#rpg maker 2 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nintendoduo · 3 months ago

Text

Playing the Super Nintendo's Forgotten Home-Made RPGs of the '90s (Part 1)

Did you know that the Super Nintendo housing a family of tiny spiders in your closet is also technically a device for creating RPGs? (As in role-playing games; sorry, everyone who imagined their SNES shooting out rocket-propelled grenades.) This is thanks to RPG Maker: Super Dante and RPG Maker 2, the two SNES-compatible installments in the long-running series of games about making games. Although neither made it outside Japan, in 1998 a group called KanjiHack released their own English translation for RM2 and encouraged players to send in their creations, to be showcased in an extremely 1998-looking website called The Fantasy Maker's Vault.

How did that go? Well, four months later, KanjiHack announced they were fed up with receiving hundreds of half-baked, poorly-formatted games and were deleting all but the ones that were actually finished, which left them with exactly... one game. Shortly after that, the makers of RPG Maker submitted something of their own: a cease-and-desist letter. KanjiHack promptly shut down, and all those user-made SNES RPGs were forgotten forever. Or, well, until now.

Thanks to some digging on archive.org and a visit to an all-German Discord (shout out to Spatzenfärber at the RMArchiv & Makerpendium server!), we were able to find eleven English-language home-made SNES RPGs from the '90s. While playing through all of those historical artifacts across two livestreams, we were witness to things you wouldn't normally encounter in games with the Nintendo Seal of Quality, like crude jokes, ham-fisted attempts at social commentary, misspellings, underage substance abuse, and, of course, some weirdly horny stuff. Here's part one of our attempt to summarize each game, for posterity.

Note: These games can be downloaded at archive.org or rmarchiv.de (or archive.org’s archived version of rmarchiv.de, if it goes offline again).

Note 2: If Tumblr won't let you read the article without logging in (or keeps breaking the images), you can read it at Dreamwidth.

"Atonement" by RPG Advocate (05-08-1998)

Original description: A young girl sets out to establish friendly relations with an old enemy.

Right off the bat, the earliest game uploaded to the Vault (and, apparently, the oldest surviving RPG Maker user game ever) starts with a girl being told to strut her stuff in front of "important dignitaries" in order to improve her kingdom's trade relations. Emphasis on relations. The protagonist is Maia, an image-obsessed young princess who spends so long doing her make up in the opening cutscene that we seriously thought game had crashed.

It really dosen't, Maia.

Maia is told to go see her father, the king, who needs someone to travel to the neighboring nation of Yatari and prevent a war. Since all the dignitaries present decline to do it for various reasons (one guy says he's "allergic to Yatari food"), Maia volunteers to go there and "smooth things over." The way this is presented almost makes it sound like the start of a 16-bit porno. Fueling that impression is the fact that, if you snoop around the king's library, you'll find a flyer directing you to a website hosting what sure looks like erotic Final Fantasy VI fan fiction (we didn't read enough of it to find out for sure).

But, for better or worse, you never get to that part. After fighting some generic monsters in a field, you reach the city of Meese, which can be thought of as a sort of social commentary on recent changes in industry and commerce. We know this because as soon as you step in, someone comes up to you and says:

In Meese, Maia finds overpriced item shops on one side of town and people begging for money and complaining about the busted sewage system on the other (wonder what that's supposed to be commentary for?). There's also a guy who gives you a random series of directions with no context, which suggests this town might have a mental health problem, too. While on the poor side, Maia has to fight off a pack of "gangstas," who are represented as four-armed swordsmen wearing robes because this game has no "guy with baggy pants and du rag holding a machine gun" sprite.

Maia finds out that there's been a rockslide just outside of town, which means that in order to progress you have to retrieve some dynamite from a warehouse. Unfortunately, that warehouse also happens to be the place where this town stores all of its monsters and RPG enemies. Before going in, a dick named Kyle (such a far-out fantasy name) joins your party without asking because "a pretty lady like you" has no business going there alone. This game would be 1998's GOTY if you could just kick Kyle in the nads and leave him there, but sadly you're given no choice but to put up with his ass.

(Thank goodness this game's graphics aren't detailed enough to make it obvious if one of the characters has a boner.)

The "warehouse" turns out to be big dungeon that has to be navigated in a specific order, otherwise you activate the "security system" and get kicked back to the beginning. Once you figure out that you need to follow the directions that random guy in the town gave you (sorry for doubting your mental state, random guy) the main problem becomes that this poorly-kept building is infested with an enemy type called "TURD." You can't take two steps without stepping on a turd. As if dealing with Kyle wasn't bad enough.

Early on in the dungeon, you get a glimpse of a treasure chest at the other side of a wall. After a while fighting turds and other enemies, you can reach that chest, open it, and find your reward for all that effort: poison gas. Now, on top of all the turds and Kyle, you're also poisoned, which means you'll be taking damage with every other step and the dungeon will be unwinnable unless you're playing in dev mode and have infinite health. Even so, the screen-flashing "poison" effect is so annoying that you'll wish you could die. Hope you made a save state before spending the past half hour punching turds!

Three floors into this deadly, no doubt foul-smelling dungeon, you run into a human character who's just chilling there. It turns out he's the brother of a beggar who asked you for money in the town. If you gave the beggar money, his bro, who apparently has magic powers, will completely restore your HP and MP, remove any "bad status," and even let you save your game. We didn't feel like making a new save and replaying the entire dungeon to find out what happens if you cheap out, but RPG genre conventions lead us to assume that he turns into some sort of muscular demon who deals 9999 damage.

After that, you finally reach the dungeon's boss: a blue guy named "Medulla" who spouts gibberish words at you (presumably meaning "What did you do to my precious turd collection?!"). If you best him, he drops the dynamite you came here to collect and, at last, you get to clear the way out of the town! And then...

...nothing happens. There's no exit behind the "rocks" (which actually looked remarkably like barrels). In fact, if you use dev mode to get to the other side of this town in the overworld map, it's all empty. This is as far as RPG Advocate made the game. You got your hands dirty, in the worst possible sense, for nothing.

According to his Makerpendium wiki page (WARNING: German), RPG Advocate was a polarizing figure in the community who on the one hand helped translate various RPG Maker titles, but on the other was kind of a dick (was Kyle a self-insert character?). It seems that this SNES demo evolved into a PC game called Phylomortis: Atonement Gaiden, which later got two sequels called Psychopoltical Drama Phylomortis II: Triumvirate of Dystopia and Phylomortis: Avant Garde. Based on the gameplay available on YouTube, they are about as intelligible as their titles suggest. But Maia is in them, so we're glad to know she eventually made it out of that shitty town.

"Daxara" by Adol (05-16-198)

Original description: Geren travels from Castle Harmony to learn of the origin of appearing monsters who are robbing the world's Shards in order to end it.

Like 40% of RPG Maker games from this era, this one starts with a knight being told he has to go talk to the king, who is a kind man. We know this because not one but two people tell you "The king is a kind man," though they're both within the king's earshot so there's a chance they're only saying that to avoid being shackled in a dungeon.

King Kind tells you that someone has attacked a shrine for unknown reasons, so you need to go there and find out what the hell. As you leave the castle, some lady named Sarah says she heard about your mission and asks to come along with you, because she's just very passionate about shrine-related crimes, we guess. If you say "Yes," she joins your party. If you say "No," she also joins your party, but first she says "You're such a funny guy!" Way to be a Kyle, Sarah.

Once you reach the shrine, you run into enemies like "Thing," which look exactly like red turds (please consult a physician if this happens to you), and "Batling," which suck. That's their power: they suck.

There are a few chests around the shrine, some of which contain an item called "fluid" that you probably shouldn't be touching with your bare hands. Soon, you reach the end of shrine and find the mysterious attacker: it's some sort of dog-person called "?" who says you're too late, because his minions have already stolen the Shard that was in this shrine and will use it to "destroy this pitiful world!" Oh no! If only you hadn't been delayed by Sarah... is she an agent of "?"?

Anyway, once you fight dog-person "?" he suddenly becomes a fish-person called "Sinister." We are already witnessing the fabric of reality disintegrating due to his meddling with the kind king's shrine Shard.

If you manage to defeat Sinister ? the Dog-Fish-Person, he drops some more fluid (ewww) and some flesh that you're supposed to show the king as proof that you killed him. Does the king distrust you so much that he forces you to carry around the decomposing flesh of his enemies as proof? That's very unkind of him. The worst part is that once you get back to the king, he doesn't even acknowledge all the bloody flesh you brought him. Instead, he sends you to another town to deliver a note to some sort of mythical being named "Colin."

That sounds like a pretty urgent mission. So, naturally, as soon as you reach the other town, you get distracted by side missions. For instance, one guy tells you that "strange things" have taken over his basement, which is bad because that's where he keeps all of his coffins. If you agree to go into the coffin collector's basement, he says "You won't regret this!" Then you go down and instantly get ambushed by sworded skeletons that can kill you with one blow.

So that was a lie.

Once you decide to move on with the game, you can talk to Colin, who tells you that the rest of your epic adventure awaits on the other side of a door and gives you an item called "Colinkey." You might think you can use the Colinkey to open the Colindoor, but nope. You can't do shit. This is where the game unceremoniously ends: with a closed door and the disquieting certainty that you will never know what's on the other side. (Unless you check with dev move, in which case you learn that it's "some unfinished maps.")

"Forever..." by Kypdev (05-17-1998)

Original description: A boy heads off on a series of quests.

In this one, they don't even have to tell you to go talk to the king. Your character, Kyp, wakes up in his bed saying "Damnit! I am late!" and you instinctively know that the thing he's late for is going to talk to the king. Note that Kyp is so manly that he sleeps in his armor.

Before leaving the house, you can talk to your family: your mom, who tells you to dress warmly for your mission (I'm wearing clothes over an armor, mom), your dad, who wishes he could join you but says his adventuring days are over, your cat and dog, who bark and meow at you respectively, and your baby sibling, who magically vanishes as soon as your mom exits the room.

There's a church next to your house, and if you go in (maybe to seek solace for the sudden disappearance of your little brother or sister) the minister will confess to you that he isn't really religious. He's just in it for those sweet minister bucks and the tax-exempt status.

There's also a bar, and if you enter it you'll find that your dad has gone there to drown his sorrows and is already shitfaced. Now you have to live with the shame of being related to such a freaking lightweight.

The most sordid part of all this is that if you talk to the bartender, he'll tell you to "have a drink," even though everyone knows that alcoholism has a genetic component. Also, uh, doesn't the game's description refer to Kyp as a "boy"? He's just very bulky on account of carrying an armor around all day.

Anyway, after fighting generic monsters in a field, you reach the castle and... hmm, what was it you were supposed to do here? Let's see if anyone around can remind you:

Something tells us we're supposed to talk to the queen. Once you do, she says "Please talk to the king," so you do that too, since she asked nicely. The king, in turn, asks: "Wilst thou aid my kingdom and bring peace?" If you say "No" (maybe you'd rather investigate the case of the magical disappearing baby), he tells you to "Leave mine eyes, coward!" but he must be suffering from dementia because if you talk to him again, he'll greet you like the first time and ask the same thing. If you say "Yes," he tells you to... talk to the queen.

Kinda feel like we're getting jerked around here.

The queen informs you that thy task, should thy choose to accept it, is to rescue their daughter from a rogue knight. To begin the quest, she asks you to go search in a specific tombstone in the castle's cemetery, which would suggest that perhaps we're a bit too late to save the princess. But, before doing that, let's see what the diverse cast of characters has to say now:

After maximizing your luck stat, you go check out that tombstone the queen mentioned, which is actually the entrance to an underground passage leading to the island where the princessnapper lives in a tower. Upon climbing the tower you get to confront the evil Misaka, who laughs at you and calls you a child. Yeah, a booze-drinking, armor-wearing child who's about to kick your ass.

Misaka doesn't take being defeated by a muscular little boy very well. In fact, he's so embarrassed that he makes like a baby and vanishes.

The princess, Dana, is so thankful for being rescued that she magnanimously announces she's joining you on your quest. Wait, wasn't your quest to rescue her? That's not so magnanimous then. By the way, if you get tired walking up and down the tower, for merely 1G you and Dana can curl up inside a talking pot that somehow serves as an inn. A tempting offer, but we passed on the chance to spend the night together Chavo del Ocho style.

So, what's the game gonna be about now that you retrieved the princess? Nothing, because once you go back through the underground passage, you get a message saying "end of beta," followed by RPG Maker 2's default end credits sequence. We can find no evidence of Kypdev developing any further versions of this game, or any game. He's just Kyp now, presumably.

Did you know you can only insert 30 images in a Tumblr post? We didn't until now, so... to be continued in another post, which will hopefully take less than 26 years this time.

#nintendo #snes #super nintendo #super famicom #sfc #rpg maker #rpg maker 2 #RPGツクール2 #RPGツクール #retro gaming #gamedev #rpg advocate is cool #actually don't know if he's cool #just wanted to acknowledge the meme #seriousposting

7 notes · View notes

nintendoduo · 16 days ago

Text

Playing the Super Nintendo's Forgotten Home-Made RPGs of the '90s (Part 3)

The Super Nintendo is home to classic role-playing games like Chrono Trigger by Square, Breath of Fire by Capcom, and Kitten Quest Part 2: Legends - Chapter 1 by a random, most likely underage internet person who had a Sailor Moon Geocities website in 1999. That last one is one of the many games made in the SNES version of RPG Maker 2 and posted to the internet in the late '90s, only a few of which survive, for better or worse. Here's our look at three more of those games, freshly excavated from the ruins of the old web.

Note: These games can be downloaded at archive.org or rmarchiv.de (or archive.org’s archived version of rmarchiv.de, if it goes offline again).

Note 2: Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of this historic article series (also readable on Dreamwidth, as is this one, if Tumblr is acting up or you just don't like it).

"Dragon Saga" by AegisKnight (05-25-1998)

Original description: A young knight sets out on a journey to save the world from the Dargonlord Phalanx.

If you're the type of gamer who likes standing in front of book shelves and pressing A, this game will be hugely rewarding to you (and only you). You play as an armor-wearing dude named Chris who owns a shelf containing books with titles like "HOW TO BECOME A KNIGHT" and "HOW TO SAVE THE WORLD." Chris sounds like a dork.

As soon as you step out of Chris' room, a royal messenger tells you the king wants to talk to you ASAP and gives you some cash to get you "ready" for the meeting. Is it the king's birthday? Are you supposed to buy him a present? You decide to buy nothing and pocket the money.

Note that if you stand by the exit to Chris' room for too long, you'll be accosted by a lady who says "I love books!" and then just stays there, blocking your way and trapping you in this small area of the game forever. Presumably she's waiting for Chris to starve to death so she can steal his dorky books. The only way to avoid this book-loving maniac is going back to the room and exiting as fast as possible.

But this game isn't just about books. No, it's also about magazines. To the left of this area, there's a series of shelves holding issues of mags like Nintendo Power, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Playboy (which the protagonist seems excited to see), and that '90s classic, This is Only the Beta Version, Full Soon to Come.

(Alas, no links to erotic fan fiction this time.)

Before departing for the king's castle, you can talk to the charming local children who live in this residential building/public library/weapons store. One wishes he could join your quest and tells you "your lucky," while another informs you that he has peed himself. This game has the most realistic little kid dialogue in all of gaming.

So, you travel to the castle, fighting the packs of bats that roam the countryside (and likely wetting your own pants at least a little bit, because "packs of bats roaming the countryside" sounds terrifying). At last, you enter the castle and head straight for the king. And by "straight" we mean "after checking all 14 book shelves in here." Unfortunately, they all have the same book, the poetically titled You Find Nothing.

As you explore the castle, you run across a guy in a robe who says he's an amateur magician and asks if you "want to see?" If you say yes, he flashes you. As in, he makes the screen flash.

(Can't guarantee that he didn't flash you anything else while the screen was all white, though.)

Another fun thing to do in the castle is touching the fire in the stove, which causes Chris to say "Ouch!" The level of realism in this game can be frightening sometimes. You can also talk to the guards, who, unlike in previous games, have different dialogue! Well, sort of.

Oh, and you can talk to the king too, we guess. He says he asked you to come here because you are "the one," "the legendary knight," and as such it's your job to "destroy the Dragonlord Phalanx." Most RPG protagonists would react to information like that by going "say whaaaaaaa." Chris is a bit more nonchalant about it.

(Strong "Elizabeth Holmes text messages" energy in this exchange.)

The king says that two of his servants will aid you in your quest to find and kill the Phalanx, whoever or whatever that is: Bryan the Knight and David the Wizard (it's pretty obvious that the dev based these characters on two IRL buddies of his, Knight and Wizard). To start the quest, the trio must climb a nearby tower populated by some bird people that the game hurtfully calls "Freaks" and some cat people called "Jorjes." It's nice to see some Hispanic representation.

At the top of the tower lives a dog person called Pagne, whose character arc can be summed up by the following screenshots:

After defeating Pagne, the heroes go back to the castle, where the king thanks them for their service but warns them that "there are many others to defeat" and "this is only the beginning."

That's right, this epic adventure is only starting, baby! Anyway, that's when the game ends.

According to Makerpendium.de, this game's creator went on to make four sequels for various other RPG Maker programs, but none appear to be preserved. All those joke book titles are now lost in time, like tears in rain. Or pee in wet pants.

"Xemorph: The Nine" by Xemorph Smorg (05-25-1998)

Original description: A man sets out to end the reign of a King and restore world peace & order.

Despite what the name might suggest, this one has nothing to do with alien creatures with phallic heads. This time, your mission is to go talk to the king... and kick his ass. But first, we start with an old man telling his grandson to go pick a book for him to read. After dismissing one book as "stupid" and another as "to boring," the illiterate kid settles on a book called Xemorph: The 9. Wait, is he gonna read a strategy guide for the game we're playing?

The grandfather says that this book is actually "a true story" that happened about 100 years ago, and starts reading. Like most great works of literature, this one starts with a guy standing in the middle of an empty field. If you make him go into a nearby town (this is "Choose Your Own Adventure" book), he can enter a nice inn where he's greeted by a guy who tells him to "Get lost!" and a woman who says "Nice to meet you!" and then yells "I am scared! Ahhh!" From this we can conclude that the book's main character is very, very ugly.

Near the inn is the best part of this game: the graveyard. Not only does it have the graves for real historical figures like Adolf Hitler (1854-1945, meaning he was 91 when he died), Newt "Gingridge" (1956-2013; neither date is correct), and Shigeru Miyamoto (1969-2053, also incorrect; Miyamoto will never die)...

...but also famous video game characters like Crash B. (1995-2010), S. Onic (1990-1996; that's right, Sonic's full name is "Sonic Onic"), A. Tari (1977-1984), and of course Mario (1985-2000, fated to die the day Luigi finally gets tired of his bullshit).

Disturbingly, sometimes you can see a ghoul roaming the graveyard, and if you're brave enough to talk to it... holy shit, it's-a him.

(We're assuming the kid who made this RPG 26 years ago was promptly sued by Nintendo and is still in prison.)

There are also some mysterious graves for people called "THE," "WEED," "HOLDS," "THE," and "ANSWER," which might provide a subtle clue about the inspiration behind these headstones. That, or they're related to the bush blocking one of the graves, but nothing seems to happen when you stand next to it and press every button.

You can also visit some of the houses in this town, where we find out that this game is even more realistic than the previous one, because if you touch the fire in the stove, you actually lose health. It is the duty of every conscientious RPG player to touch every fire in every game to see if this happens. Also in real life.

You also meet a town resident who tells you that "That castle in the desert is almost impossible to get into! Only 1 mans ever made it." Whoever that 1 mans is, he reportedly lives near the castle, but you're warned that "he is not that nice." Since no one has given you anything resembling a mission (or even a plot) so far, you go looking for that desert castle and that guy who knows how to enter it. After fighting some giant spiders and three-headed helldogs, you find Mr. "Not That Nice," who says he'll help you get into the castle... if you fight him first!!! We can see how he gets his reputation.

What follows is a battle for the ages. Your enemy's very first hit is a "critical" one, causing you to lose a whopping... 1 HP?! You lost five times that just from touching the fire.

As promised, the poorly socialized knight "transrports" you into the castle when defeated. He also tells you his name is Jorg and asks to join your squad, so we guess we're best friends now. Anyway, you're finally in the castle! Meaning: a small room with an empty throne and two pillars. There's no king to talk to. Unless... you're the king? Was this game secretly a metaphor for "finding yourself"?

If you go up to the pillars and start pressing buttons (because what else are you gonna do in here), you'll find out that each has a different effect: the left one makes the screen shake, somehow, and the right one transports you back to that town at the start. And that's it, you've officially ran out of things to do in this game, unless you wanna go around the map punching dogs and spiders for no reason.

This is, sadly, the last of the games archived in the legendary Fantasy Maker's Vault website from 1998. However, our friend Spatzenfärber at the RMArchiv & Makerpendium Discord managed to salvage two more SNES RPG Maker 2 from the old web. The first one is...

"Kitten Quest Part 2: Legends - Chapter 1" by S-Mercury (08-25-1999)

The developer's website didn't have much of a description for this one, but here's an excerpt from a contemporary review for Part 1: [T]here was actually no plot. Only a cat telling me (by the way this game is pretty strange since the main characters are cats even I was one) that I should go save some guy.

A SNES RPG where you play as a cat? That actually sounds fun! Unfortunately, this is Part 2, where you play as a dumb human. The game starts with your mom telling you "Today you become an adult!!" and kicking you not just out of the house, but out of the entire town.

That's the second game where your mom evicts you the moment you turn of age (after Ductarr: The Rise of Rebellion, covered in the previous article), which probably says something about the age of the people making these.

There's some sort of black hole in the corner of your room, and if you go near it, someone, it's unclear who, yells "AHHH!!!!!!!!!" Is your character gazing into the abyss and finding it gazes also into you? Do you have someone trapped down in that hole like in Silence of the Lambs? There are no good options here.

That's the entire family home, by the way: one big room with two beds in the center and a black screaming hole on the corner. Once you leave the building, you can never come back inside. Your mom changed the locks the second you were out of there, it seems.

Outside your (former) house is a long staircase leading to a portal, which transports you to the inside of an inn. Leaving the inn reveals that it's in a very small town with only one other building: some sort of narrow bar or restaurant with nothing but some chairs and tables and a knight who says "Welcome..." and nothing else. This game is starting to feel like a Lynchian nightmare.

There's another town nearby, also with only two buildings. At this point we recommend being careful and not thinking too hard about the non-Euclidean geometry governing these buildings (avoid questions like "Why is there a patch of grass on the ceiling there?" "What's going on with those windows?" "How do those angles make any sense?") or your brain will start leaking out through your nose.

(As a reminder, someone willingly put this game on the internet for others to play.)

One of the buildings is a shop with two identical shopkeepers who just say "SHOP1" and "SHOP2" at you but won't actually let you shop (rude), while the other appears to be some sort of boat rental service. The attendant there lets you take one of the boats on the pier outside, which means we can now explore the vast seas!

And they are vast... but, unfortunately, also completely empty except for some unpopulated islands and a blimp that produces garbled text if you try to interact with it.

And that's it for Kitten Quest Part 2: Legends - Chapter 1, which did not feature a single kitten, or even an adult cat. It should be illegal to name a video game Kitten Quest Part 2: Legends - Chapter 1 and not have any feline presence whatsoever, if you ask us. You were a disappointment, Kitten Quest Part 2: Legends - Chapter 1.

That leaves us with only one SNES RPG Maker 2 game to cover, which is... an actual finished game?! And good, too?!? At this point, we wouldn't blame you for being skeptical of that claim. Still, look out for the next and final part of this article series, which will be entirely devoted to that one mythical good SNES RPG Maker 2 game.

#nintendo #snes #super nintendo #super famicom #sfc #rpg maker #rpg maker 2 #RPGツクール2 #RPGツクール #retro gaming #gamedev #homebrew #kitten quest part 2 legends chapter 1 #mario's ghost #seriousposting

5 notes · View notes