RPG Maker Classics

514lorn

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Anyone have any interest in classic RPG Maker games? Or even just games made on the older versions of RPG Maker?

I just finished off Wind I Creator which is a raising sim made basically entirely in RPG Maker 2003 with the default assets or edits of the default assets. You try to raise an army of clones of this incredibly frail girl so you can use a medicine with a 1/10000 chance of death on her to cure her condition. Was a really fun time with some good jokes, plus it's really interesting how far they can push the engine.

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Would love to hear what you've been playing or any of your old favorites!
 
My first experience of RPG maker was sitting in class at collage and installing this as part of a class, this was back in the days of Win 98.

While i enjoyed the experience i preferred to play games rather then make my own, so as such, I like to explore other peoples works, and if i remember right games like Corpes-Party, Eternal Senia, Pokect Mirror, all started out as RPG maker games, and became there own thing? I do not know if they count, but these are some of the ones i have experienced i played and enjoyed, but i am open to newer ones.

The game your playing i would be happy to give this a go, is it on twich.io?
 
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I used to play around with RPGMaker VX and VXAce but never managed to make anything lol. Mostly just making maps and walking around in the maps i made. I remember playing around with photoshop and paint as well to bypass the engine's limitations and make the maps more "alive".

Some games that i enjoyed:
- Alter A.I.L.A. Genesis (pretty darn good!)
- Exit Fate (heavily inspired by Suikoden)
- The Amber Throne (this is the game that inspires me to play around with Photoshop)
- Subterranean Starfield
- Helen's Mysterious Castle

There's also Dark Hero Party, which is a Hentai-NTR game. The story is full of irony and suffering. It's quite memorable to me.
 
I've always wanted to check out Hylics, and a couple other games made with RPG maker, but haven't figured the best way to go about it through Android (Samsung S24 Ultra if you have suggestions.)

My buddy had these fan made Phantasy Star 4 prequels made using some version of it that he said were good
 
There are some real classics made with RPGMaker in Japan (as mentioned earlier, many of them are H-games) but the scene sadly never got very far in the west. I used to check out new games all the time but they suffered greatly from an excess of ambition and a lack of originality. This improved over time but gave rise to some really obnoxious creator cliques and very few of the 'big' projects were ever completed, or development migrated into something like Game Maker instead. Some of these same cliques would even go on to become part of the awful indie game scene of the 2010's.

I preferred some of the weirder more experimental games over the FF-derivatives but a lot of these could become very self-indulgent. I remember really liking The Way games, Yume Nikki (all time Japanese horror classic), Middens, some of Calunio's projects were good too. I really wish I could include Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden but that sadly ended up getting completed in Game Maker.
 
The problem with RPGMaker games, is when the default graphics/engine is used. Nothing wrong with that, but then everything about it bleeds over and feels identical to every other project, and unless you're good at art anything you add won't compare to what the default free assets were...

The engine doesn't look that difficult to change, but depends on what you're trying to modify it for. The built in xp/scaling i remember being interesting, from slow linear to quadratic.

Downloaded a number of projects back 5-10 years ago; Some very interesting, an 8bit Final Fantasy type made in 24 hours and looks/feels like an NES game.
 
The problem with RPGMaker games, is when the default graphics/engine is used. Nothing wrong with that, but then everything about it bleeds over and feels identical to every other project, and unless you're good at art anything you add won't compare to what the default free assets were...
Absolutely true. It could be heartbreaking when you really start enjoying a game and see the same goofy armored guys showing up repeatedly, or the battle vfx that can't help but diminish the experience. That said there were more than a few games with excellent custom sprites/art that fell short in other areas like using licensed music, spriterips or assets from highly recognizable games, a bland or generic plot or simplistic gameplay systems. The default DQ-like battle system was always really hard to swallow in games that didn't use a custom one.
 
I tried some RPG Maker games between 2002 (finally owning a Windows computer) and 2010 (finally having access to broadband at home). The only one which I remember was Romancing Walker. I wanted to like it, but I had trouble figuring out what to do next.
 
There were a few titles that stuck with me that were made with RPG Maker. One is Space Funeral, a purposely ugly game that's part parody and part satire of RPG Maker games in general. Another was A Blurred Line, a RPG Maker 2000 game that had a bunch of great ideas but it ended on a cliffhanger as a hook for a sequel that never got made.

I was able to discover these games thanks to rpgmaker.net, but I'm not even sure if that site is still around anymore.

I was able to find an archive for those games at least. I'll leave it here for the curious: https://archive.org/details/rpgmaker-net-game-archive
 
Actually speaking of RPGMaker games... might get some halfway decent ones coming out if people are making CG's and graphics using AI generators... assuming you get some good generations. I'm seeing a lot of 'AI CG' stuff on some sites i go to with ongoing/in-progress projects.
 
Actually speaking of RPGMaker games... might get some halfway decent ones coming out if people are making CG's and graphics using AI generators... assuming you get some good generations. I'm seeing a lot of 'AI CG' stuff on some sites i go to with ongoing/in-progress projects.
Good to know. Since rpgmaker.net seems to be out of commission right now, which sites would you recommend checking out to find these games?
 
The game your playing i would be happy to give this a go, is it on twich.io?
You can find it over here.

Also since I'm seeing a lot of people who love Yume Nikki and other horror RPGM games, may I recommend Azusa 999? It's one of the big progenitors to Yume Nikki made in the PC-98 RPG Maker. It's not very well known in the West but definitely worth playing if you like those kind of games!

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I'm glad people mentioned the Hello Charlotte series, since they are my favorite RPGMaker games! I can also recommend Red Trees, a very short and comfy game with a nice pastel art style; and Pom Gets Wifi, a comedy one that may have aged poorly, but at the time was extremely funny.
 
Good to know. Since rpgmaker.net seems to be out of commission right now, which sites would you recommend checking out to find these games?

Itch.io is one place; erogevn.net... no those are the only two i seem to have my eyes on. Mind you most are going to be RenPy or other engines, but there's some RPGMaker ones mixed in.
 

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