TNL Game Club Round 7: Conquest of the Crystal Palace

[Yoshi]

I'm going to do something I believe to be unique among the Game Club selections so far: I'm going to pick a game I don't think I have ever played.

As many of you know, I've long held that Yasumi Matsuno is largely responsible for the good examples of the JRPG and SRPG genres. Up until about a month ago, I knew of eight of this games:

• Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (SFC)
• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (SFC)
• Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1)
• Vagrant Story (PS1)
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA)
• Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
• MadWorld (Wii)
• Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)

Recently, a ninth game was added to that list, and it's unlike anything else on it. Unlike the other games, where Matsuno mostly did producing, designing, and supervising, early in his career at Quest he was but a planner on a little known platformer for the Famicom. The game was Matendouji in Japan but renamed Conquest of the Crystal Place when it was published by Asmik on the NES.

It was the subject of one of Joystiq's Virtually Overlooked columns, and it also benefits from music from Masaharu Iwata, who joined Matsuno on several of his projects, including Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Final Fantasy XII. Seems like a potential winner.

edit: This entry will run through April 10.

[bbobb]

Oh man, I loved this game as a kid but completely forgot about it.

I wonder if it holds up at all.

[Low]

Have to say Game Club is pretty awesome. Mercenary was a complete surprise and despite reading about this over two decades ago ($@#* I'm old) this is the first encounter I've had with Crystal. Confuse it with Mendel's Palace for some reason.

[Opaque]

I'm going to do something I believe to be unique among the Game Club selections so far: I'm going to pick a game I don't think I have ever played.

If you mean a game Yoshi has never played, could be. If you mean a game the chooser never plated, I did that the first game.

That being said an NES game is a nice change of pace from what we've got recently, I'll start this up right now.

[Vasteel]

This has been one of my go-to NES games for years now, but I had no idea Matsuno was involved in it. I'm gonna finally finish it over the next few days!

[NeoZeedeater]

Great pick. I'm a long time fan of this. Normally domestically released NES games get plenty of attention but this one still gets overlooked.

[GohanX]

I've never played this or even heard much about it. I just ordered it from half.com, hopefully it gets here before we move on to another game.

[Frogacuda]

This game is cheap as hell. There are so many times where I jump over a gap, just to have some jumping asshole materialize out of mid air and knock me into a pit. It's fairly forgiving as far as how many hits you can take, but it kind of has to be with all the cheese hits.

Worth it just for the music alone, though.

[MechDeus]

This game is cheap as hell. There are so many times where I jump over a gap, just to have some jumping asshole materialize out of mid air and knock me into a pit. It's fairly forgiving as far as how many hits you can take, but it kind of has to be with all the cheese hits.

I can deal with that considering NES action games, but the big problem here is attacking something when you're mid-air makes the character suddenly plummet like a rock. Someone was fucking retarded to make that happen.

[Frogacuda]

You know what game is like this but better? Kenseiden.

Not criticizing the pick Yoshi, it's a game I'm glad I'm giving a second glance to.