Old-school/emulator game of the week: Seiken Densetsu 3

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

I'm playing this classic again. Love the "class change" system where you can go dark or light to get different abilities. Anybody here played it recently?

[Forkboy]

1. That's the old SquareEnix SNES game, isn't it?

Surprisingly I haven't played it, as I tried to play any of the games put out by SE. Hmmm, maybe I'll try to track down the rom and give it a go. I love the old console RPGs.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

2. Coolrom.com has a lot of them

But I'm not going to formally condone the unlawful acquisition of ROMS ;-)

[Forkboy]

5. I don't condone it either.

Nor do I condone downloading ZSnes with which to play those roms we don't condone downloading. :D

[backscatter712]

6. Try DAPHNE and play Dragon's Lair! You can even do it legally!

http://www.daphne-emu.com/site3/index_hi.php

The DAPHNE developers have a deal with Digital Leisure, the company that owns the rights to Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and lots of other old laserdisc games. If you own the DVD version of the games, the DAPHNE code will verify you have the DVD, then download the ROMs and laserdisc images, and get you set up playing the games exactly as they were in the arcade.

Basically, you go to http://www.digitalleisure.com/ and buy the DVD version of Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2, Space Ace or Thayer's Quest (I recommend the 20th Anniversary Special Edition three-pack which has Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2 and Space Ace.) Either the DVD-ROM or DVD-video versions of the games will work - the DVD-ROM will run on a Windows PC, but isn't 100% authentic to the arcade, and the DVD-video version, while it has all the correct animation, and can play in an ordinary DVD player, has lots of annoying pauses in the gameplay, so you really want to run DAPHNE if you want it to be 100% like the arcade.

[Bjorn Against]

3. Great game, one of the best ever in fact. It is a shame that it was never released in the US.

Seiken Densetsu 2, better known in the US as the Secret of Mana was another classic. I really wish they could make another game in the series, without screwing up like they did with the last few games. The series would be a natural fit for the next gen systems with online co-op, but lets hope that if they make another one they do a better job than they did with the last few.

[Karl_Bonner_1982]

4. "Not available for legal purchase in my nation" is probably the best excuse for illegal acquisition

My blessings go out to the team who translated this into a ROM and made it available to English-speaking gamers.

The same logic also holds for out-of-print materials that are hard to find.