Japanese Niche Games Deals & Discussion Thread 4.0

shivan128

shivan128

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Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread!  Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here.  Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc.  Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.

I've wikified the thread to make it more friendly and open to others that can actively update with important information. You can find the wiki post directly below this one.

NOTE:  Please, leave the censorship discussion away from this thread.  It's common for japanese games to have questionable content outside of the country.  We want to keep discussions to the game itself and not about cultural/societal tolerance.

A message from Thorbahn:

Our CAG Japanese Niche Games Thread also has a community on PS4, where you can interact and game with other members of the thread.

Our moderators are: Draekon, Las_Hole, and Waffleswanton

You can basically friend any of our members, or any moderator, and you will be able to request to join the community under "Communities friends are in" tab, and a mod will approve your request.

You can also leave your PSN ID in the thread, saying you want to join, and we can invite you directly as well.

As always, have fun and enjoy your stay!

 
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Supposedly the Switch version is 30 FPS vs 60 FPS for the PS4 version. Guessing the XBone version is also 60 FPS. It doesn't matter as much for these old games but it looks smoother going around in environments although battles are turn based so doesn't really matter there.
 
I’m just going to wait for reviews and player feedback and decide later. I’m already looking to go digital with switch 2 to end the fomo physical chase and force myself to not buy games unless I’m ready to play them or there’s a good digital sale. This would probably be a good one for a future $20 to $25 sale. Like the Grandia collection GungHo released for $40 is on sale for $19.99 digital on the eshop. No need for me to chase it. It’s under 9 gigs just like this Lunar collection. I don’t mind as much having a digital backlog.
 
Lunar Switch is currently the #1 best seller in video games category:) Even beating all the gift cards that are usually #1. Interesting how the listing states the price is currently at a 30% discount from regular price of $80.
 
I played the demo for the PSP version of Lunar back when that first came out, and it just felt so generic. I mean, sure, it would have seemed a lot less so to American kids in the early 90s, but by the standards of 2009 or whenever, let alone today’s, I just couldn’t really see the appeal. But more power to you if you’re nostalgic for it, I guess.

I have to wonder, though, are the Japanese even that into Lunar?
 
If you told me what was generally considered a niche weird weeb game at the time, that likely didn‘t have enough audience to be worth porting to the states when it was “cutting edge”, would be the #1 best seller in video games category of the number #1 online retailer 30 years later, I would not have believed you.

The next actual games in the top sellers list are Indiana Jones Great Circle PS5 at #13 and Dog Man: Mission Impawsible NSW at #15. Know it’s going to drop quick soon, but nice seeing Lunar at #1 for a little bit.
 
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I'm glad I had a bit of insomnia and was able to get an order in for the PS4 version of Lunar before it sold out. The Lunar games are special to me since the first one was the game that finally got me to get a PS1 way back in the day, so I would have been really bummed if I missed out. Hopefully Gung Ho gets more stock for those who still want it.
 
Souffrir said:
I played the demo for the PSP version of Lunar back when that first came out, and it just felt so generic. I mean, sure, it would have seemed a lot less so to American kids in the early 90s, but by the standards of 2009 or whenever, let alone today’s, I just couldn’t really see the appeal. But more power to you if you’re nostalgic for it, I guess.

I have to wonder, though, are the Japanese even that into Lunar?
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There's definitely a lot of nostalgia tied to the Lunars. The games are originally SegaCD games so they're very old and wouldn't be as enjoyable to someone who first played it in an era where we were getting more mature/complex/more popular JRPGS.

I first played them on the PS1 and that was during Square's golden ages still, and even then, as a teenager, I knew the Lunars were more "basic" games but they were still fun, well made and had a lot of charm.
 
Lunar was back from when we didn't have very many good jrpgs. People are also suckers for those few seconds of in-game .FMV that gets used in the marketing and box art. I believe that for a lot of people it was that one game they really wanted to own, but never did.

No one had Saturns or SegaCD. If you did, you were older. Or else were a really spoiled child. There was the occasional Sega megafan but those were very tertiary systems. Not that many families even had a Genesis, if they owned a current console. What you guess, maybe 1 in 3-4? That was the mainstream one. Sega CD even had a really bad rap because it often wouldn't work (read discs). I remember trying them at Funcolands. Really poor reliability and bad word of mouth.
 
The PS1 working designs releases are probably what most have nostalgia for, but yeah, series goes back farther than that, over 30 years. Also agree, the Sega CD, Neo Geo, expensive systems like that seemed like mystical unicorns at the time.
 
elessar123 said:
I knew someone with a Saturn (he's now a game dev, no real surprise). Sega CD though, nope.
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I remember one of my cousins had a SegaCD, he literally got it while we were visiting them for some family reunion thing for a few days. Their family was pretty damn rich (prob like top 10% rich in the 90s), which was a huge disparity our family who lived in 2 bedroom apartment. My brother and I only had a NES and a friend of ours had a Genesis- we were super excited to see him play it and on their massive TV (it was a 40" or 50" rear projection TV but at the time, it was insanely big to us). We weren't allowed to play it of course, because he was a douche (as was his mom who didn't want us touching their stuff). He fired up Sonic CD. My brother and I were pretty impressed seeing a game running from a "CD" (again, another thing we barely had any experience with as we just had a cassette player).

But then he fired up TimeGal and only shit, it was amazing to see. Of course, since we didn't get to play, we didn't realize it was just FMVs playing... LOL

For that reason TimeGal was one those games I wanted for a long time and ultimately did get like 7 or 8 years ago and wow, does that game suck.
 
The Genesis was my first console. I got it Christmas 95, along with Batman Returns, if I remember correctly. Well, whichever Batman game it was, I couldn't figure out the first level as an 8 year old, so we returned it to KB Toys and they were clearancing the model 2 Sega CDs for $50. I had never heard of the Sega CD, but I saw it attached to my Genesis, so I bought it with the money from Batman. It came with Sewer Shark. God I hate Sewer Shark.
 
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If it comes back for PS4 the Lunar collection please post about it. I'm okay with missing it the first time, but I don't want to miss the restock whenever it comes. Disappointed, but I needed to be up way too early for that. I do have loads of other stuff to play and I think a Saga game might be in my future!
 
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