Games from 2004

[Ellie]

So to try and find a Game of the Year for it, and hopefully some interesting games to play, I thought we could discuss games from RMXP.net in 2004.

Hard to get a list, all we have are archives and later posts to look at, and I know not many were there back then, but we can try.

The biggest game was Phylomortis (not Avant Garde), by RPG Advocate.

Ahriman's Prophecy came out as RMXP.net was created.

These games are definitely 2004:

Worlds, Lene
Chrono Crisis, Chains of Fate
Fawful's Fury, Boo mansion
The Red Death, j-street
The Book, Ultimoore
.hack// Reverb, McKenzie
The Blue Pearls, JabberwockyAi
Fantasy Phantom, Kai
Chrono Theory, jonnybstuff
Aurora Dreams, destined
Fallen, MimeSong
Utopian Chaos, Flash
Tales of Gemune, RPGuitar
Final Fantasy Platinum, Platinum-XP
Rename, Magna Man
Project ORO, Lord Gradient
Dirge of Eden, Garyuu
Blitzkrieg, The Sin
Shadows of Fate, RPGInevitable
Epitath of Eternity, Enoex^_^
Stormcatcher, Kaz Travio
Golden Sun: Tribute, WesTehGreat0rz
Secret of Lestania, jbart321
Stealing Glory, arcthemonkey
Gear Saga, Zaibatsu
Enderon, Legend of the Past
Full Metal Alchemist: Amestris Invasion
Cryzaline: The Element, holycleric
A Story of Love, Zieg
Misgiving Axion, maydenchina
Lands of Time, UNLEASHER
Project: INFECTION, Hero
Equinox: Genesis, Creative Dev.
Rokujou - The Six Emotions, Platinum-XP
Metropolis, Platinum-XP
Heaven's Falling, MakiAru
Lost Memories, Codesterz
Broken Sky, Olly
Cold-Fire, mnbvcxz213
Damnation, Vivi the black mage
Monteblack Project!, infralilla
Legends of Mana 2, destined
Hotel Sim, That
RPG RTS, Fireball270366
Illusion, Lucavious
Project Remembrance, bonsai
Valikorlia: Sinking Moon, sink to the beat
Dirge of Eden, Garyuu
The Opposing Brothers, Earthor
Densetsu no Megami, Platinum-XP
Night and Dagger, OzGuR Poe

And my first proper game, Chronicles of Afar, but that's completely lost.

Play any of the above? Like them?

Got any of your own suggestions?

I'm not saying we force through a result so that we have something, because that's lame, this thread'll be here a fair while and if it turns out nobody's bothered or played anything then so be it.

Not going to be a poll, either, because this needs more discussion tbh.

I'd really like to play the original Phylomortis if anyone has a link...

 

[Ellie]

I know this kinda bombed as an idea, but since a lot of veterans have come back, any thoughts?

 

[coyotecraft]

Oh! I remember now! Chrono Crisis by Chains of Fate. Yeah. I was in love with the screenshots.

I was going to say I don't remember it ever being completed. Did some digging and he planned to make it an original title: Theoria instead of a chrono fan game. Found his DA, and a link to Theoria's development forum that was closed in 2012 until progress was made. So I'm going to say it was vapor ware.

Anyways. I can sorta match user names with avatars. But the game project titles aren't ringing any bells.

 

[Jason]

Those screenshots look great, especially the reflections too!

... Unfortunately though I don't know ANY of those games

 

[coyotecraft]

The reflections are a cheap trick. I remember thinking, wow there is a script for that?
But it's done on a sprite sheet. The characters I mean. The walls and junk are probably actual their own tiles.

There were battle screenshots somewhere. I vaguely remember someone saying it was all Photoshop and not real. But he assured everyone that it was all functional.

 

[Jason]

Wouldn't that mean the characters don't line up with the tilesets though? Since they'd be twice as high meaning where the characters feet start wouldn't be in line with the current tile you're stood on, meaning it'd look really awkward under certain circumstances

 

[coyotecraft]

Going to start a new topic on this.

 

[Ellie]

I remember that now too... vaporware entirely I think. There were very few finished games back then tbf.

A few are in the ezine, but not much can be judged from that.

 

[Erichermit]

So many games became vaporware. It's very common in this scene though. People really should just try to make either short innovative games or Long Mediocre ones. (Hint: The first one is the better choice!)

 

[Bluxxon]

Okay sorry for this minor bump! But I'd like to talk a bit about Chrono Crisis.

Ok, so basically, in 2008 Chains encountered some personal problems that required him to spend less time developing the game. In response, most of the team left to create their own Chrono fangame, and Chrono Crisis was turned into an original game.

The Chrono Ark splinter team was made up of of the same graphic artists, coders, and writers, so visually the game remained similar. The team was actually making amazing progress in the months that followed, but when Square Enix sent a Cease & Desist letter to Crimson Echoes (another Chrono fangame done through ROMhacks) the Chrono Ark team decided to move underground. That's one of the main reasons that this project appeared to drop off the map. It wouldn't have been wise to advertise with Square gunning for fangames. This had some pretty bad consequences though; the game forums dropped in activity and new members became rarer. Personal issues (mostly good ones though) once again lead to team members slowly dropping out until it was just two of the original team left. Eventually it got to the point where it became simply impossible for them to realistically finish the game. It was a super sad day when word came down that it was over, but most people on the forum had expected that it was coming for awhile.

So the game had about 7 years of on and off development, and although it might be considered vaporware, there is a lot of content that came out of it! For instance, the full soundtrack for both Crisis and Ark done by musician Roetaka was released shortly after the projects official cancellation.

http://alexroe.bandcamp.com/album/chron ... -2006-2008
http://alexroe.bandcamp.com/album/chrono-ark

The update archives for both Crisis and Ark are also still hosted on the forums, if anyone would like to check them out.
http://www.kagerostudios.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=22 Crisis
http://www.kagerostudios.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=79 Ark

There was also a publicly released demo for Chrono Crisis back when it was on RPG Maker 2k3, but I don't have the link for it at the moment.

If anyone has any questions about the game, feel free to ask. Also, why was the forum green while I was posting.

EDIT - Ahaha, I see you have Fawful's Fury in that list too. That's a much funnier story.

 

[Ellie]

Wow, great to hear. Will definitely be trawling through that forum.

 

[Bluxxon]

I dug around a bit and found the old Crisis demo from ~2004. This version was touched up by one of the forum's members, fixing some glitches and stuff.

http://cc.luxatom.com/assets/archives/O ... isDemo.zip

You also might need to download this http://cc.luxatom.com/assets/archives/rpgmaker_fonts.rar font.

It should be said that the demo is a completely different beast than what the game eventually became, but it really shows what the team was capable of during the projects infancy. Some of the team is working on a new game, but I know next to nothing about it.

 

[95enthusiast]

There are quite a few great games missing off this list, but I think you know that. Are you only looking at games from this website?

 

[Maki]

It's pretty cool to see something I worked on 10 years ago still mentioned. I was 13-14 when I made Heaven's Falling! Haha! :D

I don't know if anyone really cares anymore, but here's what happened: Unfortunately for me, those were the days of CD-RWs instead of flash drives, and eventually I had to abandon the project because the disc became very scratched and eventually just stopped working (along with all of my data). I was just about to release one of the biggest updates to the game (I had purposely waited a while to release one so I could add more than people were used to in a regular update) with essentially all of chapter one finished (we're talking about 15+ new maps, new characters, and major script refinements, as well as some better story elements). I was so upset that I just gave up on RPG Maker entirely. I tried to make a new game around 07-08 but the community I was apart of (X-RPG) was a ghost town and I really didn't know where else to go. Looking back at what I can remember of the update, I started experimenting with a lot of day/night cycle stuff. The last thing I remember working on was a new town where you had to go investigate a haunted school or something along those lines. I remember this map using a new script that allowed lighting effects and moving shadows (don't remember the author though unfortunately).

So if anyone has any versions of HF I would love to replay it! I've searched high and low and come up with nothing.

&
Thanks for the mention!


EDIT: This is the closest I've gotten (and it's really good for a laugh hahahaha)
http://web.archive.org/web/200409140626 ... gplace.tk/