Lunar Threads

Scaryice, who joined recently, did a speedrun of TSS, playing through it as quickly as possible -- 3 hours 35 minutes. The video, in 10 parts, is available for download at the Speed Demos Archive (also the home of Quake done Quick, if you've heard of that). While people who've played the game might be amused to see how much you can skip, those who have never seen the game might get more out of it, as you'll finally be able to see and hear some of what the rest of us keep talking about. It's in low, regular, and high quality, so you can pick what suits your connection speed and space.

There aren't a whole lot of RPGs that can be speedrun in a practical sense; Radix at SDA has an upper limit of 7 hours for things he'll host and the random element of battles usually can't be shortcut while the linearity is also fairly forced. TSS makes a better than usual candidate because every random battle can be run from and you get EXP from major events as well as from battles. There's only one bit of levelling in this video, the timing of which will be obvious to anyone who's played the game.

All unessential conversation is avoided, of course, and the required stuff is blown through quickly. You'll still see cutscenes and hear all the music, though possibly not at full length.

I tried playing SSSC through as fast as possible, didn't happen of course, despite my best attempts at cheating.

Wow.

I watched the first half hour of it. The music... some of it seems remixed into SSSC (mainly cave themes, it seems like, my memory isn't clear on it right now), but what wasn't, like the song for Vane... I really liked those.

The overworld maps are actually... large!

And you get experience for completing events, too! That's actually a nifty addition, and I'm tempted to say that I'd like to see experience as a reward for other non-battle events at times, but I'm not sure how the balance would go.

But so far I've really enjoyed it.

Yeah, the originals = better than all other versions of Lunar.

And yeah, TSS Vane is one of my favorite town themes ever. It fits Vane so well.

Hey, cool.

I saw screenshots, around three or four, of TSS. But I never got to play it or see more of it. And wow, it's possible to beat it that fast? This will be fun to watch, I'm going to download it right away.

Yeah, 3+ hours is insane IMO. I was lucky to be in Vane after 3 hours of play in TSS. Usually I was still in Saith or Meribia.

GhaleonOne wrote:Yeah, 3+ hours is insane IMO. I was lucky to be in Vane after 3 hours of play in TSS. Usually I was still in Saith or Meribia.

I just watched it and I must say, that was really good, not to mention gave me much insight on how TSS was. I did like the fact that you could get event EXP, if only they didn't take it out, that would have been fun to do side quests to get more EXP and such.

And the maps, they were huge and you had to do a lot of walking, why'd they change that?

I'm really starting to like TSS better, just by watching the speed run. Too bad I couldn't read the dialogue unless I continually paused. :p

SKParasite wrote:And the maps, they were huge and you had to do a lot of walking, why'd they change that?

It might have had to do with the fact that TSS had battles on the worldmap, while SSSC/LL did not.

SKParasite wrote:I'm really starting to like TSS better, just by watching the speed run. Too bad I couldn't read the dialogue unless I continually paused. :p

Yes, I want to go play it now. Though for the important dialogue, you can always look at the screenshots on this site.

DevNall wrote:

SKParasite wrote:And the maps, they were huge and you had to do a lot of walking, why'd they change that?

It might have had to do with the fact that TSS had battles on the worldmap, while SSSC/LL did not.

I understand that, but they could of kept the random battles in and the huge maps. It would have been nifty.

DevNall wrote:

SKParasite wrote:I'm really starting to like TSS better, just by watching the speed run. Too bad I couldn't read the dialogue unless I continually paused. :p

Yes, I want to go play it now. Though for the important dialogue, you can always look at the screenshots on this site.

I forgot the site had screenshots of the game. I'll go look and see what they have.

Just because you CAN speedrun a game, doesn't mean you should.

Final Fantasy IX requires you to (almost) beat the game in 12 hours to get Excalibur II. And yet, you'd miss out on so much fun doing that the only real way to get that sword is just hack it on.

That said...event XP? That...sounds like Breath of Fire:Dragon Quarter.

You're missing the point of speedrunning, then. I agree, it's not the best way to enjoy the fullness of a game, which is why I wouldn't do it myself -- I'm a compulsive do-everything, talk-to-everyone player. (I'm in an agony of indecision with my replay of Ocarina of Time because I have 99 skulltulas and don't really want to go into the Bottom of the Well and get the last one, but it doesn't seem right to skip it even though it'll make absolutely no difference whatsoever in what little remains of my game.) But it's neat to find out how quickly something can be done. It generally works better for action games (Link to the Past < 2hrs has some amazing tricks, as does about any Metroid run), and of course provides a reference video useful for other purposes, such as determining what music is played where. No one is arguing that games should be speedrun as the ultimate in experiencing that game, but it's a whole different angle on the game.

Besides, now there's no excuse for significant ignorance of TSS.

Speed running is a way to get further enjoyment out of a game you've already played the hell out of. You're not missing anything if you know the game inside and out, which is pretty likely for any game you're going to attempt a run on.

And if it wasn't the case before you started the run, it will definitely be the case after. At least as far as the parts involved in the run.

There really wasn't anything remixed for SSSC, as I recall. There may have been a snippet of Ghaleon's foreboding music from the original, but it was barely there. I haven't played SSSC in years, so I can't recall any music being carried over except for maybe the Frontier theme. Alun, or G1, maybe you have better recollection of this. Bar none, TSS music is what made the game so enchanting aside from story.

Nope, wasn't anything remixed as far as I remember. From my understanding it had something to do with loosing some liscense to the TSS music from whoever owned it. It wasn't that they wanted to redo all the music in the game, more that they had to. I wish I could remember where I heard that though.

The only music in SSSC which came from TSS was put in by WD -- at least, it's not in the PC version of SSS and so I wouldn't expect to find it in the PS or Saturn versions. There are three places that TSS music was used, all in cutscenes: Xenobia's/Ghaleon's theme is added to the end of the Trinity of Terror scene, Luna's singing in TSS is in the background of Alex's nightmare about her (I think that's in the forest around Pao, not sure), and the sad piano music is played when the Fortress crashes, before the land starts turning green. And I think that's it. WD had wanted to put TSS's Burg music in, but it turned out to not be feasible (likewise with the Star Dragon Theme in EB). I think it had to do with the PlayStation's midi (whereas nothing special was needed to put it into the bgm of animated scenes).

Of course, several of SSSC's themes were from EB, including that stupid ugly dragon cave theme. Althena's theme (intended to substitute for the much more singable one in TSS) and the Four Heroes theme both come from EB, although that one is pretty inconspicuous -- I think in EB it only plays during Lunn's introduction, and in SSSC only when Laike tells Alex who he is. No guarantees that that's right, though.

The Dragons Theme (not to be confused with the Dragon Cave theme) music from EB also carried over to SSSC. Which is fine, it's one of my favorite themes from any of the games.

Yeah, I knew there was at least one more.

I think that's one of the things that bugged me about SSSC. The music sounded too much like Eternal Blue, and in the original versions the music gave both games a completely different atmosphere. It's not that EB's music was bad (except for the sh:tty Dragon Cave music), but I just felt disappointed that SSSC's music was nowhere near as good as the original score. I'm still dreaming of another Lunar game with a fully orchestrated, awesome score.

You'd think though that if they had to redo the score and wanted to copy some EB tracks to save time/budget, they at least could have left the dragon cave music behind though. A pity though since TSS's was my favorite.