Terranigma
 

This is by no means a NEW game but I am pleasantly surprised by what I've experienced in Terranigma so far. The game is a almost a cross between Zelda and Secret of Mana with great humor, good gameplay and a pretty darn decent soundtrack.

Is anyone else a big fan?

Wait for the end. It will break your fucking heart (in an awesome way). This is one of the great SNES titles, right up alongside SoM, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Final Fantasy IV and VI etc. And a damned fine addition to the Heaven and Hell series. Pity it never made it over here. I'm bloody thrilled for my imported copy, though.

I liked it quite a bit, though the story didn't hit me nearly as much as Illusion of Gaia's did. Maybe I'd have more fond memories of it if Enix had actually brought it over here during the SNES era instead of having to wait around for me to discover emulation (and the games I hadn't played).

Yeah, I hear that NERD-1. It's one of those "we didn't get it" that just enrages me. That and Suikden Denesetsu III. Utter travesty that they never landed on our shores, given that they both had official English translations.

SD3 didn't bother me as much since I didn't really care a ton for the battle system as much as SoM's. Playing it along with all of the newer mediocre Mana games and it just feels like that one started the slide (though it's certainly the second best in the series...not like that's very difficult to do :().

Oh, I hear you on that. Don't make me pull out that fucking WICKED awesome SoM av/sig chain Lurker, Skills and myself rocked to prove it.

SoM is one of the sacrosanct games for me. I just never, ever get tired of it.

Yep, Secret of Mana is pretty much a spiritual experience for me. Every facet of the game is so natural and refined. I was pretty much sold after I heard 'Into the thick of it' while fighting rabites in an open field, so every other aspect of the game is merely a complimentary color. :)

But anyways...

Heaven and Hell series? Would 'Illusion of Gaia' be a member of that series, perhance?

At any rate, great, I look forward to the ending! I am also perplexed that the game never made it stateside, though that hardly matters these days.

I am not sure that it deserves to belong amidst the hallowed SNES RPG pinnacle (FFVI, IV, CT, EB,SOM.) but I am really surprised, more than anything of the overall palette of the game and the pacing.
Not the typical, beat bad guy, save the world type of game by any means and I find it welcome.

For those who haven't checked this game out yet, the game evolves around the very process of evolution itself, not only of character, but of actual world, with economy between nations playing a vital role in the game's sense of development. Its an rpg, yet completely unconventional according to those standards.

Take this for instance...some towns have a tourist center which require you to take pictures of a surrounding area in order to sell their wares (of land and trade) to surrounding nations.

Regarding that. What exactly am I supposed to take pictures of with the camera? The tourist center doesn't seem to want to accept my pictures. (arseholes)

I agree, and yes! PROUD TO HAVE A GIRLY MOMENT AT THE ENDING. Terranigma was a massive stealth release here, local gaming magazines made no mention of it coming at all, just appeared in stores one day. I was pretty starved for any sort of adventure-ish RPG-ish sort of thing since we missed out on all the good SquareSoft junk. "Can we have Chrono Trigger?" "Nah here's Secret of Evermore" "Hmm". So this was an explosion of some kind of magic. I WISH I DIDN'T FUCKING SELL IT AFTER FINISHING IT.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...anigma_box.jpg
I've never seen another copy since. ;_;

SD3 was okay. It's an earth shattering disappointment after playing Secret of Mana. My godbrother had the original cartridge back in the day and he and I would play that to no end. God the memories. However, I'm really glad that Neill Corlett did a translation of it and released it. Searching for ROMs is really what got me into understand the interwebs and start exploring it.

But seriously, I do get the the anger of not releasing it. I mean, it's not like Secret of Mana didn't sell well or anything.

Really? I haven't been able to finish Illusion of Gaia, because it bored me. Maybe I should give it another shot.

Terranigma has to be in my top 10 games, and most definitely one of my top RPGs. The ending brought tears to my eyes. The music is amazing also. Crysta is just so beautiful. Undoubtedly makes me sigh a bit whenever I hear it.

This is like a blast from the past. When I used to scour the internet looking for translated ROMs like Front Mission and Rudra's Secret Treasure. Anyone remember DeJap and J2E Translations? And loading IPS patches?

Oh god yes I remember DeJap. I had the beta translation patch for Tales of Phantasia. <333 that game to this very day.

Haha, yes, I remember that! Fucks like a tiger! Hehe... the whole boat scene was awesome. Couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw it...

This thread is making me want to try Terranigma again. The first time I tried it, it seemed very slow and it couldn't keep my attention. That was years and years ago, though. Perhaps it deserves another chance.

I loved Illusion of Gaia, though.

Yeah, Seiken Densetsu 3 was nothing compared to glory to Allah that was Secret of Mana. And god, do I ever remember DeJap and those boys. The ToP translation, Bahamut Lagoon, Mother 0 etc. Twinbee.

This is Exactly the same initial reaction that I had. It seemed really slow paced in the opening and its taken me a fairly long amount of time to give Terranigma a chance.
I think the first 5 dungeons seem a lot longer than they are...I can only advise you to stick with it. After you get those 5 dungeons out of the way, the game REALLY picks up.

The world of Terranigma goes from dark and cold to extremely bright and hopeful very quickly. The scope of the game at large, isn't at all about just going from dungeon to dungeon beating the obligatory enemies and bosses with a few puzzles thrown in to drag out the experience, at all.
Its unfortunate because the beginning kind of sets it up for that...which makes the deviation from that principle later in the game all the more sweeter. :)

Terranigma is definitely one of my favourite games. I first played it like four years ago and the whole time I couldn't shut up to people about how awesome it was. And none of them gave a shit and went back to playing Fifa '03. It's unique, charming, playable and tragically overlooked. Here's hoping it sees a VC release sometime in the not-too-distant future.

I think I'm the only person in the world who thinks otherwise...

Yeah, there's 3 games I think.

Soul Blazer (which is basically like a beta of Terranigma, but still awesome in its own way. Especially the soundtrack!)
Illusions of Gaia
Terranigma

In that order I believe.

Ah, Illusion of Gaia Time. That was also awesome. Man, what happened Enix, you used to be cool. I blame Midway and LA Rush.

Hands down, I enjoyed this more than Secret of Mana 1. Enix was probably the prince of SNES titles. Terranigma, IMO, gave me not the gameplay and story but the music was like the 3-4th best soundtrack I heard from an enix game. Im surprised this was never rehashed for a gba game. If that's the case, I want a remake!.

Funny how this thread is made. I just looked at a game magizine (hardcore gamers) for this month and they have a 2page article on Terranigma in the Graveyard page. I'll post it whenever I get the chance.

Actraiser gets tossed in there quite a bit, too.

I really enjoyed the game when I first played it four years ago. The gameplay was fun, the story was interesting, and I didn't recall having many complaints about it. Of course, I still remember the ending even if I only played the game once. Definitely a favorite of mine.

Terranigma, despite also having discovered it within the emulation phase of mine, is one of my fondest RPG memories ever.

I like most the fact that you are literally saving the world through recreation rather than (right away at least) saving it from a generic villain. The cg scenes actually touched me, giving a strong impression that you were really making a difference. From the first seeds of plant life in the world, to the birth of humans. I got chills down my spine (and just now too :$) thinking about such a grand accomplishment, and the gratitude that the lifeforms return to you in kind throughout your quest.

The music was absolutely awesome as well. "Sealed" is chillingly serene. The adventurous music of Grecliff and Eklemata was really driving and exciting.

Very interesting memories of that darn Bloody Mary boss too, her being one of the "level checkpoint" kinds of bosses, like Nabu in Sailor Moon Another Story, or every boss in 7th Saga.

I'm with you, mate.

And yeah, same as Infernal. That game just magically appeared in the stores in full PS/Saturn anticipation era without anyone ever hearing about it before that. I was amazed it was actually a PAL only release after I checked on it. I was poor back then though, and never bought it.

Oh well, I love the music and do plan on playing it one of these days ... like a good dozen of others ... ^_^;

Heh, you make this sound like it's something from the past. There are plenty of games out there still getting translations from groups like AGTP (Gideon is a very hard worker...) or independent groups like the people from FESS who are slowly translating the Fire Emblem games. (They did pretty much finish 6 for the GBA; just some cosmetic work left that they'll probably never bother with.) =P

Cool man. Soul BLAZER. Damn, that was a great game too.

Speaking of the soundtrack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z72HGjXZ8bA

Its pretty cool for the first 3/4 of the song, then kind of gets lackadaisical, but definitely cool overall. I love how all the music for the series is similiar in quality, in a way. Very introspective music, relaxed and purposeful and what not. :)

There is an article on Hardcore Gaming about this series.
I played Illusion of Gaia/Time a few years ago and really enjoyed it, so I should really give this a try.

I've been playing through Terranigma lately and I like the game but I think Soul Blazer remains my favorite (one that I've replayed over and over again).

That was a great read. Thanks a lot for that link!

This makes me want to play this game again...

I actually picked up a torrent the other day looking for the DKC games, and there were a bunch of other games labeled as 'Classic Games' in there too... I saw a folder called 'Soul Blazer Trilogy', so I added that to the download. I didn't know that Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma were part of a series...

And for some reason, I didn't even know that Soul Blazer existed. In any case, I've been playing through Soul Blazer since I picked it up yesterday, and I'm loving it. Once I'm done, I'll probably play through the other two games again, seeing as I never actually finished either one of them, I don't think.

It's a damned shame that it never came stateside, considering the fans of the old-school genre. In any case, who owns the rights to this now? SquareEnix? Given that we've seen just one title on the Wii's VC from SE, it's not out of the realms of possibility that they could port it to the VC. I'd gladly pay for it.

The Soul Blazer series is really underrated. I've always been a fan of Illusion of Gaia (or Illusion of Time to our friends across the pond), and Terranigma is a real gem indeed. Whether or not Quintet intended for all the games to work as an actual series is debatable, but there is a definite link in this chain. Check out the title screen for the North American beta version of IoG:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/848/sb2jj8.png

So Enix NA was originally going to call it "Soul Blazer: Illusion of Gaia", and use the original Japanese background image. Pretty neat, and it goes one step further to joining the games together.

That'd be my guess. I sure hope they decided to finally release Terranigma here, too. We got every other Quintet RPG (even Granstream Saga for PSone), it's just a crime not to include this one.

I loveds Terranigma to death - too bad I sold all my Super Nintendo stuff back then to get a Nintendo 64. The beginning was very slow, but what came afterwards was great. I found the graphics of the "awakening sequences" breathtaking at that time. Also a wonderful soundtrack. Having a look at a soundtrack rip, there are only a handful of tracks I find mediocre. Beruga has one of the most classic villain themes. Is there an orchestrated version available?

I remember a very tedious part that involved hiding from guys with flashlights, it took me ages to finish the part. Maybe I was just too clumsy back then. ^^

The translation to German was a little bit special, but not awful. The ending was a little unsatifsying - it´s okay to imagine what happens next, but I just wanted to KNOW, not just imagine.

it's a shame I never played the game when I lived in Germany. About 2 years ago I played the game on my PSP and it was great but the game would crash at a certain part of this cave and after that I upgraded the firmware so yea...

I reached pretty far I guess, I reached some part where I had to kill some queen in a castle, not sure. I gotta download the rom and play it again, or find one of those devices that I can play imported games on my SNES.

Is Granstream Saga really (and easily?) the best of the Quintet games like that article says? It seemed like the game wasn't held in high regard by anybody. I guess I'll have to try it at some point. For whatever reason I thought it was supposed to be one of those infamous games like Beyond the Beyond or Shadow Madness.

I honestly think the only thing it really had going for it were the animated cutscenes. Then again, I tried playing it last year sometime and that could be why I feel that way.

I know I *liked* it when it first came out but it really hasn't aged well. I can still play a game like Vagrant Story without any qualms, but every time I attempt to play Granstream Saga I facepalm and give up.

So it's frustrating or boring in some way now?

Boring is a good word. The game isn't hard, that's for sure, and the visuals are pretty terrible (I understand it's older than many PSOne games; but come on, the people don't even have faces.), the music is rather dull, and the gameplay was interesting when it was released, but there were other games that came out in the lifespan of the PSOne which did did the whole "real time combat" thing a lot better.

It's also pretty short and the plot was pretty cliche'd; though I did like the final plot twists and the ending was sort of sad/good. (It has 2 endings but the likely "canon" ending was the one I feel was a good ending.)

It'd be worth playing on a emulator maybe if you never played it, since you could soften the textures and increase the framerate a little so it didn't feel so sluggish. It's not a terrible game, it's just one that did not stand the tests of time. :(

I thought the only game that was a bigger waste of my money on the PSX over Granstream Saga was Beyond the Beyond.