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 3:59 am I would have preferred an actual NES cartridge game.
That's true, but it wasn't planned at Square. And yes, FFA was the first Squaresoft RPG ever brought to Europe. (Rad Racer came before but isn't a RPG)
However, judging by their mockup screenshots, the game wouldn't have been the same as it is now:
www.unseen64.net/2008/04/14/secret-of-mana-nes
Amazing material ! Thanks for sharing.

Apparently both versions co-exist that Seiken Densetsu/FFTA was a FDS game latter ported to the GB and that it is a completely different game - and both exist that the FDS game was just a mere project or that it is finished. If it was finished, I hope a prototype will eventually be found that'd be amazing !!
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by DRW »

Bregalad wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 4:21 am Apparently both versions co-exist that Seiken Densetsu/FFTA was a FDS game latter ported to the GB and that it is a completely different game - and both exist that the FDS game was just a mere project or that it is finished. If it was finished, I hope a prototype will eventually be found that'd be amazing !!
I guess you didn't catch the sarcasm: The idea that the Game Boy game is a port and that the corresponding FDS game was completely finished is a bullshit claim made by our local forum Münchhausen Alp.

You know, the guy who programmed a dozen games in record time and made much more complex games than "Super Mario Bros.", but still had them fit on an NROM cartridge, but nobody has ever seen anything but still screenshots:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 88#p248406 (and the following posts)

That statement literally appears nowhere else. Even the developers say the FDS version was never even started and was supposed to be an unrelated game from FFA:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 30#p235151

But wait, Alp provided a source. The source for his "Seiken Densetsu" claim: A copy of a Japanese website on his old laptop that he can't find anymore. :lol:
(Remember when he couldn't publish his "Tower of Algol" game because he lost the source code? Yeah, seems like he loses files on a regular basis.)
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Bregalad »

DRW wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 4:33 am I guess you didn't catch the sarcasm: The idea that the Game Boy game is a port and that the corresponding FDS game was completely finished is a bullshit claim made by our local forum Münchhausen Alp.
Oh indeed I didn't. I'm not regularly following liars on various forums sorry for that.

And the screenshots you linked to, are they genuine ? It looks like the sprites would be very large for NES standards (probably 32x24 ?) and use no black outlines, which is not something Squaresoft did at no point in their history. Even their very early King's Knight already used the typical 16x16 sprites with black outlines who would be typical of Square's drawing style for the next 10 years.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Pokun »

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. :P

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.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

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DRW wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 4:33 am I guess you didn't catch the sarcasm: The idea that the Game Boy game is a port and that the corresponding FDS game was completely finished is a bullshit claim made by our local forum Münchhausen Alp.

You know, the guy who programmed a dozen games in record time and made much more complex games than "Super Mario Bros.", but still had them fit on an NROM cartridge, but nobody has ever seen anything but still screenshots:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 88#p248406 (and the following posts)

That statement literally appears nowhere else. Even the developers say the FDS version was never even started and was supposed to be an unrelated game from FFA:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php? ... 30#p235151

But wait, Alp provided a source. The source for his "Seiken Densetsu" claim: A copy of a Japanese website on his old laptop that he can't find anymore. :lol:
(Remember when he couldn't publish his "Tower of Algol" game because he lost the source code? Yeah, seems like he loses files on a regular basis.)
Why does Alp's profile pic look familiar?

It's like I've seen them on YouTube before...

I think on YouTube, they made the claim that making NES games in ASM was easy as soon as you 'get used' to NES ASM.

EDIT: Just found out they are IceLink256.
Pokun wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:02 pm 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. :P
I'm the kind of person who would prefer games with dungeons to have a map of those dungeons. Imagine playing the game on the go(exactly the way the Game Boy was intended to be played), and yet having to draw a map on paper while playing the game on, say, the train, or in the park, or in passenger seat of a car.
Pokun wrote: Sun Nov 29, 2020 1:02 pm 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.
I have both SCART and composite cables for the SNES. I have a stereo RCA to 3.5 mm male headphone adapter, but I don't know if the wireless headphones I have's headphone jack is input or output(the latter is a stupid idea, but it's possible). And for the former, I'd be limited in how far I can physically be from my SNES.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by tepples »

A few years later, this video game history topic came up again in another space, with a few hints as to how this situation came to be, particularly prior to Tomb Raider.

In a somewhat private Discord server ostensibly about the Mega Drive console, I made a joke about Sega's 1985 rail shooter Space Harrier not having a female protagonist because the world wasn't yet ready for Space Harriet. This led to a productive discussion about a batch of female action game protagonists popping up suddenly in 1986-1987, possibly under the influence of manga, anime, and light novels of the time, such as Urusei Yatsura and Dirty Pair and Magical Princess Minky Momo. They agreed that Athena was a crap game, and one of them pointed out that Layla showed obvious inspiration from Dirty Pair.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Gilbert »

tepples wrote: Sat May 07, 2022 8:00 pm Space Harrier
Just play Attack Animal Gakuen.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by tepples »

This game history article popped up recently in Pocket:

Van Mai (born Van Tran) is a Vietnam War refugee who in 1982 developed Wabbit for Atari 2600 for the short-lived studio Apollo. The game is described in an article by Kevin Bunch and Kate Willaert as "the first console game to star a human girl", named Billie Sue in the manual.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by Pokun »

Interesting historical find! "First console game with a named playable female character who isn't off-screen."
Billie Sue for Smash Bros, or something.
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Re: Homebrews with female characters

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

Eyra, the Crow Maiden is one such game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdVmq7xBVmE
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