[Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

I'm ready go tonight. There's a party, alright. We don't need the raisin for joy, oh yeah. Tick down to midnight.
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Flarecake
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[Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Flarecake » Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:40 am

Fun fact: A guy in one of my online classes this semester has a last name of Futch. No joke. I've never seen it as an actual name before.

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DHerder222
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri May 04, 2018 9:00 pm

Hey long time peeps,

I want to try and indoctrinate notabohr into our cult of Suikolove. Problem is, he likes JRPGs but sometimes struggles playing retro games. Any suggestions on how I should introduce him to the franchise?

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Fri May 04, 2018 9:31 pm

DHerder222 wrote:Hey long time peeps,

I want to try and indoctrinate notabohr into our cult of Suikolove. Problem is, he likes JRPGs but sometimes struggles playing retro games. Any suggestions on how I should introduce him to the franchise?
All five core games have some degree of retro jank so I'd say you may as well just start at the beginning, mainly just 'cause Suiko 1 is pretty short and breezy / arguably tighter and better paced compared to the others, even if its age betrays it the most of the five in other ways. If it hooks, then 2 and 3 are probably locks. After that who knows.

A dead series like Suikoden is a bit tough to make recommendations for since there's no natural modern onboarding point for newcomers, unlike a Fire Emblem or whatever, which appears to have several at this point.

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DHerder222
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri May 04, 2018 9:43 pm

I was thinking the same thing. He's seen clips of Suikoden II, and at least I doesn't look too much more primitive than that.

Also, I've been debating reviving converting the characters into tabletop RPG format, if anyone still cares about that. :pacbean

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Fri May 04, 2018 9:53 pm

There's stuff about Suiko 1's UI which I kinda hate which 2 mostly fixed or at least streamlined, but otherwise yeah, it's a tad rougher visually than 2 but similar enough that it shouldn't stand out that much, beyond maybe some of those early-ass PS1 rendering effects which looked bad in all games back then.

Going chronologically could be a fun experiment as well. Even if Suikoden 4 doesn't exactly put its best foot forward for itself or the series, it's mechanically light and (relatively) technically solid for a mid-life PS2 JRPG and it's got Tactics as a follow-up, so it might kinda-sorta work okay as an introduction point.

If you go 4-Tactics-5-1, there's a fair amount of connective tissue there, too. It might actually be less jarring than moving in production order and finding yourself ending the series forever on a pair of prequels.

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DHerder222
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri May 04, 2018 10:41 pm

That's an interesting idea! I thought IV was okay, I didn't dislike it nearly as much as some people did. Maybe I'll give it a quick go-round to see if it holds up as a starting point. I remember wanting to see more of Keneth, Paula, Jewel and Tal early on. They were a decent Scooby Gang.

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True Perception
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Fri May 04, 2018 11:00 pm

I don't know. Fans and newcomers alike dread the sailing. It might put him off of the series too quickly.

Edit: At least, help him find Vicki quickly, if you start there.

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John Layfield
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by John Layfield » Sat May 05, 2018 1:19 am

1 or 4 are good starting points. I'd lean towards 1.

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Bier_Engel
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Bier_Engel » Sat May 05, 2018 7:00 am

I started with III and I found that to be a good starting point. Modern enough to not turn me off, but interesting enough that I still wanted to go back to the old ones.

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Estranged
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Estranged » Sun May 06, 2018 7:34 am

I started with II and it made me want to know about the stuff that was referenced from I. III wasn't out yet at the time.

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True Perception
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Sun May 06, 2018 10:28 am

I played I back when it came out. A buddy of mine had it. I later bought it and III when I got a PS2, put out a search for II, and pre-ordered IV the same day. So, kind of jumbled together after the first. I think III was the first one I dove into on my own time, though.

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Flarecake
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Flarecake » Sun May 06, 2018 4:42 pm

I started with I. I didn't even know there were sequels until I randomly found III at Target or Kmart or something when it originally came out.

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True Perception
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Sun May 06, 2018 5:14 pm

Same. I was at some now defunct game store at I saw it on the shelf, and asked the clerk about it, and he pointed out the preorder for IV on the wall. He said it wouldn't show up, but placed the order for II, and I just happened to get lucky enough that another store had it, and no one from either store stole it to sell online.

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Falcon Critical
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Re: [Suikoden] is dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Falcon Critical » Sun May 06, 2018 6:10 pm

I started on a recommendation from a friend, who leant me his copies of S1 and S2.

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:07 am

yo Layfield I recovered and restored one of yer classic Suikoden jams as the start of my main site curation pass.

http://caffeine-fueled.com/ten-years-on ... till-good/

whaddup 2012. lemme know if you wanna login to change stuff around but can't get in.

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John Layfield
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by John Layfield » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:26 am

w-w-whaaaat

how many of these can you bring back???

and yeah there's no chance in hell I remember my password.

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:32 am

It looks like all the text survived whatever went wrong last time just fine, though there's loose code stuff mixed in I gotta wrangle out of some pieces, from whenever it was we had footnotes plugins or something which no longer exist, I dunno. None of the images survived, so I'm sourcing replacements from scratch, based on whatever I can remember or suss-out from the dead attachment urls in the text bodies, or just 2018 judgement calls on 2012 hindsight.

But yeah, short answer is I can bring back everything. Some of it might just look a bit different.

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John Layfield
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by John Layfield » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:39 am

That's pretty rad. Way to go, dude. Excited to see which greatest hits come back.

The Wayback Machine, IIRC, has some of the more popular posts archived with images somehow. (i.e. mine)

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Thu Jul 12, 2018 3:46 am

I'm rather fond of this brave new era of bigass responsive full-width images in big feature articles everywhere, if crystal clear 1080p 16:9 screenshots of Suikoden 3 existed I would've used those as much as possible :pac

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John Layfield
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by John Layfield » Thu Jul 12, 2018 4:03 am

Sounds like you just joined the Suikoden Revival Movement, buddy.

You've an eye for aesthetics. Remind me to make you redesign my stream sometime.

And let me know when you post up an article with your Brave New World of images, so I can copy you when I spruce up my old stuff.

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Estranged
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Estranged » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:04 am

Oh, man... now I want to play S3 again...

Edit: ...and 1 and 2 and 4 and 5 and Tactics...

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cybersix
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by cybersix » Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:01 pm


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DHerder222
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by DHerder222 » Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:23 pm

The sigh @ Konami.

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True Perception
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by True Perception » Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:07 pm

Suikoden: Dead so long, it's entering Alcobaça territory...

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Delthazar
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Re: [Suikoden] is still dead, long live Suikoden

Post by Delthazar » Fri Aug 17, 2018 9:58 pm

DHerder222 wrote:
Fri Aug 17, 2018 7:23 pm
The sigh @ Konami.
Konami likely has little or nothing to do with this other than giving it their go-ahead. Concert events for games dead or alive are pretty common in Japan.

It's a neat thing and it's cool that it exists.