Anyone here into Lunar Silver Star/Eternal Blue? Now at start of Disc 2 on both...but can't get Silver Star one to work...

[Estil | 1,265]

2 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

As someone mentioned a PSP version/port, I'd like to point out that it's almost universally simple to jailbreak (install custom firmware on) a PSP, so I'd vote PS1 on the games mentioned as well as anything else you might want to play, just because it's simple to rip the discs then play the images on the PSP wherever and whenever you want.  That's how I completed most of the PS1 RPGs that I owned (and later beat), as I'd forget about the PS1/PS2 for large stretches, but almost always had the PSP in a backpack with me.

Well isn't there a PSP 3000 or something you can hook up to the TV and play the games on the TV?  Yeah the PSP could do it but even now over 15 years later the DS still can't  

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

22 minutes ago, Estil said:

I sometimes hear about these supposed "western" RPGs but I don't see anything western about them at all...no cowboys/cowgirls, no horses, no six-shooters, no general stores, no saloons, no pretty saloon girls...  

If you want some "Wild West" flavor in your RPG I would highly recommend Wild ARMs, the original on PS1 is a solid game... and also a JRPG

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

4 hours ago, Estil said:

Well isn't there a PSP 3000 or something you can hook up to the TV and play the games on the TV?  Yeah the PSP could do it but even now over 15 years later the DS still can't  

Yes, you can on the 2000/3000 with the appropriate video cable, although you have to be running custom firmware in order to be able to actively play games via video output.  On normal firmware, the external cable is only for display video from the PSP (usually UMD movies, but I believe it can/will output video files as well) which can be nice but is a waste.

[Estil | 1,265]

So I read a couple reviews of this game along with the Tales of games for the PS1 and for the GameSpot review they remark among other things "not a single polygon can be found on Lunar's dual CDs"  To which I say rather bluntly -- So?   Yeah in the late 90s/early 00s (such as MegaMan Network Transmission) GameSpot did NOT like at all any sort of 2D graphics on any system from 5th gen (PS1/N64) onward.  Sure 2D games have made quite a comeback/renaissance these past several years but boy was that soundly ridiculed by GS and other reviewers back then.  Not to mention Sony had this stupid "no 2D" rule that nearly caused it to not get MegaMan 8/X4!  Though it did lead to the MegaMan Legends Trilogy (Capcom promised if 8/X4 were allowed on PS1 they'd make a 3D MegaMan game in exchance).  

[Tanooki | 4,936]

@Estil  I know this is a known, maybe not as widely if people didn't care or pay attention, but Gamespot likely was kissing Sony's ass at the time with the comment, if not, weird coincidence.  Sony for a set number of the earlier years of the PSX actively FINED companies who put out games that had only 2D visuals, this included even Capcom with all the 1on1 fighting games they brought over from their arcade cabinets.  Eventually enough companies pushed back hard, threats and what not, and it was dropped.  Sony's supreme arrogant excuse?  2D games were kiddie and of the past, 3D is modern and for more mature people (disgusting no?)

[Hammerfestus | 3,853]

Ha, I remember all that anti 2D stuff.  Everyone went from being concerned with how many bits a system was to obsessing over polygon counts.  Really unfortunate mindset as some of the PSX‘s best games are 2D Games.

[Estil | 1,265]

11 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

Ha, I remember all that anti 2D stuff.  Everyone went from being concerned with how many bits a system was to obsessing over polygon counts.  Really unfortunate mindset as some of the PSX‘s best games are 2D Games.

Indeed, because I've now finally started this game (I was previously working on Tales of Eternia aka "Destiny 2") and I definitely think I made the right call in choosing the PS1 version.  The graphics are beautiful and colorful (as they should be for most any SNES/PS1 JRPG) and to think I was impressed and in awe back in my college days seeing those MegaMan 8/X4 cutscenes...if only I had discovered JRPGs back then and saw the cutscenes in this one!

And so far I'm only up to the part where you arrive in Meribia!  Not to mention you do get cute characters/NPC dialog in this one   I must say Luna is super cute when does that healing song in batter but that scene of her singing right before you get to Meribia, wow.  It did take me two hours though to get through that first cave (that icy one right near your hometown) because I had to keep going back in and out after Luna "ran out of gas" so to speak (ran out of healing magic).  Luckily the battles are done Chrono Trigger style (not random encounters but rather you see the enemies on screen).  That first boss was quite aggravating though because he heals himself near 100 HP after every turn so unless your team can do >100 HP damage a turn you're screwed!!

Unfortunately for whatever reason, I can't get the second disc of the game to start up on my PSIO...the first disc works flawlessly though and thankfully you don't get to the second disc until you're about 75%ish the way done (what is up with the last disc almost always having way less of the adventure than the previous discs???).  Maybe the second disc is designed so that it won't boot up unless it sees a memory card save ready for Disc 2?

[Estil | 1,265]

On 5/22/2021 at 9:50 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

...also, how is this possible for a big JRPG fan? 

*shrugs* What can I say?  Especially with these multi-disc ones I feel like I'm truly getting my money's worth ya know?  THANK GOD I don't have to spend around two hundred fricking dollars to get a real CIB copy of either of these games!!    Serves me right I suppose for not taking PS1 collecting seriously back in my college days when you could still get most any PS1 game you want new and not pay a frickin' fortune for them!!  At least I did manage to get the Legends Trilogy from Capcom back in the day for $50 new!  

[Reed Rothchild | 9,547]

47 minutes ago, Estil said:

*shrugs* What can I say?  Especially with these multi-disc ones I feel like I'm truly getting my money's worth ya know?  THANK GOD I don't have to spend around two hundred fricking dollars to get a real CIB copy of either of these games!!    Serves me right I suppose for not taking PS1 collecting seriously back in my college days when you could still get most any PS1 game you want new and not pay a frickin' fortune for them!!  At least I did manage to get the Legends Trilogy from Capcom back in the day for $50 new!  

When you're done with your encyclopedias you should grab some sort of gaming encyclopedia and read up on all of the amazing games floating around out there that you don't know about.  Seriously.

[Estil | 1,265]

1 hour ago, Reed Rothchild said:

When you're done with your encyclopedias you should grab some sort of gaming encyclopedia and read up on all of the amazing games floating around out there that you don't know about.  Seriously.

You...care to be a little more specific?  And for the record I'm also working on not just my 1977 Britannica yearbook I've also been reading my local newspaper archive as well (I did 1990 last year and I'm doing 1991 this year...you know 30 years ago like Back to the Future?  )

I must say Luna has a rather bossy and jealous streak...

Edited July 18, 2021 by Estil

[Kguillemette | 1,545]

Glad you enjoy the game. Knowing your interests, it should be right up your alley! It's a popcorn rpg if there ever was one.

[Estil | 1,265]

3 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

Glad you enjoy the game. Knowing your interests, it should be right up your alley! It's a popcorn rpg if there ever was one.

"popcorn" RPG?  I wish I knew though what I was doing wrong about why that second "disc" won't start up on my PSIO though...   Though that'll be awhile (about 70-75%ish the way?) before I get there anyway...

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

16 minutes ago, Estil said:

"popcorn" RPG?  I wish I knew though what I was doing wrong about why that second "disc" won't start up on my PSIO though...   Though that'll be awhile (about 70-75%ish the way?) before I get there anyway...

I wonder if it might have something to do with the way the unit fools the Playstation regarding the copy protection.  Many years ago, I ended up with a copy of Monster Rancher more or less by accident, and at a time that it was considered really expensive.  To ensure I kept it pristine, I made a backup copy of it and tried playing with that, as the shop that sold my my system also sold me a GameShark-like dongle which went into the serial port in the back and allowed for playing of backups and/or imports.  I noticed that while I could boot the game and play it with any monsters I'd already created, if I booted the game then told it to create a new monster, it would read the random data off of whatever disc I put in, but wouldn't boot the game back up afterward, presumably because it wasn't seeing a legitimate disc the second time around.  Thinking about this, I used my original disc to get try to get back into the game and, bingo, there I was, back in the action.

Regarding the device I had all those years ago, my guess is that it only bothered to feed the "all clear" signal to the system regarding the initial boot up sequence when discs were checked for their legit copy protection, then didn't have enough logic onboard to know that the system was pinging again when a disc needed to be swapped out.  Same thing could be happening here.  If it is, that's a big oversight on the part of the folks who designed the device, as the tinkerers and hackers have had ~20 years to figure out that was an issue and implement some sort of fix for it.  Same sort of thing might have been happening on the PSP as well with multi-disc games, as I recall that stuff like FF7 and FF8 had to have their ripped ISOs merged together into one big file with a little bit of patch code in between in order for the system to allow you to play them beyond the first disc.

[Kguillemette | 1,545]

15 hours ago, Estil said:

"popcorn" RPG?  I wish I knew though what I was doing wrong about why that second "disc" won't start up on my PSIO though...   Though that'll be awhile (about 70-75%ish the way?) before I get there anyway...

I just mean you can mostly play the game by smashing the x button a bunch. You can play with one hand and snack with the other while the story unfolds.

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

18 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

Glad you enjoy the game. Knowing your interests, it should be right up your alley! It's a popcorn rpg if there ever was one.

Not unless you want to find all the smut!

[Estil | 1,265]

9 hours ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

Not unless you want to find all the smut!

Smut?    I bet it's nothing compared to what you find in Tales of Phantasia though...  

Edited July 21, 2021 by Estil

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

10 hours ago, Estil said:

Smut?    I bet it's nothing compared to what you find in Tales of Phantasia though...  

In the PS1 version of Silverstar Story there are bromides to be found. They are pretty much the only collectibles in the game and they are their own rewards.

Here's one:

[Estil | 1,265]

14 minutes ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

In the PS1 version of Silverstar Story there are bromides to be found. They are pretty much the only collectibles in the game and they are their own rewards.

Here's one:

And let me guess, Luna is constantly scolding you and making that scolding "humph!" face at you whenever these come up?  

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

57 minutes ago, Estil said:

And let me guess, Luna is constantly scolding you and making that scolding "humph!" face at you whenever these come up?  

Well I don't wanna spoil things, but not really. They really don't tie into the story. I don't remember everything 100% so it's possible that a line of dialogue pops up here and there regarding these but they really are 100% bonus contents. The game doesn't reward completion or anything. They are their own reward, and I believe there are 13 of them. 

[Estil | 1,265]

23 hours ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

Well I don't wanna spoil things, but not really. They really don't tie into the story. I don't remember everything 100% so it's possible that a line of dialogue pops up here and there regarding these but they really are 100% bonus contents. The game doesn't reward completion or anything. They are their own reward, and I believe there are 13 of them. 

GREAT...JUST GREAT   I just come to find out that getting some (if not the majority of these) of them you must get in very specific, often very narrow windows of opportunity or else it's GONE forever...   And this after I had already invested 8 hours in my quest so far (and already missed 3-4)...I don't want to have to start all over but if I'm really serious about liking cute chicks in JRPGs...well...umm...

Edited July 22, 2021 by Estil

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

1 minute ago, Estil said:

GREAT...JUST GREAT   I just come to find out that getting some (if not the majority of these) of them you must get in very specific, often very narrow windows of opportunity or else it's GONE forever...   And this after I had already invested 8 hours in my quest so far...I don't want to have to start all over but if I'm really serious about liking cute chicks in JRPGs...well...umm...

Yeah some are missable.

[Estil | 1,265]

16 hours ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

Yeah some are missable.

Well now's a fine time for someone to tell me!   If it had been re-released in some sort of Playstation Trophy support kind of thing I would've first looked up at playstationtrophies.org to see if any of them were missable so I would've known going in to be very careful not to miss any...and I'm sure getting all the Bromides would've been worth at least a silver.  Are there any other missable items I should know about?  For the pre-trophy quest sorts of games I like to try to have at least one of each item/weapon/etc in my inventory...as I consider that to be the REAL objective of games like this.  I had been working on the GBA versions of FF5/FF6 and I'm trying my best with the help of the FF wiki article not to miss any of the missable items.

So yeah, I think I am gonna have to start over and make very sure this time to get them all...I mean if I'm really serious about what I've said over and over about loving to have cute chicks in JRPGs  

Edited July 23, 2021 by Estil

[Estil | 1,265]

So I finally got back to where I was...this time I'm using a cheat sheet from both GameFAQs as well as one from RPG classics to make sure I (hopefully) Catch 'Em All.  BTW, isn't Jessica's victory pose in battle (is that the right term) so cute?   Now those vampire fangs of hers those aren't so cute though...    And I think Nall (the flying cat/dragon sidekick) did in fact mention at least at one point how much more fun an adventure is with cute girls on your team!    They better have some in Dragon Quest 12...

[WhyNotZoidberg | 585]

2 hours ago, Estil said:

So I finally got back to where I was...this time I'm using a cheat sheet from both GameFAQs as well as one from RPG classics to make sure I (hopefully) Catch 'Em All.  BTW, isn't Jessica's victory pose in battle (is that the right term) so cute?   Now those vampire fangs of hers those aren't so cute though...    And I think Nall (the flying cat/dragon sidekick) did in fact mention at least at one point how much more fun an adventure is with cute girls on your team!    They better have some in Dragon Quest 12...

No time wasted. The game is so good that it hardly matters. Can't wait to see what you think of Eternal Blue.

[Estil | 1,265]

5 minutes ago, WhyNotZoidberg said:

No time wasted. The game is so good that it hardly matters. Can't wait to see what you think of Eternal Blue.

There is still the matter of figuring out how to get the second "disc" of Silver Star to work on my PSIO though...though that will still take awhile to get that far...what do you think makes these games so good?  (try to go easy on spoilers of course)