kitsunebi's talking to himself again

[kitsunebi]

Another ancient RPG that somehow found a second life in Japan.  This time it's 1982's Wizardry II, which was released in Japan in December 1986.  This guide is from March 1987.

This game is notoriously hardcore in that, should your party perish (and the game is hard as balls, so they are VERY likely to do so), your saved games are erased and you're forced to create a new party in Wizardry 1, then play through that entire game again before you can import your characters to this game and try again.  The only way to avoid this was to cheat and create backups of your saves or else yank your game disks out of the computer and shut it down if party death looked imminent.  Kids today just don't know...

Somehow this extreme sadism appealed to the Japanese and Wizardry became a huge hit there.

https://archive.org/details/Wizardry2PerfectManual

[kitsunebi]

Here is another guide for Wizardry II:

https://archive.org/details/Wizardry2HandBook

[twiztor]

On 6/7/2019 at 3:20 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

Another ancient RPG that somehow found a second life in Japan.  This time it's 1982's Wizardry II, which was released in Japan in December 1986.  This guide is from March 1987.

This game is notoriously hardcore in that, should your party perish (and the game is hard as balls, so they are VERY likely to do so), your saved games are erased and you're forced to create a new party in Wizardry 1, then play through that entire game again before you can import your characters to this game and try again.  The only way to avoid this was to cheat and create backups of your saves or else yank your game disks out of the computer and shut it down if party death looked imminent.  Kids today just don't know...

Somehow this extreme sadism appealed to the Japanese and Wizardry became a huge hit there.

holy shit! that would take insane levels of dedication to legitimately beat. I've never heard of that before and am horrified/amazed/intrigued.

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, twiztor said:

holy shit! that would take insane levels of dedication to legitimately beat. I've never heard of that before and am horrified/amazed/intrigued.

Yeah, the original release couldn't even be played unless you imported characters that had finished Wizardry I.

Later releases of Wizardry II changed this and offered a pre-generated party and the ability to create new characters...but there was a catch.  Since the game was designed for characters that had beaten the first game at around level 12-13, and the pre-gen party or newly created characters started at level 1, trying to start the second game with new characters and survive the initial battles was hard as #$%^.

I think it was treated as a pen-and-paper RPG scenario might be.  It was designed for high-level players, and so newcomers really weren't intended to play.  It seems rather stupid from a business perspective, though, since the potential number of customers that both owned and completed Wizardry I was obviously much smaller than if anyone could play.  But this was 1982 - early in the days of computer game software - and the game was made and sold by a couple of programmers, not a big company, so crazy experiments like this sometimes happened.

[kitsunebi]

Here's a guidebook from 1990 for Emerald Dragon, an RPG first released for Japanese computers in December 1989.  It was eventually ported to the PC Engine CD in 1994 and the Super Famicom in 1995.

https://archive.org/details/EmeraldDragonCompleteGuideBook

[kitsunebi]

Another guide for your questing pleasure - this time, it's Wizardry III, first released for the Apple II in 1983.

https://archive.org/details/Wizardry3HandBook

[kitsunebi]

I was wondering why they decorated the disc with coffee beans until I noticed the clitorises.

I already threw the disc in the trash, but after pasting the pic into this post, I noticed the line on the bottom of the disc which says "*Please be careful with products similar to coffee beans"

[Areala]

Did you at least rip it for Archive.org before you binned it?

*huggles*
Areala

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, Areala said:

Did you at least rip it for Archive.org before you binned it?

Of course, although I don't know how many people care about discs full of Win95 demos that can't be run on a modern OS.

[kitsunebi]

Just in time for you Sega fans to use with your Genesis Minis is the guide to Wonder Boy in Monster World, or Wonder Boy V: Monster World III as it's not-at-all-confusingly titled in Japan.

https://archive.org/details/wonderboyvmonsterworldiiiofficialguidebook

[kitsunebi]

I have uploaded 2 more guides for you this morning, both for Wizardry III, first released in 1983 for the Apple II, though these guides are for the 1987 Japanese PC-98 release.

https://archive.org/details/wizardry3playingmanual

https://archive.org/details/wizardry3monstermanual

[kitsunebi]

I'm guessing no one here is particularly interested, but I'm gonna keep uploading Wizardry guides for a while yet. 

Wizardry IV, released in 1987, turns many RPG conventions on their heads. It places the player in the role of the villain defeated at the end of Wizardry I, and rather than descending deeper into a dungeon on a quest to kill the big bad, you start at the bottom of the dungeon and must work your way up and out, killing heroes which were based on actual player characters from character disks sent to Sir Tech Software by players who had completed previous Wizardry games.  It is also widely regarded as one of the most difficult RPGs ever made.

https://archive.org/details/wizardry4playingmanual

[kitsunebi]

Another Wizardry IV guide uploaded for your downloading pleasure.

https://archive.org/details/wizardry4handbook

[kitsunebi]

My inbox is being flooded with PMs from people losing their shit over when the next Wizardry guide is gonna be uploaded.  I thought all anyone cared about around here was Mortal Kombat and Nintendo, but wow, was I wrong - you guys sure love your hardcore classic RPGs!  So here it is - a rather classy guide from the folks at Login magazine. (*Two of the preceding three sentences are patently false.)

https://archive.org/details/wizardry4chijouenomichi

[kitsunebi]

Moving on, here is a guide for Wizardry V: Heart of the Maelstrom.  This was the first game designed by D.W. Bradley and brought many innovations to the series.  Unfortunately, it was still using the same graphics engine as the previous games (it was actually completed before Wizardry IV) and thus looked hopelessly outdated when it was released in 1988.  Japan didn't really have this problem, however, as the graphics for the 1990 PC-98 were completely redrawn (as were later ports to the FM Towns, Super Famicom, PC Engine CD, and PlayStation), making the Japanese versions far superior, visually.  Here's a comparison of the succubus sprite:

Apple II: PC-98:FM Towns:Super Famicom:

PlayStation:

 

And here's the guide:

https://archive.org/details/wizardry5handbook

 

[JhonnyD]

On 6/28/2019 at 3:11 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

Just in time for you Sega fans to use with your Genesis Minis is the guide to Wonder Boy in Monster World, or Wonder Boy V: Monster World III as it's not-at-all-confusingly titled in Japan.

https://archive.org/details/wonderboyvmonsterworldiiiofficialguidebook

Wonder Boy/Adventure Island is the most confusing series ever regarding titles

[kitsunebi]

Hey y'all!  It's one of those days ending in "y," and you know what THAT means!  That's right, it's time for another Wizardry guide!!!

https://archive.org/details/wizardryvheartofthemaelstromplayingmanual

[kitsunebi]

Are you guys ready to download a Street Fighter II guide featuring lots of exclusive artwork and a special section featuring interviews with the developers including various screenshots of early prototype builds?  Yeah, I thought so!  Just click on the following link and you'll get none of that and yet so much more!  This is Wizardry V, bi$%*.  You're welcome.

https://archive.org/details/wizardryvkouryakuhen

[kitsunebi]

I realize not all of you are down with the genre-defining awesomeness of the Wizardry series.  Not everyone likes RPGs or has an interest in the origins of the genre.  I get it.

So let's change things up with a little something for you guys that I don't personally have any interest in.  Gran Turismo 2. 

I can enjoy a game of Mario Kart or Crazy Taxi, but realistic racing games have never done anything for me.  But I know this series has a lot of fans, and OH MY is this a hefty tome of a guide.  Over 620 pages of I don't even know what - it would put me to sleep if I tried to flip through it all.  But somebody scanned this monster, and now I've uploaded it somewhere the rest of you can find it.  Car nuts, go nuts.

https://archive.org/details/granturismo2officialguidebook

[kitsunebi]

I've uploaded an artbook for Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness, a 1995 fighting game from Capcom.  The home versions remained Japan-exclusives, but this apparently got a stateside release in arcades.  I've never been one for either arcades or fighting games, so I can't say I'd ever heard of it.  But now this book is archived for posterity, at any rate.

https://archive.org/details/cyberbotssetteishiryoushuugamestmookvol.20

[Habanero]

Nice thread.

[kitsunebi]

On 1/29/2019 at 5:46 AM, E-Day said:

If I had to choose between scanning a 1997 issue of PC Gamer and and 1994 issue of VG&CE, I'll choose VG&CE every time because it holds more interest to me. That's not to take away from PC Gamer. Now, if I had a Fujitsu scanner that could scan quickly instead of making it a time consuming labourous job, and someone else could edit some of the scans, then I would scan everything

I was flipping through pages on this thread and noticed this comment from earlier in the year.

Soo.....now that you have a Fujitsu scanner, feel free to scan all of the PC Gamers.  I'll even help edit them (this offer only applies to any PC Gamer published in the 90s.)

[E-Day]

If I had any PC Gamer issues to scan, I would. Especially if you would be editing them

 

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, E-Day said:

If I had any PC Gamer issues to scan, I would. Especially if you would be editing them

 

Somebody send this man a donation of PC Gamers, STAT!

[kitsunebi]

And now for something completely different...it's PEDOPHILIA: THE GAME!!!

OK, not really.  It's Tashiro Masashi no Princess ga Ippai (Tashiro Masashi's So Many Princesses), a platformer for the Famicom. But heart-shaped pictures of kids identified as being between 4-8 years old coupled with that shot of the guy in shades (wearing shades in Japan is sort of associated with deviant behavior) doing his best "OMG I just saw some panties" face...and well, it ain't good.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.  And I SWEAR I did not know this until I googled his name just now.  As in, I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH before learning this...The dude in the picture was a comedian/singer of some small celebrity, who in 2000 was arrested for using a camcorder to secretly film up a woman's skirt on a crowded train.  A year later, he was arrested again for peeping through a neighbor's bathroom window, again with a camcorder.  And in 2015, he was arrested YET AGAIN for being caught secretly filming up women's skirts on trains (this time with his mobile phone.)

This game cannot escape being associated with all kinds of fucked up creepiness...