What is an RPG?
Mike Mangold
that mean? Do they require you to spend lots of time on the game like
Sim-City or can you pick it up every now and then like I do with Virtua
Cop? Thanks in advance.
Joe Ottoson
A "true RPG" is more in between. They usually take about 20-30 hours to
complete. There's nothing making you play one all at one time (except the
quality of the story :-)
Lest we forget...
...A sharper edge was never seen as the like of the flowering guild. Should it have been revised, it would surely make sense...
Jeff
>
>OK, I know that RPG is an acronym for role-playing-game, but what does
>that mean? Do they require you to spend lots of time on the game like
>Sim-City or can you pick it up every now and then like I do with Virtua
>Cop? Thanks in advance.
A fair question, actually. Role-playing games have three common
elements. 1) a hero(you) 2) a goal(ie Save the world from evil)
and 3) a story that impells you to reach the goal, which usually
involves battling bad guys, talking to other characters, solving
puzzles or just adventuring. They can take quite a while, so
they usually have some form of save so you can pick up where you
left off.
Some people consider games without a story to be roleplaying(ie.
Dungeon Explorer, Shining Force CD, Populous, Third World War, etc.)
They feel that the battles themselves make the story. These are, IMHO,
not RPG's. If they were, everything from Space Invaders to Mario
could be called an RPG. A real RPG centers around the story
and the goal, and the battles and puzzles are just obstacles.
Some great RPG's for the Sega platforms: The Lunar series(!!), the
Phantasy Star series, Shining Force I & II (not the CD!),
Vay, Defenders of Oasis(my favorite Game Gear RPG).
The SNES is the best cart-based system for RPG's(Final Fantasy series,
Chrono Trigger, and many, many more). It's widely held that the
Genesis failed in Japan because it didn't have as many RPG's as the
SNES. I read in (I think) Next Gen online that some system(M2?) was
committing to release 20-40 RPG's in the US because they feel the market
is starving for them(too true!)(*) Sony recently caved in to massive
pressure and has started to support RPG's. (A wise move. The moment
we learned that Square wasn't making any RPG's for the N64, myself and
a few friends have decided not to get an Ultra64.) This is a good
trend and I hope it doesn't end.
Hopefully the Saturn will have a lot of RPG's. No matter how inferior
people think it is, if it has a huge library of RPG's it will be a
winner in the next-gen wars.
Jeff
(*) If this IS from Next Generation online, it probably has no basis
on actual fact.
char...@vnet.net
>In article <3137CC...@intr.net>, mang...@intr.net wrote:
>> OK, I know that RPG is an acronym for role-playing-game, but what does
>> that mean? Do they require you to spend lots of time on the game like
>> Sim-City or can you pick it up every now and then like I do with Virtua
>> Cop? Thanks in advance.
>A "true RPG" is more in between. They usually take about 20-30 hours to