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Assorted Console Games on Emulator Handhelds
Altered Beast (Genesis, Played on RG35XX) - “Rise from your grave!” I had not realized how incredibly short this classic beat-em-up is! There are only five stages, which are relatively short and only seem super-repetitive because the evil wizard won’t call the boss unless you’re in beast form. When you beat the game, you get some credits and then go around for a second loop.
Wild ARMS (PS1, Replayed on RG35XX) – The first game in the series, which still had a lot of the “fantasy” and “anime” trappings that didn’t quite jive with the wild west theme that came to define the series later. (Though it really is impressive how much of the series lore was built for this 20-odd hour game and then built on or reused for the much longer sequels!) I took advantage of my ability to use PS1 cheat codes in GarlicOS to max money and XP and turn off random encounters, because apparently what I wanted from this play-through was the story and the dungeon puzzles. (And that cuts play time from 20 hours to around 12!) The thing is, this has too many dungeons and not enough puzzles—the remake had some good choices cutting out several of the less plot-critical dungeons and increasing the available puzzles in the remainder. Like Beyond the Beyond, this is very much a transitional game between SNES and later PS1 jrpgs, and it follows a stock jrpg model of shuffling you from place to place with one, maybe two available dungeons at any given time; and also a few opaque points that leave you reaching for a strategy guide. Unlike BtB, this game is much better balanced in terms of battle difficulty and character growth, and the random battle rate isn’t insane.
(For the record, I played this in 2010 and I played the remake, Alter Code F two years later and it took me twice as long to finish. Both games involved me starting a playthrough, abandoning it, and then trying again years later…and both involved using cheats. The rest of the series I actually played “honestly” and in order, though I didn’t actually write up much in the way of notes or reviews about them: Wild ARMS 2 in 2006, Wild ARMS 3 and then Wild ARMS 4 in 2007, Wild ARMS 5 in 2008. And I played Wild ARMS XF in 2015, but that was its own mess. I may replay 2 on one of my various handhelds; I think it was my favorite of the lot.)
Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, Partial Replay on Miyoo Mini+) - I last played the PSP retranslation (War of the Lions) in 2014, and the original probably a decade before that, so I’d forgotten how…not great…the translation was. The Miyoo Mini+ also has the ability to use PS1 cheats (via the “native menu”), so I loaded the party down with every item and gave Ramza a full Calculator build. I don’t love playing games for long on the Miyoo Mini+, though, because the shape makes my hands cramp up. And I wasn’t super in the mood for a full run of this (even with cheats, which would get me through it in half the time) so I stopped late in Chapter 2.
The Granstream Saga (PS1, Partial Replay on RG350) - Wow, the translation is terrible! I knew that, but you forget quite the degree of these things. The bones of it being a Quintet game (they had a big overlap with Shade, who developed this) are there, but they didn't do that great a job with the shift to 3D. At least outside of battle, it feels like Soul Blazer, but it has a lot more plot (and space between battle sequences) and less of a secure gameplay loop; and I don’t love the one-on-one duels as the combat system. And I remember that the last chapter goes completely off the rails. I last played this in 2010, and there’s a reason I’ve been back to the entire Quintet catalogue but not this, since.
Pirates of Dark Water (SNES, Played on RG350) - I discovered a hacked version of this in a nested folder and tried it out, and it took me a full stage before realizing that the hack was infinite lives. Which in a coin-muncher beat-em-up is very sensible. I don’t actually remember the cartoon series at all so I have no idea how true this is to it, but it’s a perfectly cromulent side-scrolling beat-em-up with a few cute quirks. I’ve never seen environmental traps that the enemies were so very willing to ram themselves into over and over. (Their pathfinding is iffy, which is very exploitable.) Overall, though, this is way too long—eight fairly long stages—given how few distinct enemies there are and the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Oh, and the fact that some of the bosses have a hard-to-avoid attack that cuts off half your life meter (the final boss can knock off three-quarters if you walk near him at the wrong time) is just unfair.
Secret of Mana, Turbo (SNES, Played on Retroid Pocket 3) – The main thing this hack changes (and the patcher is an entire program of its own that lets you fully customize all the changes!) is that it combines the Variable-Width Font hack and the Reborn retranslation with eliminating the counter between attacks, so you can spam hits against enemies. That makes combat go much faster and changes the tenor of boss fights significantly. It also adds a few cutscenes and a fair amount of dialogue (per Reborn) and an entire new area near Tasnica was added. (There’s no plot there, but it’s still pretty neat.) They put in a day/night cycle that’s a little rough but mixes up the enemy distributions. The battle system feels very different; a few spells are rearranged, status effects are more common but equipment items are more distinct in preventing them, bosses can stun-lock you with spells (but you can’t spam magic any more!), knockback rules are changed (the whip pulls enemies toward you!), and everything is generally just faster. Oh, and you can choose to have it place enough weapon orbs so that everything gets to level 9 before the Mana Fortress. If you’re a longtime fan of SoM, this changes it up enough to make it feel fresh, and I recommend it. If you haven’t played the game before, maybe play the original (or just a retranslation) first.
Arcus Odyssey (Genesis, Played on RG35XX) – An isometric adventure/beat-em-up that only has eight stages, but most of them have some sort of gimmick, like needing to collect key items or destroy certain enemies or obstacles to proceed. The overall playstyle and four character options make it feel similar to a Gauntlet game. I was amused by the translation, with lines like “Would you like to have a Ring of Fire Magic?” Like, am I going to say no? Of course I would! (I suspect it’s there because you have a limited inventory, and some items can’t just be used up to clear space.) The story is the usual badly-translated battle against an evil sorceress from the Dark World and her minions, though there’s a certain charm to the enemies taunting you and telling you how much you must hate them.
7th Saga – Easier 7th Saga with Magic Fix and Extended Item Names Hack (SNES, Played on Retroid Pocket 3) - I had played a bit of this on my RG35XX; it’s a combination of the Easier 7th Saga magic fix hack and the Extended Item Names hack that re-translates the names of all the items and equipment and expands them to 14 characters so they can use real words. As I noted then, these really improve the playability and readability of the game. Now what I really want is for someone to fully retranslate the original Japanese Elnard and expand and improve the dialogue. I’ve always found the aesthetic and the mythology of this world fascinating, despite or perhaps because of its sparsity in the US release. But even though this hack increases and rebalances stats to try to alleviate the crushing need to grind, it’s still clear this game intends for you to die and try again a LOT. The in-game map doesn’t show towns, so exploring the continents is expected to be nerve-wracking. Enemies have a lot of “dick move” attacks, including instant-death and sapping your MP. Without a guide, there’s a lot of guessing and piecing together where to find things. And if you lose to another apprentice and they take all of your Runes? Reset the game; you’ll never recover from that. (I also discovered that because of some quirk of the hack or the emulator, the Fireball spell freezes the game, which meant if I wasn’t already using cheat codes, I would have needed them to get past Gariso regardless—he seems guaranteed to cast it within six rounds.) I don’t think I’d ever make the argument that this is a good game, but it’s always been a fascinating game to me.
Wild ARMS (PS1, Replayed on RG35XX) – The first game in the series, which still had a lot of the “fantasy” and “anime” trappings that didn’t quite jive with the wild west theme that came to define the series later. (Though it really is impressive how much of the series lore was built for this 20-odd hour game and then built on or reused for the much longer sequels!) I took advantage of my ability to use PS1 cheat codes in GarlicOS to max money and XP and turn off random encounters, because apparently what I wanted from this play-through was the story and the dungeon puzzles. (And that cuts play time from 20 hours to around 12!) The thing is, this has too many dungeons and not enough puzzles—the remake had some good choices cutting out several of the less plot-critical dungeons and increasing the available puzzles in the remainder. Like Beyond the Beyond, this is very much a transitional game between SNES and later PS1 jrpgs, and it follows a stock jrpg model of shuffling you from place to place with one, maybe two available dungeons at any given time; and also a few opaque points that leave you reaching for a strategy guide. Unlike BtB, this game is much better balanced in terms of battle difficulty and character growth, and the random battle rate isn’t insane.
(For the record, I played this in 2010 and I played the remake, Alter Code F two years later and it took me twice as long to finish. Both games involved me starting a playthrough, abandoning it, and then trying again years later…and both involved using cheats. The rest of the series I actually played “honestly” and in order, though I didn’t actually write up much in the way of notes or reviews about them: Wild ARMS 2 in 2006, Wild ARMS 3 and then Wild ARMS 4 in 2007, Wild ARMS 5 in 2008. And I played Wild ARMS XF in 2015, but that was its own mess. I may replay 2 on one of my various handhelds; I think it was my favorite of the lot.)
Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, Partial Replay on Miyoo Mini+) - I last played the PSP retranslation (War of the Lions) in 2014, and the original probably a decade before that, so I’d forgotten how…not great…the translation was. The Miyoo Mini+ also has the ability to use PS1 cheats (via the “native menu”), so I loaded the party down with every item and gave Ramza a full Calculator build. I don’t love playing games for long on the Miyoo Mini+, though, because the shape makes my hands cramp up. And I wasn’t super in the mood for a full run of this (even with cheats, which would get me through it in half the time) so I stopped late in Chapter 2.
The Granstream Saga (PS1, Partial Replay on RG350) - Wow, the translation is terrible! I knew that, but you forget quite the degree of these things. The bones of it being a Quintet game (they had a big overlap with Shade, who developed this) are there, but they didn't do that great a job with the shift to 3D. At least outside of battle, it feels like Soul Blazer, but it has a lot more plot (and space between battle sequences) and less of a secure gameplay loop; and I don’t love the one-on-one duels as the combat system. And I remember that the last chapter goes completely off the rails. I last played this in 2010, and there’s a reason I’ve been back to the entire Quintet catalogue but not this, since.
Pirates of Dark Water (SNES, Played on RG350) - I discovered a hacked version of this in a nested folder and tried it out, and it took me a full stage before realizing that the hack was infinite lives. Which in a coin-muncher beat-em-up is very sensible. I don’t actually remember the cartoon series at all so I have no idea how true this is to it, but it’s a perfectly cromulent side-scrolling beat-em-up with a few cute quirks. I’ve never seen environmental traps that the enemies were so very willing to ram themselves into over and over. (Their pathfinding is iffy, which is very exploitable.) Overall, though, this is way too long—eight fairly long stages—given how few distinct enemies there are and the repetitive nature of the gameplay. Oh, and the fact that some of the bosses have a hard-to-avoid attack that cuts off half your life meter (the final boss can knock off three-quarters if you walk near him at the wrong time) is just unfair.
Secret of Mana, Turbo (SNES, Played on Retroid Pocket 3) – The main thing this hack changes (and the patcher is an entire program of its own that lets you fully customize all the changes!) is that it combines the Variable-Width Font hack and the Reborn retranslation with eliminating the counter between attacks, so you can spam hits against enemies. That makes combat go much faster and changes the tenor of boss fights significantly. It also adds a few cutscenes and a fair amount of dialogue (per Reborn) and an entire new area near Tasnica was added. (There’s no plot there, but it’s still pretty neat.) They put in a day/night cycle that’s a little rough but mixes up the enemy distributions. The battle system feels very different; a few spells are rearranged, status effects are more common but equipment items are more distinct in preventing them, bosses can stun-lock you with spells (but you can’t spam magic any more!), knockback rules are changed (the whip pulls enemies toward you!), and everything is generally just faster. Oh, and you can choose to have it place enough weapon orbs so that everything gets to level 9 before the Mana Fortress. If you’re a longtime fan of SoM, this changes it up enough to make it feel fresh, and I recommend it. If you haven’t played the game before, maybe play the original (or just a retranslation) first.
Arcus Odyssey (Genesis, Played on RG35XX) – An isometric adventure/beat-em-up that only has eight stages, but most of them have some sort of gimmick, like needing to collect key items or destroy certain enemies or obstacles to proceed. The overall playstyle and four character options make it feel similar to a Gauntlet game. I was amused by the translation, with lines like “Would you like to have a Ring of Fire Magic?” Like, am I going to say no? Of course I would! (I suspect it’s there because you have a limited inventory, and some items can’t just be used up to clear space.) The story is the usual badly-translated battle against an evil sorceress from the Dark World and her minions, though there’s a certain charm to the enemies taunting you and telling you how much you must hate them.
7th Saga – Easier 7th Saga with Magic Fix and Extended Item Names Hack (SNES, Played on Retroid Pocket 3) - I had played a bit of this on my RG35XX; it’s a combination of the Easier 7th Saga magic fix hack and the Extended Item Names hack that re-translates the names of all the items and equipment and expands them to 14 characters so they can use real words. As I noted then, these really improve the playability and readability of the game. Now what I really want is for someone to fully retranslate the original Japanese Elnard and expand and improve the dialogue. I’ve always found the aesthetic and the mythology of this world fascinating, despite or perhaps because of its sparsity in the US release. But even though this hack increases and rebalances stats to try to alleviate the crushing need to grind, it’s still clear this game intends for you to die and try again a LOT. The in-game map doesn’t show towns, so exploring the continents is expected to be nerve-wracking. Enemies have a lot of “dick move” attacks, including instant-death and sapping your MP. Without a guide, there’s a lot of guessing and piecing together where to find things. And if you lose to another apprentice and they take all of your Runes? Reset the game; you’ll never recover from that. (I also discovered that because of some quirk of the hack or the emulator, the Fireball spell freezes the game, which meant if I wasn’t already using cheat codes, I would have needed them to get past Gariso regardless—he seems guaranteed to cast it within six rounds.) I don’t think I’d ever make the argument that this is a good game, but it’s always been a fascinating game to me.