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Hello! - Sakuczya - 02-21-2022
Hm, no idea how to start these kind of things. First time I am actually really using a forum of this kind instead of just lurking around, but I decided to break my silence haha!
So what is there to say about me...
SNES was a huge part of my childhood and for me there is pretty much nothing more visually appealing in games than wellmade pixelart. (All Enix/Quintet and Squaresoft games favourite, very special and uncommon picks, I know
) Whenever I wouldn't play SNES games myself I would watch Let's plays of things like Super Mario World. The good old hoax videos where someone found a secret laser powerup or a hidden super secret level soon introduced me into Lunar Magic and SMW hacking. That sparked my interest in game making and behind the scenes stuff! It was so cool seeing other sprites in SMW that usually don't belong there. Finding out more about how they made these games in the first place and the more technical site was quite overwhelming at first, but with the years I got more and more the gist of it (especially since my english has improved).I adore this site, because it gave me access to so many sprite sheets and thus allowed me to tinker around with RPG maker and similar things easily! The way everything here is written feels so wholesome and nice! I kinda wanted to give something back and realized there are still SNES games missing. One of which was Angelique. Makes sense since it is quite a obscure game. It is japanese only. I played it as a kid and did not understand a single word. But the game focuses a lot on the character protraits. And with the power of savestates and checking if the answer I gave made a positive facial expression appear, I made it quite far into the game. (Those old savestates I made as a kid actually helped me a lot in my ripping task. I gave my past self a good pat on the back for I always spammed savestates back then, especially at scenes that looked nice to me! B) ) I first tried to do it with decompressing the graphics (Thank you person who made the Koei decompression tool!), but it was still so confusingly aligned that I decided to use the good old method of screenshots, vSnes and Krita.
That game was the beginning of the otome genre (dating sim for girls). There have been some attempts in the past to make a translation of the game, but from what I've read all those projects died down because of issues with the game, formatting, code.
I hope that my work might easen the way for fan projects that might try to recreate and translate this game on other engines.
It's a game that really influenced me a lot as a child in a positive way. I think that the graphics are quite nice. And it's a good example for isometric view of rooms as well as how to make certain materials in pixelart. Feel free to ask me anything about the SNES Angelique game!
I really have to say, now that I have done some myself... I have huge respect for everybody who is contributing to this site! I did not expect it to be so much work. But it also really improved my workflow, understanding of animations and layers and it really feels amazing to see all the work I have done uploaded! I can rest in peace as cheesy as that sounds, it is a big accomplishment for me!
If I will rip another game it would probably be some Chibi Maruko-Chan SNES game. Just as obscure. And I have just as countless hours and savestates there. Probably only a few care about that, but there is that completionist itching.
I am trying my best and after I am done with Angelique (as of writing I am triyng to capture the guardian spells somehow) I will probably go back to lurking until I one day might be able to provide the sheets of my own pixelart game. (See you in 50+ years for that, haha! Ha...
)
RE: Hello! - Yawackhary - 02-21-2022
Hiya and welcome to the site. Don't worry about not sure of what to say, forums are an old fashioned way of talking online anyway.
Wanted to say thanks for all those Angelique rips. Your passion in that game is something that I haven't seen in a long time coming here along with Mica's Mortal Kombat rips, in terms of new members. Also it is rather unusual (especially outside of Japan and the US) to grow up playing RPGs but it's not a bad thing. You managed to play games that weren't exactly the easiest genre to get especially on the SNES where if you did managed to play a RPG, it would have been Secret of Mana. Either that or one of the Phantasy Star games on the Mega Drive (or most likely Final Fantasy VII on the PS1).
As for the translation, sadly there are many games that haven't been translated into English or other languages (that makes your rips even more impressive). It might still happen one day but there are like 1000s of games out there waiting for the same treatment. Oh and there's a Voice Fantasy version of the game too so it might even get voice acting, assuming that the Voicer-Kun addon gets emulated.
If you want to rip Chibi Maruko-chan or any game that you fancy, go for it. It might be some Japanese licensed game and yes, there are only a few who would care but sometimes you get those nice surprises. I would like to see it myself and other would too. People come here to look at Mario/Sonic/Toby Fox game/meme game of the month and it is a demoraliser when those gets 1000s of views a day while others struggle to break the 100 mark over a month after being put on the site but there are some here who are not like that. Many of the regulars rip from games and games from consoles/computers that are obscure, maybe have a cult following because it is like going to an art museum. Sure people who straight away look at something like the Mona Lisa but they might be interested in other works. People have put time into those sprites/backgrounds and the effort, well... Depends on the artist but it shouldn't be forgotten. Then again this is coming from the person who has ripped games in the past that I just don't like just to see them on the site...
RE: Hello! - Sakuczya - 02-22-2022
That makes me glad!
Yeah, many great games are much less known than they deserve to be because of the language barrier. I used to think that that was especially the case in the past and that newer games would not suffer from that fate, but even today there are lots of titles that do not get released or translated everywhere.
And Angelique is a prime example of that issue. The game series is alive and well in japan with a lot of games a new Switch title that was just released last year! Here you don't even hear about it's existence.
A friend of mine does not want to play the Tales of the Abyss game on the 3DS, simply because his english skills are lacking very much and there is no german translation without workaround, although he is a huge fan of the Tales-of games.
Chrono Trigger is not even a very obscure title, yet the european people had to wait for the DS version in 2009 to get an official release with translation.
(That's another reason why I love Secret of Evermore, the game was never officially released in japan which turned the tables for on, heh)
I think the localization issues are getting better now, but it really surprises me how long it takes for the marketing people to realize other countries might be just as much into x game.
For some reason playing games in a language you don't understand has something magical to it. Although you don't get a single word, the games might be still very fun and that really shows how great the gameplay, music or the graphics of that game are.
I always had a thing for somewhat obscure games. It is so nice to see that even these rather unknown games have aquired quite the following now. I was very sad when in elementary school almost nobody knew what a SNES is anymore (I was born in the wrong generation I suppose, the Wii was already on the way at that point) and those who did know had never heard of the games I played. I grew up accepting that nobody cares for those games. Gaining stable access to the internet then let me realize there are many people who do really care! Such a nice feeling knowing you are not alone with those good memories from those games. And just like you said, there are people that are appreciating the time and effort that was put into making those games. And even bad games or art can help at learning. I fully agree, it should not be forgotten!
Game ripping really feels like a puzzle, with each sheet and game there comes that good feeling of inching closer to the full picture one day. Very satisfactory, no matter how big it is!