non-series

who’s the artist for that box? the style is super familiar

sweet tennis tips, friend

is it Susumu Matsushita? They do covers for Famitsu.

So I played through Record of Lodoss War on the Dreamcast during the last couple days (making hordes of monsters explode into huge numbers is so much fun) and wondered if there are any other Japanese-developed Diablo-clones, and oh boy this game was made by Neverland (of Estpolis/Lufia and Rune Factory fame) and it seems to me like they reused their Diablo-clone engine to make the PS2 Shining Force games (Neo and Exa), and now I am full of anticipation.

And then there’s also Shining Tears and Wind and those are developed by the peeps who did the GBA Shining Souls (who are also kinda Diablo clones I guess) and they look like they play very similar to the Neverland games too, despite making use of 2D instead of 3D backgrounds? Hmm…

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possibly, though the colouring looks slightly different to his usual airbrushed-looking style

geograph seal :gotohell: jumping flash

tumblepop :gotohell: diet go go :gotohell: joe and mac returns

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i just did a quick search so i may have missed an earlier mention but the goldeneye-perfect dark-timesplitters throughline is too obvious not to mention

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yeah this is a good catch

i wonder if flagrant copycat stuff like The World Is Not Enough (N64) fit in this line as well

goldeneye rogue agent and wii clearly do not, ironically

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Kid Niki :gotohell: Hammerin’ Harry :gotohell: Perman

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canon: yoshi’s story :gotohell: wario land 2

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this one is kinda tenuous and i’m not totally 100% on it, but the way ninja princess/the ninja/sega ninja has a button to shoot up and a button to shoot in the direction you’re facing seems like it could be the forbear of gain ground’s system of a button to shoot in the direction you’re facing and a button to shoot your character’s unique weapon.

(the character weapons in gain ground, for those who don’t know are mainly defined by the direction in which they fire. some go up the screen, some go to the left and right, some move round in circles, etc.)

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the sonic wings games and the gunbird games share a lot of development staff, as well as a lot of concepts.

-multiple selectable characters in a stg was pioneered by sonic wings, i think
-multiple endings for each character
-shiny points items that are worth more depending on which frame of their animation loop they’re on when you collect them
-lighthearted comedic tone
-guest characters from other games

i think turbo force could also be considered a slightly more distant ancestor

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