For what it's worth, I really loved this series. It was great to hear about a system I virtually had no knowledge about and every week was some entirely new game I was unfamiliar with.
Yeah, absolutely. I personally find the SG-1000 particularly interesting since it's comparable tech-wise to the Colecovision, which was one of my favorite systems growing up. Games like the ones showcased in this episode really are quite impressive to see running on said hardware.
One nice thing about these is that they’re a more accessible glimpse through the keyhole to the world of PC-6000 and PC-88 games. Many of these are lost forever on floppies while the ROMs survived. But, even with disk images and an emulator, you contend with an ancient DOS on a language you don’t speak, games with lost manuals, not to mention self-published bedroom coder usability…
Bear in mind, the console take on Princess Tomato is basically a new game outside of the shared story and scenes. You'd have a larger manual and local knowledge base for playing graphic text ADVs like Princess Tomato on PC-88, at least back in the day. The tricky bit is emulating them now outside that context. Project EGG makes many of these games available to own and emulate with relative ease, but you're still lacking the zeitgeist and relevant materials that players back then would have used. The Famicom version targeted an audience that needed much less of that.
Loretta no Shouzou is the sort of game where for some Japanese dude who was a tween or teen in the 80s, they got stuck DEEP in it and it remains one of their favourite games of all time. The SG-1000 version of The Black Onyx... maybe not so much. Congrats on polishing off yet another console library, Jeremy! Been here since the pre-NES Works days when the primary focus of the project was strictly Game Boy, and you continue to do great work. I honestly believe that this kind of archival and retrospective work is important. As more and more games are made, it becomes increasingly difficult to play even a percentage of them all, even if you restrict yourself to just "the good ones" or even "the important ones". As the original context these games deteriorates from living memory, these sorts of semi-hands on (being able to actually see and hear the games in action, as opposed to just reading a blurb with maybe some screenshots), digestible looks at the past will become increasingly important to the preservation and future understanding of the art. In these comments I sometimes give shit and often make jokes, because I'm an internet goblin, but I want to take this opportunity to sincerely say: Thank you for the wonderful work that you do. I don't know if it's the first time I've said this, but I hope it's not the last. Cheers!
Also the chronological format and how that helps to put the games into a historical context. It makes it easier to see trends, influences, and understand perceptions. Like why a massive hit in Japan might be a total flop overseas because it wasn't localized until three years later when it was now old and dated, released after the second generation of titles it had influenced. You see how the library evolves. Something that was often very hard to do even when you were there at the time.
Sucks that people have been pestering you but I’ve really enjoyed this in-depth look into the SG-1000, I didn’t knew much about it and this has been very informative
For the people complaining about NES coverage - Uhhhh ... say we're talking about Pink Floyd. We'll be talking about "Dark Side of the Moon" - it's going to get looped on Spotify forever ... you realize they put out *SEVEN* studio albums before Moon. Many of these aren't really fit for radio play to go in between ads. You can talk about influences - what's "swimming in the water" at the time - Saucerful of Secrets was released about the same time as Sgt. Pepper's - what's London like in 1967? So why would you want to be stuck listening to a loop of the same old boomer hits unless all you ever care about is nostalgia?
Or how about this: We know that Queen is a great group. But have you ever listened to anything but Bohemian Rhapsody? Why not go back in to their deep rich history and give Ogre Battle a try?
Black Onyx is so much historically significant, how much it introduced the Wizardry style RPG design to a generation of players who grew up to work in the industry. It's baffling its omitted from most in games history discourse.
And from the live promo version, not the performance in the anime. That's a nice deeper cut for the fans without going anywhere too obscure for a more casual audience.
The SG1000 may not have the same appeal to the masses in the west that the NES/Famicom does but I have seriously enjoyed every episode of this series! It has been fascinating to learn more about Sega's first console and all it went through leading up to the Mark III/Master System that those of us in the west are more familiar with. Cheers to you!
I loved this series. Learning about the history of a system that rarely gets exposure was a treat. And it works as a great companion-piece for those of us playing along and interested in the foundation of Sega hardware.
Damn, that hurts me to read…. Your works and podcasts are incredible. This channel has grown so much and you make a lot of people happy. I sincerely wish you the best and thank you.
I'm going to go to bat for The Black Onyx here. First-person RPGs like Wizardry, Black Onyx, etc are misunderstood. The primary antagonist of these early games is the dungeon itself--effectively mapping the dungeon and being able to translate what you see on screen to an accurate paper map. While there is semi-permadeath in this version (I say semi because you can just revert to a previous password), you the player are leveling up your paper map which is just as important as equipment. The Black Onyx is a good compromise in complexity. It's dungeon is not as mean as Wizardry 1-3, and there are less traps and mean things to confuse the player's mapping. While combat here is simplistic, it's also predictable in ways that Wizardry is not (e.g. you have a rough idea of the outcome of a combat round before doing it). The simplicity also means combat is quick and breezy, and the player spends less time shuffling around menus. Navigating the dungeon and mapping it is generally enough to appropriately strengthen your party--no need to walk back and forth and grind. I really like the pacing and overall speed of the Black Onyx and I think it's better than some of its contemporaries in this regard. If you're determined, you can probably beat it in less than a dozen hours without much trouble. There are interesting ideas here that are unique to the Black Onyx too. For example, if one of your characters dies, instead of using a previous password or starting again, you can use the talk command to recruit a new one (you can also shake them down for money!). Having a town where you can walk around and explore is also something new and lends a cohesiveness to the world. Wizardry (and many others) often used menu towns; the Black Onyx makes the town integrated with the dungeon--there's even multiple entries to the dungeon in town. On the presentation side of things, the Black Onyx is one of the first RPGs I can think of where the character's sprites are modified by the equipment they are using (e.g. you can see the difference between a sword and a mace) which is nice touch. The Black Onyx is not the best first-person RPG, but it's still got some good qualities and interesting ideas beyond it's storied and important influence on Japanese RPGs. It's not the masterpiece that is the Famicom port of Wizardry, but it's still a solid take on this style of RPG and I think it deserves a bit more attention beyond being "that pre-Dragon Quest RPG made by the Dutch Tetris guy"
After seeing this, I thought Black Onyx was only the last game for the SG-1000, but also Loretta no Shouzou too, which I thought that it was a Master System game at first. I know Black Onyx from the Game Boy Color remake, and the NES Super Black Onyx.
This has been SUCH a great series, I've learned so much great history I never knew about before! I'm SO HYPE to hop straight into the Mark 3 for the same reason, LETS GOOO
I tried to fan translate Loretta no Shouzou back in high school and made a fair way through but gave up when I realized I had no clue how to insert the text into the game.
@@JeremyParish By the way, I was wondering if there's going to be a SG-1000 Works book in same vein as the video works books for other consoles? As one of the world's 6 or 7 SG-1000 enthusiasts I'd love to own something like that.
These videos you’ve done have been a godsend. I’m kinda poor right now and I can’t afford tv. this series has been supremely entertaining. Thank you 🙏 for the amazing videos bro
For what it's worth, I'm very glad you took an entire year excavating this console's history over the comparatively well-trod ground that is the NES. It opens up a number of interesting questions about this embryonic period which I hope are asked of the principals while they're still with us.
Well, at least they tried something else with that Sherlock Holmes game, even if it's nothing exciting today. Sherlock Holmes games released on the Famicom are also apparently nothing to write home about, with lots of weird decisions, such as a lot of pixel hunting, having to ask the same question over and over to get the results - without any clues - and so on. As a fan of the canon novels/short stories, it's always been interesting to me how popular the consulting detective was/is in Japan, with so many characters and stories based on Doyle's works, at the very least indirectly.
I remember playing a Holmes game on the famicom where he beat up a lot of random passerby, can't remember what it was called but it was basically the primal soup that'd one day become GTA
I’ve joked with a friend about the dominance of Segaiden on this channel due to you initially positioning it as a rare side thing merely meant to compliment NES Works, but all that aside, I’m honestly all for it
The fact you talk about what no one else does is why I watch this channel. I love SMB, DQ, FF, Metroid, Link, PS...but channels talking about those are a dime a thousand.
“cast yourself back into the world of March 1987, when your only options for a pure role-playing adventure on a game console, were essentially limited to this and the first two Dragon Quest titles.” Yeah, that’s not even a contest.
I think the idea behind that quote is that there isn't a choice. if you played those two Dragon Quest games and you were hungry for more console RPGs, then your only option was to play The Black Onyx.
I have been marathoning your chronology. Oh my god, seeing this game now, in the context of these streams of videos baffles the hell out of me. When the US was enjoying the Famicom trio, SG-1000 coughed this game with its last breath.
Absolutely adored this series, Jeremy. I have huge respect for people who cover the systems that other people ignore. It's far more interesting to see how consoles and games like this shaped the industry that we know today, over parroting the same information we've heard for years about the usual fare as popular RUclips tends to stick to.
It's really interesting seeing the slow evolution of dungeon crawling RPGs, especially with how they were translated from PC controls to a consolized take on them. It's not a genre with standards and audiences you'd could translate to one another. But Japan ran wild with it, and the way it would eventually lead to something like Etrian Odyssey is definitely admirable from a design perspective. Though with EO, I think the real strength of that game is that it kept the appeal intact to such a degree I know many people who went back to older dungeon crawlers and had a good time because the appeal clicked after the introduction that game had given them.
I also find it interesting how Japan basically took over the Wizardry series, after America got sick of it. I remember being shocked when I found out it was still a viable franchise in Japan despite being dead in the US since the 90s.
9:19 wow I shoulda seen that coming, LOL! Interesting deep dive on the black onyx, I have heard of that one before in the scope of old CRPGs around the time of wizardry and those other early titles.
"it must be the public domain version". Yeah, the Conan Doyle estate sucks. But like the coming of the sun destroys Dracula in Castlevania games, January 1, 2023 will weaken the estate's hold on Sherlock Holmes as the last Conan Doyle written stories enter the US public domain and the last collected book form thereof. As far as Japan goes, Conan Doyle estate's hold ended on Jan. 1, 1981, 50+1 years from Conan Doyle's death in 1930. The 1890s magazine translations into Japanese also appear to be public domain. The complete translations by Ken Nobuhara though are still in copyright until January 1, 2048 though since he died in 1977 and Japan extended copyright protection in late 2018 so it's Life + 70 for named authors that died after 1967 now. As far as Phantasy Star goes, I recommend the Sega Ages version for its much needed accessibility improvements.
5:02 - That sounds a lot like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. The boardgame, that is, which would have been out at this time. Which would then be out as a videogame on the Sega CD four years after Loretta No Shouzou.
4:20 Juxtaposing groans of the hardware with groans of the player: just another perfectly scripted topic transition from Jeremy Parish! Really been appreciating your craft recently.
I spent this entire video racking my brain, wondering where in the world I had heard of The Black Onyx before... Then I got to 16:53 and it all made sense
Loretta no Shouzou looks like the kind of game that could use a mouse, or maybe that Graphic Tablet thing you mentioned earlier. (Then again, that Graphic Tablet was wired onto the cartridge, so that's probably not a possibility.) It could also use a translation, but anyone could see that.
It's amazing that they managed to get all of that into what was a glorified Colecovision system. It bears thinking about, what might have been in the states had the console market not crashed. We could have had full ass RPGs on our Colecos.
It is interesting to see what people can do with limited hardware. I'm impressed that the Holmes game avoids any softlock situations, that's actually good design even if it ends up being repetitive.
Nice Ferris Bueller reference at the open. It's definitely a wonder how long Sega kept at the SG-1000 so long (well, 2 years was an eternity back then) after its past date. Especially since the 16-bit MD was due at the end of the following year.
As far as contemporary console RPGs go, there was also Deep Dungeon: Madou Senki on the Famicom Disk System which came out in December '86. Which despite being a blatant and unapologetic ripoff of Wizardry II, and having some rather horrendous ear-splitting music, still holds up better than the Black Onyx today imo. And being a disc-based game, you didn't have to mess with any passwords, which is always a plus.
Just wanted to say thank you for covering the SG-1000. I don't care a whole lot about the NES, but I love Sega, so this series has been way more interesting to me than your NES one. (I'm probably in the minority on that, but oh well.) Despite being a Sega fan, I knew very little about the SG-1000, so Segaiden has been really informative and fun, and I look forward to your series continuing with the Master System.
A shame about those comments, I subbed because of NES Works sure. But your care and dedication makes it so watching anything else is just as good if not better. And like I said back in episode 1 I've always felt I'm lacking in SEGA history and knowledge, so this series is a great help. Both justified and kinda overly rough on The Black Onyx, but splendid timing because just a day before this was uploaded I tried a Windows port of Rogue (Yes, _that_ Rogue) and found it rather fun
One of the things I really love about old Japanese RPGs and adventure games is they only use the kana. And for a native English speaker like me who only knows a couple hundred or so kanji but can read kana easily it makes it way easier to parse.
I really enjoyed this series on the SG-1000. At 15:44 though, you seem to imply that characters in the The Black Onyx on SG-1000 don't level up. They do. The yellow line beside the character is an experience meter. Fighting monsters causes it fill, and filling the experience meter causes the character to gain a level.
OK but when do we return to Super Cassette Vision Works? I gotta admit I am pretty impressed by the Sherlock Holmes game, considering the hardware and what we saw early on.
Gotta do Cassette Vision before SCV, and I'm still waiting on my CV to have its S-video mod work completed by Sound Retro Co. It's a VERY uncommon procedure so it's taking a while.
I was pretty surprised to learn that The Black Onyx on the SG-1000 beat a lot of other first person dungeon crawlers I knew were on the Famicom (including The Black Onyx itself) to market. I think being so used to hearing about those games on home computers and the timeline that lead to the first Dragon Quest warped my perception. The only one that could possibly also have been out that I checked on was the first Deep Dungeon, but I'm not sure if it's FDS release was actually in 1986 or if that was just the MSX version.
I wonder if there was a Sherlock Holmes boom going on in Japan at the time since Towachiki's infamous Sherlock Holmes game for the Famicom predated Loretta no Shouzou by about six weeks. The Jeremy Brett series was airing in Japan at the time, so maybe that the trigger. The Famicom game "Super Black Onyx" is not the same game as "The Black Onyx", I'm afraid. It has totally different gameplay. It's also much worse than the original. Finally, congratulations on finishing another system's library! Only 926 more Game Boy games to go!
The Sherlock Holmes character (though not all of his stories) entered the public domain in the early 1980s, so everyone went buck wild with adaptations. (The latter-day stories I obliquely referenced in this episode will enter the public domain next year, I believe.)
As a Sega fanboy, it brings me immense joy that you greatly annoyed Nintendo fanboys for a year. Kudos to you for that! I mostly kid, I love Nintendo too (however I am wearing a Sega T-Shirt as I write this), but annoying any self-important, impatient to the point of being rude, fanbase of any kind should be applauded. Patience is a Virtue people! You need to practice your Virtues more! I sincerely enjoyed this. I've always known about The Master System, and learned of the SG-1000 maybe 7-8 years ago, but knew nothing about it except it was Sega's first console, and it launched the same day as the Famicom. This has been extremely informative and a blast to learn about. And while the majority of the games aren't great, the signal is RF, and the games are ridiculously overpriced, I still wish I had one with a handful of games to go with my Master System, Genesis, Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast library. It would just be cool.
While I admit the actual SG-1000 games on their own aren't very interesting, the history and context of their releases has been fascinating to learn via Segaiden. The history of Sega consoles outside of the Genesis/MD and the Dreamcast is woefully under represented in the land of video essays to the point where your series was the first I'd personally heard of the SG-1000 at all. I'm eager to see more of your perspective on the Master System, which I'm only familiar with via Regular Show parodies and the occasional Jeff Gerstmann rant.
It's a shame that they didn't invest some resources into polishing The Black Onyx, no pun intended, if an improved or possibly even definitive version of the game would have been an ideal swan song for the SG-1000.
I've really enjoyed these SG-1000 videos, simply because it's a console I have very little familiarity with. The NES videos are great but there is tons of NES coverage across the internet. I like Jeremy's videos on NES games because they're very well done and entertaining but they're not essential for me to brush up on NES history. But for systems like the SG-1000 or the Lynx, these videos are packed with new information for me.
@@JeremyParish His most recent video was an overview of the SG-1000 and he used the word "garish" to describe the color scheme in Champion Tennis. I wondered if he had received some inspiration... coincidence maybe, but that type of venacular, I associate with you.
Didn't the first Megami Tensei come out in 1987? I played on the Switch and your experience with Black Onyx sums up my experience with it. It's ambitious but so very hard to play today. Definitely a game that has not aged well
The content is great, but what I really need is more analog video artifacts in the footage - some sync loss, tape creasing, or some old fashioned ghosting.
I wonder how Black Onyx would play if it had some arcade sensibilities. Score, shorter dungeons and a time limit... Might've been an interesting experiment.
By and large, you've just described Tower of Druaga, also from 1984. It's no wonder it was so influential on Japanese xRPGs to come, right alongside Black Onyx.
@@DragoonEnRegalia not really. Druaga has a totally different feel playing it. Black Onyx looks zippier, moving tile to tile instead of plodding the way Druaga does. The battles are also turn based, but even with that, everything about Black Onyx seems faster.
@@JeremyParish Speedy Smurf boots and snarky comments aside, the games play very differently. They just share the same theme of dungeon crawling. What I'm thinking of really wouldn't be Druaga; it would be Black Onyx with a few added arcade attributes. 1st person, grid movement, snappy turn based battles, but with a timer moving you along and a score tally.
Do people think Sega's systems only have Sonic to talk about or something? The Famicom/NES gets coverage everywhere already, it's nice to see other systems and manufacturers get the limelight.
For what it's worth, I really loved this series. It was great to hear about a system I virtually had no knowledge about and every week was some entirely new game I was unfamiliar with.
Exactly my feelings, but better expressed.
Same here. The SG-1000 was a total black hole for me and getting to see the library as a whole really made me appreciate it.
I really enjoy the SG1000 and Atari 7800 episodes. i'm definitely in no rush to reach the finish line with this series
Yeah, absolutely. I personally find the SG-1000 particularly interesting since it's comparable tech-wise to the Colecovision, which was one of my favorite systems growing up. Games like the ones showcased in this episode really are quite impressive to see running on said hardware.
One nice thing about these is that they’re a more accessible glimpse through the keyhole to the world of PC-6000 and PC-88 games. Many of these are lost forever on floppies while the ROMs survived.
But, even with disk images and an emulator, you contend with an ancient DOS on a language you don’t speak, games with lost manuals, not to mention self-published bedroom coder usability…
That's a good way to put it. It's much easier to play Princess Tomato on the NES/Famicom than it would be to wrest with the PC-88 version of it.
Bear in mind, the console take on Princess Tomato is basically a new game outside of the shared story and scenes. You'd have a larger manual and local knowledge base for playing graphic text ADVs like Princess Tomato on PC-88, at least back in the day. The tricky bit is emulating them now outside that context. Project EGG makes many of these games available to own and emulate with relative ease, but you're still lacking the zeitgeist and relevant materials that players back then would have used. The Famicom version targeted an audience that needed much less of that.
SEG AYE DEN ESS JEE ONE KAY
I see what you did there.
I still love the channel-change schtick each and every time.
Same. It never gets old.
Loretta no Shouzou is the sort of game where for some Japanese dude who was a tween or teen in the 80s, they got stuck DEEP in it and it remains one of their favourite games of all time. The SG-1000 version of The Black Onyx... maybe not so much.
Congrats on polishing off yet another console library, Jeremy! Been here since the pre-NES Works days when the primary focus of the project was strictly Game Boy, and you continue to do great work. I honestly believe that this kind of archival and retrospective work is important. As more and more games are made, it becomes increasingly difficult to play even a percentage of them all, even if you restrict yourself to just "the good ones" or even "the important ones". As the original context these games deteriorates from living memory, these sorts of semi-hands on (being able to actually see and hear the games in action, as opposed to just reading a blurb with maybe some screenshots), digestible looks at the past will become increasingly important to the preservation and future understanding of the art.
In these comments I sometimes give shit and often make jokes, because I'm an internet goblin, but I want to take this opportunity to sincerely say: Thank you for the wonderful work that you do. I don't know if it's the first time I've said this, but I hope it's not the last. Cheers!
Also the chronological format and how that helps to put the games into a historical context. It makes it easier to see trends, influences, and understand perceptions. Like why a massive hit in Japan might be a total flop overseas because it wasn't localized until three years later when it was now old and dated, released after the second generation of titles it had influenced. You see how the library evolves. Something that was often very hard to do even when you were there at the time.
Sucks that people have been pestering you but I’ve really enjoyed this in-depth look into the SG-1000, I didn’t knew much about it and this has been very informative
It’s fine, I’ve learned to use the “delete” option when it starts clogging up the comments
Most professional gaming history videos on the internet. They usually end with me on eBay but they are great.
My apologies to your retirement fund
God damn, that Konia Wa Hurricane clip hit my nostalgia like a bullet....
You play dirty.
I'm always here for more Segaiden.
For those curious about this oddity, the CRPGaddict reviewed Black Onyx rather in depth.
For the people complaining about NES coverage - Uhhhh ... say we're talking about Pink Floyd. We'll be talking about "Dark Side of the Moon" - it's going to get looped on Spotify forever ... you realize they put out *SEVEN* studio albums before Moon. Many of these aren't really fit for radio play to go in between ads. You can talk about influences - what's "swimming in the water" at the time - Saucerful of Secrets was released about the same time as Sgt. Pepper's - what's London like in 1967?
So why would you want to be stuck listening to a loop of the same old boomer hits unless all you ever care about is nostalgia?
It's fine, I'm gonna make the videos I'm gonna make.
Or how about this: We know that Queen is a great group. But have you ever listened to anything but Bohemian Rhapsody? Why not go back in to their deep rich history and give Ogre Battle a try?
Black Onyx is so much historically significant, how much it introduced the Wizardry style RPG design to a generation of players who grew up to work in the industry.
It's baffling its omitted from most in games history discourse.
Lack of accessibility may be a key issue.
Cherishing that moment of Priss and the Replicants
Konya Wa Hurricane is, and always will be, one of my favorite Jpop (City Pop?) songs. Definitely got a smile from me.
A pleasant surprise at the beginning of the episode
And from the live promo version, not the performance in the anime. That's a nice deeper cut for the fans without going anywhere too obscure for a more casual audience.
Coolness for Konichi Wa Hurricane.
This channel is a treasure. It's a need. As enjoyable and interesting as always. Thanks for the effort, Jeremy.
Jeremy "Power House" Parish, for the work you put into your parade of unending reviews, all of which are always top notch.
The SG1000 may not have the same appeal to the masses in the west that the NES/Famicom does but I have seriously enjoyed every episode of this series! It has been fascinating to learn more about Sega's first console and all it went through leading up to the Mark III/Master System that those of us in the west are more familiar with. Cheers to you!
Just started the video and had to stop to say I felt that Konya wa Hurricane clip hit me right in my soul. Bless.
Black Onyx is almost more historical and cultural lynchpin than game, very interesting - thanks as always for the great videos!
I loved this series. Learning about the history of a system that rarely gets exposure was a treat. And it works as a great companion-piece for those of us playing along and interested in the foundation of Sega hardware.
"Konya wa Hurricane" got me all nostalgic. You really do a good job setting the right context with those opening clips.
I've really loved this series! I honestly didn't know much at all about the SG-1000 before this. Keep doing what makes you happy Jeremy!
I’m not really sure that anything makes me happy these days, but thanks
@@JeremyParish Aww...just know that what you do makes us happy. Your videos are always the highlight of my Wednesday!
Damn, that hurts me to read…. Your works and podcasts are incredible. This channel has grown so much and you make a lot of people happy. I sincerely wish you the best and thank you.
I'm going to go to bat for The Black Onyx here.
First-person RPGs like Wizardry, Black Onyx, etc are misunderstood. The primary antagonist of these early games is the dungeon itself--effectively mapping the dungeon and being able to translate what you see on screen to an accurate paper map. While there is semi-permadeath in this version (I say semi because you can just revert to a previous password), you the player are leveling up your paper map which is just as important as equipment. The Black Onyx is a good compromise in complexity. It's dungeon is not as mean as Wizardry 1-3, and there are less traps and mean things to confuse the player's mapping.
While combat here is simplistic, it's also predictable in ways that Wizardry is not (e.g. you have a rough idea of the outcome of a combat round before doing it). The simplicity also means combat is quick and breezy, and the player spends less time shuffling around menus. Navigating the dungeon and mapping it is generally enough to appropriately strengthen your party--no need to walk back and forth and grind. I really like the pacing and overall speed of the Black Onyx and I think it's better than some of its contemporaries in this regard. If you're determined, you can probably beat it in less than a dozen hours without much trouble.
There are interesting ideas here that are unique to the Black Onyx too. For example, if one of your characters dies, instead of using a previous password or starting again, you can use the talk command to recruit a new one (you can also shake them down for money!). Having a town where you can walk around and explore is also something new and lends a cohesiveness to the world. Wizardry (and many others) often used menu towns; the Black Onyx makes the town integrated with the dungeon--there's even multiple entries to the dungeon in town. On the presentation side of things, the Black Onyx is one of the first RPGs I can think of where the character's sprites are modified by the equipment they are using (e.g. you can see the difference between a sword and a mace) which is nice touch.
The Black Onyx is not the best first-person RPG, but it's still got some good qualities and interesting ideas beyond it's storied and important influence on Japanese RPGs. It's not the masterpiece that is the Famicom port of Wizardry, but it's still a solid take on this style of RPG and I think it deserves a bit more attention beyond being "that pre-Dragon Quest RPG made by the Dutch Tetris guy"
After seeing this, I thought Black Onyx was only the last game for the SG-1000, but also Loretta no Shouzou too, which I thought that it was a Master System game at first. I know Black Onyx from the Game Boy Color remake, and the NES Super Black Onyx.
This has been SUCH a great series, I've learned so much great history I never knew about before! I'm SO HYPE to hop straight into the Mark 3 for the same reason, LETS GOOO
I tried to fan translate Loretta no Shouzou back in high school and made a fair way through but gave up when I realized I had no clue how to insert the text into the game.
Oh no!!
@@JeremyParish By the way, I was wondering if there's going to be a SG-1000 Works book in same vein as the video works books for other consoles?
As one of the world's 6 or 7 SG-1000 enthusiasts I'd love to own something like that.
Rest assured that I view all my video scripts as the rough draft for a future book.
I love learning about games and game history for consoles I never been exposed to. Its super fascinating, thank you for this series.
Exquisitely written and produced episode. What a pleasure.
Jeremy your videos are a lifesaver at work. I can listen to you talk about the lore of early 80's Japanese video games all day.
Shout-out to your boss for letting you slack off so tastefully on the clock
The Segaiden series has been fascinating. Really glad you took the plunge into this under explored part of video gaming.
Just adding my voice to the others who've enjoyed this series. Having heard little regarding Sega's pre-MS output before, it's been educational!
These videos you’ve done have been a godsend. I’m kinda poor right now and I can’t afford tv. this series has been supremely entertaining. Thank you 🙏 for the amazing videos bro
I for one am a fan of video game history
Love all the videos but hearing about the more obscure corners of video game history is always a delight. Keep it 🆙
Been a huge fan of this particular series; ive learned so much.
For what it's worth, I'm very glad you took an entire year excavating this console's history over the comparatively well-trod ground that is the NES. It opens up a number of interesting questions about this embryonic period which I hope are asked of the principals while they're still with us.
Well, at least they tried something else with that Sherlock Holmes game, even if it's nothing exciting today. Sherlock Holmes games released on the Famicom are also apparently nothing to write home about, with lots of weird decisions, such as a lot of pixel hunting, having to ask the same question over and over to get the results - without any clues - and so on. As a fan of the canon novels/short stories, it's always been interesting to me how popular the consulting detective was/is in Japan, with so many characters and stories based on Doyle's works, at the very least indirectly.
Not to mention his parallel fame with Arsene Lupin (the 3rd), who's probably more popular in Japan than anywhere else outside of France.
I remember playing a Holmes game on the famicom where he beat up a lot of random passerby, can't remember what it was called but it was basically the primal soup that'd one day become GTA
I see what you did there with your party character names.
Great job with this series! Looking forward to the retrospective ^^
I’ve joked with a friend about the dominance of Segaiden on this channel due to you initially positioning it as a rare side thing merely meant to compliment NES Works, but all that aside, I’m honestly all for it
The fact you talk about what no one else does is why I watch this channel.
I love SMB, DQ, FF, Metroid, Link, PS...but channels talking about those are a dime a thousand.
“cast yourself back into the world of March 1987, when your only options for a pure role-playing adventure on a game console, were essentially limited to this and the first two Dragon Quest titles.”
Yeah, that’s not even a contest.
I think the idea behind that quote is that there isn't a choice. if you played those two Dragon Quest games and you were hungry for more console RPGs, then your only option was to play The Black Onyx.
I have been marathoning your chronology.
Oh my god, seeing this game now, in the context of these streams of videos baffles the hell out of me. When the US was enjoying the Famicom trio, SG-1000 coughed this game with its last breath.
Absolutely adored this series, Jeremy. I have huge respect for people who cover the systems that other people ignore. It's far more interesting to see how consoles and games like this shaped the industry that we know today, over parroting the same information we've heard for years about the usual fare as popular RUclips tends to stick to.
Opening the video with a cutaway to Hurricane Live, I see you are a man of culture.
It just amazes me what this cardboard box was capable of.
It's really interesting seeing the slow evolution of dungeon crawling RPGs, especially with how they were translated from PC controls to a consolized take on them. It's not a genre with standards and audiences you'd could translate to one another. But Japan ran wild with it, and the way it would eventually lead to something like Etrian Odyssey is definitely admirable from a design perspective. Though with EO, I think the real strength of that game is that it kept the appeal intact to such a degree I know many people who went back to older dungeon crawlers and had a good time because the appeal clicked after the introduction that game had given them.
I also find it interesting how Japan basically took over the Wizardry series, after America got sick of it. I remember being shocked when I found out it was still a viable franchise in Japan despite being dead in the US since the 90s.
@@jasonblalock4429 Familiarity breeds comfort, and many of the more successfully experimental dungeon crawlers didn't get localized in Japan.
9:19 wow I shoulda seen that coming, LOL! Interesting deep dive on the black onyx, I have heard of that one before in the scope of old CRPGs around the time of wizardry and those other early titles.
Great, now I need to watch BGC, or that song will never leave my head. Also, what a great song.
"it must be the public domain version". Yeah, the Conan Doyle estate sucks. But like the coming of the sun destroys Dracula in Castlevania games, January 1, 2023 will weaken the estate's hold on Sherlock Holmes as the last Conan Doyle written stories enter the US public domain and the last collected book form thereof. As far as Japan goes, Conan Doyle estate's hold ended on Jan. 1, 1981, 50+1 years from Conan Doyle's death in 1930. The 1890s magazine translations into Japanese also appear to be public domain. The complete translations by Ken Nobuhara though are still in copyright until January 1, 2048 though since he died in 1977 and Japan extended copyright protection in late 2018 so it's Life + 70 for named authors that died after 1967 now.
As far as Phantasy Star goes, I recommend the Sega Ages version for its much needed accessibility improvements.
Yeah, having an automap makes Phantasy Star 1 *so* much more tolerable to play today.
5:02 - That sounds a lot like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective. The boardgame, that is, which would have been out at this time. Which would then be out as a videogame on the Sega CD four years after Loretta No Shouzou.
4:20 Juxtaposing groans of the hardware with groans of the player: just another perfectly scripted topic transition from Jeremy Parish! Really been appreciating your craft recently.
I spent this entire video racking my brain, wondering where in the world I had heard of The Black Onyx before... Then I got to 16:53 and it all made sense
0:05 BGC! ❤
Regarding The Black Onyx, this looks right up to what one can do on this console without any fancy mapper chips in just 32k.
Will never not be charmed by console adventure games, as someone who grew up in PC point-n-click adventure games.
Loretta no Shouzou looks like the kind of game that could use a mouse, or maybe that Graphic Tablet thing you mentioned earlier. (Then again, that Graphic Tablet was wired onto the cartridge, so that's probably not a possibility.) It could also use a translation, but anyone could see that.
It's amazing that they managed to get all of that into what was a glorified Colecovision system. It bears thinking about, what might have been in the states had the console market not crashed. We could have had full ass RPGs on our Colecos.
It is interesting to see what people can do with limited hardware. I'm impressed that the Holmes game avoids any softlock situations, that's actually good design even if it ends up being repetitive.
Nice Ferris Bueller reference at the open.
It's definitely a wonder how long Sega kept at the SG-1000 so long (well, 2 years was an eternity back then) after its past date. Especially since the 16-bit MD was due at the end of the following year.
As far as contemporary console RPGs go, there was also Deep Dungeon: Madou Senki on the Famicom Disk System which came out in December '86. Which despite being a blatant and unapologetic ripoff of Wizardry II, and having some rather horrendous ear-splitting music, still holds up better than the Black Onyx today imo. And being a disc-based game, you didn't have to mess with any passwords, which is always a plus.
Huh, somehow that wasn’t on my list. Thanks!
Just wanted to say thank you for covering the SG-1000. I don't care a whole lot about the NES, but I love Sega, so this series has been way more interesting to me than your NES one. (I'm probably in the minority on that, but oh well.) Despite being a Sega fan, I knew very little about the SG-1000, so Segaiden has been really informative and fun, and I look forward to your series continuing with the Master System.
A shame about those comments, I subbed because of NES Works sure. But your care and dedication
makes it so watching anything else is just as good if not better. And like I said back in episode 1
I've always felt I'm lacking in SEGA history and knowledge, so this series is a great help.
Both justified and kinda overly rough on The Black Onyx, but splendid timing because just a day before
this was uploaded I tried a Windows port of Rogue (Yes, _that_ Rogue) and found it rather fun
Holy eeeeefff I love Bubblegum Crisis!!!
One of the things I really love about old Japanese RPGs and adventure games is they only use the kana. And for a native English speaker like me who only knows a couple hundred or so kanji but can read kana easily it makes it way easier to parse.
I really enjoyed this series on the SG-1000. At 15:44 though, you seem to imply that characters in the The Black Onyx on SG-1000 don't level up. They do. The yellow line beside the character is an experience meter. Fighting monsters causes it fill, and filling the experience meter causes the character to gain a level.
OK but when do we return to Super Cassette Vision Works?
I gotta admit I am pretty impressed by the Sherlock Holmes game, considering the hardware and what we saw early on.
Gotta do Cassette Vision before SCV, and I'm still waiting on my CV to have its S-video mod work completed by Sound Retro Co. It's a VERY uncommon procedure so it's taking a while.
I was pretty surprised to learn that The Black Onyx on the SG-1000 beat a lot of other first person dungeon crawlers I knew were on the Famicom (including The Black Onyx itself) to market. I think being so used to hearing about those games on home computers and the timeline that lead to the first Dragon Quest warped my perception. The only one that could possibly also have been out that I checked on was the first Deep Dungeon, but I'm not sure if it's FDS release was actually in 1986 or if that was just the MSX version.
Bubblegum Crash? LoL! YISSSSS!
Or was that from Crisis?
Thank you. (That's it. That's the comment.)
SEG
AYE
DEN
ESJEE
ONEKAY
Hahaha.. Brilliant!
0:30 if I were you, I’d teach them a lesson by jumping straight from this into Amigaiden
I don't want to die tho
Who is that on Channel 33?
Kinuko Ohmori, performing "Konya wa Hurricane" from the anime Bubblegum Crisis.
Oooh lord the writing 😩👌
I wonder if there was a Sherlock Holmes boom going on in Japan at the time since Towachiki's infamous Sherlock Holmes game for the Famicom predated Loretta no Shouzou by about six weeks. The Jeremy Brett series was airing in Japan at the time, so maybe that the trigger.
The Famicom game "Super Black Onyx" is not the same game as "The Black Onyx", I'm afraid. It has totally different gameplay. It's also much worse than the original.
Finally, congratulations on finishing another system's library! Only 926 more Game Boy games to go!
The Sherlock Holmes character (though not all of his stories) entered the public domain in the early 1980s, so everyone went buck wild with adaptations. (The latter-day stories I obliquely referenced in this episode will enter the public domain next year, I believe.)
Black Onyx is hurting my eyes
That flickering is unbearable for me
As a Sega fanboy, it brings me immense joy that you greatly annoyed Nintendo fanboys for a year. Kudos to you for that!
I mostly kid, I love Nintendo too (however I am wearing a Sega T-Shirt as I write this), but annoying any self-important, impatient to the point of being rude, fanbase of any kind should be applauded. Patience is a Virtue people! You need to practice your Virtues more!
I sincerely enjoyed this. I've always known about The Master System, and learned of the SG-1000 maybe 7-8 years ago, but knew nothing about it except it was Sega's first console, and it launched the same day as the Famicom. This has been extremely informative and a blast to learn about. And while the majority of the games aren't great, the signal is RF, and the games are ridiculously overpriced, I still wish I had one with a handful of games to go with my Master System, Genesis, Sega CD, Saturn and Dreamcast library. It would just be cool.
Gotta warn a guy before you hit him so hard with Bubblegum Crisis music without warning.
meanwhile I'm over here like "when is he getting back to Gameboy?" lol
In two weeks.
joking aside though, I've enjoyed this series, as I have zero experience with SG-1000, so it was cool to see all these games
I named my child Esgee because of this video...
what was that awesome newwave song you clipped? it was kinda like kim wilde
While I admit the actual SG-1000 games on their own aren't very interesting, the history and context of their releases has been fascinating to learn via Segaiden. The history of Sega consoles outside of the Genesis/MD and the Dreamcast is woefully under represented in the land of video essays to the point where your series was the first I'd personally heard of the SG-1000 at all.
I'm eager to see more of your perspective on the Master System, which I'm only familiar with via Regular Show parodies and the occasional Jeff Gerstmann rant.
It's a shame that they didn't invest some resources into polishing The Black Onyx, no pun intended, if an improved or possibly even definitive version of the game would have been an ideal swan song for the SG-1000.
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH BOI!!!! Konya wa Hurricane!!! BUBBLEGUM CRISIS FTW!!!
I've really enjoyed these SG-1000 videos, simply because it's a console I have very little familiarity with. The NES videos are great but there is tons of NES coverage across the internet. I like Jeremy's videos on NES games because they're very well done and entertaining but they're not essential for me to brush up on NES history. But for systems like the SG-1000 or the Lynx, these videos are packed with new information for me.
Well, congrats on finishing another console (and a more "traditional" one than VB at that).
I think you got the attention of Joe from Game Sack with these Segaidens, Jeremy.
I doubt he is aware this channel exists
@@JeremyParish His most recent video was an overview of the SG-1000 and he used the word "garish" to describe the color scheme in Champion Tennis. I wondered if he had received some inspiration... coincidence maybe, but that type of venacular, I associate with you.
There are only so many words in the English language to describe the SG-1000 color palette.
@@JeremyParish Well, as much as I want to think that all my favorite RUclips guys secretly hang out, this statement is definitely accurate.
The Black Onyx almost feels like a proto-Miracle Warriors. That's another game that hasn't aged well.
The Sherlock game does not look like fun today but I definitely would have tried it had I encountered it at that time
Didn't the first Megami Tensei come out in 1987? I played on the Switch and your experience with Black Onyx sums up my experience with it. It's ambitious but so very hard to play today. Definitely a game that has not aged well
MegaTen, Final Fantasy, and Phantasy Star all appeared at end of 1987. In March, the first wave hadn’t really hit yet.
The content is great, but what I really need is more analog video artifacts in the footage - some sync loss, tape creasing, or some old fashioned ghosting.
If I were a rich man...I'd pay you to talk about every video game ever forever
patreon.com/gamespite
I guess they really pushed the hardware in the end
I dunno, being something of a fan of the style, I think I might like to play one of the more accessible versions of The Black Onyx.
I wonder how Black Onyx would play if it had some arcade sensibilities. Score, shorter dungeons and a time limit... Might've been an interesting experiment.
By and large, you've just described Tower of Druaga, also from 1984. It's no wonder it was so influential on Japanese xRPGs to come, right alongside Black Onyx.
@@DragoonEnRegalia not really. Druaga has a totally different feel playing it. Black Onyx looks zippier, moving tile to tile instead of plodding the way Druaga does. The battles are also turn based, but even with that, everything about Black Onyx seems faster.
Sounds like someone needs to learn where to find Gilgamesh's Jet Boots
@@JeremyParish Speedy Smurf boots and snarky comments aside, the games play very differently. They just share the same theme of dungeon crawling. What I'm thinking of really wouldn't be Druaga; it would be Black Onyx with a few added arcade attributes. 1st person, grid movement, snappy turn based battles, but with a timer moving you along and a score tally.
1:41 Looks like someone reskinned Golgo 13 for a Jane Eyre RPG
Team Esjee and Onekay!
You spent a long time setting up that "No shit, Sherlock", didn't you?
So when are we getting Tiger Electronics LCD Works?
Let me know when you get an RGB capture solution for that
@@JeremyParish Why? Those units don't have R, G, or B. I believe in you
Neither does SG-1000, yet here we are.
@@JeremyParish Exactly! You can do it!
For real though, thanks for doing these.
"Why aren't you talking about NES games?"
O, where could they possibly find people talking about the NES on the Internet!
Do people think Sega's systems only have Sonic to talk about or something? The Famicom/NES gets coverage everywhere already, it's nice to see other systems and manufacturers get the limelight.