Post by Manspeed on May 31, 2008 9:55:54 GMT -5
First off, I've never pulled off a really successful thread before. So bear with me.
Second, this thread is a "sequel" to the original thread here on the Contemporary board made by Smashchu. For those of you who remember, I was the guy who came up with all the hoboty ideas.
I've opted to make this thread as way of taking our minds of off the lack of what we as crazed die-hard fans wanted in Brawl, and to give us a chance exercise our creative departments rather than our argumentative ones.
If there were a massive crossover RPG for Nintendo, what would it have? I believe it would require the following...
1, The Characters
It's an RPG, the crux of the game lies in it's characters. Obviously there's opportunities for more appearances than a game like SSB, but at the same time there's potential for a wide-range cast of Nintendo's most obscure.
The only problem is deciding who should be playable and who shouldn't. This was my biggest stumbling block last time. I figure it would best to just cycle through a list of all known Nintendo figures and try designate as many non-playable-but-still important roles to them as possible. I must've made a revised a list of possible friends for this game 900 million times already in my free time. Still no dice. I think maybe it had something to do with the fact that I wanted to have an iconic 64 warriors (making fun of the 108 Stars of Destiny from Suikoden) and couldn't come up with original skillsets for all of them.
It would probably be our best bet to start with the original 13 characters from SSB64 and work our way up from there. Parrothead would be a valuable asset.
2. The Plot
This is the other thing that RPGs are built around. We've already seen plot potential in the form of Subspace, but what if the characters could talk? What if they were not trophy replicas but the actual characters? How would we fit all this together?
When I think of a wacky and interesting plot for a crossover RPG, I think of Namco X Capcom. That was some good hobo, if you'll excuse my terminology.
I myself have already gone through almost as many plot revisions as I have playable character rosters. At it's earliest the plot involved a mirror of Kirby Super Star's Milky Way Wishes chapter, but with the other planets replaced with Nintendo's worlds, and MARX having a backup army of Nintendo's greatest villains. Then I tired teaming Kirby up with a plucky kid hero that was set to be Captain N's successor, and having Mario go AWOL until the very end. Then I gave up for a while after realizing this was too cliche.
So recently I experimented with nixing the KH-style multiple worlds thing, and just decided to set the game one on big continent that happens to be visited by characters from far-off places. For example, Fox arrives in the Great Fox, but the player never actually visits the Lylat System. I was really trying to keep things simple, which goes along with my roster problem spoken of eariler.
My new main character was set to be a caricature of this girl I once dated and is now my closest friend. I figured I'd make the main character a girl since plucky male heroes are overdone. The I tired to come up with a suitable reason for her being the protagonist. I figured her weapon would either be a Wii Remote, or some sort of magical Green Lantern-style ring that fulfills the same purpose as the trophies from SSB.
The plot would now be based off of Time Twist (since that kid didn't have a name and said game was set amongst real-world events), with this girl seeing a show on TV that tells her to meet this guy somewhere who gives her the Remote/Ring, and then she gets teleported the continent I mentioned before, and this oracle thing that has an NES controller for a head shows up with a cryptic message about her assisting a bunch of legendary warriors (which started out with the 64 I already mentioned) and such. I haven't progressed past that.
3. The Setting
In the previous section I briefly spoke about the setting. First I thought we'd seperate the worlds in a Kingdom Hearts style system, with the protagonist being ripped out of the real world, and thrown into the Nintendo world. Then I thought, nah, that's overdone.
So recently I settled for something more akin to Subspace, except not a pocket universe populated by trophy replicas. I mean, an attempt to take all of Nintendo's settings and combine them into a cohesive world. If you've ever read those German Nintendo Power comics, you'd know where I'm coming from (and if you havent read them, look 'em up on Mario Wiki, they're awesome).
In the end, I thought some character's worlds would not be seen in the final game to stress the fact that some of them live very far away, despite being in the same universe, and to keep things simple. The protagonist gets there in the same way that the kid from Time Twist got unstuck in time, with a hint of Chronicles of Narnia fantasy to it.
One particular aspect I had for the core setting that has remained consisted throughout is the idea of a major Metropolis that the characters visit from time to time. It could be populated by Miis, Animal Crossers, and I guess assorted NPC drones from various Nintendo titles.
4. The Battle System
Now here's where we get to something more technical. Looking back at Namco X Capcom, it's battle system was pretty half-assed. You had a generic StratRPG setup with a Tales-esque real-time microgame shoehorned in. Not a good template to follow.
When I think of the original thread, I can't believe how much our old ideas resembled the system from NXC. For the longest time I assumed a StratRPG that combines elements from Fire Emblem and Paper Mario was good. Now I realize that it needs more. I'm talking a system that combines the best elements of the former in addition to Pokemon, Golden Sun, Tomato Adventure, Card Hero, Magical Vacation, and whatever other RPGs that Nintendo has put out.
My vision puts this game on the DS. The bottom screen is the grid full of characters. The top screen is a close-up view of whichever character's turn it is. When you move them on the bottom screen, you watch them running on the top screen past whatever other allies or enemies they passed. When they attack, you see them attack on the top screen.
I thought maybe the characters would have small movepools a la Pokemon, with able to be learned by more than one character. Attacking would work like in Paper Mario and Tomato Adventure, with a bunch of timed button presses. There could be team-up attacks like in Mario & Luigi.
You win the battle by pulling a certain task like in Fire Emblem or Advance Wars. Not sure if generic non-characters units should be utilized. I also don't know much about Golden Sun or Magical Vacation, I'm pretty sure they have something that can be used here.
My battle system as well as the rest of this idea definitely needs work. That's why I posted this. I want it to be a team effort. We can compare and contrast out ideas and find out what works.
Now get out there and get those wheels turning!
Second, this thread is a "sequel" to the original thread here on the Contemporary board made by Smashchu. For those of you who remember, I was the guy who came up with all the hoboty ideas.
I've opted to make this thread as way of taking our minds of off the lack of what we as crazed die-hard fans wanted in Brawl, and to give us a chance exercise our creative departments rather than our argumentative ones.
If there were a massive crossover RPG for Nintendo, what would it have? I believe it would require the following...
1, The Characters
It's an RPG, the crux of the game lies in it's characters. Obviously there's opportunities for more appearances than a game like SSB, but at the same time there's potential for a wide-range cast of Nintendo's most obscure.
The only problem is deciding who should be playable and who shouldn't. This was my biggest stumbling block last time. I figure it would best to just cycle through a list of all known Nintendo figures and try designate as many non-playable-but-still important roles to them as possible. I must've made a revised a list of possible friends for this game 900 million times already in my free time. Still no dice. I think maybe it had something to do with the fact that I wanted to have an iconic 64 warriors (making fun of the 108 Stars of Destiny from Suikoden) and couldn't come up with original skillsets for all of them.
It would probably be our best bet to start with the original 13 characters from SSB64 and work our way up from there. Parrothead would be a valuable asset.
2. The Plot
This is the other thing that RPGs are built around. We've already seen plot potential in the form of Subspace, but what if the characters could talk? What if they were not trophy replicas but the actual characters? How would we fit all this together?
When I think of a wacky and interesting plot for a crossover RPG, I think of Namco X Capcom. That was some good hobo, if you'll excuse my terminology.
I myself have already gone through almost as many plot revisions as I have playable character rosters. At it's earliest the plot involved a mirror of Kirby Super Star's Milky Way Wishes chapter, but with the other planets replaced with Nintendo's worlds, and MARX having a backup army of Nintendo's greatest villains. Then I tired teaming Kirby up with a plucky kid hero that was set to be Captain N's successor, and having Mario go AWOL until the very end. Then I gave up for a while after realizing this was too cliche.
So recently I experimented with nixing the KH-style multiple worlds thing, and just decided to set the game one on big continent that happens to be visited by characters from far-off places. For example, Fox arrives in the Great Fox, but the player never actually visits the Lylat System. I was really trying to keep things simple, which goes along with my roster problem spoken of eariler.
My new main character was set to be a caricature of this girl I once dated and is now my closest friend. I figured I'd make the main character a girl since plucky male heroes are overdone. The I tired to come up with a suitable reason for her being the protagonist. I figured her weapon would either be a Wii Remote, or some sort of magical Green Lantern-style ring that fulfills the same purpose as the trophies from SSB.
The plot would now be based off of Time Twist (since that kid didn't have a name and said game was set amongst real-world events), with this girl seeing a show on TV that tells her to meet this guy somewhere who gives her the Remote/Ring, and then she gets teleported the continent I mentioned before, and this oracle thing that has an NES controller for a head shows up with a cryptic message about her assisting a bunch of legendary warriors (which started out with the 64 I already mentioned) and such. I haven't progressed past that.
3. The Setting
In the previous section I briefly spoke about the setting. First I thought we'd seperate the worlds in a Kingdom Hearts style system, with the protagonist being ripped out of the real world, and thrown into the Nintendo world. Then I thought, nah, that's overdone.
So recently I settled for something more akin to Subspace, except not a pocket universe populated by trophy replicas. I mean, an attempt to take all of Nintendo's settings and combine them into a cohesive world. If you've ever read those German Nintendo Power comics, you'd know where I'm coming from (and if you havent read them, look 'em up on Mario Wiki, they're awesome).
In the end, I thought some character's worlds would not be seen in the final game to stress the fact that some of them live very far away, despite being in the same universe, and to keep things simple. The protagonist gets there in the same way that the kid from Time Twist got unstuck in time, with a hint of Chronicles of Narnia fantasy to it.
One particular aspect I had for the core setting that has remained consisted throughout is the idea of a major Metropolis that the characters visit from time to time. It could be populated by Miis, Animal Crossers, and I guess assorted NPC drones from various Nintendo titles.
4. The Battle System
Now here's where we get to something more technical. Looking back at Namco X Capcom, it's battle system was pretty half-assed. You had a generic StratRPG setup with a Tales-esque real-time microgame shoehorned in. Not a good template to follow.
When I think of the original thread, I can't believe how much our old ideas resembled the system from NXC. For the longest time I assumed a StratRPG that combines elements from Fire Emblem and Paper Mario was good. Now I realize that it needs more. I'm talking a system that combines the best elements of the former in addition to Pokemon, Golden Sun, Tomato Adventure, Card Hero, Magical Vacation, and whatever other RPGs that Nintendo has put out.
My vision puts this game on the DS. The bottom screen is the grid full of characters. The top screen is a close-up view of whichever character's turn it is. When you move them on the bottom screen, you watch them running on the top screen past whatever other allies or enemies they passed. When they attack, you see them attack on the top screen.
I thought maybe the characters would have small movepools a la Pokemon, with able to be learned by more than one character. Attacking would work like in Paper Mario and Tomato Adventure, with a bunch of timed button presses. There could be team-up attacks like in Mario & Luigi.
You win the battle by pulling a certain task like in Fire Emblem or Advance Wars. Not sure if generic non-characters units should be utilized. I also don't know much about Golden Sun or Magical Vacation, I'm pretty sure they have something that can be used here.
My battle system as well as the rest of this idea definitely needs work. That's why I posted this. I want it to be a team effort. We can compare and contrast out ideas and find out what works.
Now get out there and get those wheels turning!