10:48 Technos should also get credit for its absurdly robust engine, particularly how much physics simulation it's doing for an 8-bit game. Maybe there's some antecedent I'm forgetting, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't do things like *this* in any other game of the era. Not to mention all the various ways bouncing objects - or people - can cause comedic chaos. (ie, 14:00) Replaying their old NES games on the Switch, they're consistently some of the only 8-bit games that can actually make me laugh from the emergent slapstick of the physics interactions.
I remember playing River City Ransom on the Wii virtual console a lot in high school. My younger brother always called it "City River Ransom" and asked that I play it with him. Fun times.
River City Ransom is the kind of game that fostered the playground culture of sharing video game secrets. And by "secrets", I mean fundamental structural design elements that go unexplained in the game and its manual. If my buddy didn't have Nintendo Power, I would have never known that you have to find and defeat every boss in order to open River City High.
Even with the obscure elements, I feel like the short/linear nature of RCR works in its favor. The map is small enough, with few enough major challenges, that someone should be able to blunder their way through it even without a guide. Just exploring, while slowly leveling up, is really all that's necessary. It feels like a game that *wants* the player to win.
I feel like you may be the perfect youtuber to do an exhaustive retrospective on the entire Kunio/Double Dragon/Renegade/River City... thing. As a relatively new fan of Tecno's behemoth (thanks RCG1 & 2), I always enjoy how you cover it.
I loved playing River City Ransom with friends or family. The rental store my parents and I used at the time had a system where if you rented games enough times you got to keep them and River City Ransom was one of the games we got that way. I still get new River City games as soon as I can once they come out and have pre-ordered a few.
Regarding the argument near the end about "leveling negating the need for skill," that's part of the appeal of action RPGs; you can grind if you're fine with the repetition and want to have a pretty easygoing experience, or you can beeline and skip optional fights if you want a real challenge. It's funny to see people talking about games like Elden Ring and its Adjustable Difficulty like it's a novel concept, because pacing vs. difficulty has been a facet of the RPG genre since its inception.
Indeed, and you can also add this: the difficulty of areas can make the player consider whether or not they should attempt the area/enemies, or first get stronger somewhere else. This makes where to explore a tense decision!
I want more games that let me chill out and explore all I want without making the game too easy. DQ 11 draconian options and xbc1 definitive edition are great for this
River City Ransom is still one of my top games of all time. Its great as a single player or multiplayer game, great as a brawler and rpg, has choice of play style and has tons to discover. I remember my brother and I hadnt found the secret shop in the tunnel until six months after beating it the first time, blew our minds.
River City Ransom is still one of my favorite games. How many games can you walk slowly towards thugs just to have them scream help! and run away? Bonus points for the Double Dragon cameo near the top of the high school, as well.
River City Ransom blew my mind as a kid. Beat'em ups were my absolute favorite genre from the ages of like 4-8 and I had just discovered RPGs so combining the two gave me a piece of gaming perfection.. Funny enough it wasn't until late high school I found someone else who had the same love for it as me. While I did love the enhanced remake of GBA I'm thrilled this style of game has been making a bit of a comeback. As for YsIII I had played the SNES port around the time it came out, was starved for a new Zelda title and Link to the Past was a few months off, and got destroyed by it. Ended up not gaining an appreciation for the series until Ys Seven came out almost two decades later.
Two great games this episode. Ys III with its differing console ports and its excellent remake that got a mention Oath in Felghana. River City Ransom is a childhood favorite but I've never beaten it, maybe I should one of these days. Neutopia next, nice?!
There's so many ways to play River City Ransom now, you should give it another go. With an adult's attention span, it's pretty quick, even if you want to grind for unnecessarily high stats.
There's an excellent retro collection of the 8-bit Kunio-Kun series on most major platforms, and it's worth picking up. The big draw is it includes games never officially translated before, along with new translations of the ones that were brought over like RCR. But it also contains the original westernized versions, if you prefer.
I wish I'd come across River City Ransom as a kid. From the little I've had a chance to play it, it's genuinely good. Ys has been one of my favorite franchises for years, and Ys 3, both Wanderers from Ys and Oath in Felgana are fantastic. Oath was a terrific recentering of the franchise, and a master class in remaking an old game.
RCR left such an impression on me when first playing it (especially the co-op!) that I still vividly remember my first time trying it at a friends house back in the early 90's, and the repeat sessions we had while figuring out the game and testing it's weirdly explorative environments to find things like the hidden shop in the tunnel in the later portion. Still one of my favorite NES games of all time. The PC Engine CD port is well worth checking out also! Even though it's not translated the shops are in the same locations with the same list structure, so you can use a guide for the NES version to figure out which item is which and what the stat increases are. Loved discovering & playing through that version a couple years ago when the pandemic started. X68000 has a port of it also that I plan to play through soon here. BARF!
River City Ransom was everything I didn’t know I wanted and needed in a game back in the day. It was one of the most fun times I had ever had in my entire life.
Long ago I found a position in the first dungeon of Ys 3 where infinite enemies spawn but can't hurt me, and left some kind of heavy weight on the attack button overnight to farm their XP, and when I came back I was tough enough to steamroll almost the entire game, only the final dungeon slowed me down. So this is a workable strategy.
Watching so many continuous examples of Zelda 2’s influence in a row makes it seem sort of shocking they returned to form for link to the past. Really interesting
I wonder if the Zelda CDi games have anything to do with it behind the scenes? The CDi was released in 1990 and Nintendo and Phillips started planning their deal not long after apparently? And there was apparently a portable CDi by Sony, so asside from smart phones could it possibly be a Sony console Nintendo games are playable on despite their deal not going through?
Based on an old interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, it would appear that the decision to depart from Zelda 2's gameplay stemmed from Shigeru Miyamoto's frustrations with the technical limitations placed on the original Zelda game. Basically, he wanted to revisit Zelda 1's gameplay with the more advanced hardware of the Super Nintendo so that he could implement many of the ideas he had for that game. The Light World & Dark World concept for example originated with an idea for Zelda 1 of featuring time travel, where Link would have been able to travel to the distant future & back, exploring a much more technically advanced version of Hyrule. There was even concept art for Zelda made for A Link to the Past featuring her wearing a futuristic outfit that went unused.
@@travisjordan3853Ah, so Miyamoto essentially wanted to "remake" Zelda 1, and then that kind of got so popular that the top-down format "stuck" as the default Zelda format (for, you know, the Zeldas that _weren't_ 3D games like the portable ones). Neat.
Yeah, pretty much. There were originally plans to do a SNES Zelda game in the style of Adventure of Link after ALTTP but they never got around to it. In some ways they sort of saw Ocarina of Time as incorporating aspects of Zelda II back in the fold (mostly through the more involved sword combat).
I do remember Ys III on SNES! and we had that launch-era strategy guide for the SNES and I'm pretty sure the auto-levelling trick was covered in that section, haha. may need to find a new copy of it here soon. River City Ransom of course was one of the ones I enjoyed back in the day, though never managed to make it to the end. At least not until recently with its Nintendo Switch Online appearance.
The River City games always impress me, they and the first Zelda are kind of open world as good as nes/fc can manage, and to me that's really cool. Really shows how powerful it was..! And the song in the "intermission"/intro channel hop thingy or whatever it is called (please tell me), I've had that song stuck in my head today... Coincidences are weird...
In a world where beat’em ups consisted mostly on walk from left to right, RCR (and nes renegade) came to break the mold! The exploration factor is fantastic and the replay value very high!! You can choose every play session to purchase different abilities and see what they have to offer. A cult classic!’ On my channel you can see some progress on my RCR inspired Fangame (asi of my DD Fangame).
I love RPGs/ARPGs that let you grind, but don't make it mandatory. It's like setting your own difficulty. Do you want a challenge? Rush ahead. Do you want a cakewalk? Take it slow and grind. In fact, I'm sad this isn't how Diablo 4 works. It's one thing I liked about that sub-genre of ARPG. Diablo 2, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, etc. all worked that way. As do the many classic NES/SNES RPGs I grew up on.
I was playing the PC version of that Ys IiI remake (The Oath in Felghana) just now when a notification for this video came up. Great timing though, since I played The Oath in Felghana many times in the past on both PSP and PC, which then became one of my favorite Ys games. Also there is a new release of The Oath in Felghana that just came out months ago for the Switch.
I LOVED Y's3 as a kid. Just played thru it again recently and I think it's still great! Who else called it Wanderers From "Whys" other than me and everyone I knew?🤣 thanks Jeremy!!!
I'm guilty of that. I always called it Wanderers from "whys." It wasn't until he covered the earlier Ys games that I found it it was pronounced Wanderers from "Eees."
For what it's worth, the only Ys game that I ever played was Ys 3- the side-scrolling, MetroidVania-esque gameplay is what attracted it to me when I was younger!
Phantasy star 1 did come out on December 20 1987 in Japan that would've been a good episode on segaiden weeks something to point out. I like your videos alot. Best regards Nikita.K
Back when renting NES games from the video store was still a thing, i rented both of these relatively new games for long enough that Video Plus charged me the price of the games and i got to keep them both. I was in 4th or 5th grade then. Hearing the music from those games takes me back for a minute.
It's funny that so many games in this series were budget titles (River City Ransom, The Magic of Scheherazade, etc.). You'd think that back then these would be more expensive to develop than a generic 8-bit platformer just because of all the mechanics involved
In Technos's case, they had a really advanced engine for the time which powered everything in the Kunio-Kun series. They pumped out 10 games in the franchise, in several different genres, in only 5 years. So it must have been pretty easy to develop on.
I tried playing YS 3 on the Snes but the hit detection was so bad. Definitely play the TG-16 version. The Genesis port looks better but the music isn’t as good.
river city ransom is one of my favorites on NES, and I'll always have a soft spot for Ys III as it was one of the first RPG's I ever finished. I remember it being really hard.
I am sadly ignorant of all things Ys, but River City Ransom I did play! Never got that far as I think it felt like old hat looks-wise compared to Turtles in Time (I played RCR late in its life) and the leveling system was a bit too advanced for me at that time. I think the range also frustrated me, maneuvering up so close I am practically touched by the enemy... I was not a fan. Subsequent replays with more dexterious fingers have helped me warm up substantially to the game.
3:16 In my experience this exploit doesn't work in all versions of the game. I played both the SNES version and PC-Engine CD version quite extensively, and I could never get it to work in the latter. So I'm not so sure that this is by design.
I had no idea the Nes Double Dragon utilized that experience system. I suppose it might have been mentioned in the manual? I only ever rented the game. These videos always teach me something new.
tbh I always viewed RPG mechanics as progression, not really a way for people to grind and destroy everything. Like, as you play you learn new spells, get new equipment, etc. Never saw it as a way to deemphasize skill.
Still loving this specific series every week Ys 3 I think I only saw the super NES version of. I remember the slowly …….creeping through the first couple of dungeons mechanics to grind enough to go further. I think it wasn’t so much of a chore as combat was so mindless and the game had a fairly forgiving difficult curve (if you over powered early you were probably good for a while) RSR I feel like if anything deserves to be more of a true Double dragon sequel (even if more of a renegade sequel) just because it takes the basic mechanics and adds a stat boosting formula on top
Best versions of Y's III were the Sega Genesis, TG-CD and the remake, Oath in Felghana which is on multiple platforms. The soundtrack on all three versions is nothing short of excellent.
Ys 3 was pretty jank but I enjoy it more than the 1st 2 because I just can’t get behind running into enemies to attack them. But the remake they did Oath in Fhelgana was great! River City Ransom was absolutely amazing though.
You missed a good opportunity for the opening song. Ys 3's Japanese box uses a modified quote from Billy Joel's Baby Grand, you should've used the original lyric from the song "in my time I've wandered everywhere around this world.She would always be there." Ys changes the "she" to "hope."
I enjoyed Ys 3 quite a bit, though I thought the level balance was somewhat hamfisted. You're always either dying in a second, or virtually invincible, with basically no in-between.
On the topic of accessibility, the original computer versions of Ys III actually had difficulty options, between Easy, Normal, and Hard. This mostly only affects the damage you take from enemies, but its omission from the console versions is unfortunate... The complaint I probably hear most often about Ys III is that it's too hard, so having an Easy difficulty might have helped to broaden its audience. At the time it was pretty rare and forward-thinking for an RPG--even an ARPG--to have selectable difficulty!
Yeah, I absolutely HATED Ys 3 as a kid, when I rented it and couldn't even get past the first couple screens of the first dungeon. The way it frontloads the grinding was completely foreign and counterintuitive to me. And even today I really don't care for it, even though I like most of the rest of the series.
I think the PC Engine/TurboGrafix version is pretty fairly balanced, grinding aside - I played through it not too long ago and felt it was pretty fair all up. I'd say the Mega Drive/Genesis port is absolutely too hard - not only is *more* grinding needed to level up, but the final boss has a couple of extra phases which have to be taken care of perfectly or it's likely you won't survive. But the SNES one is too hard not because of challenge, but sloppyness - I felt the collisions weren't as tight as either the PC Engine or Mega Drive versions - and this really made some of the mid-game incredibly tough.
@@BeyondTheScanlines The final boss in the PC88/98 and MSX versions was quite pathetically easy. But when they ported it to the Sharp X68000, they over-corrected and made the final boss insanely hard, as the X68000 had a reputation for being populated by hardcore arcade addicts who wouldn't be satisfied by a pushover. This X68000 port then became the basis for the Famicom, SNES and Genesis ports, which is why the last boss is so much harder there. Meanwhile, the Turbo CD port was based more closely on the original PC88/98 version. I prefer the X68000 version myself, followed closely by the Genesis version. The Turbo CD version has some pretty serious issues with its presentation that, while not game-breaking, do hamper my enjoyment of it quite a bit. Clearly, not as much TLC from the staff was put into this one compared to the phenomenal Books I & II.
@@JeremyParish the first GI Joe game was, but the 2nd had a map with multiple routes with different Joe's available on each route... Although I almost always chose the route that got Storm Shadow (because he was a ninja).
Just subscribed but I can't turn on notifications for this channel on the channel page because it says that it is a "for kids" channel. Was able to do it on this video though.
10:48 Technos should also get credit for its absurdly robust engine, particularly how much physics simulation it's doing for an 8-bit game. Maybe there's some antecedent I'm forgetting, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't do things like *this* in any other game of the era. Not to mention all the various ways bouncing objects - or people - can cause comedic chaos. (ie, 14:00)
Replaying their old NES games on the Switch, they're consistently some of the only 8-bit games that can actually make me laugh from the emergent slapstick of the physics interactions.
Reaching an absurd level of power that lets you literally blur through areas that once gave you headaches is one of the genre's fundamental joys imo.
I remember playing River City Ransom on the Wii virtual console a lot in high school. My younger brother always called it "City River Ransom" and asked that I play it with him. Fun times.
River City Ransom is the kind of game that fostered the playground culture of sharing video game secrets. And by "secrets", I mean fundamental structural design elements that go unexplained in the game and its manual.
If my buddy didn't have Nintendo Power, I would have never known that you have to find and defeat every boss in order to open River City High.
Even with the obscure elements, I feel like the short/linear nature of RCR works in its favor. The map is small enough, with few enough major challenges, that someone should be able to blunder their way through it even without a guide. Just exploring, while slowly leveling up, is really all that's necessary. It feels like a game that *wants* the player to win.
I feel like you may be the perfect youtuber to do an exhaustive retrospective on the entire Kunio/Double Dragon/Renegade/River City... thing. As a relatively new fan of Tecno's behemoth (thanks RCG1 & 2), I always enjoy how you cover it.
I loved playing River City Ransom with friends or family. The rental store my parents and I used at the time had a system where if you rented games enough times you got to keep them and River City Ransom was one of the games we got that way. I still get new River City games as soon as I can once they come out and have pre-ordered a few.
Regarding the argument near the end about "leveling negating the need for skill," that's part of the appeal of action RPGs; you can grind if you're fine with the repetition and want to have a pretty easygoing experience, or you can beeline and skip optional fights if you want a real challenge. It's funny to see people talking about games like Elden Ring and its Adjustable Difficulty like it's a novel concept, because pacing vs. difficulty has been a facet of the RPG genre since its inception.
Indeed, and you can also add this: the difficulty of areas can make the player consider whether or not they should attempt the area/enemies, or first get stronger somewhere else. This makes where to explore a tense decision!
I want more games that let me chill out and explore all I want without making the game too easy. DQ 11 draconian options and xbc1 definitive edition are great for this
River City Ransom is still one of my top games of all time. Its great as a single player or multiplayer game, great as a brawler and rpg, has choice of play style and has tons to discover. I remember my brother and I hadnt found the secret shop in the tunnel until six months after beating it the first time, blew our minds.
River City Ransom is still one of my favorite games. How many games can you walk slowly towards thugs just to have them scream help! and run away? Bonus points for the Double Dragon cameo near the top of the high school, as well.
As a kid, my mind was absolutely blown when Billy & Jimmy showed up - and complete with their theme music! It felt like a wrestling run-in, haha.
@@jasonblalock4429 It did get bonus points for not just using the same music but doing another version.
@@thejackal007 Kinda like in CV3 hearing "Vampire Killer" with crazier drums.
River City Ransom’s rockabilly musical theme is one of my favorite 8 bit tracks. It brought so much flavor to a great game.
Ever since Ys 3 showed up on the SNES, that OST has persisted. So glad Falcom is aware of this with a full remake and many arrangements.
Impressively, pretty much every Ys game has an amazing soundtrack
River City Ransom blew my mind as a kid. Beat'em ups were my absolute favorite genre from the ages of like 4-8 and I had just discovered RPGs so combining the two gave me a piece of gaming perfection.. Funny enough it wasn't until late high school I found someone else who had the same love for it as me. While I did love the enhanced remake of GBA I'm thrilled this style of game has been making a bit of a comeback.
As for YsIII I had played the SNES port around the time it came out, was starved for a new Zelda title and Link to the Past was a few months off, and got destroyed by it. Ended up not gaining an appreciation for the series until Ys Seven came out almost two decades later.
For me the best part of ys3 was the soundtrack. I hum the tunes to this day. And had forgotten where many of them came from until this video
It does have one of the best soundtracks.
Same. The Ys 3 OST rips.
YES!!
love me some river city ransom
R.C.R. has a solid spot in my top 10 NES games and it is always a bit surprising to me when I see other top lists for the system not include it...
Man the first gaming channel that used the word "vintage" in it's intended meaning and use? I knew I loved your channel for a reason.
Two great games this episode. Ys III with its differing console ports and its excellent remake that got a mention Oath in Felghana. River City Ransom is a childhood favorite but I've never beaten it, maybe I should one of these days. Neutopia next, nice?!
There's so many ways to play River City Ransom now, you should give it another go. With an adult's attention span, it's pretty quick, even if you want to grind for unnecessarily high stats.
There's an excellent retro collection of the 8-bit Kunio-Kun series on most major platforms, and it's worth picking up. The big draw is it includes games never officially translated before, along with new translations of the ones that were brought over like RCR. But it also contains the original westernized versions, if you prefer.
I would argue that Battletoads has probably has just as long a life as River City Ransom, but probably not for the right reasons...
I wish I'd come across River City Ransom as a kid. From the little I've had a chance to play it, it's genuinely good.
Ys has been one of my favorite franchises for years, and Ys 3, both Wanderers from Ys and Oath in Felgana are fantastic. Oath was a terrific recentering of the franchise, and a master class in remaking an old game.
RCR left such an impression on me when first playing it (especially the co-op!) that I still vividly remember my first time trying it at a friends house back in the early 90's, and the repeat sessions we had while figuring out the game and testing it's weirdly explorative environments to find things like the hidden shop in the tunnel in the later portion. Still one of my favorite NES games of all time. The PC Engine CD port is well worth checking out also! Even though it's not translated the shops are in the same locations with the same list structure, so you can use a guide for the NES version to figure out which item is which and what the stat increases are. Loved discovering & playing through that version a couple years ago when the pandemic started. X68000 has a port of it also that I plan to play through soon here. BARF!
River City Ransom was everything I didn’t know I wanted and needed in a game back in the day. It was one of the most fun times I had ever had in my entire life.
All this talk about Ys makes me want a Turbo-Works.
You got it.
Long ago I found a position in the first dungeon of Ys 3 where infinite enemies spawn but can't hurt me, and left some kind of heavy weight on the attack button overnight to farm their XP, and when I came back I was tough enough to steamroll almost the entire game, only the final dungeon slowed me down. So this is a workable strategy.
To my mind, the game that came closest to capturing RCR’s essence was Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
Exactly this!
I'm groaning at that dad joke, but that just means it was good.
Watching so many continuous examples of Zelda 2’s influence in a row makes it seem sort of shocking they returned to form for link to the past. Really interesting
I wonder if the Zelda CDi games have anything to do with it behind the scenes? The CDi was released in 1990 and Nintendo and Phillips started planning their deal not long after apparently?
And there was apparently a portable CDi by Sony, so asside from smart phones could it possibly be a Sony console Nintendo games are playable on despite their deal not going through?
Based on an old interview with Shigeru Miyamoto, it would appear that the decision to depart from Zelda 2's gameplay stemmed from Shigeru Miyamoto's frustrations with the technical limitations placed on the original Zelda game. Basically, he wanted to revisit Zelda 1's gameplay with the more advanced hardware of the Super Nintendo so that he could implement many of the ideas he had for that game. The Light World & Dark World concept for example originated with an idea for Zelda 1 of featuring time travel, where Link would have been able to travel to the distant future & back, exploring a much more technically advanced version of Hyrule. There was even concept art for Zelda made for A Link to the Past featuring her wearing a futuristic outfit that went unused.
@@travisjordan3853Ah, so Miyamoto essentially wanted to "remake" Zelda 1, and then that kind of got so popular that the top-down format "stuck" as the default Zelda format (for, you know, the Zeldas that _weren't_ 3D games like the portable ones). Neat.
Yeah, pretty much. There were originally plans to do a SNES Zelda game in the style of Adventure of Link after ALTTP but they never got around to it. In some ways they sort of saw Ocarina of Time as incorporating aspects of Zelda II back in the fold (mostly through the more involved sword combat).
@@JB_Hunkamunka My brother, who does not like non-Zelda II 2D Zeldas, always saw 3D Zelda as having more in common with Zelda II than regular Zelda.
I do remember Ys III on SNES! and we had that launch-era strategy guide for the SNES and I'm pretty sure the auto-levelling trick was covered in that section, haha. may need to find a new copy of it here soon. River City Ransom of course was one of the ones I enjoyed back in the day, though never managed to make it to the end. At least not until recently with its Nintendo Switch Online appearance.
The River City games always impress me, they and the first Zelda are kind of open world as good as nes/fc can manage, and to me that's really cool. Really shows how powerful it was..!
And the song in the "intermission"/intro channel hop thingy or whatever it is called (please tell me), I've had that song stuck in my head today... Coincidences are weird...
In a world where beat’em ups consisted mostly on walk from left to right, RCR (and nes renegade) came to break the mold! The exploration factor is fantastic and the replay value very high!! You can choose every play session to purchase different abilities and see what they have to offer. A cult classic!’
On my channel you can see some progress on my RCR inspired Fangame (asi of my DD Fangame).
Ys III was my first Ys game (my brother randomly stumbled upon it while trying out SNES games), and it made me fall in love with the series!
I spent so much time playing RCR back in the day. Great game, one of my NES favorites
Your analysis of retro games is second to none. I appreciate it!
Best channel on retro games hands down. The memories and nostalgia this all brings.
River City Ransom is top 5 NES games for me
I love RPGs/ARPGs that let you grind, but don't make it mandatory. It's like setting your own difficulty. Do you want a challenge? Rush ahead. Do you want a cakewalk? Take it slow and grind.
In fact, I'm sad this isn't how Diablo 4 works. It's one thing I liked about that sub-genre of ARPG. Diablo 2, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, etc. all worked that way. As do the many classic NES/SNES RPGs I grew up on.
I was playing the PC version of that Ys IiI remake (The Oath in Felghana) just now when a notification for this video came up. Great timing though, since I played The Oath in Felghana many times in the past on both PSP and PC, which then became one of my favorite Ys games. Also there is a new release of The Oath in Felghana that just came out months ago for the Switch.
Lovely episode, I really enjoyed the Kunio kun bit as it's such an underrated title with its intricate mechanics. Kudos! ✌🏼
Love the meteoidvania run here. Great work as always
Currently going through your full video game works 1989-1991 playlist!
Renting Ys III repeatedly throughout the early 90s is almost single handedly responsible for me ending up as a fantasy weeb.
Nice, this one starts with my favorite Roy Orbison song!
I love RCR so much! Fantastic game.
I LOVED Y's3 as a kid. Just played thru it again recently and I think it's still great! Who else called it Wanderers From "Whys" other than me and everyone I knew?🤣 thanks Jeremy!!!
I'm guilty of that. I always called it Wanderers from "whys." It wasn't until he covered the earlier Ys games that I found it it was pronounced Wanderers from "Eees."
Why do you type is as Y's?
Clearly a Master System kid.
I thought it was "why-ess" myself.
For what it's worth, the only Ys game that I ever played was Ys 3- the side-scrolling, MetroidVania-esque gameplay is what attracted it to me when I was younger!
Phantasy star 1 did come out on December 20 1987 in Japan that would've been a good episode on segaiden weeks something to point out. I like your videos alot. Best regards Nikita.K
Back when renting NES games from the video store was still a thing, i rented both of these relatively new games for long enough that Video Plus charged me the price of the games and i got to keep them both. I was in 4th or 5th grade then. Hearing the music from those games takes me back for a minute.
Lovely beautiful videos. You are doing insanely good work here mate.
I loved both of these games but not until much later when I was older and understood them better
i wonder how long until king's field ends up on metroidvania works, it's only like 6 short years from 1989!
I feel like that'll just be him ripping on King's Field the whole time, considering how awkwardly designed that game is xD
I think this series is gonna end with Super Metroid in 1994, though
Wow, the disrespect for Symphony of the Night here.
I'm not messing with 3D games, though.
%$#@ you, I just saw someone play Wicked Garden at my local open mic night tonight. Get out of my HEAD!
It's funny that so many games in this series were budget titles (River City Ransom, The Magic of Scheherazade, etc.). You'd think that back then these would be more expensive to develop than a generic 8-bit platformer just because of all the mechanics involved
In Technos's case, they had a really advanced engine for the time which powered everything in the Kunio-Kun series. They pumped out 10 games in the franchise, in several different genres, in only 5 years. So it must have been pretty easy to develop on.
I tried playing YS 3 on the Snes but the hit detection was so bad. Definitely play the TG-16 version. The Genesis port looks better but the music isn’t as good.
There is something about ordering and eating food in River City Ransom thst is viscerally satisfying.
river city ransom is one of my favorites on NES, and I'll always have a soft spot for Ys III as it was one of the first RPG's I ever finished.
I remember it being really hard.
Man, watching this as I'm playing through Oath of Felghana makes me realize that playing the remake is likely the best way to experience Ys.
Great quotes of gaming history #218: "BARF!"
I am sadly ignorant of all things Ys, but River City Ransom I did play! Never got that far as I think it felt like old hat looks-wise compared to Turtles in Time (I played RCR late in its life) and the leveling system was a bit too advanced for me at that time. I think the range also frustrated me, maneuvering up so close I am practically touched by the enemy... I was not a fan. Subsequent replays with more dexterious fingers have helped me warm up substantially to the game.
3:16 In my experience this exploit doesn't work in all versions of the game. I played both the SNES version and PC-Engine CD version quite extensively, and I could never get it to work in the latter. So I'm not so sure that this is by design.
I had no idea the Nes Double Dragon utilized that experience system. I suppose it might have been mentioned in the manual? I only ever rented the game. These videos always teach me something new.
Shout out for you picking up the Texas Boots.
tbh I always viewed RPG mechanics as progression, not really a way for people to grind and destroy everything. Like, as you play you learn new spells, get new equipment, etc. Never saw it as a way to deemphasize skill.
Still loving this specific series every week
Ys 3 I think I only saw the super NES version of. I remember the slowly …….creeping through the first couple of dungeons mechanics to grind enough to go further. I think it wasn’t so much of a chore as combat was so mindless and the game had a fairly forgiving difficult curve (if you over powered early you were probably good for a while)
RSR I feel like if anything deserves to be more of a true Double dragon sequel (even if more of a renegade sequel) just because it takes the basic mechanics and adds a stat boosting formula on top
Best versions of Y's III were the Sega Genesis, TG-CD and the remake, Oath in Felghana which is on multiple platforms. The soundtrack on all three versions is nothing short of excellent.
It's Ys, not Y's. Ys is the name of a location, not a possessive of the letter Y.
I can't wait until you get to Wizards & Warriors 3, AKA, the jumping simulator.
My friend left a shoe on his controller when he went to school to grind in Ys 3.
Ys 3 was pretty jank but I enjoy it more than the 1st 2 because I just can’t get behind running into enemies to attack them. But the remake they did Oath in Fhelgana was great! River City Ransom was absolutely amazing though.
You missed a good opportunity for the opening song. Ys 3's Japanese box uses a modified quote from Billy Joel's Baby Grand, you should've used the original lyric from the song "in my time I've wandered everywhere around this world.She would always be there."
Ys changes the "she" to "hope."
Wrong year... "The Bridge" was ’86.
wow had no idea Zelda 2 was influenced by Dragon Buster, but I can see the similarities
I enjoyed Ys 3 quite a bit, though I thought the level balance was somewhat hamfisted. You're always either dying in a second, or virtually invincible, with basically no in-between.
How could you go thru this entire River City retrospective and not mention it got a naked butt on the NES?
Because Seanbaby has already been writing on the internet for 25 years?
Sometimes you just have to let the footage speak for itself.
I think river city ransom is cool but I couldn't really figure out where to go and what do to at the very beginning of the game
I think you forgot to add this video to the metroidvania playlist.
Blame yourself or God
@@JeremyParish? Just something I noticed while watching the playlist
He did it again?!
Ys 3 in both original and remake forms is still fun to play. Oath in Felghana just doesn't work properly on zen architecture.
RCR is just the best 8 bit game, at least especially with a friend. it rules.
On the topic of accessibility, the original computer versions of Ys III actually had difficulty options, between Easy, Normal, and Hard. This mostly only affects the damage you take from enemies, but its omission from the console versions is unfortunate... The complaint I probably hear most often about Ys III is that it's too hard, so having an Easy difficulty might have helped to broaden its audience. At the time it was pretty rare and forward-thinking for an RPG--even an ARPG--to have selectable difficulty!
Yeah, I absolutely HATED Ys 3 as a kid, when I rented it and couldn't even get past the first couple screens of the first dungeon. The way it frontloads the grinding was completely foreign and counterintuitive to me. And even today I really don't care for it, even though I like most of the rest of the series.
I think the PC Engine/TurboGrafix version is pretty fairly balanced, grinding aside - I played through it not too long ago and felt it was pretty fair all up.
I'd say the Mega Drive/Genesis port is absolutely too hard - not only is *more* grinding needed to level up, but the final boss has a couple of extra phases which have to be taken care of perfectly or it's likely you won't survive.
But the SNES one is too hard not because of challenge, but sloppyness - I felt the collisions weren't as tight as either the PC Engine or Mega Drive versions - and this really made some of the mid-game incredibly tough.
@@BeyondTheScanlines The final boss in the PC88/98 and MSX versions was quite pathetically easy. But when they ported it to the Sharp X68000, they over-corrected and made the final boss insanely hard, as the X68000 had a reputation for being populated by hardcore arcade addicts who wouldn't be satisfied by a pushover. This X68000 port then became the basis for the Famicom, SNES and Genesis ports, which is why the last boss is so much harder there. Meanwhile, the Turbo CD port was based more closely on the original PC88/98 version.
I prefer the X68000 version myself, followed closely by the Genesis version. The Turbo CD version has some pretty serious issues with its presentation that, while not game-breaking, do hamper my enjoyment of it quite a bit. Clearly, not as much TLC from the staff was put into this one compared to the phenomenal Books I & II.
The best Ys III (and best BGM) is the Sega Genesis port.
Could River City Rampage instead count as one of the first crime sandbox games ala GTA and Saints Row?
I'd see it as more of an ancient ancestor of the Yakuza series, myself.
Do you think GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor for the NES is a Metroidvania?
Not at all. Their progression is strictly linear from stage to stage.
@@JeremyParish the first GI Joe game was, but the 2nd had a map with multiple routes with different Joe's available on each route... Although I almost always chose the route that got Storm Shadow (because he was a ninja).
Zelda was inspired by Dragon Buster?
Zelda II clearly took notes from DB.
BARF
O@A fan??
Just subscribed but I can't turn on notifications for this channel on the channel page because it says that it is a "for kids" channel. Was able to do it on this video though.
Weird? I have it set not as for-kids. I’ll look into it.
The channel says it's set to "never posts content for kids," so I think your browser may be drunk
You made fun of me at PAX East several years ago for citing River City Ransom as one of my favorite games. You should mention that in the video.
?
Why would anyone make fun of you for saying a fantastic game is one of your favorites?
For you, the day Jeremy Parish mocked your taste in retro gaming was the most important day of your life.
But for him, it was Tuesday...
@@kcfagan882 🤣🤣🤣
Ys 3 and River City Ransom are both great. 😀👍🎮
You played the absolute worst version of the game. Ys III on the SNES suffers from lousy hit detection and the enemies being given invincibility.
That has nothing to do with the structural design of the game, which was the point of this piece.