Your story about discovering emulation reminds me of when I introduced it to my son when he was 8. He asked if we could get the snes mini cause he always wanted to play the old stuff. I was shocked his zoomer butt didn't know about emulation so I pulled out my old usb with the snes/genesis/playstation stuff, hooked up an xbox controller to his little laptop and told him to play to his hearts content. Sometimes you get those dad moments where you hope he remembers when you were good to him rather when you were stern when you're gone. I just hope he doesn't only remembers the tine I replaced all his Dreamcast ISOs with Bass pro fishing because he'd called me an old boomer.
So- the Romero town is not a reference to John Romero, but to George Romero, writer and director of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc. Basically the creator of the modern zombie film. Love your reviews- good stuff!
I used to hang out with a friend who lived in a tiny trailer…it wasn’t a full sized mobile home…back in the 90s. I remember watching him play through this whole game for a few weeks. His living situation was awful but when he was plugged into a game like this reality couldn’t get to him.
I've been going through this Playlist and I gotta say this background info was welcome and hit at just the right time. It blew me away hearing about your experience with Zsnes and a rom list; I got into rpgs the exact same way through my dads computer, except I clicked on Chrono Trigger. I'm working my way through actually beating it for the first time 20 years later. Great video dude
Aww man you really took me back to the early 2000s when describing Zsnes with the Sidewinder! For my PC gaming in the mid to late 90s I started off with the classic white Gravis 4 Button controller, a Capcom 6-Button controller that came with Super Street Fighter 2 for MSDOS, and the same Microsoft Sidewinder you described but all 3 could only connect via serial port as this was before USB 1.0. But yeah ZSNES was a huge game changer back then as it was more compatible than SNES9X and was more optimized to where almost every game ran between 50 and 60fps for the Pentium. I'm extremely lucky having discovered emulation in the early days. My lineup was ZSNES for SNES, Magic Engine for Turbo Grafx 16, Nesticle for NES, and KGen for Genesis which became Kega Fusion. There was MAME back then but it was extremely slow. The only arcade emulator at the time that was worth while was Callus which played almost every CPS1 game.
Great script, very succinct and covers really interesting design choices in the game. Love that Inn that steals your money lol. Nice life backstory too. Earthbound and Donkey Kong music is A++ Tier List stuff at the end was a smart inclusion and really fun to hear your reasonings!
I liked how you put in some Mega Man X music in this one. MMX was my favorite game growing up and when I played this game for the first time ever as an adult I couldn't help but keep getting distracted by the sound fonts that this game chose to use as both were by Capcom. I have noticed other developers stick with their own favorite sound fonts as well although I am not sure who composed music in each game. Good ear bruh,
Ah, an origin story! Glad you doing better now (I hope). Discovering roms in the late 90s/early 2000s was a game-changer for me as well. I only had FAMICOM where I grew up. Around 1999 people in our city center suddenly started selling illegal SNES ROM collections on CD-ROMs, that is when I discovered the world of JRPGs. Great video! Love the Slayer track
I like Breath of fire but you're absolutely correct. I never got as Far as You did clearly but the Localization is terrible. I never knew what the Majority of the items were even supposed to do. in fact there are edited GBA Roms where Fans have redone some of the Text. if you happen to have a PlayStation you should check out Breath of Fire 3 The Dragon Mechanic was really cool in that Game.
I remember liking Breath of Fire 1 & 2 when I was a kid but I could never beat them because they were too cryptic in spots and this was before the internet. I think about them from time to time but never had the ambition to pick them back up. Thanks for putting this out to show what I missed in the ladder half of the game. Very flawed games but great sprite work and cool RPG atmosphere.
The item names come from changing japanese characters to english. For example, you could get "makadonarudo" in the same space as the english "MCDNLD". still means McDonalds but it shows how each name had to be truncated.
Great review. After taking your message about societal progress amidst what in my eyes is a clear imminent environmental disaster and subsequent population crash quite personally, your videos are just too good to boycott for longer than a year it turns out. We’re lucky to have you doing your thing.
8:47 - The gold bar doesn't have to be purchased from Auria - instead, you can buy vitamins and cure the guy's hiccups who will then give you a G. Bar :)
This is one of those franchises that I liked enough to play, but didn't like enough to love. I think if each of the games came out about 3 years earlier, I'd be more of a fan of them. As it stood, they felt like a throw-back to how things were 4 years earlier, which was a significant amount of time with video games in the 1990s. To give an example, the band The Human League released a song called Tell Me When in 1994 that really missed the mark with everyone except people interested in a throwback. But had the song come out in 1986-1990, it would have been a massive classic hit, but in 1994 it felt out of place and dated.
Play it on emulator so you can at least get dash/run and not have to spend so much time walking around. Though if you avoid battles with Marble3s, it's not as bad. I'm playing it through on Switch Online right now, and I regret not going emulator. I'll definitely be going emulator for BoF2, if just for the much better fan translation.
@@bloodgain thanks for the heads up man, but I've always tried to get the full original experience. I've gotten so far to buy an actual SNES again so that I can play all these games I didn't get a chance to experience as a kid. Let's see how it goes.
@@fantome3799 Fair enough! I think you'll still enjoy it a lot. The walking speed is really the only major complaint I have, though I agree with all of Jason's criticisms. It was an early SNES RPG, though, so it plays almost more like an NES RPG, as expected. I will say some of the "secrets" you can unlock would be nearly impossible without a walkthrough, unless you stumbled into them. We're talking "search the walls" level stuff.
Yeah, I played this on a real super nintendo. As far as game-speed/user-friendliness goes BOF is about as good as you can ask for in an old jrpg, even more than the sequel I'd say.
Breath of Fire eas my first rpg. Xmas of 93. Along with Secret of Mana. I was 7 years old. I havent played scince i got the true ending back in highschool with no internet of course. Magic times
@@JasonGravesPoser Thanks a lot man! Great review btw, I never had it in me to finish the game (as a kid I used to play lots of old JRPGs and getting tired after grinding through like 80 percent of them) but I'd like to return to it one day. I'll probably go for the GBA version though, it seems more palatable.
If you remember the NES emulator having an amputated hand dripping blood from the wrist-hole for a mouse cursor, it was NESticle. I dunno if it was or not for you, that's just my hardcoded memory of an NES emulator from those early emulation years. Hahaha.
You didn't mention how lit the music is. There's that one battle theme that absolutely slaps. Can't wait for breath of fire 2. Super good game despite the horrible horrible encounter rates.
I played a lot of these when they came out (cuz I'm old lol) and I am loving your Every SNES RGP series. Fun to hear takes from someone who's played them more recently. I'm too used to modern games to *really* want to go back to many of these (might check out FF pixel remasters or something but other than that mah) interesting viewpoint and personal history!
Nice tier list at the end. I'll have to try out Ultima 6 on the snes after hearing your ranking. Never played it or maybe once but always passed over it because it looked like a sloppy dos game port and those kind of RPGs were never good without a mouse but now Ive gotta give it a go. Also Im sorry to hear you didn't like EVO. I have alot of nostalgia for that one. Really great sound track and actually pretty damn educational for a little lad first hearing about the concept of evolution.
I'm officially following you for this series. I look forward to you getting to Brain Lord. Hidden gem that I think a lot of people don't know about. (Hit me up if you can't find it. I'll loan you my copy. This username at Gmail.) I'll def have to look back at your Drakkhen review. Another one that I think was little noticed on SNES, though maybe more so by the PC (Amiga!) crowd. Talk about classic D&D level hard, and not surprising, since Gary Gygax was involved. I'm almost surprised you rated it B-tier, given the context and help the SNES version sorely lacks. I really need to get the PC version from GOG and play through it. Maybe I can find Gygax's supplement for it online.
Or that part you had to switch to Gary because it's totally obvious he can walk through trees. I liked this one more, mainly because we agreed in many things, finally I guess.
finally you do a game that I almost care about. Breath of Fire 2 was my jam. Or was it 3? I cant remember but I know I never played the first one. Looks decent though. Nice selection of music throughout as usual. Looking forward to BoF2 review... or 3. I'll know it when I see it
regarding the tier list at the end, I agree with most of it.. but ill never understand why people think ff4 is better than ff5. FF4 was soooo easy and had no customization. even the story was rather meh.. 5 is better in every way. Probably just nostalgia making people think 4 was anything but a baby game.
You were exactly the kind of person I want to hear these retro game stories from. It’s perfect.
Your story about discovering emulation reminds me of when I introduced it to my son when he was 8. He asked if we could get the snes mini cause he always wanted to play the old stuff. I was shocked his zoomer butt didn't know about emulation so I pulled out my old usb with the snes/genesis/playstation stuff, hooked up an xbox controller to his little laptop and told him to play to his hearts content.
Sometimes you get those dad moments where you hope he remembers when you were good to him rather when you were stern when you're gone. I just hope he doesn't only remembers the tine I replaced all his Dreamcast ISOs with Bass pro fishing because he'd called me an old boomer.
So- the Romero town is not a reference to John Romero, but to George Romero, writer and director of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, etc. Basically the creator of the modern zombie film. Love your reviews- good stuff!
I used to hang out with a friend who lived in a tiny trailer…it wasn’t a full sized mobile home…back in the 90s.
I remember watching him play through this whole game for a few weeks. His living situation was awful but when he was plugged into a game like this reality couldn’t get to him.
The incredible detail you put into your origin just made dis review for me lol....very reminiscent of my childhood experiences...
HOW DID I FIGURE THIS OUT WITHOUT A WALKTHROUGH AS A KID?!
This is such an underrated channel. Keep it up man, you and Tim Rogers are really inspiring me with my own verbose writing project. Much love
This is a great review - the best one on RUclips of this game.
I've been going through this Playlist and I gotta say this background info was welcome and hit at just the right time. It blew me away hearing about your experience with Zsnes and a rom list; I got into rpgs the exact same way through my dads computer, except I clicked on Chrono Trigger. I'm working my way through actually beating it for the first time 20 years later. Great video dude
Aww man you really took me back to the early 2000s when describing Zsnes with the Sidewinder! For my PC gaming in the mid to late 90s I started off with the classic white Gravis 4 Button controller, a Capcom 6-Button controller that came with Super Street Fighter 2 for MSDOS, and the same Microsoft Sidewinder you described but all 3 could only connect via serial port as this was before USB 1.0. But yeah ZSNES was a huge game changer back then as it was more compatible than SNES9X and was more optimized to where almost every game ran between 50 and 60fps for the Pentium. I'm extremely lucky having discovered emulation in the early days. My lineup was ZSNES for SNES, Magic Engine for Turbo Grafx 16, Nesticle for NES, and KGen for Genesis which became Kega Fusion. There was MAME back then but it was extremely slow. The only arcade emulator at the time that was worth while was Callus which played almost every CPS1 game.
Great script, very succinct and covers really interesting design choices in the game. Love that Inn that steals your money lol. Nice life backstory too.
Earthbound and Donkey Kong music is A++
Tier List stuff at the end was a smart inclusion and really fun to hear your reasonings!
I liked how you put in some Mega Man X music in this one. MMX was my favorite game growing up and when I played this game for the first time ever as an adult I couldn't help but keep getting distracted by the sound fonts that this game chose to use as both were by Capcom.
I have noticed other developers stick with their own favorite sound fonts as well although I am not sure who composed music in each game.
Good ear bruh,
the music choice is perfect for the seriousness of this conversation.
lol
This is my favourite new YT channel. Thanks Jason, I'll be watching everything you've ever made now
Ah, an origin story! Glad you doing better now (I hope). Discovering roms in the late 90s/early 2000s was a game-changer for me as well. I only had FAMICOM where I grew up. Around 1999 people in our city center suddenly started selling illegal SNES ROM collections on CD-ROMs, that is when I discovered the world of JRPGs. Great video! Love the Slayer track
I like Breath of fire but you're absolutely correct. I never got as Far as You did clearly but the Localization is terrible. I never knew what the Majority of the items were even supposed to do. in fact there are edited GBA Roms where Fans have redone some of the Text.
if you happen to have a PlayStation you should check out Breath of Fire 3 The Dragon Mechanic was really cool in that Game.
I remember liking Breath of Fire 1 & 2 when I was a kid but I could never beat them because they were too cryptic in spots and this was before the internet. I think about them from time to time but never had the ambition to pick them back up. Thanks for putting this out to show what I missed in the ladder half of the game. Very flawed games but great sprite work and cool RPG atmosphere.
you should have 100k subscribers! you did a great job weaving your own story into this game review
also what are all the music tracks you used during the video? would love to see a playlist
Your best video yet. Wonderful
The item names come from changing japanese characters to english. For example, you could get "makadonarudo" in the same space as the english "MCDNLD". still means McDonalds but it shows how each name had to be truncated.
The bopping Earthbound music.
I was a fan of the Mystic Quest battle theme myself lol
This was my first rpg before Final fantasy! It hooked me into the RPG world.
I first played this game on the game boy advance around 2001 time love it thanks for the review
Great review. After taking your message about societal progress amidst what in my eyes is a clear imminent environmental disaster and subsequent population crash quite personally, your videos are just too good to boycott for longer than a year it turns out. We’re lucky to have you doing your thing.
I love your stories about your life.
You do fine work, brah.
Thanks!
Goodness. All of this was so great. Thank you!
John Romero? You're thinking of George, maybe?
Oh lol, duh yeah. My mistake
Inventor of the zombie movie, inventor of the FPS. Who can keep them straight?!
Well they both horrified us. George with his movies, John with Daikatana.
Every king needs a queen (size bed)
Recently found your channel. Great stuff.
8:30
16bit Raining Blood 😅🤟🤟
8:47 - The gold bar doesn't have to be purchased from Auria - instead, you can buy vitamins and cure the guy's hiccups who will then give you a G. Bar :)
good content
keep it up
youre gonna get there
EDIT: just finished the vid
i take back what i said
you like Drakhen
This is one of those franchises that I liked enough to play, but didn't like enough to love.
I think if each of the games came out about 3 years earlier, I'd be more of a fan of them. As it stood, they felt like a throw-back to how things were 4 years earlier, which was a significant amount of time with video games in the 1990s. To give an example, the band The Human League released a song called Tell Me When in 1994 that really missed the mark with everyone except people interested in a throwback. But had the song come out in 1986-1990, it would have been a massive classic hit, but in 1994 it felt out of place and dated.
I've always passed on this game, but was always intrigued by it.
Guess I'll give it a go in the near future.
Nice review man!
Play it on emulator so you can at least get dash/run and not have to spend so much time walking around. Though if you avoid battles with Marble3s, it's not as bad. I'm playing it through on Switch Online right now, and I regret not going emulator. I'll definitely be going emulator for BoF2, if just for the much better fan translation.
@@bloodgain thanks for the heads up man, but I've always tried to get the full original experience.
I've gotten so far to buy an actual SNES again so that I can play all these games I didn't get a chance to experience as a kid.
Let's see how it goes.
@@fantome3799 Fair enough! I think you'll still enjoy it a lot. The walking speed is really the only major complaint I have, though I agree with all of Jason's criticisms. It was an early SNES RPG, though, so it plays almost more like an NES RPG, as expected. I will say some of the "secrets" you can unlock would be nearly impossible without a walkthrough, unless you stumbled into them. We're talking "search the walls" level stuff.
@@bloodgain I guess I'm some kind of masochist old nerd, because tropes like grinding and cryptic bullshit from old games is kinda of my thing. Hahaha
Yeah, I played this on a real super nintendo. As far as game-speed/user-friendliness goes BOF is about as good as you can ask for in an old jrpg, even more than the sequel I'd say.
This is a solid rpg on the snes. Was great when I played this as a kid.
I played this for the first time last year along with Breath of Fire 2 and I actually liked this game better
I think it's way more fun, but 2 has more going on.
Breath of Fire eas my first rpg. Xmas of 93. Along with Secret of Mana. I was 7 years old.
I havent played scince i got the true ending back in highschool with no internet of course.
Magic times
It's George Romero not John Romero :p
Could anyone please tell me the name of the track that starts playing at about 05:03 ?
ruclips.net/video/3WK6XDPsbgc/видео.html
@@JasonGravesPoser Thanks a lot man! Great review btw, I never had it in me to finish the game (as a kid I used to play lots of old JRPGs and getting tired after grinding through like 80 percent of them) but I'd like to return to it one day. I'll probably go for the GBA version though, it seems more palatable.
If you remember the NES emulator having an amputated hand dripping blood from the wrist-hole for a mouse cursor, it was NESticle. I dunno if it was or not for you, that's just my hardcoded memory of an NES emulator from those early emulation years. Hahaha.
Subscribing for Breath of Fire. That's one of my favorite games of all time. Top 5 definitely.
You didn't mention how lit the music is. There's that one battle theme that absolutely slaps.
Can't wait for breath of fire 2. Super good game despite the horrible horrible encounter rates.
Jason Graves needs his own t shirts/coffee cups for sale.
Excellent video that really GETS what video games meant and encapsulated for poor kids back then.
I played a lot of these when they came out (cuz I'm old lol) and I am loving your Every SNES RGP series. Fun to hear takes from someone who's played them more recently. I'm too used to modern games to *really* want to go back to many of these (might check out FF pixel remasters or something but other than that mah) interesting viewpoint and personal history!
Nice tier list at the end. I'll have to try out Ultima 6 on the snes after hearing your ranking. Never played it or maybe once but always passed over it because it looked like a sloppy dos game port and those kind of RPGs were never good without a mouse but now Ive gotta give it a go. Also Im sorry to hear you didn't like EVO. I have alot of nostalgia for that one. Really great sound track and actually pretty damn educational for a little lad first hearing about the concept of evolution.
FFIV was the social distraction I needed from my life at the time (1991)
Why is Reign in Blood playing in the background?! Lmao!
What’s that first game you’re playing?
I'm officially following you for this series. I look forward to you getting to Brain Lord. Hidden gem that I think a lot of people don't know about. (Hit me up if you can't find it. I'll loan you my copy. This username at Gmail.)
I'll def have to look back at your Drakkhen review. Another one that I think was little noticed on SNES, though maybe more so by the PC (Amiga!) crowd. Talk about classic D&D level hard, and not surprising, since Gary Gygax was involved. I'm almost surprised you rated it B-tier, given the context and help the SNES version sorely lacks. I really need to get the PC version from GOG and play through it. Maybe I can find Gygax's supplement for it online.
What game is playing in the background in the beginning? Looks so trippy.
lsd i think
I wonder what is the song that plays at 8:09 and 11:00?
It's from Pebble Beach Golf Links on the Saturn
@@JasonGravesPoser Thanks a lot.
5:03 what song is this?
ruclips.net/video/3WK6XDPsbgc/видео.htmlsi=vXwEYrSrO8mFKNpw
Or that part you had to switch to Gary because it's totally obvious he can walk through trees.
I liked this one more, mainly because we agreed in many things, finally I guess.
What about Terranigma?
OMG I can't believe you put my beloved Mystic Quest as a D! It's CLEARLY a C-
what game did he put on the A+ tier?
finally you do a game that I almost care about. Breath of Fire 2 was my jam. Or was it 3? I cant remember but I know I never played the first one. Looks decent though. Nice selection of music throughout as usual. Looking forward to BoF2 review... or 3. I'll know it when I see it
Can't wait to get to 2 dude cause I'm going to have lots to say
@@JasonGravesPoser the best rpg breath of fire 2
Why is it everyone I know from Florida grew up in a trailer?
Just eat the damn orange!,
Favorite line “Way of the ninja, kind of a shitty little trashy game.”
regarding the tier list at the end, I agree with most of it.. but ill never understand why people think ff4 is better than ff5. FF4 was soooo easy and had no customization. even the story was rather meh.. 5 is better in every way. Probably just nostalgia making people think 4 was anything but a baby game.
well west has such bad problems like you just told most of them are single while in here we live as a family and marriages last till death
You talk i listen
I always kinda thought its strange you play so many old games haha
Drakkhen over Soulblazer and Breath of Fire only a B………tell me you are a contrarian without telling me you are a contrarian