51–60 of 119 posts
I played SMRPG as a kid in the late 90s using an emulator and a cracked ROM.
The game was translated to Portuguese and apparently the translators were big Dragon Ball Z fans.
It was quite the experience reading Nintendo characters calling each other maggots and such.
Mario RPG might possibly be my favorite video game of all time. I grew up pretty poor and really wanted an N64 for Christmas. We couldn’t afford it at the time so I found an alternative - I remember being sad about it, but I found a used copy of Mario RPG for something like $30, this was at the end of 1996. When I sat down with it it’s like something clicked. I didn’t get the N64 for another year but it didn’t matter…
For what it's worth, the remake is faithful and careful. The menu even allows you to restore the original music (though I think the updates are awesome).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved SMRPG and I have tried to play Earthbound probably 50+ times in my 39 years of existence and I have never, ever found it fun or interesting. I don't think I've ever gotten past that opening where the village/city/whatever is under attack by aliens and you're running around trying to find people or something.
It's not surprising that you would find a game boring if you've only played the first 10 minutes of it 50+ times, but you might enjoy it more if you stick some of those 10 minute sessions together and try getting past the tutorial.
I’m probably just stupid, but games back then had this tendency to make everything into a maze, where the “challenge” was in figuring out what the hell to do next. SMRPG suffers from this too, there’s a few points near monstro town that if you don’t know exactly where they’re trying to get you to go, it’s really confusing. Childhood me couldn’t figure it out and I never made it past there (I have since revisited and completed the game.)
What was so fun about Super Mario RPG for me was the sheer amount of Easter eggs. From Geno's Whirl's 9999 damage (only to normal enemies, not bosses, EXCEPT for Exor), to fighting Culex, to all the steps you need to do to unlock the lazy shell, and hundreds of others I forgot or never knew about, it felt like a truly endless adventure.
Relevant Cybershell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKdkWTbUkIQ I was surprised how much of this was new to me.
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4! Edit: looks like I was wrong. I genuinely believed this for 26 years.
Which 4? There's 11 of them
Several inaccurate details just in the first couple of paragraphs: conflating remakes with preservation, citing a localization change as an "original" subtitle, and crediting Nintendo for third-party productions. I realize video game press is not known for its rigor but the more I read Polygon the less I can take it seriously.
Is this what you're referring to? The original SNES release did have that subtitle:
SMRPG is great. It's absolutely "baby's first JRPG" (but with actual stats, not the low stats of Paper Mario) and it wears that badge with pride. I don't think there's a JRPG more accessible than this one if you're not familiar with the genre - the UI of the original is very much geared around "make it understandable to people who've only ever played the Mario platformers" and it just... works. From what I've seen, t…
Yeah I wonder if Square could have taken the series in a more Kingdom Hearts-like direction if it had had the runway to do so.