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going to be a bloody valentine, if reviews are loveless…
can’t wait for the mizzurna falls fan translation to be finished.
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Alright here is “the skinny”
We could probably do the first episode of this later this month. Dunno what I’m gonna be doing with my life all year but you can bet your ass: this is gonna be some part of it somehow!
If we did an episode this month, we could easily just get some people in a room to talk about our memories of the playstation 1, the time it was released and that sort of stuff: a good introduction to the topic of the podcast at large.
if we wanted to use @ronk 's idea in a way we could not neccesarily copt the MST3K angle entirely but have the metafiction of the podcast be that were all trapped in a bunker.
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this podcast takes place in an alternate universe where Sega never released the Dreamcast and instead released a third add-on to the Genesis that used highly illegal, experimental radioactive properties that allowed you play Saturn games [“Toxic-Lock On Technology”]. it bombed so hard it literally scorched the Earth
the only survivors reside in an underground bunker run by Sony fans with every ps1 game as the only surviving media art form.
this is The Last Play Station
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what is this
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A creepypasta, unfortunately
hey, a new word-play for my most favourite jRPG title of the last decade:
infinitive undiscovery, yesssss~~~~
j/k, game looks ace…
And yeah, someone also mention Racing Lagoon and how SQEX tried to make the oddest jcaRPG at the turn of the century.
alright if we set this up in the last half of this month: who is available what days and at what times?
this thread has inspired me to finally get around to playing some of the oddball (to me) PS1 games I’ve found at thrift stores the past year.
I’ll start with T.R.A.G. which in Japan was given the infinitely better title HARD EDGE.
Imagine if Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7 had a baby. the baby got the tank controls and lock-and-key style maze running from RE, and the crazy anime hairstyles from FF7, as well as the whole disc 1 Midgar aesthetic, particularly Shinra tower. that’s what this is… an anime Resident Evil game set in the Shinra tower section of FF7 with knockoffs of AVALANCHE taking control—I seriously think they lifted Aeris’s hair wholesale for the Michelle character. you switch between 4 different characters to explore different floors of this doomtower, so it’s almost like Lost Vikings, too. almost.
but I need to talk about the music real quick, because the music is, I swear, literally plagiarized from FF7. just listen:
I can’t say for certain but it sounds a lot like something that would be in FF7 while you’re hanging out in Midgar slums, or even FF8 while you’re hanging out in Dollet or Deling City. I will admit that part of my enjoying this game as much as I did was due to the cool hangout soundtrack which may or may not be plagiarized.
I am honestly surprised at how much time I put into it (I was also surprised that the main dude’s name is Alex, because that’s my name too)… I played until I got a game over for the first time, which took around 5 hours. the game was mercifully easy up until that point, and death came finally at a boss that moved fast enough that I need to master the tank controls to beat it so… F that.
the enemies you encounter in this tower are either zombified Shinra soldiers or RE Hunters wearing sweatpants (seriously). they are all pitifully easy to dispatch. in addition to the RE tank controls there are little combo moves you can do which are pretty cool. like imagine if Chris Redfield could backflip away from zombies with a double tap of the back button, or Jill could do a forward dash/spin kick combo by double tapping the forward button. kinda neat actually.
the voice acting is hilariously terrible, or terribly hilarious, as you’d expect. the translation riddled with grammatical errors that the voice actors dutifully recite. one of the characters is a ‘Detective’ named Burns Byford, an amazing name. in conclusion:
I then started playing A Bug’s Life, greatest hits version, but I quit after about 10 minutes because it kind of made me sick. it’s so ugly. you have no control over the camera so it just follows behind you whichever way you turn. the jumping sucks, there are terrible voice sounds constantly shouting the same thing over and over. the menu design is awful. the save screens are so badly designed I nearly overwrote some other game saves the first time I tried to save. oh well, it was only a dollar.
next I moved to AKUJI THE HEARTLESS and uhh, this game kind of rules. it’s a 3D action platformer in which you can actually control the camera (R1/L1 swivels) and it works pretty well. it reminds me a little bit of Crash Bandicoot actually, if Crash Bandicoot’s entire world were smeared with the blood of his enemies. you collect still-beating hearts to regenerate your health (the hero, Akuji, had his heart torn out of him, hence the title). the fighting is fast paced and feels good.
the graphics are great, classic low-poly PS1 stuff. I adore the character models, such as this creepy guy. I really dig the skeletal spectacles and top hat on him:
for some reason they got the blandest college professor-sounding dude to do the voice of the undead warrior Akuji, but eh, who cares. I only played this for about an hour before other matters required my attention (namely, sleep) but I plan on going back to it as I was actually having fun.
ps1 society 4 lyfe!
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i think trag must have been a us-only name, as i’m sure it was called hard edge in europe too.
i had a demo of akuji the heartless! it seems like there was a few occult-themed western-developed 3d action games on the ps1 about that time: akuji the heartless, nightmare creatures, soul reaver, and so on.
i played the akuji demo a lot, but even now i don’t think i’ve ever played the full game. i don’t think it ever got any kind of popularity, either, did it?
yeah I don’t think so, I’d certainly never heard of it before. but your post reminds me that the Akuji disc contains demos for Tomb Raider 3, Soul Reaver, and Gex 3, which you can choose to play on start-up. it’s a Crystal Dynamics game. Akuji feels a lot better and snappier than Soul Reaver though, to me. SR’s movement always felt so sluggish and the environments so bland.
yeah, akuji is good. i completed it a few years ago. it’s based on gex engine iirc.
very nice dynamic percussive soundtrack as well.
as far as Resident Evil style counter terrorist games are concerned, there’s also Chase the Express (Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn in US). actually has a pretty moody atmosphere for what’s essentially game version of Under Siege 2.
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I’ve put several more hours into Akuji now and I am still really enjoying it. some fiddly platforming annoyed me but I eventually pushed through and defeated the big spider boss Okal. I enjoy the mixing of melee and magic. the game feels almost Souls-like sometimes, or Vagrant Story without the RPG elements.
if it’s based on the Gex engine maybe I should actually try the 3D Gexes. it has also made me want to give Tomb Raider a real shot.
Reading this thread it occurs to me I’ve played maybe 5 PS1 games
Well, somebody’s got some work to do!
I played and beat AKUJI THE HEARTLESS (about 13-15 hours, estimate—7:30 on the save file + many, many game overs) and I think it’s now one of my favorite PS1 games.
it’s funny how much Mario there is in it, despite it being a super serious blood soaked 3D game, there’s still a part where you have to traverse a series of pipes to progress. hellpipes. many floating and moving blocks and switches. the levels, especially the later ones, are remarkable spaces to traverse… one level felt like an Escher painting it was so involuted, wrapping in on itself endlessly.
The ending to the story is bizarrely anticlimactic—about a 15 second FMV of Akuji reuniting with his wife, where Akuji’s pecs are almost as big and prominent as his wife’s breasts. they both touch each other suggestively. and then the credits. it was weird. I don’t care though, I had a great time.
Raziel was totally right about the soundtrack too. really unique sounds that remind me of the hypnagogic percussive ritual trance stuff a friend of mine makes.
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Just stumbled on this thread, hope you guys end up doing the podcast! I’m enjoying the SNES pod and I know the PSX deepcuts are even weirder.
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Maybe.