What current gen systems do you own?

The Wii is the only current gen system I have.

I have my 360 and plan on getting a ps3 soon. My friend ben, who was on this board as believethehype but for some reason always forgets to post, had his red ring of death happen today on the 360. I told him he could still sell it on ebay broken and get some money.

I only have the 360. About a week or so ago, I could have bought a PS3, but with the lack of games out yet, I just couldn't see spending that kind of money on it. I would have bought a wii instead if I could have found it at the normal retail price, but now, I've spent the money on non-game related stuff.. heh.

I still have the Wii. You all already know why I enjoy it. I don't feel like repeating myself.

The next system I am probably going to get is a 360 but I'm worried about the RROD.

Maybe people just try to be funny and mess around or try to modify it and get the RROD- Gates' middle finger. :)

I got really bored of the wii, hopefully that might change with that brawler fighting game thing,,,ahh I forgot the name but it was all the characters from nintendo fighting...anyways, the 360 is the way to go for me. I have nothing against sony except that they crushed all the great systems. I really dont like this generation of gaming honestly.
Long gone are the days of having multiple systems come out with amazing games, collectors having fun collecting, etc...it seems all gone

Yeah, working designs needs to come back in to business and start porting over Japanese games from PC and various systems to the 360.

360 is failing in Japan. I wouldn't expect much love from those people for 360. If any porting happens, we'll probably just see jrpgs on ps3 instead since Japan has some kind of obsession with sony systems.

But I think it will only take ONE GAME to turn the gaming landscape on its side- ONE GAME. (I think Final Fantasy 7 was the one game that put Playstation 1 on top for good.) If the one game sells well on a non-sony system, then it may become more profitable for big name companies to support it.

But you're right on the money when you mentioned Nintendo. They have no one to blame but themselves.

Working designs...wow I loved that company, I had sooooo many of their rpgs they brought over. I miss them. Atlus tries but its not the same.

Workings designs was the best, right up there with camelot. I had most of their games as well. They always chose the best games to translate and bring over.

Camelot kicks major a$$! The golden sun series doesn't get the credit it deserves. They took full advantage of GBA and will go great with DS (if they decide to). Get over the loss of WD, people. Camelot makes up for all of it. Golden Sun DS would boost DS sales and send PSP back to hell where they belong.

Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, Breath of Fire, LOZ: Phantom Hourglass- who needs Atlus? :D

Oh and by the way, those rpgs are originally Japanese too. We didn't see FE for over a decade- and I want to see Romancing Saga brought here as well. Companies are still playing keep away with us.

Working Designs is hundreds of times better than Camelot. I wish WD would come back. I loved there RPG's and have the majority of them. :(

I agree... I certainly didn't like each and every game WD ported over, but a lot of them, I loved, especially in the 16-bit era.

As far as golden sun and bof... I kind of liked BOF in the snes days, but their newer pc and playstation games just didn't do it for me.... and golden sun, i played it on the gba, and I couldn't get in to that at all... If i'm not mistaken, it was too much talking and not enough action... Reminds me a lot of magic knight rayearth in that sense.... LOL

You all gotta be kidding me!

You buy too easily into the cinematics and animated scenes that WD relied too heavily on to try to hide the gameplay itself. WD was not the second coming people. Not even the ps1 Lunars can hold a candle to Nintendo's selections (and they don't even NEED Square Enix that badly).

Now in Lunar I enjoyed the cinematics and gameplay was decent (no invisible enemies :) ) , the stories are cool, and the characters are quirky. But their games are still solid at best. If I beat these games I'm not sure I would ever want to play them again. The replay value for WD games is pretty low unless you have little else to do with your time. The entertainment factor is definitely there, but it's more of a one time thing to me.

Games that I'll be playing over and over are what I value the most. A game like this would be Castlevania. (I'll never tire of whipping monsters.)

Of course, Castlevania use to be a great series, and some people claim they are still good on handhelds, but in general, all of their console games made since the n64 are trash. The same can probably be said for the might and magic series. I really enjoyed the first two or three might and magic games, even played some of the ones in the 3dfx era, as well as the new 360 one... I'm not going to go as far as saying they're all trash, but they're nothing like the originals. Now, they're heading to this fps rpg crap.

Maybe cinematics are what some people want, but when I'd prefer to play ultima exodus rather than ultima 7 or 10 or whatever they have out now, I don't think it's about graphics.

However, in the 16-bit era, where we were being introduced to CD games, cinematics would have been one of their strong selling points. A lot of the animated FMV looked great, better than anything we'd ever seen, with out going to like a laserdisc or Capacitance Electronic Disc arcade system.

Digital or cd sound would have been their 2nd selling point, while data capacity would have been the third, but cd sound and fmv also have something to do with data capacity too right?

With that said, I hate long cutscenes or talk scenes. This is why I didn't like shining force that much, golden sun, or magic knight rayearth. Lunar I and II, Popful Mail, etc were more bearable.

IMO, nothing will ever come close to Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. It's a really long game that is a bit of a challenge, unlike Lunar Silver Star Story, which is short and too easy, but I like many different games for different reasons and wouldn't really want to call any one a favorite. Dark Wizard and Lunar II are definitely in the top 2 though :/

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Some other WD games that I really liked are cosmic fantasy 2, vasteel dragon force, shining wisdom, and vay. Vay really didn't have the best graphics and had sort of a plain interface, yet it was really challenging. It's probably a game that if you liked only graphics and cutscenes, or easy games, you'd probably hate it.

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Some of the games I didn't like of Working Designs.

I'm probably going to get a lot of crap for this one, but Albert Odyssey... The game itself is great, but the battles are way too frequent. You can't move 2" with out having to fight a mob. This reminds me of a PS1 game called beyond the beyond and another game for the NES called destiny of the emperor. Destiny of the emperor was a lot better than beyond the beyond btw. Otherwise, Albert Odyssey looked and played great on the saturn.

Magic Knight Rayearth, another saturn game... you know why I don't care for this one, but it's more of a girly game anyway.

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Replayability... I agree that a lot of the castlevania games have replay value, the classic ones at least. I've spent many hours playing 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as rondo of blood, but in general, the games I play the most, rpgs, usually have very little replay value. That's just something you have to accept if you like rpgs, with some exceptions: MMORPGs, some of the action rpgs, or maybe one of the scarce multiplayer/teamplayer RPGs (dungeon explorer, double dungeons, gauntlet, zelda four swords 1 and 2, or maybe final fantasy crystal chronicles.)

A few of the action rpgs, like baldur's gate dark alliance actually made it so that you can go through the game over and over again. So, you could go through it once on normal level, then on hard or whatever. If you can stand those pesky action rpgs, you may find a few like this... I musta been really bored, because I went through the game probably 3 times in a week or so period lol.

Also, it's a personal preference whether or not you'll want to go through some of the rpgs over again... I beat ultima exodus and dragon warrior probably 15 times, crystalis probably 3 times, destiny of the emperor 2 or 3 times, zelda one 3 or 4 times, zelda 2 probably over 20 times, etc.

Probably the most exciting game/time was when I beat Ys book 1 and 2 for the first time. It was a really long game, because at one time, Ys was two different games, and they put them together, added some cutscenes and a little better graphics, cd sound, and voiceovers.

It took a long many of hours playing the game to beat it, but right after I did, it was like a spiritual moment for some reason... As soon as I beat it, I started all over again and beat it in about half the time, now that I knew where to go and what to do. Even with the updated graphics, it still had pretty bad graphics. Ys 1 and 2 is a game that not a lot of people can get in to, unless they force it, but once they get in to it, they get involved in the game and can't stop. I think I went through the entire game one more time after that, and that was enough.

To me, Ys 1 and 2 was a game that was worth much more money than the retail price, because I got so much more out of it. Even if it would have only been one go round, it was still worth it...

(You didn't mention the GBA and DS Castlevanias' greatness. They're pretty cool.)

There actually are RPGs with good replay value, Secret of Mana and Legend of Zelda (long live second quest!!) being two of them.

Playing till you can't get it wrong already adds value to the game right there. It's just a matter of how innovative the game is. Dual Hearts does not get it done in my book- it rips off lots of elements like life meters, control scheme and storyline from Mario and Zelda. Original games to me are more likely to succeed at holding my attention more than clones and Atlus games (sorry Atlus fans). Doing what's never ever been done before, no matter how obscure, should be a mandatory law in the game making business. It also adds replay value.

Flexibility and depth are important as well. Mixing and matching items and spells for the different characters adds plenty of replayability to a game. It's always fun to strategize, kind of like mastering a football team playbook. "How do I beat you this time? Let me count the ways..." It rarely gets any better.

Haven't played many of the games you mentioned. But I'll say I've only been addicted to FF Tactics Advance on GBA the longest- I think the record was something like 10 straight hours. The missions take some time to master winning. Depth is unrivaled and incomparable! No other game to date has ever kept me that hooked. And that game could be played forever, especially since it doesn't have a stupid lock and key linear storyline. (You hate predetermined stuff, but that's exactly what those games you mentioned in your last post are.)

In terms of overall quality, this is the style of games I live for, man. The kind that never get old. And though they have yet to see daylight in the 7th gen, I can still always go back and plug into the previous generation ('99-'05) of the most unforgettable titles in recent history- Halo, Ninja Gaiden, handheld Castlevanias, FFTA, Simcity 4, Half Life 1 and 2, etc etc

Even though this has nothing to do with the heading, I think Wii will see plenty of replayable games- FE Radiant Dawn is a great start.

I think we have a different meaning for pre-determined. I consider pre-determined games as one way games, no choices to stray from the path from beginning to the end of a game, no way to get lost because you're always going in the right direction, etc.

In that sense, I don't consider lunar, dark wizard, the original might and magics, dark queen of krynn (And other older ad&d games), or many of the other games as pre-determined. You don't have to follow a certain path all the way through to the end, although there may be locked areas until you reach a certain objective, etc, and in many cases, you can travel to areas before you're suppose to and sometimes even get lost.

Of course, you can't get lost in dark wizard, but you have a lot of control and choice as to what you wish to do next. You're not stuck with pre-determined characters but summon or hire who you want and build up an army of like 50 different ones, if you want that many.

Popful mail may be more pre-determined, but it's more of an adventure than an RPG anyway.

Pool of radiance, dark queen of krynn, death knights of krynn, original might and magics, etc all are pretty much like that too.. You find jobs or quests to go on, in no particular order, and just do your own thing... Travel too far, and you get in a fight you can't win lol...

When I talk about linear vs non-linear, that's a whole other thing. Hardly any games are completely open-ended. The only ones I can think of right now that come close are elder scrolls. How much replay value do the elder scrolls games have though? To me, almost none, because if you take the time to go through each and every quest and sidequest and conquer the world, along with going with the main storyline, building your character, and beating the game, it would take so much time that it wouldn't be worth doing all over again. These games really are like MMORPGs.

There was one final fantasy game, may have been part seven, on the PS1 that I bought when I got my first PS1 system... Anyway, I played for awhile, and you couldn't stray from the path at all. I mean you had to follow the storyline and path 100%, and I couldn't stand that game. When I think about pre-determined games, I think of this game and a lot of the shining force games, wachenroder (vah-ken-row-der) etc. I guess that's how the shining force and primary strategy fighting games are though, with no adventure aspect, but not final fantasy or non strategy rpgs.

Really, if you seen all of my praises to the classic rpgs in the last few years, you'd know I liked the original dragon warrior 1-4, ultima exodus, crystalis, tunnels of doom, etc..

If you have your own take on predetermined stuff, that's fine. It's a free country. I was referring to games with boring linear objectives like GTA (yep I had to throw that in again :D ) and Freelancer. Travel to place A and kill bad guy B in order to complete mission C- lock and key type stuff- Shadowgate also comes quickly to mind. I don't really care for these at all.

If you actually read my posts, then, more than talking about pre determined, I stressed the importance of longevity- playing timeless games that don't get old. We have yet to see very many at this generation. So, going back and playing the greats (all the way up to 6th gen) that are out there is beneficial and, to me, more gratifying. Maybe I'm a little nostalgic, but it's better than eating up new junk that gets thrown my way.

I suppose my take on pre-determined games are games that are pre-determined every step of the way, like I said, never being able to stray from the path, as opposed to having alternate endings. In my definition, even mega man isn't pre-determined, because you can choose which stage and boss you wish to fight first.

Detonator Organ would probably be considered open ended by many, because you have multiple choices as well as several different endings, but even that is a comic adventure.