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does anyone have some experience using a honey bee or other such converter to play nes games on a famicom? i'm seriously tempted to pick up an a/v famicom so that i can replace a foolishly purchased toploader, but don't know if there will be any problems that arise from using an adapter to basically make a famicom my new nes. seems like making the machine do more work than it was designed to.

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one good turn.

check out oldschool gamer. would probably be expensive, but the service is supposed to be pretty damn good. shipping consoles is not cheap either, mind you.

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is there any practical reason to go to the trouble of setting up my dreamcast and original xbox to get online? i guess the dc's browser would still work, but does anything even support online play on either of these anymore? i'd imagine xbox stuff is online only with a 360 now.

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the best quick rundown of the fds's story is probably the one here.

basically, advantages are that the games are much cheaper to make, could be rewritten with other games at disk writer stations, and have higher capacity than early famicom carts could (though this was quickly surpassed). there's also some extra sound channels supported by the fds that make for slightly better music.

kid icarus and metroid were two that had save systems on fds instead of the passwords, but i'm not sure about wrecking crew or mach rider. i think doki doki panic came out on fds because it was an ead product; for a while almost all of nintendo's games were put out on fds. it wasn't until the mid-nineties that the first zelda came out on cart in japan, if i remember correctly, and zelda 2 never did.

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i used to use videogame rebirth for release date info but now it's down...although gamefaqs also lists a 1994 date for the famicom cart release of zelda 1 in japan. corroboration!

the fds enjoyed some measure of success; zelda alone ensured that. not as sensational as nintendo wanted it to be, of course, but comparisons to the 64dd are a little unfair. famicom disk system actually has a respectable library for a console add-on, whereas the 64dd is more notable for all the stuff that was planned for it (mother 3, mario rpg 2, wario ware) than what actually got made.

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yeah, sorry; i was just making a general distinction. the fds is a fun little time capsule, the 64dd is a more like a graveyard.

you can always live out your childhood course editing fantasies with the f-zero expansion disk, i guess? you need a japanese copy of f-zero x though. and a modded or import n64. oh yeah and you need to drop several hundred dollars on an obsolete n64 attachment.

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dessgeega, have you finished otocky? because by stage ten that game starts breaking my thumbs and i have no idea how to get any better.

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i had a good time with tale of the forsaken land; it seemed to be a heavy source of inspiration for etrian odyssey, although i didn't play any of the original wizardry games so i can't really say. if i had to pick a problem it would be that the game was incredibly slow-paced for me. battles had lots of loading and unskippable animation, and working through the menus always seemed to take much longer than it should have. the combat is satisfyingly rough though, and i really liked the layouts of the stages and all the little shortcuts. writing was pretty good as well.

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is it true that the us release of arkanoid ds doesn't have the paddle controller?

is it worth playing without that?

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has anyone tried from the abyss or jake hunter, both on ds? from the abyss caught my eye when i was buying something else; looks like a colorful arpg dungeon crawl and there's apparently a local wi-fi dungeon where you can play with friends. jake hunter i'm just kind of morbidly curious about.

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the sol system has basic uses for recovering from d-counter fuckups and escaping the halved party xp/zenny penalty after death, and advanced uses for farming items/experience/cash.

if you're going through just reloading after you die, then i did the same thing and you might as well keep at it. messing with sol system can break the game if you start experimenting, and i've always felt the difficulty level is pretty well-tuned for your first playthrough. don't bother with sol unless you find yourself feeling like the game is really unfair, which i wouldn't say it is outside of the trial-by-fire first dungeon and a certain boss towards the end.

getting lots of party xp, by the way, is a function of ending fights quickly and using your traps well. i tend to forget the traps exist, but they make things a lot easier.

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yeah, the european version was pretty messed up by removal of quick saves. it's technically a bug fix, as it was possible to exploit the quick saves for item duping, but the process for that is kind of obscure and definitely not worth how badly it screws the average player.

as for breaking the game - well, pretty much what boogalooper said; doing loops to build up party xp. i guess it's not really "breaking" anything, but the game is built around the levels you'd get playing normally, and raising much beyond that will start making things much easier.

boogalooper, loosing five save tokens will probably put you in a tight spot later on. advice: if you do the optional, two-person area of the old midsector shopping district, don't save beforehand because it's pretty easy and has no boss. i wasted a token there my first time and it wasn't really necessary. also, make sure you buy up nina's debuff skills at a colony store because they're all pretty awesome and reliably work on bosses. spamming 100 points worth of attack down is how i survived the final enemy in that three-part boss rush.

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pretty sure the toploader nes won't take famicom carts because the slot shape is different. it might just accept the carts backwards, but you'd need a 60-72 pin converter for an nes to play fc games anyway (huge pain in the ass with a toploader and makes it take up even more vertical space), and you'd be missing out on any famicom games that use special sound chips like castlevania 3.

short version: buy an av famicom

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no idea what the formula for figuring out your total per day is, but this site has the base bp values for enemies. under each day (１日目, 2日目 etc) you'll find tables for whatever you fight that chapter. with the monster names in english, no less.

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no problem

why are you so curious about the exact science of bp, though?

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well, i'll tell you the game breaks long before your equipment stats cap out. i gave up when i had a shotgun with 800 attack and even the ex round bonus dungeon was a joke long before that point. honestly, i'd say any stat over 500 is overkill; the optional boss might be rough but by that time you should have enough medicine 4 to fill your entire inventory.

advice: dump some points into a nightstick every now and then. after a few playthroughs you'll have one that can bludgeon the museum boss to death and that's way more fun than a 999 pistol with cyanide, triple command, etc.

edit, just for clarity - certainly not trying to tell someone else how up their numbers should go, just saying i came at parasite eve with a yeeaah gonna break this game mindset and later regretted it