Back again guys!

[AlexHiro4]

It's been WAY too long. Probably 6 or 7 years since I've been on here. Anyway, I'm getting married in April, my fiance and I have a house we purchased back in July '16, and I've recently been setting up a retro video game room. It consists of two TV's, 1 CRT and 1 HDTV. Hooked up to the CRT is my NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sega Genesis plug and play (80 preloaded games), Sega Saturn, and original Playstation. Hooked up to the HDTV is my N64, Gamecube, PS2, and Sega Dreamcast. My latest systems, PS# and Wii, are hooked up in the living room.

Anyway, with all that being said, hooking up all those old systems and seeing all those old games prompted me to think about Lunar. I still own SSSC & EBC. I even have an imported copy of Magical School Lunar for the Saturn (I can't play though it because of not being able to read Japanese, lol). I also started listening to the SSSC soundtrack again (soooo good). I've decided that sometime in the near future I'm going to start a new playthough of SSSC.

I want to be a part of this community again. I remember how awesome it was to talk to you guys and do fun posts back in the day. Therefore, I'm back! I may not be on here super frequently because I'm a lot busier with my adulting in my 30's than I was in my 20's (lol), but I'll try to get on here when I can. I missed you guys.

Thanks for reading!

[Alunissage]

Oh, hi! Yeah, it's been a while. Glad to see you. This community has a strange persistency, in that people vanish for months or years, then show up again, but the community itself goes on. And yeah, adulting has that effect.

I'd intended to have a similar setup to what you describe, though with only one other TV for older things, but some various factors including but not limited to cats made that unworkable in that form in my particular house. But maybe someday I'll get it right!

[Alunissage]

P.S. Congrats on your upcoming nuptials!

[Maus]

Very nice to meet you and to hear that you are doing great!

Welcome back!

[AlexHiro4]

Thanks Alunissage! It's great to talk to you again! I certainly hope you can get your old-school gaming setup someday. It's a blast, and it keeps me young. Lol.

Maus, it's nice to meet you too! Thanks for the warm welcome.

[Kizyr]

Welcome back to the forums! Good to see you again, and congrats! KF

[AlexHiro4]

Thanks Kaiser! I appreciate it!

[jay_are]

Welcome back!
6 to 7 years ago? Lunar on PSP was the hottest thing back in the day

This community has a strange persistency, in that people vanish for months or years, then show up again, but the community itself goes on.

Lol, I second this. I come here a few times a month, sadly we aren't given much "food". We could be talking about the newest Lunar TSS / EB remakes for Nintendo Switch... think about the possibilities, GameArts / GungHo!!

[AlexHiro4]

Welcome back!
6 to 7 years ago? Lunar on PSP was the hottest thing back in the day

This community has a strange persistency, in that people vanish for months or years, then show up again, but the community itself goes on.

Lol, I second this. I come here a few times a month, sadly we aren't given much "food". We could be talking about the newest Lunar TSS / EB remakes for Nintendo Switch... think about the possibilities, GameArts / GungHo!!

Yessssss.....I love it!

Or, they could just finally make Lunar 3....lol.

[jay_are]

Or, they could just finally make Lunar 3....lol.

Oh yeah, totally!
Come to think of it. Have you played Atelier?
I never have. I also never hear any of my friends talking about it.
Or anyone in any forum I ever go to. Never seen them appear in lists of top games of any kind.
Yet, this series has just released their billionth game!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/527270/

Actually, I was exaggerating by a few digits, this game's description says: "17th in the Atelier series."
WTF??????? Lunar owes me not just Lunar 3, but like 20 more Lunar games too. How could this unknown series have enough fans to get this far?
I don't think the game has the story or OST quality of Lunar, but it must still be good enough. I'm really curious.

Meanwhile, Chrono Trigger only had 1 game, and basically no remakes (and Chrono Cross if you're into the type of games that deviate enough from the original that it could be named something else entirely, like FF8 onward.) I guess we should still be very thankful for having gotten so many remakes of Lunar 1 and at least 2 versions of Eternal Blue.

[AlexHiro4]

Yeah....I've never heard of Atelier. That's annoying that they have 17 installments, and we basically have 2 for Lunar. Well, we do have Lunar DS, but that game kinda sucked. Lol.

Also, I agree with you about games in a series that are different enough that they could be under a different name. Although, with the Final Fantasy series, I'd start with FF7 being under a different title name. Everything from the original Final Fantasy to FF6 was done in a fairly similar style, but FF7 was where the series REALLY diverged and became what it is today.

....Granted, the Final Fantasy series didn't become actual crap until FF12. Lol.

[jay_are]

Yeah....I've never heard of Atelier. That's annoying that they have 17 installments, and we basically have 2 for Lunar. Well, we do have Lunar DS, but that game kinda sucked. Lol.

Also, I agree with you about games in a series that are different enough that they could be under a different name. Although, with the Final Fantasy series, I'd start with FF7 being under a different title name. Everything from the original Final Fantasy to FF6 was done in a fairly similar style, but FF7 was where the series REALLY diverged and became what it is today.

....Granted, the Final Fantasy series didn't become actual crap until FF12. Lol.

Wow, are you me?
I actually do think it was FF7 that sent this series into ruin thanks to the fact that they started focusing more in technical advancement of graphics rather than a well written and beautiful story. FF7 itself still isn't bad, but is the one that committed the first sin: lowering the bar in favor of expensive graphix.
From FF1 to 5, the series used almost practically the same exact style of everything, except improved nicely upon each time. (It peaked at 4 though). But with FF6, they meant to start a new type of FF game in a way that FF7 would do to FF6 what FF4 did to FF3, which is to be completely faithful to it while opening your eyes to a new fascinating and exciting story.

Bottom line: If the game is going to take more effort to make its graphics, the story and music should improve that much too.
If FF6 is already the best they could make story wise and musically, then the new graphically expensive game should at least live up to that, and not be so severely inferior.

I've never played FF12, but I played 1 to 10, and 13.

[AlexHiro4]

Bottom line: If the game is going to take more effort to make its graphics, the story and music should improve that much too.
If FF6 is already the best they could make story wise and musically, then the new graphically expensive game should at least live up to that, and not be so severely inferior.

I've never played FF12, but I played 1 to 10, and 13.

1) I agree with you 100%. Story and music should improve with, not be overshadowed by, killer graphics.

2) Final Fantasy 6 is my favorite game in the whole series....possibly my favorite game on the SNES as a whole (of course it was called FF3 back then *rolls eyes*). You praising this game is speaking my language! Lol.

3) Just a side note, I've played FF1 (never completely finished), FF4, FF5 (never completely finished), FF6, FF7, F9, and FF10. I attempted about an hour's worth of FF8 and FF12 apiece, and I hated them both. I own both FF2 (PSP version) and FF13 (PS3 version), but I still haven't played either of them.

We might truly be the same person. Lol.

[jay_are]

We might truly be the same person. Lol.

That was funny Well, in that case, you're still gonna hate FF8 even more if you gave it a chance.
Having finished all from 1 to 10 (and 13), FF8 is the one that made me roll my eyes the hardest.
How can I explain... it's like an 11 year old boy wrote his first game in RPG Maker and wanted it to be about love but can only go by the experiences he had with his 1 or 2 girls he has had crushes on. I played FF8 at age 16, and I swear to god, I felt like I was too old for this embarrassing mess.
I had made silly games in RPG Maker at that age that were more mature.

I highly recommend FF2 on PSP. But don't be too eager for it because it has broken gameplay (forced grinding, insane encounter rate, etc)
however, when I played it, I was in a mood where I could spend a ton of hours with it and not be bothered. I recommend doing something like this while watching TV and only pay attention when the game needs it. The story and writing delivered quality, it isn't a lot, but the bullsh- level is very low in this aspect. When you consider that this is only the second FF game, and how old the original is, it really translated into something really fine on PSP.
That being said, the difficulty was heavily adjusted for PSP to be made more practical and reasonable. (Like in NES, each potion took a different space in the menu, and it was very limited space, and using an item took forever cause it would reload all windows each time, where in PSP the items are used instantly and you can have like 99 of each thing, like you would in FF5 or 6). Sadly, the insane encounter rate and need for grinding still hurt it.
The PSP version though, like the GBA, adds extra story that made it better than the NES and PS1 versions for me. You have to go through more grinding for it though

Oh, here's a game that I think might actually be considered a true successor to FF6 in terms of RPG quality, besides Lunar 1 and 2 of course: Suikoden 2.
The graphics, music and story (especially how emotionally involving in can be) are what the FF series should have strived for after FF6.
The only thing wrong with Suikoden 2 is it's multiple endings that you must go through the whole game to obtain. But even the bad endings are really epic.

[Alunissage]

Heh. FF8 and FF12 are the two I've most wanted to play. My interest in 8 isn't because of the characters, though; I've seen just enough of it (maybe 2/3rds, a long time ago) to find them irritating. I did like 12's characters in general (and the fact that the viewpoint character is not the protagonist; he's relatively unimportant) when I watched spouse play it.

I played FF2 (GBA version) up to maybe three or four dungeons before the end? Got bogged down trying to get a rare drop and have totally forgotten everything about it. I rather liked it, but probably my characters were way overlevelled by then.

[Sonic#]

^ I enjoyed FF8 at the time of release, and again when I played a year or two ago. I always felt like the world was pretty interesting, and I liked the characters well enough. Also, I was happiest with its battle system out of the PS Final Fantasy games, since one could easily play without ever worrying about leveling a character. (I also like this about Chrono Cross, though it implements this by tying levels directly to bosses.)