Hello, peaceful readers, and acquire to a RPG Reload. This week, we’re stability a tiny monthly plan looking during a story of handheld RPGs. That means that we will not be holding a demeanour during a specific RPG from a App Store’s past this time around. Last month, we looked during a several competitors to a Game Boy, including a Game Gear, Wonderswan, and more. This time around, we’re pulling a timeline brazen again with a demeanour during a long-awaited follow-up to a Game Boy, Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance. In total, this underline will camber twelve columns, any one holding a demeanour during a specific epoch in handheld RPGs. we wish we suffer reading them as many as I’ve enjoyed researching and essay them! Please let me know what we cruise by commenting below, posting in a Official RPG Reload Club thread, or by tweeting me during @RPGReload.
It should go nonetheless observant that tabletop, computer, console, handheld, and mobile games are all inextricably tied with any other in several ways. To cruise how other platforms contributed to handheld RPGs in these articles would grow them good over a range I’m means to understanding with. I’ll be mentioning some influences here and there, nonetheless this is fundamentally a disclaimer that I’m wakeful handheld RPGs don’t exist in a vacuum, in annoy of a comparatively slight chronological concentration of these articles.
The History Of Handheld RPGs, Part Five – Pocket Roleplaying, Advanced
While Nintendo’s Game Boy was never during any genuine risk of losing a reason on a market, it during slightest had some reasonable competition. Those competitors had tiny possibility of holding control of a market, nonetheless companies like SEGA and Bandai were vast adequate that they could captivate divided some of Nintendo’s support from third parties, if zero else. In a end, a murdering blow to a Game Boy didn’t come from a rivals, however. It was some-more a box that after 13 years on a marketplace and during slightest one supernatural revival, a Game Boy tech was usually too informed and diseased to constraint serve courtesy from a video diversion marketplace that had recently popped a cork on a PlayStation 2. While a increasing seductiveness in a handheld marketplace from competitors confidently helped poke things along during Nintendo, a scold Game Boy follow-up had already been pushed behind during slightest a few years past a strange dictated launch interjection to a startling success of Pokemon. It was time. The usually genuine warn was that probably no one else showed adult to a quarrel this time.
Nintendo had been formulation a follow-up to a strange Game Boy for utterly some time. With a Game Boy’s surprising lifespan, it’s easy to forget that before Pokemon, hardware sales had roughly totally dusty up. Rumors of something being grown in a UK called Project Atlantis started to seem in diversion magazines in 1996, good before even a Game Boy Color’s release. The specs of a hardware seemed ridiculous during a time, with a CPU speculated to be a 32-bit 160 MHz ARM processor. Depending on who we believed, this hardware would be means to hoop games of peculiarity identical to a 16-bit Super NES or a 32-bit PlayStation. Atlantis was pronounced to be scheduled for recover in early to mid-1997.
Of course, that never happened. Pokemon arrived in Japan in Feb of 1996 and hold glow like few games had before, giving a Game Boy an rare stay of execution. Atlantis went on a backburner and nonetheless story is ghastly on this, a plan was apparently scrapped. There are some who trust Atlantis went on to turn a contingent inheritor Nintendo released, mostly due to some architectural similarities, nonetheless it’s tough to contend if a integrate is there and to what border it exists. At any rate, Nintendo instead opted to pull a stop-gap tone chronicle of a Game Boy to float out a Pokemon wave. It wasn’t until a year 2000 that Nintendo would finally betray a loyal follow-up to a Game Boy.
At Nintendo’s Spaceworld eventuality hold in Japan on Aug 24th, 2000, then-Executive Vice President of Nintendo Atsushi Asada pulled a pretence that I’m certain is utterly informed to many TouchArcade readers. He initial spoke a bit about Nintendo’s new business achievements, including a Game Boy finally flitting a 100 million sole mark. He afterwards pronounced he was prepared to uncover a assembly a new product they came to see, reached into his fit pocket, and pulled out a Game Boy Advance. The complement would be expelled in a initial half of a following year for $99.99, with a launch choice of 10 games in Japan. In some ways, a Game Boy Advance was identical to a rumored Atlantis. It had a tone LCD screen, a 32-bit ARM processor (albeit clocked during 16.8 MHz rather than Atlantis’s rumored 160 MHz), and a integrate port. It was clearly directed during producing 2D sprite-based games, and during slightest visually, it was able of roughly anything a batch Super NES could do, and afterwards some.
Granted, that’s not a lot of energy subsequent to a PlayStation 2, nonetheless for developers who had been used to operative with a Game Boy, a Game Boy Advance was incredible. It also served as a good home for developers whose talents or budgets were some-more positively used towards 2D games. The usually vital censure anyone had was with regards to a screen. On a batch Game Boy Advance, a shade was unequivocally dim and had no light of a own. Hobbyists would scold this unwell soon, and Nintendo would do a same after in a opposite way, nonetheless for a time being, many developers opted to recompense with a jam-packed palette of splendid colors. That tiny gift aside, a Game Boy Advance was accurately a right complement during about a right time.
For RPG developers and fans, a additional advantages it offering were clear. The increasing shade fortitude and vast tone palette authorised for some-more entertaining content and finer fact than a Game Boy could hoop on a best day. The incomparable cartridge sizes gave developers a lot some-more respirating room for their games. Although Nintendo disheartened it, a specs were good adequate to concede for ports of Super NES games. The battery life was ridiculously good, that was critical for fans of longer games. Nintendo had complicated a past good and came to a stadium prepared to fight. The humorous thing is, for a few years, nobody showed up. Oh, Nokia done an intensely brash try in 2002 with a N-Gage, and a Neo Geo Pocket Color and Wonderswan Crystal were still around for a tiny while, nonetheless there was no critical hazard to a Game Boy Advance for many of a admittedly brief life.
That miss of foe valid to be a final square of a nonplus for a Game Boy Advance. If we wanted to strech a handheld audience, there was usually one place for a publisher to go. With 2D holding a proxy snooze on consoles after a PlayStation/Nintendo 64 generation, many vast diversion companies had a lot of staff with 2D skills and nowhere to manipulate them. Basically, a Game Boy Advance was cheap, absolute adequate to promote sincerely formidable games, had no critical competitors, and could simply horde full-priced ports of games from a 16-bit era. It was also going to have Pokemon games, that done it by default a height of choice for an whole epoch of immature gamers. It’s no consternation that even companies that had bad blood with Nintendo climbed over any other to get a permit for a platform. No one knew it during a time, nonetheless all of a events that transpired from Pokemon‘s felicitous launch in 1996 leading were entrance together to totally change a face of a video diversion market, utterly in Japan.
As with a Game Boy before it, RPGs started appearing tiny months after a system’s launch. I’ll discuss now that we can’t be as downright in describing a system’s RPG library as we have been with progressing systems. The genre exploded on handhelds from this indicate on, so I’ll be adhering to critical highlights.
Capcom, of all companies, would lead a assign with a pier of their Super NES classical Breath Of Fire, following that adult after in 2001 with a pier of a second game, and an strange RPG spin-off of a Mega Man authorization called Mega Man Battle Network. The ports were nice, of course, nonetheless it was Mega Man Battle Network that would finish adult a leader of that lot, spawning several sequels, a TV series, and spin-offs of a own. It featured a storyline that embraced a contemporary media’s mania with a Internet, paid loyalty to a categorical array by regulating fast-paced, real-time battles, and threw in a card-collecting complement to daub into a Pokemon craze.
Nintendo did their partial to captivate RPG fans to a height in a initial year, too. They consecrated strange RPGs from Shining Force developers Camelot Software and Brownie Brown, a newly-formed Nintendo auxiliary stoical mostly of ex-Squaresoft employees. While a latter’s project, Magical Vacation, never expelled outward of Japan, Camelot’s diversion was expelled in a US usually a few months after a entrance in Japan. Golden Sun, expelled in Nov of 2001 in North America, finished adult being an astonishing strike in a American market. While it had many of a common faults found in Camelot RPGs, a estimable quest, appealing presentation, beguiling gameplay systems, and collection aspects helped it mount out in a early GBA line-up. The many critical gameplay mechanics in Golden Sun enclosed a unsentimental sorcery system, called Psynergy, and collectible Djinni summons. Magic could be used to solve puzzles in a dungeons, while a Djinnis were fun to hunt down and done for good eye candy in battles.
While it’s not an RPG, we also need to discuss Advance Wars, a reconstruction and first-time localization of Intelligent Systems’ long-running Wars array of turn-based plan games. The diversion strike it off good with a ubiquitous audience, decoration a siphon for a certain other long-running Intelligent Systems array to make a English entrance later. While it seems like a Wars array has left asleep these days, a contributions, approach and otherwise, to a plan RPG genre should never be forgotten.
2002 saw RPG releases from many vital Japanese companies, including Konami, Capcom, a newly-third celebration SEGA, Electronic Arts, Infogrames, Game Arts, and others. Though these games lonesome a widespread of sub-genres, many of them wisely enclosed during slightest some arrange of collection aspect. Nintendo once again put a crafty feet brazen with a rapid follow-up to Golden Sun called The Lost Age, that authorised players to use a integrate wire or a unequivocally prolonged cue to lift over a privileged save record from a initial game. More significantly, Nintendo expelled a sixth installment of Intelligent Systems’ Fire Emblem array exclusively on Game Boy Advance. Previously a console-only series, Fire Emblem‘s pierce to handheld heralded a vast nearing change in a Japanese RPG market. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade was a vital recover in a long-running RPG series, and we could usually play it on handheld. Fire Emblem would make occasional earnings to console in a future, nonetheless from here on out, it customarily became a handheld franchise.
But Nintendo’s biggest label came, during slightest in Japan, in Nov of 2002 with a recover of Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire, a newest epoch of Pokemon games. Those games would recover a few months after in a rest of a world, and from that indicate on, a Game Boy Advance never looked back. Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Sapphire aren’t looked behind on as fondly as some of a other games in a series, nonetheless it’s easy to see since they had difficulty impressing. Virtually everybody concerned with Pokemon suspicion that Gold and Silver would be a final games in a series, so they threw all into those games that they presumably could. That left them in an ungainly position with these subsequent games. Sales were nonetheless utterly strong, and helped indurate a Game Boy Advance’s marketplace around a world. Game Freak would recover their common third version, called Pokemon Emerald, a following year, and remakes of a initial epoch Pokemon games a year after that. Many likely a Pokemon materialisation would remove steam around this time, nonetheless a sales and seductiveness from fans around a universe pronounced otherwise.
The subsequent year, 2003, was a vast one for both a Game Boy Advance and Nintendo on a whole. To start with, Nintendo introduced a new chronicle of a Game Boy Advance. It had a clamshell character pattern and a front-lit screen, elucidate a categorical censure about a strange unit. Using a light bit into a battery life significantly. Luckily, Nintendo had done a confidant choice of including a rechargeable battery in a SP, so players didn’t have to worry about shopping new batteries all a time. This done longer games like RPGs some-more savoury as we no longer had to cause in a cost of a batteries it would take to kick them. I’m certain relatives rejoiced.
On a program side, vast news was stirring as well. After several years of glacial family between Nintendo and Final Fantasy‘s publisher Squaresoft, a ice finally broke. As usual, it seems like income heals all wounds. Squaresoft had recently announced they would be merging with opposition Enix, with a new association Square Enix handling underneath a care of a former Enix. Square Enix saw vital sales intensity in a handheld marketplace and with Bandai bowing out, Nintendo was a usually diversion in town. For their part, Nintendo indispensable something to assistance column adult a struggling Gamecube, utterly in Japan where sales were scarcely cold for a Nintendo console. Luckily, a dual companies could assistance any other out. Though a whole Gamecube thing didn’t volume to much, Square Enix and Nintendo’s new attribute would yield poignant handheld fruit to a advantage of both companies thereafter.
The initial Square releases on a Game Boy Advance were announced to be Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Sword Of Mana, and Chocobo Land. While a latter was a house diversion featuring Square’s renouned walking cooking special, a other dual were of seductiveness to RPG fans. Of a two, Final Fantasy Tactics launched first, releasing in Feb in Japan and Sep in North America. While some had guessed it would be a pier of a cult strike PlayStation game, it was indeed a totally new game. Reactions to a diversion were mixed, nonetheless a diversion sole unequivocally well. It also was an critical pen in that it was nonetheless another fully-formed supplement in a vital console series, and we could usually play it on handhelds. Sword Of Mana, that arrived a few months after respectively in all regions, was reduction remarkable. It was a reconstitute of a Game Boy Final Fantasy Adventure (Seiken Densetsu) that somehow finished adult being worse in roughly any way.
Square Enix would continue to offer support for a Game Boy Advance for years to come, with many of a games entrance as a outcome of a Finest Fantasy For Advance project. With Nintendo’s support, remakes and ports of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy 2, Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 5, and Final Fantasy 6 came to a Game Boy Advance. In fact, Final Fantasy 6 was one of a final critical releases for a height in North America, nearing in Feb of 2007, some-more than dual years after a Nintendo DS’s launch. Besides a Final Fantasy ports, there were a integrate of Dragon Quest spin-offs, conjunction of that done it out of Japan, and to a warn of many, a Kingdom Hearts spin-off.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories expelled in Nov of 2004, and it’s critical for a lot of reasons. First, we see once again that Square Enix isn’t bashful about releasing handheld games that follow adult on vital console releases. In hindsight, Chain Of Memories wasn’t impossibly critical for those following a story of Kingdom Hearts, nonetheless during a time, Square was touting it as an critical overpass between Kingdom Hearts and a nearing supplement on PlayStation 2. It also demonstrated that Square wasn’t going to tie any of a properties to a singular hardware manufacturer anymore. Finally, it’s also poignant in that it was grown by Jupiter, who would go on to emanate a smashing The World Ends With You. The fight in Chain Of Memories feels like a antecedent of what we would eventually see in that game. So, while a diversion itself wasn’t of a glorious quality, it served a array of purposes.
In North America, 2003 was also a vast year in that it saw a initial English recover of a Fire Emblem game. A array going behind to a 8-bit epoch in Japan, Nintendo had never been assured adequate in a intensity sales to try localizing any of a games that came before. Of all things, we can apparently appreciate Super Smash Bros. Melee for a association finally changing their mind. Series characters Marth and Roy seemed in that diversion and were utterly popular, giving Nintendo a poke they indispensable to recover a seventh diversion in a series, Fire Emblem: The Sword Of Flame, in English during a finish of a year underneath a pretension Fire Emblem. Ironically, a diversion featured conjunction Marth nor Roy, nonetheless looking during a sales, it didn’t seem to harm any. From this indicate on, usually one recover in a array would be skipped over for localization, and it was during a time where a array itself was during risk of being retired.
Rounding out an implausible year for handheld RPG fans, Mario Luigi: Superstar Saga had a coexisting recover worldwide in November. Developed by AlphaDream, a new developer done adult of former Square members who had worked on Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars for a Super NES, Mario Luigi: Superstar Saga was a sharp-witted RPG that saw a famous brothers holding on a new enemy. Like prior Mario RPGs, this game’s fight complement facilities a lot of mini-games and timed symbol presses, and a amusement is laid on thick. Apart from a final trainer being an absurd repairs sponge, something that would turn a hallmark of this series, Superstar Saga is a good RPG that does probity to a Mario brand.
Compared to 2003, a subsequent few years were sincerely still in terms of vital releases. The reason for that, of course, was a late 2004 launch of Nintendo’s new handheld, a Nintendo DS. After a prototype ran 13 prolonged years nonetheless a follow-up, a bad Game Boy Advance got usually over 3 years to itself. The reason for that was a proclamation of Sony’s PlayStation Portable, a complement so absolute that a Game Boy Advance couldn’t wish to compete. In theory, anyway. In practice, a Game Boy Advance enjoyed a prolonged sales tail that saw it violence a PSP here and there in certain markets. Even a Nintendo DS had issues putting a father to rest in certain markets. It wasn’t until a Nintendo DS had a Pokemon of a unequivocally possess that a Game Boy Advance finally bent out.
That’s not to contend zero was expelled on a Game Boy Advance from 2004 to 2007. On a contrary, there were a lot of RPGs released, generally in Japan. There were ports like Shin Megami Tensei, sequels including Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and strange titles such as Riviera: The Promised Land. There were some-more Mega Man Battle Network games, a Square Enix Final Fantasy ports, and a Pokemon remakes. RPG fans were well-fed, to contend a least, even a long-ignored English RPG fans. It was clear, however, that many vast projects were relocating elsewhere. Most, nonetheless not all, since Nintendo still had one some-more label to play.
Mother, or as it’s famous in English, Earthbound, has always been a array whose regard exceeds a sales. It’s also a unequivocally personal work of author Shigesato Itoi, famous in Japan for his smart observations and crafty ad slogans. The initial dual games in a series, Earthbound Beginnings on a NES and Earthbound on a Super NES, both had their share of prolongation issues that scarcely prevented them from releasing during all. Yet, their troubles were zero subsequent to a third game, Mother 3. Originally recognised as a recover for a Super NES, it shortly changed to Nintendo’s 64DD hoop expostulate for a Nintendo 64. The plan ran into a array of troubles both inner and outmost and finished adult being suspended in a year 2000. That was roughly a finish of it, until a thought came to move it to Game Boy Advance instead. Development began in 2003, and even scaling down to 2D graphics, a growth ran utterly long.
The diversion finally came out in Japan in Apr of 2006, enjoying sincerely crafty sales nonetheless eventually creation a approach to a discount bins due to overestimated demand. Don’t take that to meant a diversion was a disappointment, though. On a contrary, it was positively incredible, and sits nearby a tip of many RPGs fans’ lists of a best JRPGs ever made. It was usually too late to release, unfortunately. The Game Boy Advance died some-more fast in Japan than in other regions, that hurts a intensity in a home market. Outside of Japan, a late Japanese recover meant a localized chronicle would be rising in 2007 or later, something Nintendo usually couldn’t justify. Happily for English RPG players, Mother fans are some of a many dedicated in all of gaming. Once it was transparent an central chronicle wouldn’t be released, a organisation got together and done one of a many veteran fan translations I’ve ever seen. It’s a good game, and another instance of Japan relocating vital RPG franchises to handhelds.
It was tough to suppose anything could tip a Game Boy Advance’s superb library of handheld RPGs, amassed over a march of usually a few brief years. The peak, however, was nonetheless to come. For now, let’s take a impulse to lift a potion to a Game Boy Advance. It was maybe a initial handheld console that authorised for high-quality, full-length RPGs. It valid that vital RPG releases were value posterior on handhelds. It brought Fire Emblem to America, brought Square behind to Nintendo, and it gave us a final installment of a much-loved Mother series. The Game Boy Advance SP popularized a clamshell pattern that is still used in Nintendo’s handhelds today, and combined a rechargeable battery to giveaway us all from a shackles of AAs once and for all. And it did all of that in usually a few years.
The best handheld years were still forward of Nintendo, nonetheless there was a charge already brewing off to a side, where roughly nobody was looking. In subsequent month’s chapter, we’ll be looking during RPGs for Pocket PCs and underline phones for signs of a entrance avalanche.
Shaun’s Five For The Game Boy Advance Era
For any partial of this series, I’ll be selecting 5 critical or engaging titles to highlight. If you’re looking to get a good cross-section of a epoch in question, these picks are a good place to start.
Golden Sun - Well, realistically, we should play both Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The initial diversion has a sincerely required story with some engaging gameplay quirks, like regulating Psynergy to review people’s minds or solve cave puzzles. It’s a tiny delayed during times, nonetheless overall, it’s not a bad diversion during all. The second pretension is even better, though. Not usually is a gameplay some-more refined, nonetheless a story pulls off a flattering neat pretence that we haven’t seen in many other games. Play them both, nonetheless gangling yourself a heartbreak of a third installment, that came out on a Nintendo DS. It ends on a cliffhanger that will never, ever be resolved.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance - we feel like a lot of a blow behind this diversion got was for being too opposite from a original. Yes, a story is positively some-more family transport than that of a original, nonetheless a gameplay has been modernized in a lot of engaging ways. While some competence chafe during a Judges and their Laws, we like how they force we to cruise outward of a box and be prepared for any situation. You need a well-rounded group to stay on tip of those restrictions, so we can’t usually tumble into idle habits. As an combined bonus, a goddess work in this diversion is gorgeous.
Fire Emblem - While these days it sits in a worried position of being conjunction a best Fire Emblem for beginners or experts, Fire Emblem is still an glorious installment in a series. It has a good story with an beguiling expel of characters, and while a diversion can be tough as nails, it’s a lot of fun. we unequivocally like how we can play by a remixed chronicle of a diversion that follows a story from a viewpoint of one of a other vital characters in a story, too. That additional gives a diversion a lot of additional value. The usually downside? This is a prequel to a diversion we never strictly got in English, so a finale has a lot of lax threads that we won’t see a formula of unless we find some approach to play The Binding Blade in a denunciation we understand.
Mario Luigi: Superstar Saga - For those who felt a Paper Mario games were lacking in essential vitamins and Luigis, Superstar Saga is usually a thing. Luigi is by your side via a game, and he is smashing here. The timing-based fight is severe and rewarding, and a localization is honestly humorous and charming. The final trainer is awful, generally if you’re personification a North American version, nonetheless that’s a tiny cost to play to suffer a diversion adult until that point. Still one of a highlights of a Mario Luigi array and Mario RPGs in general.
Mother 3 - Look, we don’t disciple robbery as a ubiquitous rule. Please try to get yourself a duplicate of a strange Japanese cartridge if we can. Once we have that, greatfully go and find a fan translated English chronicle of a diversion somewhere on a Internet. This is all unequivocally troublesome, we realize, nonetheless it’s value it. Mother 3 is a illusory game. we don’t even like Earthbound that many and we still cruise this diversion is great. It’s sad, cathartic, and certainly tellurian in a approach that few other RPGs brave to be. The gameplay side of things isn’t utterly as remarkable, nonetheless a timing-based combo attacks can be fun to learn. If any strange RPG had a right to play a smashing Game Boy Advance off a stage, it was this one.
That’s all for partial 5 of a persisting History Of Handheld RPGs feature. Please let me know what we cruise by commenting below, posting in a Official RPG Reload Club thread, or by tweeting me during @RPGReload. As for me, I’ll be behind subsequent week with a demeanour during Nameless: The Hackers RPG [$1.99]. And maybe even a podcast, if a stars align properly. Thanks as always for reading!
Next Week’s Reload: Nameless: The Hackers RPG
Article source: http://toucharcade.com/2016/01/07/rpg-reload-presents-the-history-of-handheld-rpgs-part-five/