Daria Reviews Wonder Project J [SNES]

[Daria]

Very good reviews of Little Ninja Brothers and Arabian Nights, I liked them.

Aww... thank you!

If Little Ninja Brothers wouldn't be so pricey in the meantime (cib) watching your review tempted me to pick it up.

Tell me about it, I just paid $90 for LNB CIB, and it was a *cheap* copy all things considered.

Too bad that Arabian Nights didn't turn out better. You showed the pros and cons very clearly. The unduly frequent random encounters in RPGs is a well-known problem even in fantastic ones like Skies of Arcadia for the DC. I asked myself why the programmers (although it is a homebrew) fell into this trap. Exaggerated encounters are frustrating at best if the gamer has a specific goal during a game session and are a big hurdle to identify with the storyline. Even for grind-loving animals like myself too frequent battles are just frustrating.

Arabian Nights wasn't a homebrew though, a legitimate commercial release in Japan, just fan translated. But I agree 100% about the random encounters, watching the video myself I was wondering why I didn't like the characters more. The clips I showed actually made them seem pretty likable but I'm wondering if that disconnect between the grind and the cutscenes was preventing me from getting into the story after all.

[lendelin]

Aww... thank you!

You're welcome. I like your videos because you provide great information and you try to explain the games. WHY is it good, WHY is ist bad or mediocre, and what are the gameplay elements. This is much more than the ubiquitous 'let's play'-videos with wannabe funny comments. After all, the questions what makes a very good game, how can we identify with a game through gameplay and story, and how a story can be PLAYED and not merely watched are questions which are very difficult to answer.

Tell me about it, I just paid $90 for LNB CIB, and it was a *cheap* copy all things considered.

Yep, the prices are just insane nowadays. Sometimes I can only shake my head about the prices for classic games today. For six years I didn't care at all about price development for older games, and my last NES and SUper NES games I bought around 8 years ago. In the last couple of months I looked the prices for a couple of NES, SNES and Genesis games up I thought about buying, and I was just amazed how expensive they are CIB in the meantime. I can tolerate some insane prices for specific games like Castlevania Dracula X or Mega Man X3 (the latter was already ten years ago $300), but overall and on average the prices are terrible even for mediocre games. I'm glad that I have all of the Mega Man and Castlevania games minty mint, but I would never pay 400 for a cib Castlevania Dracula X. That's not worth it.

My good guess is that on average the prices for NES, SNES and Genesis games tripled compared to 10-12 years ago. Closer looks at price charting. com confirmes that.

I don't pursue collecting agressively, but I should have bought some more NES and SNES games 10-15 years ago. The prices were much more reasonable. (Just noticed that this developed to a rant, I'm sorry. )

We both can be glad that we have all the PS1 RPGs we wanted, the prices for them doubled in the meantime also. Can you imagine to buy all of your PS1 RPGs today?

Arabian Nights wasn't a homebrew though, a legitimate commercial release in Japan, just fan translated. But I agree 100% about the random encounters, watching the video myself I was wondering why I didn't like the characters more. The clips I showed actually made them seem pretty likable but I'm wondering if that disconnect between the grind and the cutscenes was preventing me from getting into the story after all.

If it is a commercial release with fan translation I might buy it. Despite its flaws it looked nevertheless interesting and like you I loved Magic of Sheherazade for the NES. (talking about prices, I got a sealed one from ebay around 2002 for 7 bucks) Now here comes the Q of a very cheap player/collector: how much and where can I buy it?

[Daria]

We both can be glad that we have all the PS1 RPGs we wanted, the prices for them doubled in the meantime also. Can you imagine to buy all of your PS1 RPGs today?

I've managed to stay ahead of the spike on so many games, I don't have a huge collection compared to other collectors, but I seemed to have grabbed a lot of popular games early. I've always been a very frugal collector, so now that certain systems have gotten insane I focus on cheaper things - like PSP!

If it is a commercial release with fan translation I might buy it. Despite its flaws it looked nevertheless interesting and like you I loved Magic of Sheherazade for the NES. (talking about prices, I got a sealed one from ebay around 2002 for 7 bucks) Now here comes the Q of a very cheap player/collector: how much and where can I buy it?

Yeah I never want to do a review where I'm like: "This game is shit, never buy it!" I prefer to present the pros and cons so other people can make educated decisions about which games to play. Arabian Nights had some good points, I hope you get more fun from it than I did.

I also picked up a sealed Scheherazade in the early 2000s for super cheap (although I want to say it was more like $12 than $7) but regardless, cheap enough that I opened her up to play. (:

[lendelin]

I've managed to stay ahead of the spike on so many games, I don't have a huge collection compared to other collectors, but I seemed to have grabbed a lot of popular games early. I've always been a very frugal collector, so now that certain systems have gotten insane I focus on cheaper things - like PSP!

Very smart thing to do. I feel the same way.

When everyone runs after one thing, stop, look around and go in a different direction. Right now to start collecting for Turbografix or Super NES is terrible. Go instead for Xbox games, they are great and still cheap to get. In the next couple of years there will be 360 games and PS3 games offered very cheap. I bought in 2007 and 2008 tons of great and cheap games I wanted for the Xbox, 2 or 3 years after a systems death is the best time to collect for it. And there will be times when NES and Super NES won't be so high in demand.

The basic rule is to get these games when they are cheap and to be patient. (And once in a while buy some expensive stuff we just can't resist and REALLY want)

[Daria]

Sweet Home is (for lack of competition) the scariest game on the NES. It's also a fantastic RPG from Capcom

[lendelin]

Great review of Sweet Home! I wasn't aware of the game at all, probably because it was never released in the US; but thanks to your review I know now that it is a very important game for the history of the survival horror genre and for RPGs.

Too bad that it never came out in Europe or the US. (I assume you played a repro cart) This is a game which I'd like to play very much because these early 8bit games if done right show the raw gamelements of games today and remind us that the basics of games didn't change so much at all. The game surely paved the gameplay for a lot of survival horror games.

About the video: great editing (!!), I loved the way you compared the movie with the game and put game scenes side by side with scenes from the movie. The introduction is very well done because you showed which place the game has in game history and gave an insight in the survival horror genre (equals the incentive to watch the video); and like always you explained WHY this game is well done and it works, that means it accomplishes what it tries to do.

That's how a game review should be done! Great! (and not like these dumb and mindless reviews out there with wannabe funny babbling, screaming 'fuck' and 'bitch' all the time, and destroying games with a hammer while they don't explain a thing)

[Daria]

Great review of Sweet Home! I wasn't aware of the game at all, probably because it was never released in the US; but thanks to your review I know now that it is a very important game for the history of the survival horror genre and for RPGs.

Too bad that it never came out in Europe or the US. (I assume you played a repro cart) This is a game which I'd like to play very much because these early 8bit games if done right show the raw gamelements of games today and remind us that the basics of games didn't change so much at all. The game surely paved the gameplay for a lot of survival horror games.

About the video: great editing (!!), I loved the way you compared the movie with the game and put game scenes side by side with scenes from the movie. The introduction is very well done because you showed which place the game has in game history and gave an insight in the survival horror genre (equals the incentive to watch the video); and like always you explained WHY this game is well done and it works, that means it accomplishes what it tries to do.

That's how a game review should be done! Great! (and not like these dumb and mindless reviews out there with wannabe funny babbling, screaming 'fuck' and 'bitch' all the time, and destroying games with a hammer while they don't explain a thing)

Heh. While this is one of three games I do have reproduction carts for, I just emulated it. It's really convenient for capturing footage and I'm not at all squeamish when it comes to emulation. But thank you for the feedback. This video took so long to make I nearly threw in the towel more than once, but I'm really happy with how it turned out (some goofy pronunciation excluded). I like funny videos as much as anyone else, but I feel like there's a need for more analytical spin when it comes to RPGs. With the popularity of reproduction carts I keep seeing the same 15 games or so getting all the praise. And so many collectors are dead set against emulation I don't think they realize what's even out there.