Today, I just learned Satoru Iwata helped Game Freak in Pokemon Gen 2 by making the decompression processing speed faster, not for saving space

[Dolce]

As a child i didn't noticed that, for Gameboy games Gen 2 felt huge. The night/day cycle, gsm, radio and daily events made it feel like a living world. Like i wrote, the remakes even expanded on Jotho making it even bigger.
'
Besides, i'm pretty sure that a console that can handle X3 and Witcher could handle a game with 2 regions.

Yakuza has multiple cities that are full of life and those were made on hardware less powerful than Switch (PS3). It's purely a time and money problem.

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it's not about storage space nowadays, it's about each region getting the artistic care they deserve. and as much as i love XBC3, like maybe my favorite game ever, i would not call the zone art direction its strong point, on top of a small amount of monsters.

Yakuza is a bit different in that they don't add new regions often and when they do, they're used as is. The games don't really change in environment very often at all. But it's also easier to share assets in something realistic like that. They're just built a lot different.

like, sure, GF could plop Galar or whatever into the next game as is. but I'm guessing the next games will have their own look and feel. but i think starting with Sun and Moon, maybe even ORAS, they've gotten better and better about taking the culture of each area and putting it into fictional worlds. i was really happy seeing that ORAS had more references to the ryukyu islands, and that the elite four was set in a proper okinawan castle!

i just think the focus of working on one culture and going all in on that each gen is better, and it seems GF mostly agrees given what they went through with GS.

I mean Johto is a smaller region, but I do think the remakes addressed that with HGSS. I absolutely don't understand it when people toss complaints of size and identity at them though.
Especially where it includes new locales embedded within the map alongside completely new/expanded areas like the Safari Zone and Route 48. I just think a lot of the dungeons and areas within the game are completely optional or have ways to run through them, so people tend to view the region as far smaller than what it actually is.

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HGSS is better than GS, yes. they even fixed a bunch of Kanto GS and its stubby routes.

 

[L Thammy]

The worst person for contributing to the lionization of Iwata is probably Hiroshi Yamauchi. Imagine demanding that some second-rate programmer become CEO of HAL as part of your terms for bailing out the company. What a joke.

 

[Dolce]

The worst person for contributing to the lionization of Iwata is probably Hiroshi Yamauchi. Imagine demanding that some second-rate programmer become CEO of HAL as part of your terms for bailing out the company. What a joke.

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speaking of that, Iwata and his role in executive roles had more of an impact on the industry than his programming, i think. Iwata was a great CEO. reminds me of all the "fire Iwata" comments we got before his death.

also, being pushed to CEO usually has nothing to do with your other skills in other areas. i doubt the current head of Nintendo is very good at programming and such.

 

[L Thammy]

speaking of that, Iwata and his role in executive roles had more of an impact on the industry than his programming, i think. Iwata was a great CEO. reminds me of all the "fire Iwata" comments we got before his death.

also, being pushed to CEO usually has nothing to do with your other skills in other areas. i doubt the current head of Nintendo is very good at programming and such.

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Early HAL didn't really have anyone but programmers - leading to stuff like contracting Yoshimiru for art, who was a manga creator for a hobby magazine and an anime animator - so Iwata's programming is innately involved on that level. Additionally, even after becoming CEO of HAL and up to around the point where he joined Nintendo, he was still called in to assist as a programmer on various projects.

 

[Dolce]

Early HAL didn't really have anyone but programmers - leading to stuff like contracting Yoshimiru for art, who was a manga creator for a hobby magazine and an anime animator - so Iwata's programming is innately involved on that level. Additionally, even after becoming CEO, he was still called in to assist as a programmer on various projects.

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yeah but if he didn't have talents in other areas, would he have been promoted? like, if Iwata was a quiet introvert instead of his more charismatic outgoing personality, i don't think he would have got promoted to that.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii on Iwata's passing

Following the passing of Satoru Iwata, many game developers shared various messages about the Nintendo president. Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii was among those who had a few words to share last week. A translation of his comments are below. .@YujiHorii Nintendo President Iwata has passed away...

nintendoeverything.com

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Oh wow, I didn't know that! Thank you!

 

[L Thammy]

yeah but if he didn't have talents in other areas, would he have been promoted? like, if Iwata was a quiet introvert instead of his more charismatic outgoing personality, i don't think he would have got promoted to that.

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You could pretty easily make an argument that his poor sense outside of programming were directly responsible for the HAL's bankruptcy. He greenlit the project that went into development hell and bled HAL's funds without waiting for the proposal to be finished or investigating the practical demands for realizing the project. That's what led to him becoming CEO. I don't really want to make that argument, but I think downplaying his legacy as a programmer in order to prop up his legacy as a businessman is a similar manipulation.

Ultimately, the reputation Iwata developed as a guy sent in to save projects is simply because that's often how he was treated; when a project was struggling, he often sent in to support it, and often times his contribution was a major contributor to the final form of the project.

 

[Deleted member 106050]

tbf these games are buggier than SV :P

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I feel they are different types of buggy games. GSC (and, why not, RBY) hide their bugs pretty well. Take the capture mechanics. In Gen 1, Ultra Balls were useless: double the cost of a Great Ball for barely a couple percentage points more capture rate. In Gen 2, Paralysis, Poison and Burn don't affect capture rate at all (Sleep and Freeze double it), and most of the new special balls don't work as intended or at all.

And let's not get started with all the shit you can do with Gen 1 if you know where to poke: Glitch City, MissingNo, RNG manipulation...

But, in a regular playthrough, 99.99% of players will never notice those bugs. I bet the vast majority of people who read this post didn't know about Paralysis not doing anything in Gen 2, for example. Most people would just paralyze a wild pokémon and throw balls at it until it was caught. MissingNo in Gen 1? You have to go out of your way, and know exactly what you're doing, to encounter that glitch. Getting a "bad egg" in Gen 2? Virtually impossible if you don't know how to force it beforehand. They were games held together by string and hope... but you couldn't tell it at first sight.

SV have their bugs and glitch in the open. Simply by playing the game you exponentially increase your chances of it bugging out.

I mean Johto is a smaller region, but I do think the remakes addressed that with HGSS. I absolutely don't understand it when people toss complaints of size and identity at them though.
Especially where it includes new locales embedded within the map alongside completely new/expanded areas like the Safari Zone and Route 48. I just think a lot of the dungeons and areas within the game are completely optional or have ways to run through them, so people tend to view the region as far smaller than what it actually is.

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Not to mention that Johto made it actually interesting to revisit places you would just go through once and be done with if they were in Gen 1. In RBY, you go through the Rock Tunnel and you never go back. Unless you missed and item or a trainer, or want to capture a pokémon, you have no reason to revisit the place.

In GSC, several places open up more paths to explore once you progress in the story. In Union Cave, the first "dungeon" you have to cross, you can find Lapras on Fridays once you have Surf. Mt. Mortar has areas where you can use Waterfall. The Slowpoke Well has extra items after you get Strength. And so on. It feels more "metroidvania-ish" than RBY, for sure.

 

[Dolce]

You could pretty easily make an argument that his poor sense outside of programming were directly responsible for the HAL's bankruptcy. He greenlit the project that went into development hell and bled HAL's funds without waiting for the proposal to be finished or investigating the practical demands for realizing the project. That's what led to him becoming CEO. I don't really want to make that argument, but I think downplaying his legacy as a programmer in order to prop up his legacy as a businessman is a similar manipulation.

Ultimately, the reputation Iwata developed as a guy sent in to save projects is simply because that's often how he was treated; when a project was struggling, he often sent in to support it, and often times his contribution was a major contributor to the final form of the project.

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I don't think he wasn't a great programmer. but what is done is to imply he was the best programmer and also, used to insult developers by implying they were terrible until Iwata came along. that's not a what-if, it's repeated everywhere by Game Freak haters.

words are important because of their implications. there were lots of other great programmers, amazing programmers from that era who will never get the attention they deserve. any era. when i reflect on it, similar was done with Carmack. sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time and you get to be entered into the history books while others weren't.

i think part of it is the great man theory, which is terrible and criticized for good reason.

 

[L Thammy]

I don't think he wasn't a great programmer. but what is done is to imply he was the best programmer and also, used to insult developers by implying they were terrible until Iwata came along. that's not a what-if, it's repeated everywhere by Game Freak haters.

words are important because of their implications. there were lots of other great programmers, amazing programmers from that era who will never get the attention they deserve. any era. when i reflect on it, similar was done with Carmack. sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time and you get to be entered into the history books while others weren't.

i think part of it is the great man theory, which is terrible and criticized for good reason.

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The key is here that Iwata was repeatedly and deliberately being placed in failing projects as part of the effort to save them. Whether or not he's the one who does it, the inevitable result when that's how he's being utilized is that either he has a lot of failures he was tasked with saving and could not do so, or he has a lot of successes which were failures before he came in.

 

[Rhete]

The Gen 2 Pokemon games were frankly a miracle, considering the hardware they shipped on.

So much content and so many features, all running on the GBC.

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Even crazier, Gold and Silver will actually run on the original black and white gameboy.

 

[Dolce]

The key is here that Iwata was repeatedly and deliberately being placed in failing projects as part of the effort to save them. Whether or not he's the one who does it, the inevitable result when that's how he's being utilized is that either he has a lot of failures he was tasked with saving and could not do so, or he has a lot of successes which were failures before he came in.

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the problem is we are unaware of other people who did such things, but surely existed. they just weren't figureheads, and not brought attention to. i don't think he was brought on in GS to save the project, he just happened to have a decompression program already set up and they were rebooting the project. development still went on for years without him.

everything in life is built by groups of people who we'll never know their impact. many of them are diminished. the idea of "special people" is just something that bothers me and tends to diminish everyone else. we're seeing that now with Elon Musk, who is terrible (and Iwata was not) but still had that image. people think they he singled handedly invented Tesla, Space-X and that he deserves his status because of what he did.

everyone is human and the greatest compliment is to reflect on them as such. we have a habit of "not speaking ill of the dead", but i don't think that ever does anything good.

we have a lot of cognitive biases. we create patterns. we take events and try to extract meaning from them.

 

[xir]

Another random Iwata fact: He did the upgrades on Dragon Quest when it came over to the west.

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Wait the first game? Like the people moving in towns and stuff?

 

[erraticstatic]

Not to mention that Johto made it actually interesting to revisit places you would just go through once and be done with if they were in Gen 1. In RBY, you go through the Rock Tunnel and you never go back. Unless you missed and item or a trainer, or want to capture a pokémon, you have no reason to revisit the place.

In GSC, several places open up more paths to explore once you progress in the story. In Union Cave, the first "dungeon" you have to cross, you can find Lapras on Fridays once you have Surf. Mt. Mortar has areas where you can use Waterfall. The Slowpoke Well has extra items after you get Strength. And so on. It feels more "metroidvania-ish" than RBY, for sure.

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Yeah, I think that's the thing people misunderstand or don't catch about GSC and HGSS. They were supposed to be freeform games that incentivized you coming back throughout the week and re-exploring for different events, items, battles, and for Pokemon to catch.
One of the most common criticisms of those games regards grinding, however it had an answer to the sudden level jump in the post-game through trainer rematches. Grinding in those games aren't all that difficult if you're playing at its intended pace or at least answering your phone lol. Especially since trainers increased in level after each rematch.

I do think it would have helped most players if they carried the Vs. Seeker from FRLG into the remakes or had higher level trainers/Pokemon spread through the original games. However, those entries were built in mind with the player spending as much time in that world as possible. Plus, for those looking for a challenge could run through the game without grinding and be met with genuinely difficult matches throughout the post-game.

I do wish recent Pokemon games integrated weekly and daily events like those games did, especially since they seem intent on keeping players hooked for different raids and online competitions. It'd be nice to go back to seeing a rare Pokemon show up on certain days or having mini-games hosted twice a week.

 

[Dolce]

I do wish recent Pokemon games integrated weekly and daily events like those games did, especially since they seem intent on keeping players hooked for different raids and online competitions. It'd be nice to go back to seeing a rare Pokemon show up on certain days or having mini-games hosted twice a week.

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they still do quite often. SM had a ton of stuff. Pokemon that only appear on certain days, the battle buffet, the one where you need to throw pyukumuku into the water, massages, once daily battles, free berries on every day of the week, festival plaza, meals, biscuits, once a day berries.

 

[DanSensei]

Wait the first game? Like the people moving in towns and stuff?

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Yeah. The original didn't have saving and sprites only ever faced south, event you spoke to anyone, you had to choose from a menu where they were in relation to your character, along with a few other graphical upgrades.

 

[Dyle]

pokemon has always had bugs

look at these fuckers

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Those are all insects, but none of them are bugs. First big Pokemon was Nincada in gen 3