I'm a brit-anon, had an SNES growing up but had never heard of a Mario RPG surprisingly until I grew up and got internet access, only recently learning it was never released here. How come? Was this Nintendo punishing us for being Sega territory effectively throughout the 80's and 90's?
>>12578682They did you a favor.
>>12578682No idea but an embargo would have been even better
>>12578689of course americans hate whites.>>12578683how come?
>>12578682It's always a good thing when a retro game didn't originally release in PAL territories, because you were saved from playing it at 50 Hz
>>12578690Because it just wasn't that good.
>>12578691The whole 50hz/60hz thing is very misunderstood, if you're a kid in PAL regions then you basically never notice and most games were made with 50hz in mind. You got better quality and picture at a cost of slightly faster speed, nowadays most people would complain but back then it wasn't anything which bothered you.
>>12578682JRPGs basically didn't exist in Europe back then. The first Final Fantasy game released over here was FF7, and I'm having trouble finding any JRPG with a PAL release before it.
Probably too much hassle to translate
>>12578704Mystic Quest got a PAL release. Phantasy Star and practically every RPG on Mega Drive got a PAL release since they were such a large proportion of Sega console owners. I believe the Master System port of Miracle warriors was the first JRPG to get a PAL release. A lot of action JRPGs did as well, FF Adventure, Secret of Mana, Illusion of Gaia, Evermore, Terranigma (which infamously did not even get an American release).
>>12578704Europeans at least got the complete Phantasy Star and Shinning force series
>>12578696>if you're a kid in PAL regions then you basically never notice >back then it wasn't anything which bothered youBecause you didn't know any better. Nobody who has tasted 60 Hz can go back to 50 Hzhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW-XsGN8oKc
>>12578682Oi me speccy
>>12578735>Nobody who has tasted 60 Hz can go back to 50 HzI don't really care, if the game is 50hz only I play it in 50hz and if it's 60hz then I play it in 60, as long as the game is good and is optimized for that framerate.
>>12578682I remember being so pissed about it.The screenshots, especially of the pseudo 3D minecart section made me so hype.>Where is it already??
>>12578736shieeets yallz trippin dawg ya feel me nigga?
>>12578759Only zoomers and niggers speak that way.
>>12578762amerimutt land is a 30% white country so it checks out
>>12578682>one of the hottest SNES games ever madegrim
>>12578708Yeah, English to British is quite difficult.
>>12578782The UK isn't all of PAL, I think he meant other countries like spain, france, germany, etc.
>>12578769Best console EVAR though, right?
>>12578725>Complete Shining SeriesOh dang I never knew they got Shining Force 3 parts 2 and 3
>>12578739>if the game is 50hz only I play it in 50hzExactly, you'll only play the 50 Hz version if you have no choice
>>12578682The article there explains it. Square had already dropped the N64 for the PS1 and Nintendo had no reason to boost Square's stock and prestige by doing further releases of the game. It sold better than expected in the US and probably would have done the same in Europe, so Nintendo actually left some money on the table but what else could they do? Keep promoting the star third-party developer for the rival console? Wouldn't have been a good move on their part.
>>12578682most RPGs didn't get exported because there was too much to translate. which led to this scenario where some strange obscure Japanese titles got PAL releases but not US releases because the game had very little dialogue and so was cheap to translate. it was always a cost thing, because PAL back in the day was an absolutely tiny market especially outside of the English market, so you'd have to take a ton of time to convert to 5+ languages and maybe get a quarter of the sales you would in the US.this is also real reason there was less "censorship" in PAL releases of JP games is because the translations were slapdash low-budget affairs with barely any QC. especially once you get into the 21st century it's a lot of literal early-gen MTL gibberish a lot of the time.
>>12578704Kind of Ironic that RPGs were based on European culture but they barely got any RPGs because all the PAL languages were too much trouble to translate.
>>12578704Terranigma (I know, ARPG but still) got a Euro release but not an American one
>>12578692I feel bad for you
>>12578912it's why RPGs got popular there, they had to develop domestic titles which led to big fanbases revolving around local dev groups. more variety.
>>12578704Nigga why (you) lying?
>>12578720>>12578725Those don't count because I said so.
>>12578704Wow this is actually eye opening I never knew this. All the threads titled "Why do so many people like Earthbound, literally NOONE talked about it at the time" and "FF6 is slop the only good JRPG is Phantasy Star 4" make so much sense now. Thats actually hilarious and pathetic at the same time everything is so clear to me now.
>>12578735i still play sonic in pal because the ntsc music sounds too fast. gotta keep mind as weird as it sounds to you in pal, the same is true for those who started on pal
Whoever was in charge of advertising and distributing for Nintendo in Europe has to be the stupidest fucking person of all time. It's absurd how you have a system that's the best-seller in North America and Japan but you still manage to fuck up that badly.
>>12579079The fucking Master System outsold the NES in the UK and SpainI don't know what the fuck Nintendo was doing
>>12578912It had its roots back in the 8-bit era since they had home computers with cassette tapes and no disks so RPGs were not feasible and they never developed much of an RPG tradition.
>>12578920It's a mediocre rpg compared to others. Get better taste anon.
>>12578720Mystic Quest's release was limited and only in certain countries.
>>12578682Things got better with the N64 but EU still missed out on some games like Ogre Battle 64 and Harvest Moon 64.
>>12578682One big reason was that the core audience for the game would be older gamers already familiar with RPGs, and they already owned import copies of it. Import gaming was huge back then, especially with RPGfags because that was the only way to actually play them.
>>12578691>It's always a good thing when a retro game didn't originally release in PAL territories, because you were saved from playing it at 50 HzIt's literally no big deal you sperg
>>12579273Holy cope
Lufia 2 launched late as 1997 in PAL
>>12579198>Ogre Battle 64You didn't miss anything there, it's pretty boring.
>>12578735We're talking about a Nintendo game, and they're showing a video of a Sega game. This Sonic video isn't just a 50Hz issue, it's worse. They put the original NTSC game on a PAL console, and the result is that at 50 frames per second, it takes 1.17 seconds to display a single frame. Instead of 1 second = 1 frame. This isn't the case with Nintendo games. They run at 30 frames per second, adapted to 25 frames per second. So, 25 FPS instead of 30 is less fluid, but it's not slower, unlike the Sonic example. It's like today, console games run at 30fps while PC games run at 60 or 120fps; PC games are smoother, but not faster. So, on a Nintendo console, the music is in PAL and NTSC.
>>12578739here comes the tranny
>>12579025man, this place really sucks ever since tranny smith took over all.
>>12578682Same reason other JRPGs didn't reach Europe; too many languages to translate for and not enough budget to do it. Final Fantasy VII broke that trend because it had a huge budget with Sony's backing.
>>12578720>Mystic Quest got a PAL release.As others anon said, a limited release>Phantasy Star and practically every RPG on Mega Drive got a PAL releaseYeah precisely, "a" PAL release. Meaning in the UK, and not in the rest of Europe.The first anon >>12578704 is correct and your post is extrapolating wikipedia knowledge: looking at a couple of release dates and not what's behind them.>A lot of action JRPGs did as wellThat is true and this is the real explanation of the matter. It's not an issue of "it was too hard/costly to translate" as evidenced by the ARPGs with a lot of text that did get translated, in fact at the time most publishing in Europe weren't continent wide but per counry or within a group of 2-3 countries at best, meaning it's not like the publisher had the burden to translate 8 languages, he'd translate one or two and it'd be similar to his other releases. It was an issue that there was no precedent for a RPG releasing and performing well and since there was no precedent, nobody else would take the risk and it becomes a loop. The REAL reason why RPGs didn't release in Europe is because NOBODY GAVE A SHIT ABOUT DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS IN EUROPE. The history/fanbase of computer RPGs was also equally small. So publishers assumed there was no audiance.This was of course a mistake but it's how suits think. In countries like France or Spain if they had released the Dragon Quest games, kept the Toriyama covers, and marketed heavily on the fact that it was made by Toriyama, they'd have sold out in a month and it would have started a chain reaction. Alas this is not what happened, but if I ever find a time machine that brings me back to 1990 I know exactly what to do to make money.
>>12579319>This isn't the case with Nintendo gameslolhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSRovkKOHU
>>12578696I'm an American, but even still, I definitely understand what you're saying. I played games via RF all the way through the N64 and was never once bothered by the relatively poor video and audio quality. That's just what games at home were like. I didn't know any better, everything looked fine to me. Sure, I probably noticed that games at the arcade looked miles better than games at home, but my brain probably lumped the RGB video quality in with the better graphics into just "better graphics."
>>12579380>The REAL reason why RPGs didn't release in Europe is because NOBODY GAVE A SHIT ABOUT DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS IN EUROPE. The history/fanbase of computer RPGs was also equally small. So publishers assumed there was no audiance.Dark Eye.
>>12579331kill yourself
>>12578682Nintendo was too lazy to translate their games in every european language, so they chose to not release Mario RPG at all since by featuring Mario it would have undoubtedly been bought by a bunch of kids who wouldn't have been able to play the game. It wasn't until the GameCube that they started translating all of their games. Needless to say, waiting so long damaged them greatly since PS1 already had FULLY DUBBED games in every language even.
>>12578704I can name a few of the top of my head, but you'll go "doesn't count" because you want to spout completely retarded shit out of some inexplicable inferiority complex.
>>12579493Don’t make stuff up.>>12579380 and >>12579380 are correct.Your bullshit opinion is worthless. It was not due to being lazy, the opinion at the time was the sales were not there for RPGs so they chose not too. Financial reasons.
>>12579501They didn't translate ANY game, not even huge sellers. That was obvious laziness that they thought would not bite them in the ass, but it did.
>>12579504Nintendo translated many games.Let’s just start with one,Super Mario World in the snes era. That got translated from Japanese to English. That happened.>They didn't translate ANY game, not even huge sellersSo that’s wrong straight off.Just stop making stuff up. Your opinions are wrong and useless to everyone,
>>12579508Are you genuineny retarded or just pretending? The discussion is about games translated to languages other than english for the european market.
>>125792951996 for most of them apparently. My Dutch copy has 1996 on the box and the few scans I can find online as well. sPAIN apparently got it in 1998, but I'm not fact-checking that.
>>12578682no one cares about PALpoors.
>>12579380Consoles gamers just didn't care that much about RPG's before FF7. Secret of Evermore and Secret of Mana has a lot of fans but particularly British magazines acted like RPG's were the crappiest games you could ever play. The previews to Chromo Trigger here said it would never be released and to just get an adaptor.>>12579319A couple of games had the speed adjusted like Kirby and Mario 1. Some game were horrific in PAL such as Waverace. Even Euro ps1 games like wipeout look so much smoother at 60 hz.>>12578735I found a tv a while ago and the 50 hz menu was giving me a headache, I thought it was broken.
>>12579510Is it?Are you sure. The OP certainly said Europe in the subject but when you actually read his post>brit-anon>never released hereSo UKAlso the image is entirely UK.This was never about all European languages. Even if it was the answer is actually the same - financial reasons. They considered that this would not be a seller. Not laziness and not ‘all games were dubbed on PS1”Stop making stuff up.>retardedThere it is again. Sure flag that the person saying it is in fact that.
>>12579517clearly you do if you're responding.
>>12579517I care.Especially in the early 90s. I imported a US SNES before it came out here and hooked it up to a TV that could handle it.The lack of black background at the top and bottom of a screen and the fact it ran noticeably faster actually caused issues for other kids when SNES came out here and we played multiplayer games. They were too used to the PAL versions.
>>12578682Stuck after 5 min same with chrono trikker but stuck after 15 min makes 300 bucks down teh toilets
>>12579386We don't even know what platform the guy is testing on. Is it an emulator? Is it a console/game in NTSC or PAL? Or is it an NTSC game and a PAL game on an NTSC console, or vice versa? My PAL version of Jurassic Park 2 on a PAL SNES runs faster than PAL version of JP2 on an emulator...https://youtu.be/PGACXzEjgw4?is=ZZLpqgj3CUO59S3WColin McRae PAL on NTSC console run faster than NTSC game on NTSC console.
Super Mario RPG was released in Italian stores, though it remains unknown whether this was legal. Distributed by Cidiverte, it was the US version with its regional chip replaced by a European one and housed in a PAL cartridge case. The front of the box featured a Cidiverte sticker, while a warning on the back stated that the game might not work properly. Additionally, it cost significantly more than other games at the time.
>>12579895Pics to back it up mate?
>>12578682One of the first posts I remember reading on /v/ so many years ago was along the lines of "if you haven't played Mario RPG you aren't a true gamer".I didn't know it wasn't even released in Europe until now.
>>12578682You had to be alive in that time. During 90s nintendo europe just chose ONE (and only one jprg per year) Take into account that cartidges had to been translated to deutsch, french, italiano and español, besides English.I.E. from 1993 to 1996 nintendo europe just chose one jprg for europe:1991 Lagoon 1992 Soul Blazer 1993 Mystic Quest Legend 1994 Secret of Mana 1995 Terranigma 1996 Secret of Evermore
>>12578704>JRPGs basically didn't exist in Europe back thenHow do you say in English "¡hostia chaval que mentiroso! das asco mentiroso de mierda"?Thanks in advance.
>>12579295Impressive, getting 16 bits release dates so late. Kudos to them.
>>12579142Mutt here, I'd take Terranigma >>12578720over SMRPG anyday any hz
>>12579915Here are the first images I could find online. Many images and photographic documentation on old Italian retrogames forums or online marketplaces are now unfortunately dead links.
>>12579915>>12580190I'll stop here, I don't want to spam too many images.I hope this information about the "Italian release" has entertained you all.
>>12580190Really basedAnd of course TOTALLY legal...You can see that it's just the Amercan label slappen there. Real PAL carts had the SUPER NINTENDO logo to the left and the picture more centered.
>>12579895>>12580205the game used a helper chip, idk how they could have made boots of the thing. if it was a regular SNES cart then maybe.
>>12578704Lufia 2 got a European release, but it was just called Lufia since the first was an NA/Japan exclusive.
>>12580205It was partially legal at least according to Italian law as it was imported and distributed legally according to the sticker. Whether it was legal according to Nintendo well...>>12580213In addition to the regional chip change, 4 pins of the SA1 chip were also disconnected.
>>12580282Ahhh, technically legal, the best kind of legal.
>>12580282many European countries have weak or no IP laws, IP law in of itself is primarily a concept that originated in England
>>12578682Anti-italian discrimination
>>12580282Nintendo might have also disagreed with the legality of Famiclones but they were legal as far as Taiwan was concerned.
>>12578682The German translator for Nintendo of Europe also confirmed that they finished German and French localizations for Final Fantasy VI but these went unreleased, however Secret of Evermore still was finished and properly released.The US release of Super Mario RPG in the first place was planned to be handled by Squaresoft USA but they didn't order enough copies the way Nintendo wants usually, which enraged Nintendo who then overtook publishing duties in the US and removed Squaresoft's name from the packaging (but not the actual game) and that was the project meant to smooth the tensions between Nintendo and Squaresoft after Squaresoft were so consistently blueballed whenever ordering new carts by Nintendo (and Nintendo could NOT help themselves with Super Mario RPG and even Capcom's Street Fighter Zero US release) A PAL version would require some content changes to accomodate 50 Hz, at least remove the region lockout code, and maybe add new translations, which is more development by Squaresoft, but Super Mario RPG was rushed to the market in the first place, all further Squaresoft projects for the Super NES had their localizations cancelled (Bahamut Lagoon, Final Fantasy Extreme (V), Secret of Mana 2...) or were cancelled and any remnants repurposed as shorter scope Satellaview demos - according to previous Famitsu employees they (the press) alongside PlayStation third parties were shown 3D CGI demos of something similar to Final Fantasy VII as early as late 1993 so Squaresoft was planning their exit that early.Nintendo of Europe still managed to release new localizations well into 1998, and the first major first party game they missed was Kirby's Dreamland 3.
>>12578682It was punishment for supporting Jimmy Saville. Shigeru Miyamoto met him in '94 and Saville gave him the creeps. "I'm afraid that decades of spekky and Mega Drive games has turned the once great nation of Britain into an island of demonic pedophile idolizing creeps. We are a brand for children, we can't be associated with such evil." Miyamoto was heard to remark.When reached comment at a charity hospital for disabled kids Savvs sniffed his fingers and replied "Just doing my part to save the Saturn, guv."
>>12580315>The US release of Super Mario RPG in the first place was planned to be handled by Squaresoft USA but they didn't order enough copies the way Nintendo wants usuallyOfficially the minimum order of cartridges Nintendo allowed was 20,000 and you bought them in multiples of 10,000.
>>12580332I think NOA normally wouldn't have cared if it was third party, but it was their own properties in the game so they expected a large run like they did with their regular first party releases.
>>12580315Germany also has rigid censorship laws regarding media content. I don't mean NOA's arbitrary rules like no religious imagery, bobs and bagine, etc with no legal standing, I mean actual laws on what could or couldn't be in a game.
>>12580282>Whether it was legal according to Nintendo well...Nintendo cut a lot of corners from 1996 onwards so it might have been with their tacit approval when Squaresoft couldn't cooperate with developing a unique PAL version for it.One incident that comes to mind is Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the SNES. Nintendo was notorious back then for being assholes who require developers to over-order cartridges, often taking loans, and then Nintendo replies back with a smaller number of cartridges, occasionally vetoing the cartridge size or type and requiring the developer to further change the game to fit, and arbitrarily deciding how many copies the game should sell with no regard to whether it's profitable. Nintendo would pay the developers back for the cartridges that weren't delivered, but the rest is the developer's problem.Well Capcom ordered an expensive cartridge for Street Fighter Alpha 2 and it sold less than expected, so Capcom was very angry with Nintendo, and Nintendo was actually scared that they would completely abandon them over this for disc-based systems with none of this bullshit (and it was their final release in the west for that system, skipping Megaman & Bass after all) so they had a talk and then Capcom's losses were covered in some way, and the surplus copies found their ways to non-US markets in ways that Nintendo wouldn't normally approve of at all, but turned a blind eye (or even got involved) in this case.Another is from the Gigaleak and about Terranigma's English version, which is also a late SNES release. The Japanese submission review notes say that there's a lot of red flags with how some screens are presented, but that they "negotiated" it and would be giving it a pass. Further down in 1998-1999 with the Japan-only Super Lode Runner and Power Soukouban published by Nintendo, there's some very noticeable cut corners with the quality control but they still approved it.
>>12580339that and SMRPG had an expensive helper chip so they had to sell enough copies to make back the cost of that
>>12580345Did you know that HAL almost went bankrupt because Nintendo wouldn't let them have enough Metal Slader Glory carts so they were unable to make back the game's absurdly high production costs?
>>12580345>Well Capcom ordered an expensive cartridge for Street Fighter Alpha 2 and it sold less than expected, so Capcom was very angry with Nintendo, and Nintendo was actually scared that they would completely abandon them over this for disc-based systems with none of this bullshit (and it was their final release in the west for that system, skipping Megaman & Bass after all) so they had a talk and then Capcom's losses were covered in some way, and the surplus copies found their ways to non-US markets in ways that Nintendo wouldn't normally approve of at all, but turned a blind eye (or even got involved) in this case.Capcom had the leverage to get their way, if it had been Pack-In-Video or one of those guys Nintendo would tell them to get fucked. But Capcom were too big to piss off, so they had to apologize.
>>12580345with Famicom games a lot of companies just made their own carts and mappers so they could decide for themselves the whats, whens, and hows. since Nintendo completely took over cart production for the SFC that was no longer possible.
>>12580345>occasionally vetoing the cartridge size or typeqrd
>>12580365Nintendo arbitrary refusing stuff like a particular ROM size, battery, helper chip, etc and forcing the developer to redo the game for whatever cartridge hardware they decided they should get instead.
>>12578696the only misunderstood thing is that games could be made to play at proper speed at 50hz but almost no devs actually did it even though it'd take like 5 seconds. devs have always been lazy sacks of shit.
>>12578739obviously they meant they wouldn't play 50hz OVER 60hz if a 60hz version existed. jesus christ dude.
>>12580348And then they gave them special treatment...But that's specifically a key factor in why so many third party publishers stopped providing localizations of Super Nintendo software, or even got bankrupt. Notable casualties include the announced Super Bonk 2, a different NA version of Terranigma localized by Enix USA instead of Nintendo of Europe (actually localized at NoA but unreleased there for some reason, the employees supposedly got a 60Hz NTSC build as a gift), a finished but never released Dragon Quest VI (as Dragon Warrior V, because DQV English was cancelled over technical issues), Dragon Quest Torneko no Daibouken (as Taloon's Big Adventure, then picked up by Nintendo of Europe but never released), and some massive potential slate of localizations from 1994 onwards by publishers other than Natsume.Even when Nintendo noticed the problem and wanted to pick up publishing for some games, they often gave up for no reason (for example Tales of Phantasia allegedly, which explains the special treatment with the gigantic cartridge size, or Metal Warriors) and left developers scrambling for alternate publishers which did NOT help their developer relationships in the slightest.Especially their unpredictable rejections over content guidelines, especially in America but not unheard of in Japan (Prince of Persia SNES was held back to remove blood and some gory traps at the behest of NCL, then NoA had their own set of demands for the NA release) It was idiotic and ultimately self-defeating.
I think I'd mentioned this before but Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde was an UNROM cart in Japan and the US version was changed to MMC1, except only with a 32k CHR ROM so they had to omit two of the game's four stages. There's no explanation for this that I've ever heard of unless NOA made them use that hardware for some reason.
>>12580375>and some massive potential slate of localizations from 1994 onwards by publishers other than Natsumedammit, i wanted my US release of Magical Pop'N. fuck you, NOA.
>>12580365Secret of Mana and Romancing Saga 1 were developed for a bigger data storage medium in mind (the SNES-CD) then it got cancelled and they requested a bigger size ROM. Nintendo gave them a smaller one, which forced them to cut down content in not so clean ways, resulting in noticeable bugs. Similarly Capcom's earlier games were designed with FastROM in mind but then forced to change the software to accomodate the lower quality chips sent by Nintendo, resulting in their very noticeable slowdown that wasn't intended by the devs. And that's just the base chip, not ones with enhancements for better calculations, better compression (to fit in more data) or better processing power.So Squaresoft was constantly requesting bigger ROM chips, and Nintendo was blueballing them, but it became clear they were playing favorites - first the bigger ROM size needs to be first used by a first party Nintendo game, and they can be as wasteful as they want (for instance, Super Metroid), and then it's the turn of Yamauchi's mahjong buddies and his personal list of VIP publishers like Dragon Quest, and then a year later it's the commoners turn, which included Squaresoft, Namco, etc. Nintendo even had the gall to request some 1991 games to be held back because despite the ROM size limitations they were more graphically impressive than Nintendo's first party games and that made them "look bad", so the publishers had to bear with 6 month delays out of nowhere for doing their job too good occasionally. At some point Squaresoft and Namco complained in public that this was hindering them, but Nintendo was enraged and gave them an even harder time. This genius move was a key reason why Squaresoft went from an underappreciated second party pumping exclusives for the SNES with no thanks for their loyalty, to one of the key supporters of the PlayStation AND the WonderSwan Color meant to kill the Game Boy.
it was always kinda obvious that Konami/Capcom/Enix were Nintendo's pets and could get almost anything they wanted
>>12580357To be fair it's not hard to see whyDue to that very versatility bootleg publishers in America were advertising an adapter (never released but very possible technically) that would provide enhanced hardware abilities and much more reusable parts than the standard mapper chips, resulting in much cheaper games. So that would create an alternate parasitic ecosystem where someone else is selling the console's must-have hardware.It's kinda the same issue Nintendo had with Sony's PlayStation, aka what they called the SNES-CD add-on at some point with third party dev royalties directly paid to Sony, and none paid to Nintendo, and no reason for Sony not to dispose of the Super Nintendo shell and produce their completely unique hardware next.Yamauchi was very attached to those licensing fees for each cart (and even when they did adopt discs, changing specs just enough to avoid any royalties to Sony who was involved in various CD/DVD/Blu-Ray specs) and saw any threat to that revenue stream as an existential threat. Then again it's not as if Sony didn't do the same with memory cards for a while just to avoid using SD cards they did NOT control.
>>12580402>So Squaresoft was constantly requesting bigger ROM chips, and Nintendo was blueballing them, but it became clear they were playing favorites - first the bigger ROM size needs to be first used by a first party Nintendo game,example: p. sure no third party NES games had MMC3 until 1990 while they used it in first party carts since '88
>>12580357The Famicom had no lockout system so they couldn't prevent third party carts.
>>12580402I find it interesting that Acclaim got to make their own NES cartridge PCBs and even their own clone MMC1, unless Howard Lincoln and the Acclaim CEO were golf buddies. Don't ask me.
>>12580426Konami yes, and even then... The others, I don't see it.
>>12580456was it that they didn't let Konami use the VRC mappers on US carts so they had to trim games down and lose a bunch of content?
>>12580459I think in that case it was more just because they didn't have enough VRC chips for NES carts and their production capacity was relatively limited. Konami did actually make their own NES PCBs btw.
sometimes like with this game, the 4 megabit ROM size was more likely not Nintendo's fault but the publisher themselves for being cheap pieces of shit
>>12580385>Mega Man 4 and 6 - MMC3 CHR RAM>Mega Man 5 - MMC3 CHR ROMMade zero sense why the hardware was abruptly changed for 5 unless Nintendo made them switch it for some unaccountable reason.
>>12580426Enix were kingmakers, and to their credit they bared with Nintendo's bullshit in the Nintendo 64 longer than most (even Game Freaks (Click Medic), Intelligent Systems (WonderSwan Color) and Jupiter (NuPa: Numeric Paint Puzzle PS1) were exploring their options) and with Nintendo not being serious about the N64DD release they released DQ VII with its very primitive 3D graphics as late as 2000 when they could have done so much earlier.so appeasing them was in Nintendo's best interests.Capcom were juggernauts even with their arcade business alone, and Konami was planning a 16-bit console and even finished of its launch titles. Hudson could be said to be basically a first-party developer for the PC Engine, a key competitor with the Super Nintendo in Japan. So it's not that surprising that Nintendo rolled the red carpet for them and accepted even their scraps. Hudson Soft in particular got the best cartridges for making games that rival the PC Engine, and even was comfortable producing promotional versions of their games with those carts that other third parties could never dream of using.Bandai is an even more special case, Nintendo entrusted them at some point with their European operations and even some of the third party localizations, until 1993. Then they still got preferential treatment.Allegedly in Europe Nintendo rolled the red carpet for Ocean and Infogrammes, and was satisfied especially with how the latter was releasing million sellers there, even though a lot of it is average to mediocre licensed trash. So Infogrammes got many rule exemptions, such as advertising Game Boy games as having "Super Game Boy support", but it would be some badly designed default palettes and a solid color border designed in MS Paint and still get a pass.
>>12578682It wouldn't have been fairly late by the time it get localized, new shit was already taking place.
>>125804844 and 6 had a 4 megabit PRG ROM while 5 was a 2 megabit PRG and CHR ROM. it most likely was due to the higher cost of the 4 megabit chips or maybe Nintendo didn't have any available or their stock was mostly earmarked for SNES carts.
>>12580487>Bandai is an even more special case, Nintendo entrusted them at some point with their European operations and even some of the third party localizations, until 1993. Then they still got preferential treatment.that is quite odd because Nintendo were known to dislike licensed games and Bandai's were some of the worst
>>12580498I'm going to assume NOJ only grudgingly tolerated them because their games made a lot of money, probably NOE had a better relationship with them.
>>12580496>>12580484MM5 uses a dynamic sprite loading system that the other MM games don't use, every "frame" that is displayed for a character or enemy the game automatically loads the correct sprite set to be used on the spot. This allows a lot more versatility compared to the other games which only load the sprites they plan to use during screen transitions and other loading moments.Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe doing such a system with CHR RAM would be a pain in the ass, with CHR RAM the graphics are usually compressed and uncompressing stuff to be used live sounds like a lag nightmare.
>>12580498Nintendo did Popeye for Arcades, a dating sim based on a real-life idol for the Famicom, a racing game based on the Retsu & Go manga also a Snoopy game for the Super Famicom, and were planning a Kimba The White Lion action platformer using the same engine as Super Mario 64 as a major N64 title. And then they went and published/co-developed Jump Super Stars, Jump Ultimate Stars, and then localized for Europe One Piece Gigant Battle for the DS (originally developed by Ganbarion -same as Jump Ultimate Stars- and published by Bandai), not to mention the Mickey Mouse games they published or funded or localized for the N64, GB and GameCube, or obscure shit like Zona on the Game Boy Color, an entire Hamtaro series for the Game Boy Color / Advence with Miyamoto's involvment no less, many Eyeshield 21 games, and many instances of quality licensed games they published in Europe or America or Japan (for example Maui Mallard's SNES version)Bandai didn't only develop bad games, or licensed games, either. And either way that's irrelevant to the reason why Nintendo seeked them out in the first place: as an established toy distributor with some success in Europe, some presence in Japan, existing ties (merch for Nintendo's own properties) that were close enough they considered a merger at some point.
>>12580505>with CHR RAM the graphics are usually compressedSometimes they are and sometimes not, though you can usually tell because there will be a second or two of blank screen if the graphics are compressed. BTW, I know Mega Man 1 does most of its graphics loading when you enter a new section of the level, like the hallway before the boss because there's a brief pause. They managed to do it without blanking the screen though, so it looks a lot more seamless than most CHR RAM games.
>>12580505The 16-bit consoles had sprite DMA so you could stream sprites into video RAM in real time, but that wasn't possible with the NES.
>>12580487>Hudson Soft in particular got the best cartridges for making games that rival the PC Engine, andthen again Bomberman 2 was a cheap shit UNROM cart in 1990
like anon said, Akklaim must have had some kind of good relationship with NOA despite their games mostly being trash
>>12580375I don't know why NOA were especially douchebags about Maniac Mansion.
>>12580402>and then it's the turn of Yamauchi's mahjong buddiesOr maybe Go buddies, he was a seasoned Go player.
>>12580402>Secret of Mana and Romancing Saga 1 were developed for a bigger data storage medium in mind (the SNES-CD) then it got cancelled and they requested a bigger size ROM. Nintendo gave them a smaller one, which forced them to cut down content in not so clean waysSoM was 16 megabits and RS1 8 megabits. If I had to guess I'd assume the original intention was 24 and 16 megabits.
>>12580612Probably because having controversy surrounding a title that won't sell well at all isn't worth it. The NES had an extremely family friendly image based around the backwards way that the west processes what can fly and what can't, and Maniac Mansion was pretty clearly made for an older audience with a bunch of jokes that aren't THAT bad but that parents would throw a huge shitfit over regardless.I mean shit, Nintendo made sure Mortal Kombat was censored years later handing an enormous advantage over to Sega, and that was a game that was an actual huge deal and not some little blip on the radar.
>>12578696>if you're a kid in PAL regions then you basically never notice Because you became accustomed to slowed down games lol>and most games were made with 50hz in mind.Maybe if you only played eurojank.
>>12580590The first Bomberman was released in 1985 even before the NA NES launch or Nintendo's FDS system or subsequent mappers. Even that UNROM is an upgrade from that, and the game doesn't really warrant more. For a cheap buck it makes sense.Hudson released the very last Famicom game (Adventure Island IV) in Japan, other developers considered 1994/95 releases but never went through with it for some reason, leaving only that horse betting thing maintained all the way to like 2015.
>>12580660The game engine was called SCUMM or something and they wanted to put NES SCUMM somewhere in the credits, you know the part where Nintendo checks if their legalese is properly and respectfully written, and were not amused and Maniac Mansion already had an earlier Japanese port by Jaleco that was properly sanitized to Nintendo's liking so they were thinking the western devs could do better and just threw the book at them.(I mean even Sony would throw a fit, even "unflattering" depictions of their consoles ingame even as an easter egg is enough for a rejection, in situations where Sega would be chill with the Mega Drive in the landfill in the genie's level in Aladdin, and Nintendo fine with Rush digging Game Boys and Super Nintendos from the trash in Mega Man 7)
>>12580672still, i don't know what happened with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. why go from an UNROM cart to a more expensive MMC1 cart but then only use a 32k CHR ROM so they had to cut two levels?
>>12580694>Mansion already had an earlier Japanese port by Jaleco that was properly sanitized to Nintendo's likingthe Famicom MM wasn't censored afaik
>>12578682It'd probably have been factors like being a late SNES title, when PS1 was already out (like the image says), the costs of localization and marketing for each territory, and the SA-1 co-processor.It would've not been a viable product to release in that time frame when the SNES was on the way out and the N64 on the way in; the pre-rendered 3D sprites would've no longer been impressive when actual 3D was months away.There's only a single PAL region game that used the SA-1 co-processor; Kirby's Fun Pak (localised from Kirby Super Star).Nintendo PAL-optimised many of their releases when converting from 60hz to 50hz, with Super Metroid being a pretty notable example. That's significant extra development time.
BTW if Nintendo were responsible for chopping the NES release of Bard's Tale down to 1 megabit, then fuck them.
>>12579521>particularly British magazines acted like RPG's were the crappiest games you could ever playSuper Play was masturbating RPGs as the BEST games you could play and was big on pushing its readers towards import gaming so they could play these gems that never got released here.
>>12580368Helper chips like SA-1 were not cheap and they probably had a limited supply of them.
>>12580375also tf is with the two completely different Casper the Ghost games? the SFC version was way better, why make a different and worse Western one?
>>12580357pretty sure LJN used cheap shit cartridge hardware of their own choosing, not Nintendo's
>>12580505>MM5 uses a dynamic sprite loading system that the other MM games don't use, every "frame" that is displayed for a character or enemy the game automatically loads the correct sprite set to be used on the spotthis is a normal feature of MMC1/MMC3 btw. you can instantly switch in any sprite you want during blank.
>>12580889So on Maniac Mansion they could have music for each character. The original C64 version couldn't do that because it had to load everything from disk but the NES could just instantly switch in the music bank as needed.
>>12580345one thing you can't help but notice is that nearly every NES/FC baseball game (the bane of Famidaily's existence) used high spec cartridge hardware, they did not cheap out on those games. the only cheapo one I can think of is LJN's Major League Baseball and that was probably LJN intentionally using the cheapest possible cartridges. to be fair two of the biggest Famicom baseball franchises were Namco's and Jaleco's and they made their own cartridges, but the US localizations didn't cheap out either. you might find games for other sports that used cheap cartridges but never baseball.you can really tell what Nintendo's priorities were here, and that when it came to baseball they were fine with absolutely no expenses spared.
>>12580952luckswing games always sold in gigantic quantities so using expensive cartridges was fine, they would easily make back the cost of an MMC3 battery game
>>12580348That was HAL's own fault for being retarded.
>>12580694They got away with the hamster microwaving, at least in the US version because it escaped NOA's notice--it was only removed from the PAL release and yes you can also do that in Famicom Maniac Mansion.
>>12580401>never got Magical Pop'N>never got Umihara Kawase>never got DQ6>never got that SNES sequel to Milon's Secret CastleThis is what they took from you and left you instead with a fucking SNES port of Q*Bert.
>>12581112Q*Bert cost like $10 to produce.
>>12578682jarpigs are for depressed faggots.are you a depressed fag?
>>12581137oh but you loved them in 1990 when they were printing yen for you like no tomorrow, you old faggot
>>12580903Ron Gilbert considered it the definitive version of the game even with the censored content and he was surprised they got it to work on the NES given all the difficulty they had fitting it on the C64.
>>12581137don't make me send the yakuza after you again
>>12581137It's funny how this old fuck only said that after Square and Enix left Nintendo for Sony
>>12581161as he said, the NES could insta-swap cartridge data while the C64 didn't have that capability, whatever you loaded off the disk into RAM was all you could use. all graphics, code, level, sound data etc are loaded and stored in memory as one big block. Maniac Mansion on NES was an MMC1 game so the first 16k of the PRG would be fixed in place and the second half was swappable.so basically you could switch around the level data, level-specific code (the first 16k having core game routines in it), music, and also graphics (since MM was a CHR RAM game it would have graphics banks which are not present in CHR ROM games) like a flip book. switch in what you are currently using and switch it back out again almost instantaneously. there are also MMC1 games that swap around the entire 32k PRG bank but MM didn't use that and if you do use it it's a bit clunky and wasteful because each bank has to duplicate a lot of code and data as well as include trampoline code to ensure execution resumes in the next bank properly.
>>12581169yes of course Enix used to be one of their pets and always got preferential treatment
>>12581174>there are also MMC1 games that swap around the entire 32k PRG bank but MM didn't use that and if you do use it it's a bit clunky and wasteful because each bank has to duplicate a lot of code and data as well as include trampoline code to ensure execution resumes in the next bank properlywhat's the use case for that?
>>12581176The main use for 32k banking is when you wanted to have multiple game engines (eg. Bayou Billy has the beat-em-up, driving, etc levels each with their own separate engine). It creates its own complications because each bank has to waste space duplicating core game routines and you also can't use PCM samples as those must sit in a fixed bank. Rare's AxROM mapper did exclusively 32k PRG banking, but they also never bothered with PCM samples.
>>12581183Bayou Billy does have samples so it clearly can't be using 32k banking.
>>12581174the 16-bit consoles were so much easier as almost none of their games had bank switching. the ROM is just one big piece the CPU can see all at once and you can have much longer game levels since the level data may as big as you have ROM space for.
>>12581192Apparently Super Street Fighter 2 is the only Mega Drive game that uses bank switching
>guys, bank switching!>bros did you hear about bank switching!>this console, apparently, it had the bank switching>maybe
