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Post by toei on Mar 9, 2024 15:55:30 GMT -5
The A stands for Arale, the name of the little robot girl, but there's a poster of Toriyama's robot form in the cafe. Anyway, I finished a chapter. Turns out there are seven. Basically you've got about an hour of adventuring around town, mostly just going from place to place talking to people and occasionally doing some minimal task. Then at the end, there's a full-on 3D platformer level and a boss battle in a distinct location. The level is kind of awkward because of the camera angles, but it wasn't hard or too frustrating, and the boss was nice and simple. It's funny because it has a similar structure to OverBlood 2, with the action being clearly separated from the story parts and even down to having 7 stages. It plays quite differently, though, and the tone couldn't be more different. I'm probably not going to be finishing this one, as beyond the charm, that first chapter felt really directionless - you're kinda just going around, getting into comic mischief without much rhyme or reason. I'm also not a huge fan of 3D platformers, and these segments are probably middle-of-the-road as far as those things go (they're not trash, at least). It looks like Chapter 2 introduces a villain, so I'm going to mess with it at least a little more to see if it hooks me or what. Two things I've noticed about Dr. Slump. One, Arale is a lot like kid Goku. Because she's a robot freshly-created with the appearance of a middle-schooler, she completely lacks knowledge of social codes, and a lot of the humor derives from that; she's also super strong. Two, the famous "Naruto run" people where memeing a few years back is actually Arale's run, 100%. It's pretty fun to run around like that.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 9, 2024 16:49:32 GMT -5
It's also pretty neat how Arale's run also influenced Miyamoto with Mario. And there's even a tanooki suit in there! It's wild to see how much influence Toriyama had across the board.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 9, 2024 17:46:37 GMT -5
The Naruto creator had one of the longest heartfelt comments about Toriyama's passing. Maybe he was closer to him than other mangaka's. Amusing to hear the Naruto run was maybe pulled from Arale this whole time. I'm pretty sure she has a cameo or two in the original DB anime. Yeah, can easily see the comparison between her naivety and kid Goku.
What's amazing is how much of a private/humble person Toriyama was. With all the love he's getting now, I feel like it's the same ~5 main pictures of him I've seen floating around for years now. Think he would even request his face be censored in more recent interviews. Fame often seems handled so much better over there. I respect it.
As for me, I finally got some non-SMT gaming in today and put about 90 minutes into Monster World IV. Knocked out the beginning stuff then the first of four themed dungeons. In between the dungeon stuff is a hub town with NPC's and some stuff that changes in between story bits. You can buy some gear. Everything about this game amuses me in that it honestly doesn't feel too different from a lot of retro throwback types nowadays. Whether it was a direct influence or many younger developers nowadays don't have a clue something 20+ years ago did a lot of things modern Shantae games and whatnot do, who knows.
I can also see how Super Adventure Island 2 on the SNES is a good comparison. I kind of like how this one doesn't have an overworld though. There's some nonlinear design to it and it's adventure/platformer, but seems a bit more focused than what I recall of SAI2. Combat and platforming is all pretty solid, Nothing seriously challenging, but it's just enough to keep you on your toes. And the game oozes charm with the graphics and big detailed sprites.
One of my favorite things so far is the Pepepo-something flying companion you eventually get. You call it over with A to grab it, then can do a floating jump or a double jump. You can throw it to hit buttons, or "they like heat!" there's some goofy mechanics like throw them on top of some rising lava to make a platform. I bet there's more tricks ahead with it to keep being interesting. I'll definitely keep playing, great stuff so far.
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Post by toei on Mar 9, 2024 18:17:54 GMT -5
I'm sure the Shantae devs (and lots of indies) were inspired by Monster World IV, especially with the lead character being a woman in 1001 Nights-style clothing in both games. Wouldn't be surprised if the MWIV lead in turn was inspired by Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, considering the timing. As was Shantae.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 9, 2024 19:08:37 GMT -5
I was hesitating to say that since it wasn't localized back in the day. There's a chance this is still somewhat of a hidden gem. Then again the fan translation looks really old and there's a chance some Shantae devs and whatnot, were maybe just into importing and trading Japanese games. The history is hard to trace, but uh yeah this is like 200% pre-Shantae.
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Post by toei on Mar 9, 2024 19:41:53 GMT -5
Yeah, this is one of those early fan-translations (2001 for ver 1.02, first full release might even have been 2000), and that game has been a staple of "hidden gem" articles for over 20 years. The Wonder Boy series as a whole used to get a lot of love among certain types of gamers on the Internet in the late '90s and early '00s. It was kind of a cool "underground" series to like for a lot of people, many of whom wanted to make their own games, as "nonlinear" was seen as basically the coolest thing a game could be. No wonder Metroidvanias ended up being such a popular indie genre, really. My friend IRL who works at Ubi knew about it, for example, and wanted to get into it at the time. It wasn't really that obscure. It was probably previewed in game mags before it ended up not making it out of Japan, too.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 9, 2024 20:41:36 GMT -5
It's still a good fan translation, though - I've played through a few times and never had any real issues with it making no sense or anything. It's also one of my favorite Genesis games, and definitely the most polished of the Monster World releases.
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Post by toei on Mar 9, 2024 21:04:04 GMT -5
Yeah, it was DemiForce and one of the DeJap guys. For all the complaints over that "fucks like a tiger" line back in the day, the DeJap releases were all pretty good IIRC.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 9, 2024 21:36:44 GMT -5
I'll admit, I downloaded a JP rom and the old translation, patched it, but KEGA didn't want to start it up due to the wrong region I'm guessing. Which you can change with the F keys in KEGA, but I just ended up downloading the Virtual Console version so I'm playing it that way.
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Post by Ex on Mar 9, 2024 21:57:12 GMT -5
Yeah, this is one of those early fan-translations (2001 for ver 1.02, first full release might even have been 2000 I remember it was summer 2001 when I beat MW4, using that first DeJap Translations/Demiforce patch. I remember enjoying this one quite a bit, more than any other Wonder Boy/ Monster World games I've played. Not enough to buy the remake, though. Hope you end up enjoying it overall Xeogred.
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