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Post by Ex on Mar 14, 2019 20:50:45 GMT -5
I was that lonely SEGA kid, what with having an SMS in 1988*... especially in deep south USA. Nobody else I knew had an SMS, or even knew what it was. The only person I knew as a kid who owned a TG16, was my uncle in New York. I didn't get to play a TG16 until I was 12 years old (1991), and that was via his console while my family was up there visiting. Somewhere there exists a Betamax recording of Ex having a blast playing Bonk's Adventure.
*Lonely for one year, I got a NES in 1989.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 14, 2019 21:28:07 GMT -5
I never actually knew anyone that owned an SMS, although at least I saw one, and we're both Deep South compadres. I never, ever, ever saw a TG-16 or Duo in real life until I visited a rather expensive retro store a few years ago, and never actually saw one in action until I got my own Duo around a year ago. Not that I didn't want one, of course! I had a GameFan that had Dungeon Explorer II in it, and it looked totally rad.
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Post by Ex on Mar 14, 2019 23:15:38 GMT -5
16. Dragon Crystal | SEGA Master System | 1991
"Dragon Crystal" is a 1991 Master System roguelike, developed and published by SEGA in Europe. Tec Toy published the Master System version of this game in South America in 1991 as well. The Master System version is actually a graphically modified port of the original Game Gear version (itself released in 1990 in Japan, 1991 in USA/Europe). "Dragon Crystal" is one of the very first console based roguelikes. The Game Gear version of "Dragon Crystal" was barely preceded by SEGA's own "Fatal Labyrinth", which appeared on Genesis and Mega Drive. Both "Fatal Labyrinth" and "Dragon Crystal" predate the first "Mystery Dungeon" entry by a good three years.
You would never know the plot of "Dragon Crystal" unless you read its instruction manual. The manual refers to the player themself as the actual protagonist. It claims the player entered an antique shop, and touched a magical spherical crystal, the crystal teleported the player inside of itself, and suddenly the player was in a dangerous fantasy dungeon. The manual mentions the sudden huge egg that follows the player around. But the manual doesn't explain what the egg is, nor how to escape this magical prison. Actually the manual simply says the player must kill all the monsters to win - which is a lie.
 To actually beat "Dragon Crystal", the player must reach floor 30 of its dire dungeon, and find a sphere (resting on a goblet) there. Only by touching the sphere-goblet can the player escape the magical dungeon. "Dragon Crystal" never explains what the sphere-goblet is, its relation to the first sphere, nor why the egg is following the player. As the player makes their way deeper into the dungeon, the egg does hatch into a baby dragon. The dragon grows over time, eventually becoming an adult. However, the dragon never does a single thing to help the player. It simply follows the player around, without doing anything useful. I think the developers intended for further plot exposition, but that never happened. One can only infer that the player was brought to the magical world in order to safely guide the dragon to adulthood. Perhaps the developers intended for the dragon to aid the player in combat eventually, but never finished that bit of coding.  Anyway, to speak of the actual gameplay... "Dragon Crystal" is an overhead turn-based dungeon crawler. It works in the classical roguelike fashion. Enemies only move when the player moves. The player attacks an enemy by bumping into it (or the enemy does the same to the player). The player must eat food constantly, or else their health depletes. (Food depletes every step, without it, health depletes instead.) Enemies can of course deplete the player's health. Killing enemies levels the players stats up, marginally helping things. The layout of each dungeon floor is randomly generated (complete with random secret passages no less). The exit portal to the next dungeon floor's location is also completely random every instance. Enemies are also randomly interspersed throughout the dungeons. Additionally bits of gear and items are randomly laid out as well. Items include potions, scrolls, and rings. Anyway, everything is random!  Two things make "Dragon Crystal" very difficult. One is that the player has no idea what items will do until they use them. Item effects can be detrimental or beneficial in many different ways. However, which items do what effects are totally unknown every time the game is played. Only by using an item will the player discover if it's beneficial or detrimental. (The player can throw bad items at monsters.) Secondly, as the player progresses deeper into the dungeon, certain enemies become incredibly unfair. Monsters start having the ability to dissolve the player's weapons and armor, curse the player with terrible spells, permanently lower the player's stats, or simply wipe out half the player's health points with a single hit. To say the last third of "Dragon Crystal" is unbalanced would be putting it mildly. The player does have the ability to continue on their current floor if they die. But this costs limited currency, and even then the player only keeps their current weapon and armor. All items are lost when continuing. In case you weren't paying attention folks, this game is hard.  +SEGA did console roguelikes years before Chunsoft made it cool.
+Impressive randomization engine all around.
+Good variety in graphical representation of dungeons.
+Many different items to tinker (or suffer) with.
+It's hardcore dungeon crawlin' on your SEGA Master System!
-Certain enemies are unbalanced to say the least.
-The RNG hates you and everything you stand for.
-Weak OST. -Distinct lack of projectile weapons like bows or guns.
-If only you knew the power of the Rage Side.
After reading my description of "Dragon Crystal", you might wonder why anyone would bother to play this game at all. The answer is... this is a crazy game made for crazy people. Fans of roguelikes are a rare breed, and they will indeed get their masochistic fix here. In addition, "Dragon Crystal" was one of the first console roguelikes, and possibly the very first 8-bit non-PC genre entry. If -you- are the sort of gamer who can understand the monumental reward (beating the game) that comes with the furious frustrations of this genre, you'll probably have a 'good' time with "Dragon Crystal". For being such an early entry in its genre, "Dragon Crystal" gets a lot more right than it gets wrong. And that folks was no random act of chance, just ask Hirokazu Yasuhara.
Ex's time to beat: 2 hours 35 minutes
Ex's rating: 7/10
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Post by toei on Mar 14, 2019 23:38:49 GMT -5
I'm gonna give Dragon Crystal another shot before the month is over.
A few random observations:
-Roguelikes have actually been trendy for years. There a tons of indie roguelikes and roguelites, so much so that people are getting sick of them.
-"One can only infer that the player was brought to the magical world in order to safely guide the dragon to adulthood" is literally the plot of the surprisingly decent PSX RPG Guardian's Crusade (aka Knight & Baby in Japan), minus the player-in-a-magical-world bit.
-I love the way they pronounce "RPG" in old Japanese commercials, with each letter clearly detached for emphasis. Just from that, you can tell the genre was hot stuff.
-A lot of the unfair things you mention, like enemies that can dissolve your equipment on the last few floors, also appear in Mysterious Dungeons. In fact, the first Torneko game finishes when you find a certain item on the 30th floor, exactly like this game. I wonder if there any earlier examples of roguelikes on Japanese computers than this and Fatal Labyrinth? If not, then they definitely set the template for the Japanese take on the genre.
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Post by Ex on Mar 15, 2019 0:21:54 GMT -5
You are correct, in recent times roguelikes and roguelites have become very popular, at least in the indie space. Although the DS/3DS/PSP/Vita has seen commercial genre releases as well. There has definitely been an increase in their popularity over time.
That said, speaking personally I have not run across anyone on multiple gaming forums over the years who enjoys the roguelike genre - other than myself. If you do, you'd be a first. I'm generally met with indifference when I talk about games in this genre.
Well those elements were also present in older PC iterations of this genre. They were still contrived and unfair back then too. It's best just to avoid completely the enemies that can do this stuff. Or if you have to, throw a scroll or potion at them that will slow them down so you can escape.
The first iteration of this concept that I've seen, was in 1978's Beneath Apple Manor (a great game BTW - I beat it on Apple II a few years ago). The goal in BAM is to obtain a Golden Apple on the bottom floor of the dungeon. The amount of floors relates to the difficulty level selected by the player though, it's not a finite number. (Fun fact: Despite being put into the "roguelike" genre, Beneath Apple Manor predates Rogue by two years. In a fairer world, we'd be calling these things BAMlikes.)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 15, 2019 4:06:52 GMT -5
Of all the games mentioned so far, Dragon Crystal is the one that piques my interest the most. Although I wasn't expecting it to be turn-based, looking at it I imagined it'd play more like Brandish. For the record, you could also throw bad items at enemies in Baroque and the effects were often hilarious. An entire enemy group would turn into edible consumables. It also had other obtuse stuff like trying to eat certain items sometimes would go well, other times it'd break your teeth. I liked it well enough and I'd would have liked to 'finish' finish it, if only it wasn't so cryptic about everything.
I also believe that in this kind of games you're expected to avoid fighting the toughest enemies as soon as they become overly cheap and just rush to the last floor.
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Post by toei on Mar 16, 2019 17:04:53 GMT -5
I played through Master of Darkness this afternoon. I'd already played it a bit, and usually got bored by Stage 2. It's a Castlevania clone, and it's bad in the same way pre-Symphony Castlevania is bad*; the levels are really, really long, and the action feels diluted, the enemies and platforming too spread out, so that it never gets exciting. It's just a mostly dull action game, the one thing an action should obviously never be. To get through it - and I never do this with a game I like - I listened to a podcast the entire time. It's not a very hard game, with a rare few tricky parts, and brute force is generally enough for most bosses, so that I still didn't die all that much until I got to the final level, which is a maze, and not the kind of maze I do well in, like Revenge of Shinobi's, where you can figure out the path through methodical exploration; rather, it's the type that relies on tricking you with a secret passage. On a more positive note, the game handles well, and the basic two-weapon setup it takes from Castlevania, where you have a short range weapons and long-range, limited use secondary weapons, does make thing more interesting. The default weapon, a short knife, sucks, but the hammer is pleasant to use. It's pretty annoying how the game likes to punish you by tricking you into picking up the knife again, though - a staple of '80s side-scrolling that should have been a distant memory by 1992.
This is comparable to the Master System Ninja Gaiden, released the same year - had Sega also obtained the license to Castlevania, this is likely the game they would've tasked SIMS with developing. Like it, it's a generally well put-together clone of a vastly overrated NES "classic". It's a wonder they didn't try to do Mega Man as well.
I'd give a 4/10 probably.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 16, 2019 19:05:28 GMT -5
I wrote about Master of Darkness a while back. I found it fun, but utterly devoid of challenge, unlike Castlevania.
Anyway, can someone explain to me how Psycho Fox is considered by many to be a "good" game on SMS? I just don't see it. Those controls are just terrible.
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Post by toei on Mar 16, 2019 19:35:53 GMT -5
I wrote about Master of Darkness a while back. I found it fun, but utterly devoid of challenge, unlike Castlevania. Anyway, can someone explain to me how Psycho Fox is considered by many to be a "good" game on SMS? I just don't see it. Those controls are just terrible. If you get past the slippery controls, it's pretty good. If you want to see what it might feel like with better controls, DeCap Attack on Genesis is considered a spiritual sequel. I've also played some Dragon Crystal, and I'm still not a fan. I don't like the way the floors are built. You spend most of your time in corridors rather than rooms, yet rooms are where enemies and items are found. I also don't like how you have have to walk the length of every wall to find the openings. In the Mysterious Dungeons games, when you enter a room, you can see all of it and any "doors" right away, plus an auto-mapping feature. DC's enemies are tedious, too; you're constantly being confused, etc, making fighting tedious. |
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Post by Ex on Mar 17, 2019 17:34:51 GMT -5
I also believe that in this kind of games you're expected to avoid fighting the toughest enemies as soon as they become overly cheap and just rush to the last floor. That is exactly what I had to do to finish Dragon Crystal. Somewhere around floor 23 I gave up fighting, and just started running for the exits. I played through Master of Darkness this afternoon. 4/10 probably Hmm. I beat that one myself back in 2017. Looks like I gave it a 7/10 personally. If you'd like to know my thoughts from back then:
I'll just get this right out of the way immediately; Master of Darkness is SEGA's ripoff of Castlevania. It began life in Japan as a 1992 GameGear release called "In The Wake of Vampire". However this GameGear title was later upscaled for western markets as "Master of Darkness", and published for Sega Master System. Master of Darkness also released on GameGear in the west as well. Many years later, Master of Darkness received a 3DS Virtual Console release too. Despite having so many release variants, Master of Darkness remains obscure to many retro gamers even today.
So you play as a ouija board loving psychologist named Dr. Ferdinand Social. Dr. Social is seeking to defeat Dracula, because the good doctor's ouija board told him that Dracula is causing problems in London. (Problems like Jack the Ripper for instance.)
Have you ever played a NES Castlevania? Well then, you've played Master of Darkness. Albeit Master of Darkness isn't as polished as any NES Castlevania. Master of Darkness does try to impress with storyboard cutscenes, but its level and enemy design are repetitive too often. The difficulty overall is fairly low, but the adventure will still take you over an hour due to its length. Graphically and aurally, Master of Darkness gets the job done, but is hardly exemplary in either category. But at least Dr. Social can change direction in midair after he's jumped!
Should you play Master of Darkness? Well, if you're a fan of oldschool Castlevania, and you've already beaten Rusty on the PC-98, then sure. Master of Darkness won't blow you away, but it is a consistently engaging experience. If nothing else you might enjoy the goofy localization (one boss yells at you for "hindering him"). My biggest complaint are the stupid bats. Trust me, you'll learn to hate the bats! (I curse the programmer who scripted their movement routines.) If you're looking for a decent Halloween platformer to play on your 3DS (or GameGear, or Master System), step on up and master this darkness.
PS It's not every day you see a game's end credits spelled out by a ouija board.
Anyway, can someone explain to me how Psycho Fox is considered by many to be a "good" game on SMS? I just don't see it. Those controls are just terrible. I don't get it either man. I put an honest effort into Psycho Fox last week... nope. I thought it was terribly unfun and sloppy to play. It's not bad graphically for its time at least. |
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