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A WANDERER, A WEASEL, AND THE TRIP THROUGH IMPASSE VALLEY
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:29 pm    Post subject: A WANDERER, A WEASEL, AND THE TRIP THROUGH IMPASSE VALLEY Reply with quote

...or the fushigi no dungeon thread.

fushigi no dungeon (or "mysterious dungeon") is a series of console roguelike games [note1] by chunsoft. the earlier titles mostly center around the journeys of a character called shiren, who wears a signature rain hat and goes on gorgeous adventures. shiren titles appeared on a bunch of consoles, including the gameboy, gameboy color, and nintendo 64. (the gbc version has some of the most beautiful artwork on the handheld.)

the shiren titles are rich in japanese cultural iconography, but weren't quite wacky enough to get mystical ninja'd, i guess! later on, chunsoft started pursuing licenses for the fushigi no dungeon games, and i believe a few of these were released in the west - chocobo's mysterious dungeon (with squaresoft) and nightmare of druaga [note2] (with namco) for example. a pokemon-licensed ds game (in two versions!) is the most recent release, and a title starring yangus of dragon quest VIII is in development.

as far as i'm concerned, fushigi no dungeon 2 - furai no shiren (shiren the wanderer) on the super famicom is the finest thing the series has produced. aeon genesis recently translated the game into english, and that was enough to finally convince me i needed to get an sf doctor for my snes. (note: there just might be a pre-patched rom here!)

so shiren is a roguelike game. the game is spent questing through randomly-generated "dungeons", which are different each time, and differently populated with monsters and items and wandering npcs. most console games that attempt to incorporate randomized dungeons end up feeling stale and boring because not enough has been implemented to make them engaging and interesting and an actual new adventure every time. furai no shiren is a robust game. every time i play i encounter a situation that makes me squeal in joy, even if it is that the oni i just slayed possessed a common mountain creature and now it is a killer common mountain creature and is lunging at my throat.

shiren combines brilliant roguelike gameplay with 16-bit design sensibilities and gorgeousness. every few dungeon "floors" brings a new set of scenery, from thick forest to bridges over sparkling streams to dark mines. the game is beautiful, and the music is beautiful (even if some scenes are totally silent but for the rushing of the river below).

it's a roguelike game, so when you die, you're forced to start over at the beginning with none of your items (well, unless.), but! there are towns spread between the dungeon levels, and as you play, and die, and pass through them again, they change and grow. relationships develop, new shops open. recently i was about to recruit ZATO-ICHI, a wandering masseuse npc, to join me, and we hacked our way through a few floors of mine before a small ballista pinned me down.

the game is replete with wonderful details like this. after you die your first time, check out the "ranking" option on the main menu. if you pick your name, you'll watch yourself get whupped by whatever happened to kill you. initially, this high-score list comes with a bunch of pre-set names, and you can view the deaths of any of these pre-set characters.

so. get to playing! remember everything that happens is saved - pick "quit" from the menu to return to the menu. and start posting your discoveries and stupid deaths. and...enjoy!

[note1] !
[note2] druaga is much more combat-oriented than other games in the series (like the shiren games), and the dungeons aren't randomly generated. it's sort like the angband to shiren's nethack, if that means anything to you?
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 11:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

out of curiosity, what's the gbc game called? i do love wonderful gbc art.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

a_plus wrote:
out of curiosity, what's the gbc game called?


furai no shiren gb 2 (the sequel to furai no shiren gb, for the greymboy).

here's a death to start us off.

i was descending through the mountain grotto, leading a small child who had lost her parents. hunger set in, and as i went to eat, an old man approached and asked for my last rice ball. i refused him, as it was my only food. he died in front of me, and i finished my meal.

deeper underground, i was surrounded by terrible pumpkin ghosts in a dark passage. as they begin draining my life, i hear "riiiice baaall...give me your riiiice baaall!" the ghost of the old man has come to enact his revenge!

i quickly read a crisis scroll. it heals me and stuns the monsters accosting me. i slip from the passage into the adjacent room, and slay the pumpkin ghost waiting there for me. then i realize that the child is no longer behind me.

i go back to the passage, and there she is, still as a statue, along with a pumpkin spirit and the ghost of the old man. frozen by my crisis scroll. i try to wait out the spell, but the nutrition the rice ball afforded me is running out, and i am getting hungry again. i leave the frozen child behind and press onward down the stairs.

now i am starving, my health steadily draining. i limp through the mountain spirit cave, searching for food. i stumble upon one of those pumpkin ghosts, and it eagerly drains me of the last of my life.

level 11 with a katana +4 and cursed heavy shield, max hp of 60 and max satiation of 110% (lot of good it did me), whupped in the mountain spirit cave by a pumpkorepkin.
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Persona-sama
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This sounds amazing.
You must hook me up!

Also, a compilation of deaths in this game sounds like an interesting story idea for the magazine!
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

your hookup is right here.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was facing down a haboon when it was posessed by two ghosts simultaneously. 136 damage with one blow! That was more than twice my HP. You have to watch for these things.
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dark steve
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I was at some sort of river-fording, being swarmed by those little brownie guys with arrows. As I made a break for the exit, one stepped in front of another's line of fire and was killed, granting the shooter a level up. I took another step and it happened again, turning the cute little guy into some sort of arrow-firing tank, which fired and killed me on my fifth step, dealing 150% of my maximum HP worth of damage.

Log traps are really cool and scary.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dark steve wrote:
I took another step and it happened again, turning the cute little guy into some sort of arrow-firing tank


a "kid tank"? one of those ended a promising run of mine.

i was hacking through the mines with zato-ichi. we were traveling down a hallway and had to go single-file, with me in the front. the hallways in the mines are dark and you can only see right in front of you. and as i reached the end of the passage, there was the little ballista guy, right in front of me.

i tried walking diagonal to get away from it, because that usually works against the brownie guys. but the kid tank it turned out was twice my speed, and every step i took it moved to realign itself with me and fired. i ended up in the corner, but zato-ichi had finally gotten out of the passage and moved close enough to attack the thing. with nowhere to go and my hitpoints critical, i waved my wand of paralysis at the tank.

and missed. a final arrow killed me while zato-ichi looked on. it wasn't as bad as the time i stumbled into the monster lair though.

i just found out this game made 48 on a famitsu readers' poll of the 100 best games of all time. of course, the number 1 spot is final fantasy X, so it doesn't really count. but still!
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dhex
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

are dungeon crawlers the most brutally hard of all games?

maybe.

a death dungeon diary piece would be cool.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex wrote:
a death dungeon diary piece would be cool.


actually! didn't kieron gillen write one of these?
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is pretty awesome! If anybody feels like posting a Quick Guide for getting started, I would appreciate it. I'm very experienced with Angband and somewhat experienced with Nethack, so I understand a fair amount of how roguelikes "work", I would just appreciate a basic tutorial on the specific mechanics of the game.

And I would love to contribute to a death diary, whether it was for this game specifically or for roguelikes in general.

Yes, Gillen wrote one, about ZangbandTK:

http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackout/zangband.html
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Scratchmonkey wrote:
This is pretty awesome! If anybody feels like posting a Quick Guide for getting started, I would appreciate it. I'm very experienced with Angband and somewhat experienced with Nethack, so I understand a fair amount of how roguelikes "work", I would just appreciate a basic tutorial on the specific mechanics of the game.


if you ask around outside the inn where the game starts, folks will fill you in on most of the technical stuff. make sure to look around for new people the next time you visit, too! there's also a small puzzle-dungeon near the inn that introduces basic concepts of dungeon navigation. each time you solve one they build a new one, but don't forget to stash your stuff (even if it's just the rice ball) in the warehouse before you go in. speaking of which, don't forget to grab the free rice ball from the bar every time you start over!

the basic controls are:
A - attack or talk to what's in front of you
B - hold to swap positions with a non-violent character, or to "run"
Y - hold to position yourself (face different directions)
X - bring up menu (for fiddling with items!)
A + B - hold to rest (recover health faster)
R - hold to move diagonally (only)
L - fire equipped missile weapon or use a special ability (as a monster)
SELECT - view map (only)

equip weapons, shields and arrows, drink or toss herbs, wave or toss wands, push or throw or put things in pots, eat food and meat, read scrolls. pots and wands are unidentified when you find them. drop things in stores to sell them. pay smithies to enhance your weapons. eat when you are hungry. crisis scrolls will save your life.

you can turn the map off on the menu if you so desire. the yellow circle-square is you, red dots are monsters (including npcs), blue dots are items on the ground, the hollow blue square is the exit.

i think that covers the basics? be sure to chat people up for tips on getting through the various places you'll encounter!
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dark steve wrote:
I was at some sort of river-fording, being swarmed by those little brownie guys with arrows. As I made a break for the exit, one stepped in front of another's line of fire and was killed, granting the shooter a level up.


grr. one of those little guys killed zato-ichi while i was off picking up an herb, and that allowed it to level up into a cross-bowya, which picked me off easily.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I actually went out and got a gamepad to play this. What a delight!
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

GilloD wrote:
I actually went out and got a gamepad to play this. What a delight!

Gamepads to play emulation are the only way to go. I really don't understand how people do it with the keyboard (well, typing of the dead makes sense). But yea, my Saturn PS2 controller with the PS2->USB set up is my current flavor of choice.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
Gamepads to play emulation are the only way to go. I really don't understand how people do it with the keyboard (well, typing of the dead makes sense). But yea, my Saturn PS2 controller with the PS2->USB set up is my current flavor of choice.


yeah, i have the ps2-> usb thingy (the four controller one), with a psone pad in the first slot. i want to pick up a saturn ps2 pad eventually, but the regular playstation controller is probably ideal for super famicom emulation.
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ApM
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Only now do I realize that Roguelikes are the true embodiment of the ideas expressed in my "Starting from Scratch" article in Issue 1.

I'm hooked like crazy.

Shapermc wrote:
Gamepads to play emulation are the only way to go. I really don't understand how people do it with the keyboard.

I've always loved gaming with a keyboard. I preferred it to a joystick in nearly all cases, growing up. Playing computer games against my friends, I'd give 'em the joystick, take the keyboard, and beat the hell out of them. I don't even own a PC gamepad anymore.

I first beat Parappa the Rapper with about the most awkward keyboard layout you can imagine. I had to use two hands. It was awful. I think I mostly put up with it because that's the position where I'd finally learned where the damn buttons actually were.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I had run out of food. On that particular floor, there was a kind old man who told me that he was a kind old man. Whenever someone told him he was hungry, he said, he would give him a rice ball, and whenever someone was about to keel over, he said, he would give him an herb. He was a kind old man.

I starved to death right in front of him, after repeatedly talking to him in hopes that he would give me a rice ball or an herb. Fuck old men.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've only played one game so far and I already have an interesting story.

I was on level two of he dungeon in the forest, and I was doing pretty well except for the cursed shield I was carrying. I pretty much thought I was invincible, those Mamals were like ants beneath my feet.

Right before the entrance to dungeon level 3, I step on a hidden switch. Apparently it made a bunch of traps appear ALL OVER the dungeon floor. I was 4 steps to the exit so I thought I would be okay, but then a spring came up and launched me to the other side of the level.

I did make it back to the exit, but I had fallen asleep a few times with a monster hitting me, got my food rotten, had 3 boulders fall on me, and right before I got to the exit I was told that some gas switch was triggered and "everything looks weird!" I didn't think much of it (previous trap locations looked like flowers) because I thought it would wear off when I got to the next floor.

It didn't, but I didn't realize that at first. I went to floor 3, saw a group of (what I thought were!) three girls, and soon found out that the arrows they were firing were hitting me. I turned to attack them but by the time I finished up on the first and was heading to the second "girl" I was dead. So the lesson here is that women are very dangerous monsters indeed.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, here's one: up on the third floor or so, I'm approached by a woman who tells me that I'm cute and that I should close my eyes so that we can have a bit of fun. I know, of course, that it is astoundingly unlikely that any good could come of this. And yet, I'm compelled to find out just what happens if I say "yes."

Well, she blinded me, is what happened. The screen went dark and I couldn't see creatures or items. Picked off by arrow-firing elves I couldn't even see.

On a later quest, I met up with some travellers resting in the first townish area, who were complaining to each other about this "bitch" they'd met who'd pulled the exact same trick on them. Classic!
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
it wasn't as bad as the time i stumbled into the monster lair though.


I just now, with no food and at 0% satiation, managed to stumble down a flight of stairs to the 11th floor... into a monster lair.

I was whupped by a pumkorepkin before starvation could take hold.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It would be so neat if they made a (action-adventure) Legend of Zelda themed Roguelike. And it would certainly add to the feeling of exploration if you really didn't know what you'd come across next.

And what if the end boss was made in the way of Warning Forever. So that each time you degeat the dungeon and restart the Legend at the beginning, the boss would get more impressive!
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

TOLLMASTER wrote:
Right before the entrance to dungeon level 3, I step on a hidden switch. Apparently it made a bunch of traps appear ALL OVER the dungeon floor.


for the record! you can use your attack to search the space in front of you for traps.

(you can also find secret passages this way!)
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ApM wrote:
dessgeega wrote:
it wasn't as bad as the time i stumbled into the monster lair though.


I just now, with no food and at 0% satiation, managed to stumble down a flight of stairs to the 11th floor... into a monster lair.

I was whupped by a pumkorepkin before starvation could take hold.


how to deal with monster lairs. (from furai no shiren gb 2.)

cliff notes: shiren reads an airslash scroll to wake all the monsters up, then a confusion scroll to make them all attack each other. he uses a swap staff to switch positions with a monster near the door. one of the monsters gets possessed, and he uses a paralysis staff and swap staff to keep it at bay. knowledge to be gleaned, friends!
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 8:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Death on floor 25.

Literally, I was killed by Death on floor 25. Three of them. Just as well I guess, I was at 4% satiation and out of anything particularly useful.

My partner (Ms. Blindy O' Blinders herself!) got separated and was killed somewhere in the mines, and for the last 8 floors or so I had been moving for the exits as quickly as possible. Once I hit 25, however, which is a system of wooden bridges over a ravine, there was no more running. Death flies through "walls" (over open space, but same thing here) and moves at double speed. Scrolls were ineffective, as they're limited by room, and though I managed to disable 2 or 3 of them with a well placed Confuse, it didn't take long for a fresh group to zero in. Utterly hopeless.

Holy crap this game is good.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 9:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A DS port of this would be the very, very end of me. I just picked off like a punk by a Diakon radish I completely underestimated. I still haven't made it past the mountain stream Sad
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 11:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

forgive the slightly tipsy posting, please:

i didn't even realize there were lairs until i'd run into one and.. well, that was that game. i thought i was soooooo smart, too, since i'd thrown a staff at a skeleton wizard (who had been transformed from a skeleton mage by one of those insect-y ghosties.. hamazu or something?). well, the staff was the one i'd gotten from a chef on the first board, and it turned my enemy into meat, which i ate, and whupped a moderate amount of butt by being the skeleton mage. didn't help enough, though.

god, this game is so much more rewarding than nethack, just by virture of its persistant world. last time i died, i had three other npcs following me (my bro, the blinding girl, and a girl missing her parents) and i'm pretty positive they'll be there once i get back. and i can't wait to see what happens next time i get to the city. at some point that master potter should give me a new pot, too (which i haven't figured out the uses of yet).

one quick question: is it possible to backtrack at all? i'd like to go back to some villages with more money/levels. one npc i ran into said something along the lines of my standing still for a while bringing me back to the first village, but either i didn't wait long enough, or i did it all wrong.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ohgodsopretty... and how did no-one see fit to mention the adorable talking weasel? Or the music? It's great even by SNES standards. I gleefully toss away productivity now. Thank you Dess!

Ketch wrote:
It would be so neat if they made a (action-adventure) Legend of Zelda themed Roguelike.


Egoboo is probably the closest thing out there right this second. It wasn't great when last I played it, but apparently they've been busy, so I think I'll give it a go again sometime soon.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 12:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So I stopped playing Metal Gear Online to play Shiren! I'm enjoying it a lot, despite how difficult it was for me to realize that dying and restarting is actually part of the game.

So for one of my runs I was amassing a good load of useful items: arrows, attack spells, and I was equipping a Katana. I also had a fair bit of food in my pack so I thought I was on my way to clear sails, chopping up little monsters to get to the next town.

And, well... I was right.
Until an arrow monster and a something or other attacked me at the same time and slaughtered me.

To add insult to injury, in the next life the first moment I stepped foot into the forest outside the village, three little brownie things jumped me and assaulted my poor little Psona. I'm sure they then proceeded to beat my corpse and feed on my entrails or something. Alas.
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi,

My name is Lord Gek and I'm also a Wanderer Addict!

Until this point I thought Torneko: The Last Hope on the PS1 was the greatest game ever made but now see that 5 years before on the SNES they actually had the system down BETTER with a much more interesting set of baddies!

This game is hardcore! No wussy town portals or words of recall here, you can only move forward and if you lose its back to start with only the few things you stored away earlier to comfort you. But, in a genius nod toward the fact that they KNIOW you'll die a million times, many NPCs, items, and traps are only introduced AFTER going through the game's many initial levels some umpteen times (even the puzzles can only be completed one per life).

I hear Sega is publishing some Shiren game this year on the DS (probably only in Japanese, though) and can only HOPE they base it firmly on this SNES game but am afraid they'll wuss out with all of the RPG standard persistent character levels and some form of town portal (as seen in the latest Torneko game made on the PS2 and GBA in Japan).

Wander on, People!
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

LordGek wrote:
I hear Sega is publishing some Shiren game this year on the DS


whoa! i have not heard this and i demand you post any information you have!
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Close to nothing beyond I think I saw it mentioned on www.gamefaqs.com and looked and saw confrimation of this rumor right on Sega of Japan's upcoming DS releases:

http://www.sega.co.jp/ds/home.html

(use your favorite Japanese to English to translator)

Also of possibly semi-relevant interest:

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/dragonquest/yangus/

No clue if we'll ever see this DQ game here in the US but from the screenshots it clearly carries through on many of the key Mysterious Dungeon staples but I guess is the latest in the Torneko series and not really part of the Shiren sub genre.


Last edited by LordGek on Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ApM
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ApM wrote:
Okay, here's one: up on the third floor or so, I'm approached by a woman who tells me that I'm cute and that I should close my eyes so that we can have a bit of fun. I know, of course, that it is astoundingly unlikely that any good could come of this. And yet, I'm compelled to find out just what happens if I say "yes."

Well, she blinded me, is what happened. The screen went dark and I couldn't see creatures or items. Picked off by arrow-firing elves I couldn't even see.

On a later quest, I met up with some travellers resting in the first townish area, who were complaining to each other about this "bitch" they'd met who'd pulled the exact same trick on them. Classic!


Okay, she has just JOINED MY PARTY, blinding me a third time for good measure.

Seriously: Holy shit.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 17, 2006 6:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i had just cleared out a floor in the mine and was returning toward the exit. a pair of kid tanks had slid into the room before the staircase and forced me to back up and come around the other way. i picked them off with arrows in a narrow corridor (that's the way to take care of them), and then returned to the now-clear room.

clear except for booby traps. i stepped on a mine, BOOM, staggered onto another mine, BOOM, and then a kid tank slid in the opposite exit. fortunately the pillars in the room blocked its fire, and i took a quick step toward the exit.

...a quick step onto a trapdoor. i tumbled into the cave grotto where a dabuta finished me off.

level 11, with a yomo kamaitachi +4 and a todo shield, max hp of 55 and max satiation of 110%.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ouch.

What do different kinds of pots do?
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LordGek
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually a kind feller at www.gamefaqs.com made a pretty comprehensive FAQ on the game:

http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/fuurai_no_shiren.txt

You'll need Japanese EUC encoding to read the Japanese bits but, if you don't mind the ocassional garbled text, the English text tells you all you need to know. The writer of this FAQ translated amny of the item names a little differently but, via the description, its usually pretty sure which one they're talking about. There are 17 different types of pots in the game but until you beat the main quest you'll only see a much smaller set of them. The most common ones are as follows:

Holder: You can put things in here to take out later. A key way to protect your food from rot but also a convenient way to store up to 6 items in one inventory slot.

ID: Put any non-pot inside this pot and the item is identified.

Storeage: When you put something in this pot it disappears and instantly shows up back in your starter town's storeage center. You'll know you have this one when you put something in but when you check the pot there is nothing inside.

Theif: This pot has a sea lion in it that will steal items for you! If you want to steal in a shop just make sure you're standing in the shop's doorway when you use this. This can also be used to grab hard to reach items like something on the other side of a moat.

I'll let you folk discover the rest on your own or in that FAQ I linked for you.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 12:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

let's put any outright spoilers behind a "color=white" tag. like this, see? advice is fine but spoilers can totally spoil someone's experience.
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PostPosted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cool beans, will try to keep that in mind.
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LordGek
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, dessgeega, I have to admit I'm not getting the fine line between general discussion of this game and outright spoilers. I mean while I get posting a link to that FAQ is as spoily as you can get but I'm still not getting when things go too far SOOO...

I offer up a NEW thread for those of us who want to discuss the game strategies freely (especially for folk who are close to defeating the main quest or, God forbid, are actually past the main quest and are in one of the game's bonus dungeons!

http://www.gamersquarter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=798
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i have been playing the fan translation of shiren on actual snes hardware thanks to a game doctor sf7 from bung. it is everything i dreamed it would be.

well, except for a small bug which very rarely freezes the game when you attempt to travel from one floor to another. since furai no shiren saves every time you travel to another floor, however, you don't really lose anything. i think the problem is with the patch having never been tested on real hardware, and i'm going to email aeon genesis about it.

in the meantime, here is some video for you!

booting up the game and intro screens.

the shortest game i have ever played. the random number generator had it in for me!

adventuring with o-ryu and zato-kechi. o-ryu gets seperated from us and lost in the woods, and zato-kechi and i press onward into the mines.

enjoy!
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dark steve
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dessgeega wrote:
the shortest game i have ever played. the random number generator had it in for me!
You had a crisis scroll! It's not like you can take it with you!

If your fellow wanderers get killed, are they gone for good?
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dark steve wrote:
If your fellow wanderers get killed, are they gone for good?


if you get killed, are you gone for good?
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm nervous, I haven't seen O-Ryu in like six runs.
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Er, what codec do you need to view those movies?
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

divx!
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LordGek
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 8:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dark steve wrote:

If your fellow wanderers get killed, are they gone for good?


Not at all! I've come across all of my multiply dead partners several times but it really does seem pretty random WHERE you'll meet them again and I don't think you'll ever see a partner more than once in a single run, but I'm not even positive of this so if you lose your brother (get seperated from him or actually see him get killed) you probably won't have a chance to run into him again until your next life.
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Big Mines are the great equalizers. I think most of the times I die they're involved somehow.
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LordGek
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 10:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

simplicio wrote:
Big Mines are the great equalizers. I think most of the times I die they're involved somehow.


These actually can be used to your advantage, you realize. If you're being chased by some super huge nasty run to the nearest mine and when you step on it any folk immediately surrounding you are instantly killed. Since it brings you to 1 hp and you don't get the exp for the kill its a VERY risky manuver (there is also the chance the trap won't trigger) but there are times this can save your ass.
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dessgeega
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i fell to a sabre gator colluding with an out-of-reach healer bunny in the marsh. my real failure, however, was in letting a child get obliterated by a tank. i am a terrible parent!

level 16, weilding a dotanuki -2 (thanks to those rust monsters) and a cursed heavy shield -2, with a max hp of 73 and a max satiation of 120%.
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 12:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Almost everytime I lose the little girl its due to tank fire as well! I wish there was a way I could tell her to STAND BACK!
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