Nintendo Pool of Radiance

[SilentThief]

Wow, I never knew that the goldbox game "pool of radiance" had a version available on the original Nintendo. About 20 years ago I'd have been all about this game...


here's the link to check it out if you want to:
http://www.everyvideogame.com/play-n...diance_(U).htm

and here are a couple of screen shots.

-SilentThief

[manikus]

Intersting... very different. I would've played for more than five minutes if it wasn't breaking my eyeballs.

[Uatu]

Actually, it looks pretty nice - a bit "Japanified" for some reason, but not bad. I suppose that using colors besides gold and blue might have been nice, but...

[SilentThief]

Well, remember that the nintendo wasn't very advanced, and this was a goldbox game that had (IIRC) 5-6 disks of data as well as a save disk for the player. I'm not all that impressed but for the fact that it was a goldbox game in the first place on a nintendo. It really doesn't resemble POR much at all, tho.

A bit nostalgic
-SilentThief

[LurchBrick]

I read an interview with the head guy at SSI when they first decided to do a gold box game. He said that because the Japanese were so into RPGs, that's the main reason they ported it to the nintendo.

He said that they basically didn't make any profit off of it due to the fact that the Japanese prefer a different type of RPG (final fantasy, etc). He said it was a good experience but that is why they never ported another game again.

[Uatu]

Did they try to sell it in Japan?

Japan is rather insular (new ideas are not adopted easily) and the media controls a lot, so that may also have been related to why the software didn't sell well.

Also, what was the Nintendo port like? The same game with different graphics, or a completely different game?

There was a game called "Eye of the Beholder" for the Gameboy Advance (fairly recently) - it had little to do with the original SSI semi-action RPG game series, but seemed a lot like the old Gold Box games.

I think that Japan's first taste of RPGs was the Wizardry game series - still popular today. You might notice that, in essence, Dragon Quest (i.e. Dragon Warrior) games are basically like Wizardry, but with 2D overhead maps instead of 3D first-view dungeons. The Wizardry-like combat system has pervaded Japan's CRPGs since, while a completely separate genre of "simulation RPG" has been made for a somewhat more wargame-like RPGs, but the two have remained very separate.

Unfortunately, the truth is, of course, that Wizardry was Wizardry because that was as far as programming could take CRPGs at the time - the "goal" was clearly an actualization of paper/pencil/dice RPGs. Japan never really knew the actual goal, so they just started with Wizardry (and to a lesser extent, Ultima) and "powered-up," so to speak. Powering-up, of course, meant upping graphics and music, but also adding a very anime-ish element as well, and diverging from the original RPG idea.

[manikus]

I actually broke out my copy of PoR and tried to get it to run, but I keep getting an error...

Oh well, I have plenty of other games to play.

[Uatu]

It is definitely the hardest of the old games to run...

Also, darn that stupid code wheel thing!

[manikus]

It keeps telling me during character creation that I need to insert disk 3...

Since it's all in one file folder, and I long, long ago lost the disks... (I have downloaded a version from the web and it had the exact same files as what I already have, so I don't know what else to do right now.)

[Uatu]

I think that's what may have happened for me, too. Whatever the reason, I never was able to actually start the game (besides part of character creation).

The NES version may actually allow me to try the game out!