Boundary Gate

[nat]

I've had this game sitting around for like a year now so I finally started it today. Can someone whose played this (GUTS I'm looking at you) give me some n00b pointers?

[GUTS]

I love this game.  It's fairly straight forward, although you'll have to do a lot of wandering around the first town before you can get all the way through it to the really cool stuff.  I wrote a review for it years ago that has some pointers I think, it's here-

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/review/R43115.html

Stick with it until you beat the first town, after that it's extremely linear and easy to figure out.

[runinruder]

A first-person RPG by Pack In Video?  That sounds like a dream combination to me.  It seems really cool; I like the serious style of the artwork that GUTS mentioned in his review.  I'll have to get this if I ever get around to buying a PC-FX. 

[nat]

Great review GUTS. I agree on almost all points so far. Yesterday I got the daughter to join my party and I made it to another area, some shady run-down town with dungeons underneath.

You know, the art the style is really serious for anime. It reminds me a lot of the art I love so much in Shape Shifter and Beyond Shadowgate. It has that hand-painted-then-digitized look. While I was playing yesterday I kept thinking that if ICOM had made a game for the PC-FX this is what it would have looked like.

I have a feeling I'll have a lot of fun with this one.

[GUTS]

The art is great, it's one of my favorite things about the game.  I love the western influence and the serious tone, it fits the dungeon crawler genre perfectly.  I need to play through it again but all I have is the PSX version which isn't as good, I sold my PC-FX a while back which was kind of a mistake, I really miss a few of the games like Boundary Gate.

[Keranu]

A first-person RPG by Pack In Video?  That sounds like a dream combination to me.

Hahaha, yes that screams Runin! 

[nat]

do you have/have you played Boundary Gate, Keranu? If not you need to get on that shit.

I found a couple links with screenshots from the game. The ones on the second page are of really low quality and don't do the art justice AT ALL. While the stills are very reminiscent of ICOM classics like Beyond Shadowgate, they look 100x better because they don't suffer the same 482 on-screen-color limitation as the Turbo games do. I think the PC-FX can do like 16.7 million colors on screen so the shots aren't dithered or grainy.

http://www.c-games.info/games,002,4613.html
http://www.ncsx.com/www/bndgate.htm

[Keranu]

Nah haven't played it, but always wanted to.

[Necromancer]

I think the PC-FX can do like 16.7 million colors on screen so the shots aren't dithered or grainy.

Wow, how can it do that when it can only display 153,600 pixels? - Just yanking your chain; I know what you meant. 

This game does indeed look very B.S.ish, which is definitely a good thing.  It's unfortunate that it lacks "huge eyed anime girls with boobs the size of their heads", but I still look forward to playing it..... someday.

[GUTS]

At one point I had planned on doing a comparison page on the two versions, but I didn't have any way of getting PCFX screen shots back then.  I do remember one annoying difference is that the PS version does something weird with the map, like you have to hit a button to show it, where on the PCFX version it's always shown in the bottom corner (I don't remember exactly, but it was something like that).  The graphics were also worse on the Playstation because they just texture mapped some blocky polygons for the floor and walls instead of each frame having a nice hand drawn look.

[nat]

Dude, a comparison would be sweet. There's not much information out there on this game, for either platform.

Hey GUTS, since you're always whining about selling off your PC-FX would you be interested in another one for like $30 + shipping? There's a small possibility I may be coming across some extras. Shit I'd even just trade straight up for that copy of Asuka 120% if you still have it. Although you'd still have to pay shipping on the FX since shipping an FX is probably a few bucks more than shipping a CD.

EDIT: Sweet, I got the extra decks although they didn't come as cheap as I had hoped. One doesn't work, but I'm going to see what I can do to remedy that.

[GUTS]

Yeah totally my nigga, I need another one bad.  I'll definitely include that Asuka 120% as part of the deal so I can get rid of it.

[runinruder]

I need to play through it again but all I have is the PSX version which isn't as good

The graphics were also worse on the Playstation because they just texture mapped some blocky polygons for the floor and walls instead of each frame having a nice hand drawn look.

Now I'm confused.  Your review says to get the Playstation version because it's better looking.   

[GUTS]

I like the PCFX version better now, back then I guess I thought the PSX version looked better.  What can I say, I'm inconsistent at best.

[nat]

It'll be a couple days before those PC-FXes actually get to me. I'll let you know when they show up and we can work something out.