i've been trying to figure out what this game is for actual decades now:
back in my 90s high school days, a friend had both a psx and saturn more or less at launch, and was a big jrpg fan -- he had all the hot new ones like wild arms and arc the lad, etc (side note he also had brave fencer musashi which for weeks i thought he was calling "brave friends of musashi")
anyway i was over at his place going thru all the games and he popped in one game that had an image that has stuck with me all this time: it's an overworld screen where he's piloting this game's version of the airship, but it's just a giant fantasy-future black tetrahedron kind of thing, floating over the landscape, kinda like that one tesseractical angel from evangelion. i THINK this was a psx game but it could have been saturn. i think it was before final fantasy 7 came out, so 1996-7? i don't remember it being polygon-heavy, and it focused on nice 2d graphics like many of the first-wave games of that console cycle. i can't find anything when i dig into screenshots of alundra or arc the lad, etc, but who knows. i know that's not a lot to go on but it's what i have: big black polygonal monolith floating over the blue-green overworld
also easier one, at that same time, maybe even the same afternoon, he was playing a strategy tactics rpg on the saturn that was probably from the first year of the us saturn release, and his 5 or so dudes were moving up and fighting their way thru a switchback-y forest. pretty sure this was rudimentary 3d polygon stuff. what were the early saturn tactix games?
uh. thanks, if these are all enough of a description to figure this out
I‘m gonna have to pour over the archives for the first one, but to take a wild stab at this: Vandal Hearts? It was Japan only and released too late to be first year, but it’s the first example that comes to mind.
Hmm it seems you were playing the Saturn that day, since the other game was Mystaria, but nothing comes to my mind on the Saturn with that kind of airship description.
Seen for the first time out of context, the Yggdrasil from **Xenogears** may be hard to figure out and mistaken for some sort of tetrahedral monolith, maybe ? The game still has a lot of 2D art for characters. Would be after FF7, but given we’re talking about childhood memories and so many different games releasing so close to each other, you may have been mixing up the timeline. You mention Brave Fencer Musashiden which came out the same year as Xenogears.
Another possible candidate that comes to mind is 🇺🇸**Tales of Destiny II** / 🇯🇵**Tales of Eternia**. It’s way later (2000) but ① most of the game is gorgeous 2D graphics ② the world map has a blocky black airship going over a typical fantasy world. However, I don’t think you would mistake the ship for an Evangelion-ish monster, even on a crappy CRT.
Oh! What about Beyond the Beyond? The regular airship is a dragon but you can take control of a giant tetrahedral dungeon late in the game. Would match all your criterias : PlayStation, 2D, pre-FF7, fantasy-future black purple tetrahedron kind of thing, floating over the landscape.
@chazumaru Even if this isn‘t the game in question, thanks for filling in a serious memory gap I had about Beyond the Beyond! I’ve struggled over the years to remember its name since it doesn't get much love these days, but it was real favourite of mine.
@Karasu Hmm, if you have fond memories of the game, I would personally advise it’s better you leave it at that and don’t revisit the game too closely with a modern eye. I think Beyond the Beyond is a pretty mediocre and rushed RPG made in a hurry by the very same people who had developed the greatest game of all time in order to be the first on the PlayStation software market with a RPG. They re-explored some of Beyond the Beyond’s better ideas years later with the much more polished Golden Sun series.
I was getting all amped up at folks suggesting vandal hearts on saturn since it was JP only but I guess it could've just been vandal hearts on the psx with a console mismemory.
To add to the Mystaria, not only was it called two names (including blazing heroes) in the US, it was called Riglord Saga in Japan. I don't think anybody liked that game enough for it to deserve three whole names.
Oh, right. This thread exists. I should use it to see if anyone knows what game I’m having trouble remembering:
It’s an NES game. It’s probably a platformer, might’ve been released in the 80s, and it’s probably based on a Japanese band. The only detail I can remember is one scene where the main character is putting on a concert in a graveyard. The main character has this white-yellow color scheme, like he’s Beetlejuice or a skeleton or something.
shoot this is absolutely ringing a bell for me, and i wanna say it was released later in the system’s life? i am very much remembering something based on that exact description from rndstranger’s famidaily youtube series and i don’t really want to do work right now so i’m going to dig into this mystery
