Oathborn was looking pretty interesting, but the dev hasn't posted any updates since 2019, so I'm guessing it's dead.
I think Dragon Force for the Saturn might be the closest thing.
It is disappointing that the N64 had so little RPG's.
- Thread starter Inglorious Man
- Start date
I think Dragon Force for the Saturn might be the closest thing.
I don't think that would've precluded them from making a deal with Nintendo, there are other suppliers too like Toshiba, Pioneer, Yamaha, Sharp, Philips, the issue really isn't likely that Nintendo, then the no.1 game console maker in the world would have trouble finding a CD-ROM supplier (as this would be a lucrative contract for any company landing it) the issue was they were stubborn and not willing to use the technology period.
Last edited:
CD ended up the winning format not so much due to its advantages (though cheaper price helped), but because Japanese devs were obsessed with multimedia. See the big bucks spent on PC Engine CD games despite it being a niche even in Japan. And then 90s cheese CGI and pre-rendered background were the next thing. Of course both essentially dead as concepts now (apart from the odd load time masking cinematic) because they were nasty compromises when you couldn't do actual 3D worlds.
Yep, this.I think it's easy to say that JRPGs instantly transitioned to FMV and CD filling audio etc but, equally, the PlayStation and Saturn were still knocking out JRPGs that looked essentially like this and there's no reason the N64 couldn't have squeezed something the scope of previous cartridge based JRPGs (like FF6 or DQV) onto a cartridge... We didn't need FF8 FMV cutscenes or CGI backgrounds with CD audio...
They weren't 'trending for the audience' they were just what Japanese devs were obsessed with and delivered, in all genres. Fighting games had huge CGI intros and ending cinematics.
They publicly fucked-over Philips, the primary-co-creator of the format, which you listed.
I mean did they even? They did supply software for the Philips CD-i as per their stated contract.
Either way, it's not like Philips "owned" the CD-ROM format, by the mid-1990s there were numerous companies manufacturing CD-drives, it wasn't some bespoke technology that Sony and Philips were gate keeping over.
Nintendo likely would've had zero problems finding a supplier as there dozens of vendors to choose from, the issue was never that. The issue was they didn't want CD-ROM period.
Nintendo and Square having their meltdown was what killed RPGs on N64 basically. Square was basically the strongest powerhouse in the genre and they going to the PS1 was like an avalanche since everyone else followed suit. wasn't Square willing to compromise their games to fit on N64 carts before things went south? i remember reading that somewhere.
it was like when people said consoles lived and died depending on wether EA released their games on them or not (this is one of the reasons people say the Dreamcast died)
it was like when people said consoles lived and died depending on wether EA released their games on them or not (this is one of the reasons people say the Dreamcast died)
There isn't much to imagine since N64 got Fuurai No Shiren 2 made by Chunsoft (developer behind DQ1,2,3,4,5) which is rather close to Dragon Quest in style and it had a soundtrack by Sugiyama to boot!
You are underestimating how much better was the Sony deal compared to Nintendo (and even Sega).
In early 1997 what an american publisher was asked to pay to the console manufacturer for a CD game on PS1/Saturn was around $7.
Nintendo was asking between $30 and $38 for a cart depending on the size and memory configuration (64Mbit-96Mbit, eprom or not) + some extra cents for other items (instruction manual, label, box etc.).
But it wasn't just the upfront price the problem, the risk connect to cart business was also higher compared to CD due to the much longer time to reorder (months vs two weeks offered by Sony which owned the CD pressing plants).
On top of that Sony instituted a royalty rebate program that consisted in them giving back a certain percentage of the royalties paid depending if a game surpassed certain sales thresholds (500K, 1M, 2M).
I will always repeat that the true revolution introduced in the 32/64 bit generation wasn't the CD, because the CD was just a 'mean to an end', no the true revolution was Sony being the first console manufacturer that succeeded utilizing a third-party driven model which put all the other pure game companies which produced consoles in a hard spot, in fact every first-party driven console maker was soon after driven out of the market with the big exception of Nintendo (which is just that a special exception).
Last edited:
This looks much better than what Heartbeat could do on the PS1. I wonder why the series changed hands after DQV, probably burnout. Heartbeat were probably cheaper to hire too.
I don't know the details however around early '90s Chunsoft began publishing some very successful games (Shiren games and the 'sound novel' games, term was actually trademarked by Chunsoft) so my guess is that Chunsoft was making much more money by publishing their games than just being a developer for hire for Enix published games.
Even when they were developing Mystery Dungeon games based on other publishers IPs (Enix, Square, Nintendo/Pokemon Co, Atlus, Namco) I'm pretty sure they were getting better deal out of it because they weren't just a developer for hire but the inventor (read: who popularized) of that specific game formula.
Last edited: