The 16-Bit Generation (SNES, Genesis, TurboGrafx, maybe more)

[X Prime]

I can name virtually every SNES-era or esque JRPG under the cosmos, with a handful of exceptions.

And you know what?

The people who are negative about them are more or less right. Many of them are crap with stupid grindy bullshit to pad playtime.

A lot of them do recycle the same general plots. Not because of the RPG part, but because of the "J" part. The simple reality is that the Japanese are very good at spectacle, but tend to fall into the same writing conventions. Once you've seen about a half dozen shonen anime plots you've seen them all, for example. So, what distinguishes a given JRPG from another JRPG is how they dress up those conventions.

Someone earlier pointed out how things seemed to get worse around the PS1 era. I wouldn't go that far, but I understand the basic sentiment. My argument is that things would get worse over time because the people growing up now all watched the same anime, tokusatsu shows, and so on. As a result, what happened is that a lot of the way to dress those same writing conventions up no longer became surprising. In other words, the spectacle became rote.

For example, what makes Phantasy Star interesting amongst its contemporaries? Reality is, it's got pretty similar story beats to every other JRPG out there. Numans are no different from Japanese elves, down to the Deedlit ears. What made it stood out were the science fiction trappings. Try that now, and it's just not as interesting.

This, I hasten to add, is not to say Western RPG developers are any better. Probably because they too have by now grown up on the same anime and so on.

 

[skykiii]

This, I hasten to add, is not to say Western RPG developers are any better. Probably because they too have by now grown up on the same anime and so on.

And really, its not like western storytelling traditions don't have a lot of blatant copycats.

Hell you could argue the RPG genre as a whole started off as blatant copy-cattery. Gygax and Arneson were by their own admission wanting to roleplay scenarios similar to the fantasy novels they loved (despite rumors, Gygax was not a huge Tolkien fan. Arneson, however, was... and so was a lot of D&D's early fanbase). So almost by design D&D led to a lot of "Middle-earth with the serial numbers filed off" type creations.

And when you go and actually read a lot of Gygax's own inspirations (he actually gives a recommended reading list in one of the 1st Ed AD&D books) a lot of the stuff he recommends is formulaic garbage with perhaps one or two interesting ideas. These days I tend to find the anime I like best are ones I have nostalgia for... I tend to feel like a similar thing is true for stuff like the works of Fritz Leiber or Andre Norton: I can't imagine enjoying these as an adult without the benefit of childhood/teenage nostalgia.

At least Tolkien is genuinely good and stands the test of time.

Essentially, the minute art becomes an industry and/or gets corporatized, the majority of it becomes unoriginal samey drivel. Unfortunately the drivel tends to obscure anything genuinely good, largely because of younger people seeing Jojo or whatever for the first time and thinking its the hottest shit and now it dominates all anime discussion, and you just wish they'd shut up so you could find genuine diamonds in the rough.

..... Getting back to RPGs, honestly while JRPGs can be tedious, I've had decidedly more mixed reactions to Western RPGs. During the MS-DOS era there were a lot of good ones, but by the mid-1990s there started being a problem of them being "too complicated for their own good" as I like to call it, and often it wasn't even justified. For example RPGs where character creation had you putting points in like 100 different skills.... and then you play the game and find that 90 of those skills are never actually used in these games.

I especially always hated weapon proficiency systems. Because you want it to feel good when you find a weapon that is better than your current one, but with weapon proficiency, what happens is you find a +2 Halberd, but because of your stats its actually worse than a Longsword you've been using since two dungeons ago.

Basically, skill systems work in pen n' paper, but in an electronic RPG they're basically beginners traps waiting to happen.

And then there's western RPGs that just make weird design choices. I could never get into Baldur's Gate for example because for some reason it controlled like a Real Time Strategy game when its supposed to be an RPG, and this had an odd way of making me feel disconnected from the action. Say what you will, but if you took all the story text and remade Baldur's Gate in something like RPG Maker, that alone would make it far more engaging.

Also, I kinda didn't like when franchises would start forcing the use of the mouse. Ultima 4 and 5 for example played just fine being completely keyboard-driven, but then I absolutely hated Ultima 6 and 7's interfaces. Remake those games but with Utlima V's engine (or a close approximation) and we have a deal.

Also it must be said.... anime-style art used to be attractive. I remember even before anime became big in the west I found a lot of western-style artwork kinda unappealing. I recall avoiding Wizardry Gold because I didn't like its box art, for example. (Not that JRPG box art is exactly good either, especially since Japan pioneered the idea of "lets just put a bunch of generic anime people on the cover and call it a day." At least westerners try to be a bit expressive).

Wow, that was probably more spergery than you ever wanted to read about RPGs. I sleep now.

 

[X Prime]

I'm willing to say it: a lot of the reason anime art used to be attractive is you used to be able to find variations on it.

It more or less looks nearly the same now across franchises, unless I am imagining it and am just being jaded. I personally blame a similar kind of corporatization that zeroed in on what kind of cartoon women most Japanese consumers like. Pity it seems to be oddly childlike women on average.

 

[Captain Manning]

For example, what makes Phantasy Star interesting amongst its contemporaries? Reality is, it's got pretty similar story beats to every other JRPG out there. Numans are no different from Japanese elves, down to the Deedlit ears. What made it stood out were the science fiction trappings. Try that now, and it's just not as interesting.

Actually, I think the Phantasy Star games tried a couple of different interesting things beyond the sci-fi trappings. In a few respects, I find them more interesting than the Dragon Quests and Final Fantasies.

Phantasy Star II would have been a much beloved game if they weren't hemmed in by a six month development period. You do see a few flashes of brilliance in that one.

For example, there's a story beat in the game where afterwards the entire bestiary changes from biomonsters to mechanoids. They achieved a level of synergy between the story and gameplay that few of its contemporaries could be arsed to implement.

Timestamped:

Nei dying seems really silly and cliche now, but at the time it was quite shocking.

There's also the twist cliff-hanging ending (that Sega never revisited)

The end product was a neat concept rushed to the point where it's rife with missed opportunities and flaws.

III is REALLY interesting, because even though it's the worst entry in the classic series by far (for MANY reasons I won't go into here), it did introduce a interesting generational mechanic that had potential.

I think when it comes to classic 8 and 16 bit JRPGs, it's one of those "you had to be there" sort of things. I certainly wouldn't recommend any young person go out of their way to play them now, but some of them were viewed as kinda novel and fascinating when they first came out. Some were very cookie-cutter, while others took some chances (with varying degrees of success).

 

[std::string]

There's also the twist cliff-hanging ending (that Sega never revisited)

It was awesome though even though if it was fairly nonsensical.

 

[Captain Manning]

It was awesome though even though if it was fairly nonsensical.

I think they were gonna go somewhere with it, but like... didn't.

III was a weird side story by a B team, and IV felt almost like Sega just wanted another RPG. IV was the best one from a gameplay perspective, and the artwork was good, but the story was cookie cutter as shit. I feel like the whole potential of the series was never truly realized. Then Sega saw MMOs blow up, and they pilfered concepts from PS for PSO, and that was the end of that.

I think @X Prime is right that if they tried to do another traditional Phantasy Star today (not an MMO) people would be like "meh." The whole sci-fi/fantasy mix was novel then, but not anymore. Everybody and their cousin has done it now. Too much time has passed.

 

[std::string]

III was a weird side story by a B team, and IV felt almost like Sega just wanted another RPG. IV was the best one from a gameplay perspective, and the artwork was good, but the story was cookie cutter as shit. I feel like the whole potential of the series was never truly realized. Then Sega saw MMOs blow up, and they pilfered concepts from PS for PSO, and that was the end of that.

The timeline is a whole fucking mess because III is the last of the series chronologically. Sega probably should have forgot it existed.

 

[ChefKiss]

16 bit JRPGs actually had interesting characters
16 bit JRPG party: A frog, a mech, old guy on his 7th war, a dragon, a miniature planet, some ewok looking motherfucker, muscular cavewoman, Elemental spirit
Modern JRPG party: A handful of boyband looking motherfuckers, every single character is human or a race that looks 99% human but has elf ears or something

I blame furries really

 

[Colon capital V]

Not really about 16-bit systems, but kinda is in regards to GBA ports.

Why was the music of GBA ports of SNES games so fucking botched? I understand the GBA didn't have like, a dedicated audio cpu or whatever so that playback of audio from games came out a lot more static-y and shitty than it was meant to be.
But it wasn't just that the music came out shitty, but it played like shit that wasn't how it sounded like from the original SNES release.

The most egregious example of this is the Mother 1+2 port of Earthbound Beginnings/Earthbound on the GBA.
Just listen to the fucking opening theme when you first start up Mother 2:

That is NOT how it originally sounded on the SNES, literally what the fuck is this?
For reference, THIS is what it's meant to sound like:

Other problems include instruments sounding off-pitch, the key and octaves in which they played at are immensely different from how they sounded in the original. At times this may work like this track when you battle against some Starmen and Robotics:

But other times, you have this track when you battle against a weak opponent:

And like I said it's not just Mother 1+2, it's other SNES games that got ported with their soundtracks pretty botched too like SMW, DKC, Yoshi's Island and a few others.

Oh but don't even get me started on porting Sonic 1's soundtrack to the GBA system:

 

[Two Dollars]

This thread reminded me to get off my ass to grab the ROM's of the 16 Bit stuff I grew up on.

Super Mario All-Stars is just as good as I remember it. Five seconds into the main menu and I'm right back on my grandma's couch, wide eyed and ready to rock with my controller.

Too many comments to reply to everything, but I’ll say that even though I still go back and play both SNES and Genesis somewhat often, Mario All Stars is the only game that can make me feel like that guy from Ratatouille as soon as I hear the title screen. It helps that this was how I first experienced any of the NES Mario games.
If I had to choose between the two systems, I’d definitely take SNES. Don’t get me wrong, I like Ristar, Columns, Streets of Rage, Gain Ground, Vectorman, and so on, but there just aren’t many Genesis games that I love besides Sonic.

Also, it’s criminal that one of the best songs on the SNES is an unused track from a Flintstones game. Maybe an over exaggeration, but still a great song:

Oh but don't even get me started on porting Sonic 1's soundtrack to the GBA system:

That one’s entirely on Sega being lazy; future Sonic Mania dev Stealth even made his own (partial) GBA port as a proof of concept just to show it could have been done if Sega didn’t half-ass it. The sound is a little fuzzy and the screen is zoomed in enough to make Super Mario Bros. Deluxe blush, but it shows that it was certainly possible.

 

[Polarity]

16 bit JRPGs actually had interesting characters
16 bit JRPG party: A frog, a mech, old guy on his 7th war, a dragon, a miniature planet, some ewok looking motherfucker, muscular cavewoman, Elemental spirit
Modern JRPG party: A handful of boyband looking motherfuckers, every single character is human or a race that looks 99% human but has elf ears or something

I blame furries really

Wait what game had a miniature planet character?

 

[X Prime]

16 bit JRPGs actually had interesting characters
16 bit JRPG party: A frog, a mech, old guy on his 7th war, a dragon, a miniature planet, some ewok looking motherfucker, muscular cavewoman, Elemental spirit
Modern JRPG party: A handful of boyband looking motherfuckers, every single character is human or a race that looks 99% human but has elf ears or something

I blame furries really

I would actually blame coomers and the kind of people who need "representation."

Which are, admittedly, some of the same people.

Can't coom to an old guy on his 7th war.

 

[Stasi]

Phantasy Star III is a good game, fuck all you uncultured niggers.

 

[NoonmanR]

Not really about 16-bit systems, but kinda is in regards to GBA ports.

Why was the music of GBA ports of SNES games so fucking botched? I understand the GBA didn't have like, a dedicated audio cpu or whatever so that playback of audio from games came out a lot more static-y and shitty than it was meant to be.
But it wasn't just that the music came out shitty, but it played like shit that wasn't how it sounded like from the original SNES release.

You think thats bad? try seeing what happens when they put a PS1 sound track onto the fucking thing

which itself was already a downgrade of the Saturn could do:

Thank you, victor ireland and, bernie stolar.
Anyways, some cases it's laziness, but the fact of the mattet is the GBA was really, REALLY not a "portable SNES", nor could it truly rise to task of being such. The soundtracks that sound any way decent are those that can competently utilize the GB/GBC hardware in it's songs instead of trying to shoehorn in horifically compressed samples or shitty PCM audio(al la the sonic spinball port that took up most of the cartridge space):

It COULD be done, stealths sonic 1 romhack proves as much. Question is how viable is that on like a 16-32megabit cartridge

 

[modern horrors]

Here are some cool Genesis games:

-The Ooze. Top-down action game, unique in a way that you're controlling a puddle of green slime. You can die only if the skull in the center of it is attacked directly, other attacks just make the puddle smaller or cut chunks of it off. You attack either by spitting or lashing out with a tendril. Gets very difficult at the end. Made by the same people that did Comix Zone, so the music is very similar and a few sound effects are outright reused between the two games.

-The Lost World: Jurassic Park. You've got several huge hub maps that you progress through by doing various missions. All hubs and most missions are top-down run 'n gun but some missions use different perspective like first person 3D-ish bike riding. You're supposed to use non-lethal shit like darts/gas against dinos to receive supply air drops (you can get them even if you're in a cave), but you can just shoot them when they get too annoying. This game came out very late in Genesis life cycle and I think that's why it got overlooked.

-Red Zone. It's like Urban Strike but with better music (by Jesper Kyd) and worse perspective (top-down instead of isometric, severely limiting the view). It's more of a tech demo than anything because the devs are all Amiga demo scene people. They would later form IO Interactive and make the Hitman series.

And how come no one mentioned Zombies Ate My Neighbors? It's on both SNES and Genesis and it's great.

 

[Colon capital V]

Not a Genesis person but damn I really oughta play Crusader of Centy some day. Legit looks like a great Zelda clone for the system.

 

[std::string]

Not a Genesis person but damn I really oughta play Crusader of Centy some day. Legit looks like a great Zelda clone for the system.

There's also Beyond Oasis and Landstalker.

All those games were really fucking good Zelda clones.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

Why was the music of GBA ports of SNES games so fucking botched? I understand the GBA didn't have like, a dedicated audio cpu or whatever so that playback of audio from games came out a lot more static-y and shitty than it was meant to be.

The lower the sample rate the more CPU resources became available for other things. There were some demoscene guys that made a seriously impressive music engine that used very little resources and offered it up for licensing but I don't think anyone dared taking them up on it since they weren't a licensed developer and they used a hacked together devkit.

And anyone that like Advance Wars should play the first Front Mission, the translation patch was complete jank 15% of the time but it was a fun game.

 

[Girl Named Sandoz]

And anyone that like Advance Wars should play the first Front Mission, the translation patch was complete jank 15% of the time but it was a fun game.

a new patch actually just came out that seems to fix most of it
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6797/

i put it on my snes earlier but i haven't tried it out yet

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

a new patch actually just came out that seems to fix most of it
https://www.romhacking.net/translations/6797/

i put it on my snes earlier but i haven't tried it out yet

Jeez, that's two days old, good find! When I played it there were some sections(mostly late game) that were half-translated.