What vaporware game are you most looking forward to?

[nodtveidt]

The original Exile had a lot of good dialogue but Exile II had a couple of "ruin spots" where they just dropped the ball, such as talking about how the cable was cut and no more MST3K. Little things like that diminished some of the seriousness of the game. Of course, couple that with the bugs list that's a mile long and it turned out feeling like a half-assed attempt at a sequel to a game that could never be properly sequelled in the first place. For the Lunar games...I never played the original Eternal Blue, but I did pick up a copy of the PSX remake...and owned it for 10 minutes before returning it to the store. The game was CRAP. Silver Star Story was decent, I liked the expansive storyline, but the game mechanics compared to the original was also crap and the game just felt like a constant drag that was very hard to enjoy.

Anyone ever play Vay? The humor in that one is actually pretty decent...of particular note are the talking horses and dogs ("Do you expect me to give you some vital information? I'm just a dog!") and the reference to karaoke singers...

[Black Tiger]

The original Exile had a lot of good dialogue but Exile II had a couple of "ruin spots" where they just dropped the ball, such as talking about how the cable was cut and no more MST3K. Little things like that diminished some of the seriousness of the game. Of course, couple that with the bugs list that's a mile long and it turned out feeling like a half-assed attempt at a sequel to a game that could never be properly sequelled in the first place. For the Lunar games...I never played the original Eternal Blue, but I did pick up a copy of the PSX remake...and owned it for 10 minutes before returning it to the store. The game was CRAP. Silver Star Story was decent, I liked the expansive storyline, but the game mechanics compared to the original was also crap and the game just felt like a constant drag that was very hard to enjoy.

Anyone ever play Vay? The humor in that one is actually pretty decent...of particular note are the talking horses and dogs ("Do you expect me to give you some vital information? I'm just a dog!") and the reference to karaoke singers...

I love Vay, it's a good plain RPG and it gets bonus points from me for having a Dragon Slayer style display. I also like all the hidden stuff and the rings(?) with effects. I remember that the last area's music reminded me of Thriller and thast the final boss music was all of a sudden crazy techno unlike anything in the game before.

Vay is all over the place, so any jokiness doesn't detract from the game. But WD actually added to the game's darkness. Even though I never got attached to the characters, that scene where someone gets killed was disturbing.

But Vay is another game where if WD didn't artificially increase the difficulty again, they should've at least fixed the few super long boss battles.

The Lunar EB remake should've just upgraded the graphics and cinemas and left it as-is. I hope that WD didn't add in the paying to save the game feature again with the PSX version? 

[ParanoiaDragon]

Well, for what it's worth, I do like the fact that WD did some reprogramming of the bg's in Exile 2, so that there was some depth to some of the levels.  The main one being the first levels clouds, which, in the Jp version, were totally static!

[Joe Redifer]

That "pay to save" in Lunar 2 never really bothered me, and I am a save whore.  I always had more than enough whatever-it-was that I had to pay, except maybe in the very beginning of the game.  I thought Lunar 1 was super-short, but pretty good.  I think Lunar 2 is a lot better if you've played through Lunar 1 first, and I played them back to back (followed by the ever-so-spectacular DS Lunar).  I have never played the PS or Saturn Lunars, but I would like to have the MPEG version along with the MPEG card for my Saturn.  Somebody send me an MPEG card NOW!

Did Victor Ireland and Bernie Stolar have a bad break-up from a sexual relationship or something?  I know they hated each other and that hatred was basically the reason Dragon Force II never came to the US.  How wrong are my facts?

[SignOfZeta]

WD left Sega after getting a shitty booth location at E3 or CES or wherever it was. It was some petty shit followed by petty shit. Both those guys are f*cking a$$holes and the US Saturn market could have been loads better if they were just...more cool.

Obviously Bernie could be blamed for DF2 %100 since he headed SoA at the time, and that is a Sega produced game in Japan. Even if WD wasn't interested, Sega should have been publishing the DF games themselves in the first place. Same with Sakura Wars, the rest of Shining Force, and supporting the RAM cart(s).

As long as this has turned into a WD thread, I'll just give my two cents. Vic is a puerile egotist and his crap company got what it deserved. Building a huge fan base around putting someone else's (usually) excellent product in a (way too) shiny box with English text is a piss poor situation. The more people complained about their idiotic "humor", and multi-year delays, the more idiotic the humor got, and the games were even later eventually leaving us with a situation where...it was almost like WD was holding Lunar for ransom, and the ransom was that they had to listen to their retarded jokes. Like...Vogon poetry...

Atlus is everything people thought WD was (ie: niche gaming saviour) . They translate the game, do it on a regular schedule, and get the f*ck out of the way. Would Summon Night be cooler with stupid fold up paper people, or a crap puppet? No. It wouldn't. I like a good LE as much as the next guy, but really WD's LEs weren't that great most of the time, and even when the stuff turned out cool (the pendant from Lunar 2) they pack in a half dozen other stupid-ass things like paper people or "hilarious" audio bloopers from stupid English voice actors I didn't want to hear in the first place.

[GUTS]

Atlus has always been pretty cool, but that f*cking douchebag that works for them Vyerslives or whatever on their message board has soured me on the company.  He's a total ass f*ck prick to everyone who doesn't worship their company, I stopped visiting their forums after reading some super un-professional posts by the guy.  If anyone from Microsoft or some other company pulled that shit they'd be fired in a second, but Atlus lets him get away with it for some reason.  As a result all the regulars there think they have free reign to be total cock suckers too.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I used to talk to one of the Shirley Bros. every so often, & whichever one it was, he was really cool.  We'd talk for a an hour about different games for the Turbo, & what they were looking forward to, & what they were planning on doing, etc.  Those were good times.

[Black Tiger]

Well, for what it's worth, I do like the fact that WD did some reprogramming of the bg's in Exile 2, so that there was some depth to some of the levels.  The main one being the first levels clouds, which, in the Jp version, were totally static!

If that's true, then that's awesome. I'd still wonder if WD really did it from scratch or if it was something leftover from the developer like the changes to Magical Chase.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I'm not sure if they did it from scratch, but it sounded like they did.  But I have both versions, & they deffinitly improved the graphics some for their release.

[Joe Redifer]

Adding scrolling to a section of the BG isn't hard to do.  They did it for Popful Mail as well.

Update:  Found a masturbation joke in Magic Knight Rayearth.  Was rolling on the floor laughing for 2 straight hours.  Those WD guys are just TOO witty!

[esteban]

Adding scrolling to a section of the BG isn't hard to do.  They did it for Popful Mail as well.

If I understand the technical issues correctly, adding parallax to a pce game is much more involved than doing the same for Genny, Sega CD, etc. because the pce parallax was achieved by coding since the hardware didn't support extra planes like Genny and company...

That said, I don't think that adding parallax in Exile 2 was God's gift (via WD) to tg-16 fans, though the gesture was nice.

[Joe Redifer]

Since I PWN Exile 2, I'll have to play it to see these highly coveted background scrolling sequences.  Then I will decide how much work WD did.  If it isn't much, I will want a partial refund for the game since I bought it brand new at release and have PWND it ever since.

[nodtveidt]

Highly coveted? They're really nothing special. I bought it brand new as well and never thought twice about whether it had parallax or not.

[Joe Redifer]

Same here, though it has been awhile... a very loooong while since I have played it.  I can still remember the opening voice, though... "SSssssssssssaaaaadlerrrrr.  I have come from afar..... to sspeed you to your... desssssstiny!"

[ParanoiaDragon]

I didn't say it was highly coveted, I just think it was cool that they did it