you mention Just Breed blends RPG town exploration with tactical battles two years before Shining Force, but they both released in 1992. In fact both Fire Emblem Gaiden and Shining Force released nine months before Just Breed, so they could have definitely been inspirations for this sort of game.
You're right, not sure why I said that. I must have been thinking of Shining Force II, which goes a lot harder on the town elements, but that came out in '93, so I still flubbed it. I got the dates right earlier in the video though!
It's crazy a game looks this good on a console that was originally designed to provide a stripped down version of Donkey Kong. By the end of its life they were pumping out crazy looking games. It's cool this game looks to have alot of traditional JRPG elements with its towns and stuff while having strategy combat. JRPGs went through alot of growth as a genre really fast back then it seems.
If you're looking for more old games, try Minato no Traysia for Sega Genesis. Or just Traysia (western name). It has a lot of shortcomings and you'll probably need a walkthrough for chapter 4, but it's nice.
I don't think it's engrish, per se, just awkward. Imagine if you saw a paladin or whoever called a "just man," or a prince being described as "of noble breed." Then combine them and I think you find the sense that the name was supposed to invoke.
@@aducharme01 It's still a form of Engrish, since it hinges on the reader NOT interpreting 'just breed' as a command to reproduce - which a natively English-speaking audience absolutely world. It's grammatically correct, but absolutely fails to understand common usage.
It works just fine in context ("He is of a just breed"). It's just, if you don't have context that forces it to be a noun, it's easier to see it as a verb.
Oh man Just Breed. That's a title I didn't think I'd hear again. One of the last JRPGs I played during my hardcore emulation years when I was on a quest to play every translated RPG I could. This, along with Chaos World and Radia Senki. To me though Radia Senki really pushed the limits of what I thought NES RPGs were capable of. Real time battles, fully animated cutscenes (the game was made by Tecmo of Ninja Gaiden fame) and a story that still has plenty enough turns to hold up to this day. Just talking about is about to make me pull out fceux!
Hah! I'm on the same quest and recently played both Chaos World and Radia Senki. Chaos World was meh, I loved Radia Senki though. Expect a video on it at some point
This is something I've never even heard of so you've exposed me to something new in the age of the internet. The game looks really full bodied like they threw the kitchen sink into a famicom cart. Great review!
I first played this game and beat it and perfected it even getting the Boss Card in 2022. I loved the game sooo much! It was challenging for sure.. pretty tough game. The ost was decent some tracks being great, the plot was good, and the twist was insane! I loved the overall vibe of the game too. Nice to see a vid of this obscure gem.
As a heads up for those who see only the innuendo in the name... think about the many uses of Just, and Breed. Just, can mean justified. As in your actions are Just. It's not an often used term anymore, but it is valid. And so, the title means "Justified Breed" essentially, where Breed infers the, well, species of the character. So another way to title it to be more understandable by the masses of gutter minded folk, would be "Justified Species" or possibly "Justified Humanity", but... that just doesn't sound as good as Just Breed, I suspect for many. One more thing. Case and point: The shield at 7:14 roughly. It's name is Just.
Gosh dang, by the look at the beginning I was sure that's an early SNES game I'm missing. It doesn't look too different from Dragon Quest V. I can't believe it's NES :O
I can’t really get into strategy rpgs anymore, but having the armies level up together sounds AMAZING. I always hated having to meticulously use every character evenly to keep them all leveled. So often one character would get left out due to positioning, enemy AI, etc and before long, they’re useless. Then it becomes a game of do you abandon use of that character or waste time “fixing” them.
Cool and you have Leon from FFII as your avatar and name. FFII is super underrated. I live that game well the Origins remake with the working Ultima spell that is.
A Series Of Comedic Real Time Strategy Games Made By Square Debuting On The Famicom On Dec, 2, 1988 And The Latest Released For The PS2 (Called Hanjuku Hero 4: 7-nin No Hanjuku Hero) In April, 26, 2005
@@ErdrickHero Yeah it's like when I was a teenager and I thought the "Just Cause" games' titles were referring to the open world gameplay and you're doing all this crazy shit "just cause". I don't think I even knew the term *A* just cause, like a cause worth fighting for lol
Ok, I think the title might be a case of misfortune "engrishu". Based on the themes, my best guess is that they intended for the title to be "righteous blood" or something along those lines. It's hard to say when the title is written all in katakana without any kanji.
The title is in English, not katakana or Kanji. Just Breed isn't a poor translation by whoever made the patch, Square used the English words on the title and cover art of the Japanese cartridge. This was fairly common on famicom and superfamicom RPGs, the majority of the ones I own on those systems have English or partially english titles (in the case of the dragon quest series, "Dragon Quest" is in English but the subtitle is Japanese).
@@coopercummings8370 The title is in English yes, but if you look at the box art, it has the katakana spelling (ジャストブリード) bellow the english one. No kanji anywhere though, which makes it harder to infer meaning. I'm just guessing that "breed" is a mistranslation of "bleed" (L & R have the same spelling in kana and Japanese people often switch them around when trying to write something in English, specially when they're not that fluent in the language, that's called "engrishu", another way of saying broken English) and "just" is supposed to be "noble" or "righteous", as in "a just cause". I'm not saying the people that made the patch mistranslated the title, I'm saying Enix tried to write the title in English and ended up making something very awkward sounding instead.
"most of those have english patches these days" I disagree. The vast amount of Super Famicom JRPGs still untranslated still makes me cry. The amount that have gotten english patches (or in other languages) is pitiful compared to the full breadth of jrpgs available in the original japanese. Fucking depressing.
Eh, I feel like the amount of snes rpgs wish eng patch are muuuuch bigger than we ever seen, still not even half of the untranslated ones but nowher6near bad as it used to be
Unfortunatly these are mostly community passion projects. The amount of people who are: English/Japanese fluent, can patch 35 year old tech, interested enough to go through and find the untranslated games, and has the free time to do it are probably a very small group. These days it might be easier to simply play the original Japanese game and use a modern translation tool…or learn Japanese
Wait, what? The "vast majority" of Super Famicom JRPGs haven't been (officially or unofficially) translated to English? Where can I go to see a list of these untranslated games? Is the same also true for the NES or Genesis / Megadrive?
@@blast_processing6577 This is the best list I've found, and it's over 10 years old: racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=42708 It doesn't look like there's "hundreds" of SFC RPGs that haven't been translated. Probably well under 50, most of which aren't very good. As far as I know, pretty much all the good ones have already got fan translations.
It was quite cool. I had never seen such an RPG before. And it had a function, where you move your commander and you could tell the soldiers to follow him to the new position automatically.
@@rpg_haven Please do a video on it! It's crazy how little they're covered online. To be clear I'm not saying it's flawless, just that it doesn't play/feel like anything else. it's a weird series because rather than a JRPG, they're technically all WRPGs (i.e. very open-ended) that were made in Japan. It kinda plays like you start in the post-game if that makes sense. There's not really a big bad to defeat and the apocalypse is already over. You just explore the world map hunting bounties and doing side quests as you acquire more vehicles for your party. Watch out though because the lack of direction and somewhat experimental nature of the game design led to me getting stuck a lot, either from not knowing what to do or being wayyy too underleveled for the area I was exploring. As much as I love this series, I understand why it's not more popular.
it is alright, just a simple game. i didn't get past the point where the generals need to fight on their own, though. I assume that the "Just Breed" title is meant as "Just" as in like "Justice", "Righteous".
I played the English patch a while ago. I got most of the way through and then wanted to see someone skip to the end. I got to the part where you fight 4 clones of yourself. I think the scene at 3:06 is where I lost interest.
I'm shocked you would play that many JRPGs and not just learn Japanese. By now, you'd basically have mastered all of the vocabulary used commonly in JRPGs with how many games you've played.
@@rpg_haven But that is the time. You learn by playing RPGs in Japanese and trying to understand it. You've probably put thousands of hours into that in English. If you played every single JRPG you played in English, but instead played in Japanese and forced yourself to try to understand as much as you possibly can, you would be fluent by now.
"Just Breed" is a bad choice of words by Japanese developers who didn't know English. They wanted a title along the lines of "Righteous Lineage", but they chose the wrong suggestions from their Japanese-English dictionary.
you mention Just Breed blends RPG town exploration with tactical battles two years before Shining Force, but they both released in 1992. In fact both Fire Emblem Gaiden and Shining Force released nine months before Just Breed, so they could have definitely been inspirations for this sort of game.
You're right, not sure why I said that. I must have been thinking of Shining Force II, which goes a lot harder on the town elements, but that came out in '93, so I still flubbed it.
I got the dates right earlier in the video though!
But Fire Emblem Gaiden doesn't have town exploration.
@@thewingedavenger1007 yes it does. Extremely rudimentary dungeon exploration too
-So, honey. What do you want for Christmas?
-Just Breed!
Shinzo Abe consults on a JRPG when he's 28; Recommends a title.
LMAO
Just Breed - IM TRYING!
You got this, king
It's crazy a game looks this good on a console that was originally designed to provide a stripped down version of Donkey Kong. By the end of its life they were pumping out crazy looking games. It's cool this game looks to have alot of traditional JRPG elements with its towns and stuff while having strategy combat. JRPGs went through alot of growth as a genre really fast back then it seems.
Crazy how it does what Shining Force did, except on the NES
Most of it is due to expansion chips that would be fitted into the cardridge.
Ah yes, one of my favorite games by beloved director Shinzo Abe.
did Shinzo Abe named this game?
Funny enough, recent Fire Emblem games could probably be called "Just Breed"
Good to see ya back at it, friend!
Hahah true!
Well, just two of them, thankfully the newer ones aren't like that xD
Sounds like fun! Who wouldn't want to kill Mega-God and just breed afterwards?
This game has the best grafics of all top-down Nes titles!
If you're looking for more old games, try Minato no Traysia for Sega Genesis. Or just Traysia (western name). It has a lot of shortcomings and you'll probably need a walkthrough for chapter 4, but it's nice.
@@brunomorais9526 All these amazing games I've never heard of. and I consider myself a pretty avid retrogamer. thanks.
Just Breed is such a funny name, definitely a case of engrish.
I don't think it's engrish, per se, just awkward. Imagine if you saw a paladin or whoever called a "just man," or a prince being described as "of noble breed." Then combine them and I think you find the sense that the name was supposed to invoke.
@@aducharme01 It's still a form of Engrish, since it hinges on the reader NOT interpreting 'just breed' as a command to reproduce - which a natively English-speaking audience absolutely world. It's grammatically correct, but absolutely fails to understand common usage.
I think it is saying like Just(Good) Breed(Bloodline) but yeah it seems like engrish as I tried to explain it
What game wants to say:"The heir of justice!"
What the player understands:"Yo man, Fuk?"
It works just fine in context ("He is of a just breed"). It's just, if you don't have context that forces it to be a noun, it's easier to see it as a verb.
Oh man Just Breed. That's a title I didn't think I'd hear again. One of the last JRPGs I played during my hardcore emulation years when I was on a quest to play every translated RPG I could. This, along with Chaos World and Radia Senki.
To me though Radia Senki really pushed the limits of what I thought NES RPGs were capable of. Real time battles, fully animated cutscenes (the game was made by Tecmo of Ninja Gaiden fame) and a story that still has plenty enough turns to hold up to this day. Just talking about is about to make me pull out fceux!
Hah! I'm on the same quest and recently played both Chaos World and Radia Senki. Chaos World was meh, I loved Radia Senki though. Expect a video on it at some point
5:25 Party members hanging out in towns was also an element of Star Ocean 2, and possibly the most memorable part of it.
This is something I've never even heard of so you've exposed me to something new in the age of the internet. The game looks really full bodied like they threw the kitchen sink into a famicom cart. Great review!
Somewhere, Napoleon Blownapart sheds a tear.
And Scary Larry rubs his hands together and laughs.
Abe Shinzou's favourite game
The gods of Dark Hero Party be like:
@@maltheopia Fancy seeing you here
@@revivalfromruins I was tricked by the title.
I first played this game and beat it and perfected it even getting the Boss Card in 2022. I loved the game sooo much! It was challenging for sure.. pretty tough game. The ost was decent some tracks being great, the plot was good, and the twist was insane! I loved the overall vibe of the game too. Nice to see a vid of this obscure gem.
As a heads up for those who see only the innuendo in the name... think about the many uses of Just, and Breed. Just, can mean justified. As in your actions are Just. It's not an often used term anymore, but it is valid. And so, the title means "Justified Breed" essentially, where Breed infers the, well, species of the character.
So another way to title it to be more understandable by the masses of gutter minded folk, would be "Justified Species" or possibly "Justified Humanity", but... that just doesn't sound as good as Just Breed, I suspect for many.
One more thing. Case and point: The shield at 7:14 roughly. It's name is Just.
Just Breed is a game I have every intention of getting to eventually. Its on my tactical games backlog for about a year now.
Oh yeah! I started it years ago, but somehow never went to finish it. I definitely should try it again
Gosh dang, by the look at the beginning I was sure that's an early SNES game I'm missing. It doesn't look too different from Dragon Quest V. I can't believe it's NES :O
the US really missed out on many good early 90s strategy RPG.. Just Breed on the NES/FC, Farland series on the SNES/SFC, and FEDA
Just Breed?
Don't mind if I do!
I can’t really get into strategy rpgs anymore, but having the armies level up together sounds AMAZING. I always hated having to meticulously use every character evenly to keep them all leveled. So often one character would get left out due to positioning, enemy AI, etc and before long, they’re useless. Then it becomes a game of do you abandon use of that character or waste time “fixing” them.
Honestly feel this game is contender for best NES rpg
I agree
I have a Japanese video game magazine (I couldn't read it - I don't understand Japanese) I do remember the ad illustration!
Cool and you have Leon from FFII as your avatar and name. FFII is super underrated. I live that game well the Origins remake with the working Ultima spell that is.
I love FFII :]
Do you plan to cover the Hanjuku Hero series someday?
I've never heard of it. What's Hanjuku Hero?
A Series Of Comedic Real Time Strategy Games Made By Square Debuting On The Famicom On Dec, 2, 1988 And The Latest Released For The PS2 (Called Hanjuku Hero 4: 7-nin No Hanjuku Hero) In April, 26, 2005
Now this game sounds really interesting....will have to have a look at this at somepoint.
It's pretty fun
@@rpg_haven Certainly sounds it and as my name is meant to suggest, I enjoy "digging up" old and obscure games to stream.
@@The_gaming_archaeologist This would probably be a good one, then. TRPGs tend to be good for streaming in general
@@rpg_haven that explains Valkyria Chronicles 4 then.
@@The_gaming_archaeologist You have good taste
Is that a command to be obeyed or a descriptor? 😁
Game could be VERY different depending on whether "Breed" is a noun or a verb. Some PC-98 games could have this same title...
I've heard of this game before and never once did it cross my mind that Breed could be a noun.
@@ErdrickHero Yeah it's like when I was a teenager and I thought the "Just Cause" games' titles were referring to the open world gameplay and you're doing all this crazy shit "just cause". I don't think I even knew the term *A* just cause, like a cause worth fighting for lol
Ok, I think the title might be a case of misfortune "engrishu".
Based on the themes, my best guess is that they intended for the title to be "righteous blood" or something along those lines. It's hard to say when the title is written all in katakana without any kanji.
The title is in English, not katakana or Kanji. Just Breed isn't a poor translation by whoever made the patch, Square used the English words on the title and cover art of the Japanese cartridge. This was fairly common on famicom and superfamicom RPGs, the majority of the ones I own on those systems have English or partially english titles (in the case of the dragon quest series, "Dragon Quest" is in English but the subtitle is Japanese).
@@coopercummings8370 The title is in English yes, but if you look at the box art, it has the katakana spelling (ジャストブリード) bellow the english one.
No kanji anywhere though, which makes it harder to infer meaning. I'm just guessing that "breed" is a mistranslation of "bleed" (L & R have the same spelling in kana and Japanese people often switch them around when trying to write something in English, specially when they're not that fluent in the language, that's called "engrishu", another way of saying broken English) and "just" is supposed to be "noble" or "righteous", as in "a just cause".
I'm not saying the people that made the patch mistranslated the title, I'm saying Enix tried to write the title in English and ended up making something very awkward sounding instead.
I hope your channel does well! (never heard of the game so thank you!)
Thank you!
"most of those have english patches these days" I disagree. The vast amount of Super Famicom JRPGs still untranslated still makes me cry. The amount that have gotten english patches (or in other languages) is pitiful compared to the full breadth of jrpgs available in the original japanese. Fucking depressing.
That's true. I think most of the well-regarded ones have been, though
Eh, I feel like the amount of snes rpgs wish eng patch are muuuuch bigger than we ever seen, still not even half of the untranslated ones but nowher6near bad as it used to be
Unfortunatly these are mostly community passion projects. The amount of people who are: English/Japanese fluent, can patch 35 year old tech, interested enough to go through and find the untranslated games, and has the free time to do it are probably a very small group. These days it might be easier to simply play the original Japanese game and use a modern translation tool…or learn Japanese
Wait, what? The "vast majority" of Super Famicom JRPGs haven't been (officially or unofficially) translated to English? Where can I go to see a list of these untranslated games? Is the same also true for the NES or Genesis / Megadrive?
@@blast_processing6577 This is the best list I've found, and it's over 10 years old: racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=42708
It doesn't look like there's "hundreds" of SFC RPGs that haven't been translated. Probably well under 50, most of which aren't very good.
As far as I know, pretty much all the good ones have already got fan translations.
OK I saw the Shinzo Abe jokes and I'm a couple years late to that joke lol.
Interesting, this game looks a predecessor to a SNES title, called Der Langrisser. The gameplay and structure seems largely the same, except older.
I've heard of Der Langrisser, didn't know it was similar. Cool
It was quite cool. I had never seen such an RPG before. And it had a function, where you move your commander and you could tell the soldiers to follow him to the new position automatically.
Well for Q Queen’s Blade spiral chaos got fan translated.
Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out
@@rpg_haven it’s sequel Queen’s gate spiral chaos hasn’t been fan translated yet but it has fighting game. and anime characters in it.
Okay... but I have to ask why is it called that?
"Just" as in righteous, "breed" as in clan, kin, or generation. Another commenter suggested Righteous Blood, which I like
@@rpg_haven Ah okay. That does makes sense.
Is this Engrish for Just Bleed?
Lol could be
Cover Metal Max/Saga. Its such a hidden gem RPG series
Vehicle combat RPGs? Sounds interesting
Never got around to finding a properly translated NES version but Metal Max Returns on SNES is a one of a kind game.
@@rpg_haven Please do a video on it! It's crazy how little they're covered online. To be clear I'm not saying it's flawless, just that it doesn't play/feel like anything else. it's a weird series because rather than a JRPG, they're technically all WRPGs (i.e. very open-ended) that were made in Japan. It kinda plays like you start in the post-game if that makes sense. There's not really a big bad to defeat and the apocalypse is already over. You just explore the world map hunting bounties and doing side quests as you acquire more vehicles for your party. Watch out though because the lack of direction and somewhat experimental nature of the game design led to me getting stuck a lot, either from not knowing what to do or being wayyy too underleveled for the area I was exploring. As much as I love this series, I understand why it's not more popular.
@@0utrunner237 do you know if Metal Max Xeno for PS4 is worth playing? I totally missed it cause it came out at the height of the pandemic.
The most complex zorno game since Rance
it is alright, just a simple game. i didn't get past the point where the generals need to fight on their own, though.
I assume that the "Just Breed" title is meant as "Just" as in like "Justice", "Righteous".
Instructions unclear, ended up having 28 kids with multiple women and am now poor. Please make instructions clearer.
0:30 I am utterly disappointed.
Hahah
So... why exactly is the game called Just Breed though lol
A better translation might be "Righteous Brethren" or "Righteous Blood"
@@rpg_haven That makes way more sense then lol
I played the English patch a while ago. I got most of the way through and then wanted to see someone skip to the end. I got to the part where you fight 4 clones of yourself. I think the scene at 3:06 is where I lost interest.
Davidvinc has a full playthrough up if you're interested: th-cam.com/play/PLKGm2kYlvxiikwzJBVtNSOfADYSB9OLEc.html
hol'up... I thought Just Breed was a different game, a game where you are a party of paranormal investigators and you have to take photos to sell.
I like your moxxy - lets work !
I keep getting this one conflated with Game Boy RPG Great Greed.
That one looks pretty cool, I plan to play it soon
I thought this was gonna be a hentai game
Hahah me too
I'm shocked you would play that many JRPGs and not just learn Japanese. By now, you'd basically have mastered all of the vocabulary used commonly in JRPGs with how many games you've played.
I'd like to learn! Gotta find the time tho
@@rpg_haven But that is the time. You learn by playing RPGs in Japanese and trying to understand it. You've probably put thousands of hours into that in English. If you played every single JRPG you played in English, but instead played in Japanese and forced yourself to try to understand as much as you possibly can, you would be fluent by now.
It's unfortunate that this was sandwiched between Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy V releases, otherwise it could done better.
"Just Breed" is a bad choice of words by Japanese developers who didn't know English. They wanted a title along the lines of "Righteous Lineage", but they chose the wrong suggestions from their Japanese-English dictionary.
I want to breed but women want absolutely nothing to do with me. I want to give up on life.
Don't give up. Improve yourself and don't worry too much about what others think.
Another slow AF trash game