http://muckfry.ytmnd.com/

I think both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are available on PSN for $9.99 each btw

I played Chrono Trigger a few years ago and I felt it was a decent RPG but not as great as everyone raves it to be. I can't help but feel that the difference in reverence was because I did not previously play it as a child. Made me wonder if several other games I love today is only due to the fact that I loved them many years ago. As if the scenario was that if I had never played them prior to that, I would find them just OK at best with my modern tastes. Which is probably why the FF series sustains today despite poorly reviewed titles and newcomers to the series have a difficult time understanding the appeal and breaking into the series. I wonder if a large portion of it's fan demographic is purely anchored in nostalgia. And if that is true, it is extremely wise for Yoshi-P to be playing up that card in XIV's remake. Although, I still feel removing areas of the game such as classes would have had a better impact as to that.

Cool thanks Kayne.



I believe a lot of games are like that. It's the nostalgia that makes them remain good. I played Chrono Trigger a lot as a kid, so I really enjoy it still. The music in Chrono Trigger is amazing. Also New Game + and the variety of different endings give it a lot of replay value.

This thread is making me want to go back and play a lot of the good Squaresoft games. You know....that company Squaresoft that actually made good RPGs.

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I think New Game + was a huge part of it.

Also, the whole land of Zeal completely blew me out of the water. The first time I went up to the floating islands, and that awesome music started playing. Damn! That was always my favorite part of that game. Just wandering around on that floating island, and the academies, listening to the great music.

Schala's Theme

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There are lots of reasons this happens. Nostalgia makes up for the fact that these games do not age mechanically. Sure as far as 2D sprites go many games in the SNES era are still pretty gorgeous today, but that's only a piece of the puzzle.

It's an earlier time where stories were simplistic and cheesy instead of deep and involved. Game mechanics were often complex and convoluted instead of accessible and streamlined. Controls were often frustrating due to lack of buttons or any decent in-game tutorials. Games were usually incredibly short but hair-pullingly difficult. But none of it really mattered, because at the time where video gaming was in it's infancy, this stuff was still mind-blowingly ground-breaking.

If you do not have nostalgia to cover up all these flaws, they are extremely off-putting. You won't have as much fun as you should, and your opinion of the game tends to get soured as a result. There are some games that don't have this problem and are still extremely playable today, but the majority aren't. And when it comes to RPGs, the story is king, but that's the area that has fallen most behind.

Then there's the fact that, as a kid, you kinda didn't really care even if a game was just mediocre. I dunno about other people, but when I was a kid you maybe got 2-3 new games a year: one at Christmas, one at birthday, and then maybe some other if you were good. So when you played a game, you played the shit out of it for MONTHS, even if it wasn't really designed to be all that replayable. I recall playing all the way through Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a game you could beat in 45 minutes, probably literally a hundred times over the span of a couple years.

Occasionally I'll see a game mentioned on the internet, and people will absolutely lambast the game as being terrible, like Shaq-fu. I played Shaq-fu, I think my cousin rented it, and I don't recall not liking it. I don't remember anything good about the game either, but I don't recall thinking the game was bad. I'm certain it was terrible, but as a kid I simply didn't notice or care.

So nostalgia is pretty powerful, but I think it's mostly fuelled by the fact that you were once a kid and were lovingly accepting of all games and their flaws, and now you're a picky old fart that actually cares what they waste their time doing.

P.S.: Chrono Trigger still wins bonus points for still being one of the only RPGs to ever put a decent effort into a time travel mechanic/story that spans over multiple entire eras. Covering all the way from prehistoric all the way to the future while still tying it all together coherently.

What the he---oh it's kayne.

I recommend the DS version of chrono trigger if you're gonna replay it. new dungeon/alt final boss, portable... and you can pirate it if you're a cheapass. Most compelling is the way it makes it easier to get all the endings, since it tracks each ending after you unlock it.

And as for bad games you still played the shit out of... let me just say... I owned a 3DO. I think the only genuinely classic game that I owned was "Star Control 2: Ur-quan Masters" And don't get me wrong I put hundreds of hours into it, but I also put 40-100 hours in games most would consider merely passable like Crash n' burn, Slayer, Samurai Showdown and Guardian War. Crash n' Burn in particular was a "bad" game that I simply loved, despite its ass graphics and fairly shallow gameplay.

And even irredeemably bad games like Way of the Warrior got some play time. Although I admit I never liked the point and click adventure games as a kid so Hell and Dragon lore mostly collected dust.

k, that acapella one was pretty impressive. I'll be honest.

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yeah that guy is amazing, e.g.:

That's the first one I saw Kayne... so good.... and yeah he's awesome... i listened to everything the other night. I love how he fucks around in frames where he isn't actively singing or whatever you wanna call it.


His Zelda covers are gonna make Klu go from 6 to midnight.

Kayne... you just ruined my childhood..

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Holy shit that guy is amazing.

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I'm super late to this discussion, but I didn't have too much trouble with FF4 DS aside from a few places where I didn't know where to go, which probably got me over leveled from wandering around.

Chrono Trigger I played on the DS and got all of the endings. I agree the way it handled the time travel was very well done, but also agree with Kio that it isn't as special as some people make it out to be. Ridere is correct that NG+ had a big impact on it though.

Also reading this makes me want to play FF6, is that on PSN yet and if so is that the version I should play or should I emulate and be uncomfortable instead of on the couch?

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[In Yarr we trust.]

I think PSN has PSone version of FF6 for 10 bucks. So thats a pretty good option. I'm not sure of what if any changes from the original.

I do know the GBA version has worse sounds but a generally better translation.

No no no no, don't buy the PS1 version of either FF4, FF5, or FF6.

The load times are absolutely abysmal. Moving between areas? 5-10 seconds of loading. Enter a battle? 5-10 seconds of loading. End the battle? 5-10 seconds of loading. Want to open your party/equip/etc menu? Yep, you guessed it, 5-10 seconds of loading, and then again when you close it. It's unbearable considering the original SNES version has absolutely zero loading whatsoever. Running the PS1 version on a PS3 doesn't really help it much either, because it's still just emulating a PS1.

Why the difference? Well, as I understand it, it's because the PS1 only had 2MB of system RAM, and despite being small games, it wasn't possible to load the entire SNES ROM into memory at once. Splitting the game up into logical sections (like Disc 1, Disc 2, etc) wasn't feasible for a port (especially with so many reused assets throughout the whole game), so instead the games were split up into "field mode", "battle mode" and "menu mode". This was easy because internally that's how the game is structured anyway. Each time you switch between one of these modes, the PS1 basically had to reload the game again. While technically the SNES had to do the same thing, reading from a ROM is almost like an extension of the system RAM, and loads near-instantly compared to reading from a CD.

GBA versions are good if you're looking for something handheld, true to the original, but slightly better polished. The music isn't quite as good due to the GBA sound but if you're playing for the first time you'd never even notice. If you're gonna play on an emulator, you can patch the GBA versions to have the SNES quality music (I think I mentioned this elsewhere in the thread) making it the best option. Don't forget the original DS and DS Lite (but not the DSi or XL) can happily play GBA games if you don't have an old GBA knocking around anywhere.

I can confirm this. I bought the ps one version years ago and it's what I'm currently playing through... the first few hours it was pretty unbearable, but then I got used to it... not so bad now.

I'd hope that the PSN version wouldn't have those kinds of load times, since it's all digital. But yah. I bought the PSX versions, but I never played them. I did play FF1 and FF2 on PSX, though. Since they were smaller games, they didn't seem to have the same trouble, thankfully.

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We thankfully have 4 GBAs around now from playing Crystal Chronicles again recently. I miss my DS lite but the hinge cracked so I traded it towards my 3DS

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[In Yarr we trust.]

The GBA version of FF6 was awesome. I loved the bonus content and dungeons.

I also traded my DS lite for my 3DS. I completely spaced the 3DS not having backwards compatibility with GBA games. I loved playing those on the DS because they looked better. My GBA was an old crappy one with bad lighting.

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I really want to play this and Four Swords Adventures. I've looked into every conceivable way of making it work online and via emulators and it's just never gonna happen. So I'd have to drag some people into it. That's hard enough as it is.

I already own Four Swords Adventures and a bunch of GBAs and even some link cables, but I don't have enough for the full four player setup. Wouldn't cost too much to grab the rest used on Amazon or something.

Thing is, I'd kinda want to record it too, because it's gonna be one of those things I probably only really get to do once due to the crazy set up required to make it work. To properly record it though, you need FIVE Gamecubes, FOUR Gameboy player add-ons, and FIVE sets of video capturing equipment, along with five PCs powerful enough to do so. Not to mention somehow fitting 5 TVs all in the same room.

Only thing I can think of to simplify recording is to use some kind of CCTV-style multi-DVR box. But then you'd need one that not only has 5 inputs, but 5 inputs with sound. CCTV DVRs tend to have somewhat crappy quality too, since they're not meant for recording TV-quality signals. And even if such a thing was pulled off, editing the thing to be one in-sync video is a nightmare itself. And then where the hell am I going to put all this stuff!?



The alternative is to try and get the local emulator set up working. But that has it's own problems, namely making the emulator stay stable.

One way or another though, playing this game and recording it IS possible! There are people who've pulled it off on YouTube. But then I'm gonna need four 360 controllers or something instead.

EDIT: Actually, good news, I figured out why it was so unstable when I did it with emulators. Oddly, having GBA linking turned *on* was screwing about with the GBA emulators and making them stutter, go out of sync, and randomly disconnect. I noticed when one of my four GBA emulators wasn't doing it, so I compared all the settings. The moment I flipped it off on all four GBAs, the GC emulator shot up to 100% speed and hasn't had a hiccup since. Really odd that it needs to be off considering linking is exactly what I'm doing, though.

Now I just need to find 4 people somewhere...

EDIT2: Quick 30 second video to test running 5 emulators AND recording it at the same time! Looks like it works, now I just need 4 gamepads and 4 people. My PC is already hooked up to my 50" TV via HDMI, so won't have a problem there.



EDIT3: Thinking about it, this is majorly off-topic, but oh well.

That is so cool!!! And I had no idea it could be that complicating to record lol. Wow.

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I was thinking of way to do it with the GCN/GBA superthing hooked into a Gamecube or Wii by using one of the system switching things Gamestop sold, but that would be problematic if more than one person needed their inventory at a time, plus someone would have to be able to press the button to switch it also.

If you ever find yourself over here Ket I would definitely try to play it somehow. Those games are fun but it's so hard to get enough people together anymore.

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[In Yarr we trust.]

Ket have you tried VBA link and either Hamachi or Tunngle? The server functions on VBA-M are greyed out on current release which is a shame, but this does look possible over the net. I'd be willing to test it out if you like.

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