Post by BobSega on Aug 17, 2021 11:48:44 GMT
This was late '84, pretty early for JRPGs. Some of the more popular RPGs from the US e.g. Ultima and Wizardry were ported to the Japan home computers, but apparently not till mid-late '80s. I did discover a couple of Avalon Hill RPGs, Telengard and Fortress of the Witch King that were ported to the NEC PC-88 at the start of '84. KOEI Co. made a bunch of RPGs '82-'84 before their big hits, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition(war/strategy). Besides T&E Soft's Hydlide series, late '84 was also the start of Falcom's Dragon Slayer series. So 1984 must have been the start of JRPG franchises, I did also find out about Xtalsoft who merged with T&E after creating a series of connected RPGs including the Mugen no Shinzō/Heart of Phantasm trilogy(early '84-early '90) and Fantasian and its sequel(early '85-late '88). Jp-US Bullet-Proof Software had Black Onyx and Black Onyx II:The Fire Crystal(early to mid-late '84). Hydlide lasted till Virtual Hydlide for the Saturn in '95 while the Dragon Slayer spin-off series, Legend of Heroes, has been regular since '89.
I recently played through the original NEC PC-88 Hydlide for the first time, on the Project EGG emulator and was quite impressed so wanted to talk about it. The Project EGG release came with a PDF of the manual, in Japanese, but I was able to roughly translate it and there's a "★Development Postscript★" from creator Tokihiro Naito claiming "this active role-playing game is a new type" meaning it's an RPG in real time. One could call Hydlide rogue-like for the "attack the monsters by walking into them" though at that point I don't know how many rogue-likes allowed you to do more damage and take less by attacking monsters from the rear or side. Namco's mid '84 arcade game The Tower of Druaga, another real-time RPG or real-time dungeon crawler, is obviously one of Tokihiro's resources. Not officially released outside of Japan until much later, it's rogue-like in that you progress vertically through dungeon levels(up instead of down) and you attack by walking into monsters, but like Hydlide you switch between attack and defense modes. Druaga is all dungeon, while Hydlide is overworld and dungeon, but the Hydlide dungeon mazes look the same as Druaga's, some of the monsters are similar too e.g. green slimes, gold knights. In both games you collect treasure, armour, equipment etc. from chests, your collection depicted in a row at the bottom and defeating a number of enemies can cause chests to appear elsewhere in the dungeon.
Hydlide, like other RPGs of the time is graphically bare-bones, but nicer and more detailed than Ultima IV, first released in late '85 and probably the RPG standard of mid-late '80s. It does have NEC PC speaker bleep music/sound, but frankly it's better switched off. What I like best is the puzzle solving, which was probably innovative e.g. some overworld areas and dungeons are inaccessible at first and you need to find things e.g. crucifix, lantern, genie lamp to progress, often having to win them in a challenge of some sort e.g. boss battle. So you, as Jim the Knight, level-up as you defeat monsters, gain a lifebar and strengthbar extension, but the overworld is fairly small, that's to say, you can easily find yourself in a screen with far superior monsters who kill you in one hit. Still I found I was able to get quite far without doing much "grinding"(eliminating grinding from RPGs is good progress). I got to the final boss, a large winged demon, having leveled up only 3 times(8 level ups before maxing lifebar), there's a dragon to beat en route, but I found even at a low level you can beat it with hit and run. The demon was too much though, he's protected by knights and skeletons too. I refused to do any more grinding and just watched a video of someone at max level beating the demon and saving the princess. But I think Hydlide made RPGing more playable, I don't mean the real-time combat, I enjoy turn-based combat just as much, but the colourful, attractive overworld and puzzle solving. Still, some of the puzzles would have taken me ages to solve without a guide and one was particularly baffling. Three years later, Phantasy Star of course had a much larger, more attractive overworld, very nice music, some nice puzzles, some baffling ones.
I recently played through the original NEC PC-88 Hydlide for the first time, on the Project EGG emulator and was quite impressed so wanted to talk about it. The Project EGG release came with a PDF of the manual, in Japanese, but I was able to roughly translate it and there's a "★Development Postscript★" from creator Tokihiro Naito claiming "this active role-playing game is a new type" meaning it's an RPG in real time. One could call Hydlide rogue-like for the "attack the monsters by walking into them" though at that point I don't know how many rogue-likes allowed you to do more damage and take less by attacking monsters from the rear or side. Namco's mid '84 arcade game The Tower of Druaga, another real-time RPG or real-time dungeon crawler, is obviously one of Tokihiro's resources. Not officially released outside of Japan until much later, it's rogue-like in that you progress vertically through dungeon levels(up instead of down) and you attack by walking into monsters, but like Hydlide you switch between attack and defense modes. Druaga is all dungeon, while Hydlide is overworld and dungeon, but the Hydlide dungeon mazes look the same as Druaga's, some of the monsters are similar too e.g. green slimes, gold knights. In both games you collect treasure, armour, equipment etc. from chests, your collection depicted in a row at the bottom and defeating a number of enemies can cause chests to appear elsewhere in the dungeon.
Hydlide, like other RPGs of the time is graphically bare-bones, but nicer and more detailed than Ultima IV, first released in late '85 and probably the RPG standard of mid-late '80s. It does have NEC PC speaker bleep music/sound, but frankly it's better switched off. What I like best is the puzzle solving, which was probably innovative e.g. some overworld areas and dungeons are inaccessible at first and you need to find things e.g. crucifix, lantern, genie lamp to progress, often having to win them in a challenge of some sort e.g. boss battle. So you, as Jim the Knight, level-up as you defeat monsters, gain a lifebar and strengthbar extension, but the overworld is fairly small, that's to say, you can easily find yourself in a screen with far superior monsters who kill you in one hit. Still I found I was able to get quite far without doing much "grinding"(eliminating grinding from RPGs is good progress). I got to the final boss, a large winged demon, having leveled up only 3 times(8 level ups before maxing lifebar), there's a dragon to beat en route, but I found even at a low level you can beat it with hit and run. The demon was too much though, he's protected by knights and skeletons too. I refused to do any more grinding and just watched a video of someone at max level beating the demon and saving the princess. But I think Hydlide made RPGing more playable, I don't mean the real-time combat, I enjoy turn-based combat just as much, but the colourful, attractive overworld and puzzle solving. Still, some of the puzzles would have taken me ages to solve without a guide and one was particularly baffling. Three years later, Phantasy Star of course had a much larger, more attractive overworld, very nice music, some nice puzzles, some baffling ones.