Evermore Lead Developer Interview

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CLOUDBOND007

Evermore Lead Developer Interview

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Posts: 10201

(06/23/08 2:21 AM)

Lunitari Mage
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Some parts of this were interesting.

http://www.super-nes.com/evermoreinterview.htm

CB007's Review & GPT Archive
CB007's Gaming BBS

Camira Breen

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Posts: 376

(06/23/08 12:49 PM)

The Baroness

I loved that game. The atmosphere of the environments was unlike any other game I've played.

--Pepto-Dash!!

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/23/08 2:03 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

Well, I don't agree with him that NES games can be collectively summed up with "Meh."

See how your opinion ruined Christmas for everyone!

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 17460

(06/23/08 6:10 PM)

Frickin' Fred Durst on Stilts

BF: It's probably different for everyone. I think it's safe to say that those of us who played the games back then remember them, and that time of our lives, fondly. As I said earlier, I'd played RPGs before, but games like Mana were the first ones where I felt like I was part of the story, rather than simply moving a colored block around a grid of other colored blocks and making numbers go up. It's nice to relive that discovery, a sort of nostalgia thing.

???????????????????????????????????????????

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
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Captain Ladd Spencer

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Posts: 1531

(06/23/08 7:16 PM)

Behold the many
uses of my amazing
BIONIC ARM!

Adventure, maybe?

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/23/08 9:08 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

Either his memory is completely fucked and thinks every game before Secret of Mana was like Adventure, or he doesn't mean it literally, but something like,

I know that technically Final Fantasy 4 had a story and and a battle system and stuff that happened, but really all it felt like to me was moving Cecil around mazes and having him gain levels.

However, if he means it in that very subjective sense, then that could certainly apply to Secret of Mana ... as well as every game made since Secret of Mana until now ... as well as every game that could ever be made in the future ... as well as any game that could hypothetically be made at any time, in any universe.

abaxa

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Posts: 30

(06/23/08 9:18 PM)

It sounds to me like he's referring to RPGs like the original Dragon Warrior which had a barebones minimum of story and lots of grinding. Every time I play Secret of Mana I might stop and grind a level or two but I never feel like I absolutely have to or I'll face imminent annihilation because I crossed a bridge or something. That game does a good job of having enough enemies along the way that you level up without having to spend hours just leveling.

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Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/23/08 9:31 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

It's still purely subjective. It feels that way to him. And when FO recently replayed Secret of Mana, she leveled every weapon and spell (and whatever else there was to level) to the highest level. I know I did a fair amount of leveling, too.

Edit: It's also not like there was Dragon Warrior, then Secret of Mana, with nothing in between.

Last Edited By: Crawl and 1OOO 06/24/08 11:19 AM. Edited 1 times.

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 17460

(06/24/08 6:54 AM)

Frickin' Fred Durst on Stilts

I've noticed a consistent trend of game developers saying things like "Before this game came along, all games were bleh" in interviews.

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/24/08 9:29 AM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

I saw one thing that was contrary to that. One of the guitarists from Dragonforce said in an interview that he liked music from videogames from the late '80's, early '90's (the time when videogame music actually was at its peak).

SETZERtheGREAT

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Posts: 620

(06/24/08 1:29 PM)

The Lone Gunman

Oh, man. I love it when game developers do things like that - They demonstrate that they don't understand what makes games good and then wonder why the games they produce get poor reception.

Dude, your game had problems. That's why people didn't like it. Part of the reason as I'm seeing it now is that you didn't really aspire to make anything more than a Mana clone with an Americanized story and a far more cumbersome and confusing magic system.

"People are to be respected regardless of position or class.
This should always be remembered." - Saradin, Ogre Battle

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/24/08 3:56 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

That's not completely fair. I mean, they were hired guns on the project, it sounds like. They were told to make an Americanized game; they didn't have a choice in that. And, if I'm reading the interview correctly, they pumped it out, from scratch, in six months. That's kind of impressive to me.

And part of the reason the game got a poor reception had nothing to do with the game itself; it was released when people were moving to 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

And some complaints the game got were completely illogical, like people complaining about the ambient sound track when now that's pretty much what ALL games are like.

See how your opinion ruined Christmas for everyone!

Crawl and 1OOO

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Posts: 11009

(06/24/08 4:14 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

And DID it get a poor reception?

Jeremy Soule said, "Actually, Secret of Evermore, I'm proud of it, and in one of my brochures, it was fourth highest selling RPG on the Super Nintendo of all time."

That might sound surprising, but we know that "internet popularity" doesn't necessarily translate to much. Based on fanaticism, you might guess Final Fantasy III (SNES) and Chrono Trigger were wildly popular, but they only sold less than a half million copies in America on their first release. Donkey Kong Country out sold them by a factor of 20.

It's like how people on the internet talk about Arrested Development or The Wire or The Sopranos or something, but Walker Texas Ranger was probably way more popular than any of them.

See how your opinion ruined Christmas for everyone!

Flying Omelette

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Posts: 17460

(06/24/08 5:37 PM)

Frickin' Fred Durst on Stilts

Which just goes to show that the quality of something can't be determined by how well it sells.

In some ways, they DID try to be more ambitious than Mana with Evermore. Mana didn't really take advantage of having three different characters in the ways that Evermore sometimes did. (Like in the pyramid maze, or in Chapter 2 when you get separated for awhile). Mana didn't have any mazes that were quite as puzzling as the Gothica area's mazes. And Evermore actually has a secret boss (one of the first games I know of that did that).

Think of what you're saying,
You can get it wrong
And still you think that it's all right.
Think of what I'm saying,
We can work it out
And get it straight or say good night.

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one

Crawl and 1OOO

[-]

Posts: 11009

(06/25/08 1:12 PM)

The Fuzzy Physicist
Administrator

I wonder what ARE the top selling SNES RPGs in America?

Wikipedia has a list of best selling SNES games, but the RPGs all only use Japanese figures. Games selling over a million copies in Japan were

Dragon Quest VI
Dragon Quest V
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy V
Chrono Trigger
Secret of Mana
Romancing Saga 2
Super Mario RPG
Final Fantasy IV
Dragon Quest III
Romancing Saga
Romancing Saga 3
Dragon Warrior 1 and 2

Take out the ones that were Japan-only, and you're left with

Final Fantasy 6
Chrono Trigger
Secret of Mana
Super Mario RPG
Final Fantasy IV

So, assuming Japanese and American sales were correlated, and that Secret of Evermore would be next on the list, it would have been the 6th best selling SNES RPG.

If it really was #4, which of those would it have outsold? I'd be surprised by any. (Maybe the most likely would be FF4 and SoM, just because they're the oldest, and maybe SNES RPG fanaticism was still growing) But I don't know if I'd be too surprised if it outsold Lufia, or Tecmo Secret of the Stars. I saw Secret of Evermore on shelves for a long time, but never the latter two.

See how your opinion ruined Christmas for everyone!

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