>>96100
With the bad parts of the localization out of the way. I think in general they did a great job. Working Designers brought the "collector's edition" stuff over to the West when such things were limited to Japan. I still have the accessories from my copies!
I think they did a great English version of the OP and I still have all the lyrics and their pure glory memorized in my heart.

>>96101
And of course, Lunar and its localization gained immortality on imageboards (or textboards?) with Luna's boat song which you may know as "Shii's Song".
So, what about you? What is something inseparable from who you became?

>>96100
>I'm aging myself a bit with this one
Wait, I mean DATING myself. I forgot to mention that I remember the regular non-boss battles being pretty tedious, so if you decide to play it you may want to find a way to cheat past those. I'm playing the PSP remake (they remade this game like 5 times) and it's quite bad to play through them, although the AI auto-battle isn't too bad.
I will fight through it for Luna!

>>96102
I really liked Link's Awakening, I've probably played through the game 100 times over my life. Partially because it was on the Gameboy so it was portable, but still. I wonder if this is part of why I get drawn more towards tempered or bittersweet stories. You're victorious...but the cost of victory is to give up the dream. That time you spent with Marin by the sea, it's as if it never happened. And even the Nightmares, they're kind of evil I guess, but the older I got the more I started to think that in some ways they're just trying to protect their world.

Really ought to try out the remaster one of these days.

>>96100
I never had a PSX or any of the Sega systems, didn't really get much chance to play any of the "anime" style JRPGs as a kid except for Star Ocean 2.

Art does look kind of familiar in that picture, bottom left looks like she could be from Eva.

I did not have a console as a kid and I lived in the country so I had to leave early to walk to the bus stop and take the bus to school so I missed the Anime that they aired in the mornings like Pokemon.

It's not Otaku related but the history and archaeology documentaries mum used to watch and the Sharpe series of books by Bernard Cornwall had a huge impact on me. Sharpe is about an officer in the British army in the Napoleonic wars.

>>96108
>It's not Otaku related but
Oh, I definitely didn't mean to imply that I wanted the thread to be restricted to Japanese stuff. It can be anything.

Cyberchase. It's just so good at both educating and entertaining. And it taught math instead of copping out with science.

I have a couple.
I know most of you don't like sport, but...
For television, it has to be Bodyline, a show from the 80s my father showed me and it gave me an appreciation for Cricket and is pretty much the only sport I enjoy and the psyche around it.
There's nothing else really like it, especially the Test variety of the game.
Days In The Sun by Neville Cardus is a good book that also illustrates it really well. It's unique as a sport in that writings and games from the early 20th century are still relevant and discussed, aside from more aggressive batting from certain nations the Test game is largely the same.

As for video games,
there's been a couple, OG fallout is probably up there but overall it has to be the Pikmin series, this video illustrates the beauty and meaning of the first game which is really the only one that has a narrative aside from setting up gameplay. I love all three and do skill or speed runs of them often, but the first one is definitely the most thoughtful and has more meaning behind it than most Nintendo game, especially those of that era.
Oh, and I'm not as bad as this guy.

And for anime, it has to be the Gundam series, particularly the early UC. Both 0079 and War In The Pocket, have both made me have deep thoughts about my worldview and current events, feel heavy emotions and gotten me into several 2D genres like mecha and sci-fi. It has also gotten me into several 2D-related communities, like /m/ and model building.
I still am a big science fiction and mecha fan to this day and I watched 0079 in my late teens, it's probably been this biggest 2D influence on my life.

>>96107
>I wonder if this is part of why I get drawn more towards tempered or bittersweet stories. You're victorious...but the cost of victory is to give up the dream. That time you spent with Marin by the sea, it's as if it never happened.

Ah, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean! It seems like the stories we experienced when we were young(er) heavily influence what we seek out and enjoy as adults.
I never did finish Link's Awakening myself, I got stuck somewhere and just couldn't figure things out. It's hard to go back to play because of all the menu navigation needed to switch between items.

>>96108
>the Sharpe series of books by Bernard Cornwall had a huge impact on me
Would you mind going into detail how? Are you very interested in the stories of soldiers and such?

>>96117
>I know most of you don't like sport, but...
While you're right in that I'm not going to watch 5 hours of that, I really want to hear about all sorts of stuff, and /qa/ isn't specifically Japanese stuff or even "nerdy" stuff.
It's cool that you do the 'skill or speed runs' of Pikmin. I've noticed from watching some speedrunning events and channels that lots of games are getting "randomizers" that, well, randomize things. It adds a fresh breath of air that some people really seem to love, but I don't know if Pikmin has anything like that.

>I watched 0079 in my late teens, it's probably been this biggest 2D influence on my life.
That's perfect. It's nice when you can pin things down like that. I don't know if I can say that for Lunar, as I did watch Sailor Moon on TV first and that was hugely influential in what would become my tastes and hobbies.

>>96161
>Would you mind going into detail how? Are you very interested in the stories of soldiers and such?
I guess before then my views on soldiers would have been based on Hollywood movies so it's just people shooting each other, but in these books he is an officer so it gave an insight into the command and tactics side of things, also because it's a book not a movie it explains why things are happening and why people are doing what they are doing for example they go into detail explaining how muskets are loaded and how they are meant to be used and things like that and the character might have a monologue about what mistakes are being made by somebody or what he himself should be doing. Before reading it I had wanted to work with animals when I grew up but after reading to I wanted to be an officer and that was what would drive and define my life. Though it never happened in the end anyway because I got injured playing sport.

>>96119
yeah, GC era was weird, felt like most of the flagship titles were both late to be released and ended up being kind of mediocre entries in the series for the most part. I felt like it was the new titles like Pikmin that kept things going for Nintendo. That video kind of makes me want to play through it again.

>>96161
>I never did finish Link's Awakening myself, I got stuck somewhere and just couldn't figure things out.
Bottle Grotto entrance? It took me something like months to figure out that you have to use magic powder to light the torches. There's absolutely zero indication anywhere in the game to tell you that magic powder lights torches, nor is it intuitive like LttP where you use a lantern to light the torches, which makes sense because it's fire. Heck, LttP even has magic powder as an item which does NOT light torches.

>>96173
It is cool that books give you so many more details like that. Unfortunate about the injury.

>>96100
EVA face brings back those teen feelings

Nice, this thread is still here.
A speedrun thing came up on youtube for Super Mario World and every time I see this game it really awakens some strong memories in me. It's not a game my family had for a couple years so I associated it with my rich uncle and every time we'd visit his lake house I would just play this inside while everyone was outside swimming.
I know the feel of the carpet, the folding ottoman we'd sit on, and the exact position of the TV in relation to the window and kitchen and so on. There's a few other SNES games that I also have strong memories for because of this, like Vegas Stakes, but nothing really compares to Super Mario World for obvious reasons.
It's really bizarre how you can have such a strong memory for something so "useless" to you, as it's certainly not something I'm ever going to need to remember. But, I really can strongly feel that I've gone back to that time just by looking or listening to this. Memory and nostalgia really is a strange thing.

>>107353
It really is funny how well we can recall exact details and scenery when it comes to nostalgic memories. Maybe it's a way of preserving feelings of happiness within us so we can recall them whenever we're feeling down or whatnot.

I was too late for the SNES era, but I have fond memories of my own of going to my cousins because they had an N64 while I only had the playstation. Even though I only went there a few times a year I can still easily remember and map out the layout of their house, especially the game room, in my head. OOT, Mario Kart, Banjo, etc. etched themselves into my skull as I treasured the brief time I had to play through them whenever I was over there. Inspired me to beat them all myself when I eventually got one of my own.

While I was messing with /secret/'s CSS earlier, I was trying to think of why I love slow moving backgrounds so much.
Then I remembered: Kirby's Dream Course. Deep in my subconscious there was a strong memory of the joy I felt playing that game. (if video url time doesn't work it's at 0:27. After looking at this video it's like a bunch of memories hit me at once. I have some pleasant real life memories attached to this game, such as playing with my friend and neighbor. I remember that after a tremendous amount of effort I was able to get the gold medal thing on every course which unlocked more courses in 2 player mode.
Kirby has a truly impressive variety of games, and generally they're just so overwhelmingly cheerful. [insert joke about American Kirby box art here]

i feel like i might be exposing my age as well with these two, though in the opposite way from the OP.
for me, it's specifically Jet Set Radio and Mother 3 that shaped me into the otaku i am now. i genuinely think i would've "grown out of video games" had it not been for those two games. ...and also Sonic the Hedgehog to a maybe lesser extent, but the less said there, the better.
Jet Set Radio in particular blew my middle schooler mind away when i played it for the first time in the summer of 2012 when it got ported to HD consoles; i'd genuinely never seen anything like it. before then, video games to me were either kind of cutesy platformers/arcade games without much story or substance where you'd just get the high score and get to the end of the stage or something, like Sonic or Kirby, or hyperrealistic gritty brown-n-bloom shooters without any story or substance where you called your teammated faggots on voice chat when they cost you the game. it didn't help that i got bullied sometimes for liking video games and many of those times were my own family calling me autistic or something. but Jet Set Radio changed kind of changed how i perceived games; it's graphics and setting really stuck out to me, it's still probably my favorite looking game ever. i love its cel-shading and neon colors, every area is really pretty and works well with the modern 1999 urban japanese setting (as a kid, seeing a place that was based on a real-world location that wasn't on america was also really cool to me. it was familiar yet foreign at the same time. seeing all the ads on billboards and the street signs and all that was really cool to me.) all of this also extends to the character design! i love the way the characters look in this game; their clothing is plain enough to where i could imagine people IRL wearing some of the same stuff, but still striking and colorful enough to be visually appealing in a game. sega's website still sells merchandise for this game that i'm unfortunately continually too poor to buy... also i really wanted to (and still want to) put a baby in Mew, one of the playable girls in this game. Jet Set Radio (and Mother) are the reason why i heavily favor urban fantasy and supernatural stories in fiction now. i still think the setting is underutilized, part of me almost hates how consistently popular medieval/high fantasy stories are, especially when people complain about games/anime as mediums being "too cliche/tropey".
you can't bring up Jet Set Radio (or really, japanese games in general) without mentioning the god-tier soundtrack, which is still one of my favorite soundtracks in all of gaming. i have lots of memories of my mom and dad outright making fun of me and disparaging my taste in music, because according to them, "video game music wasn't real music" (or, rather humorously in my dad's words, "it's white people music". what the fuck is wrong with americans lol). it never made sense to me, because here's Jet Set Radio with rock music! and rap! hip-hop! techno?! as cliche and japanophilic as it may sound, it was better than the trash my parents listened to on the radio. i genuinely thought that i didn't like music, or at least music with lyrics, until i played this game. i have lots of memories of riding home from school on the bus while listening to this game's soundtrack. i also wish more games/anime in general had a soundtrack with a direction like this (without cheating and just using licensed music for everything), i get tired whenever i play a game and the music is just film score noise.
the game's story is absolutely not the deepest thing ever, but as a kid, i was always amazed with any games that had cutscenes and voice acting. the story felt like a saturday morning cartoon. i'm also absolutely a fan of stories where a group of teenagers rebel against society and adults that don't quite get it. Jet Set Radio's story is simple, but cool.
and beyond the game itself, Jet Set Radio also introduced me to a bunch of other stuff that i would've either never given a chance otherwise (like irl skating, drawing, and some bands/music), or other game/anime series in general that i probably would've never found out about had i not asked around on the internet for more games like it. funnily enough, i found out about series like FLCL, Persona, and The World Ends with You through this game. not to mention sega's back catalog of phenomenal dreamcast and saturn games.

>>115597
...and then there's Mother 3, another game that very drastically changed the way i viewed video games, music, and art in general when i played it for the first time in 2014 when i found out how to get GBA games working on my smartphone.
i don't quite know how to phrase this, because these two games are very different games (Mother 3 is a turn based JRPG and Jet Set Radio is a skateboarding arcade game), so obviously there's no really comparing the two, but a lot of the things i like about Jet Set Radio, i also see, and really like, in Mother 3: urban setting (albeit to a much lesser extent, especially when compared to the other 2 Mother games), a very ambitious story and soundtrack given the hardware this game was on, oh and i guess the gameplay was pretty good, a turn-based RPG with slight rhythm mechanics, probably one of my favorite battle systems in a turn-based game, but who cares about gameplay.
the story and soundtrack really stuck out to me when i first played this game. Mother 3's story is infamously surprisingly emotional for a nintendo game (some even call it "dark", but i'm not sure how much i agree with that.) when describing some of the events in this game, it can almost sound like it's trying too hard to be random, but in the context of the game's story, world, writing, and characters, going from killing a bio-mechanical dinosaur to having a bad mushroom trip on a faraway island, to having to pull seven mystical needles to rewrite all of space and time all ties together and works well. i feel like people do the Mother trilogy a disservice when they try to sell how "wAcKy and RANDOM!1!" the series is, because it's really not that weird in context, and the games all have an actual story they want to tell with a point and a message for the player to take away. that said, this game's story was something that amazed me, it was something i couldn't imagine being told in a gameboy advance game from 2006. much like how Jet Set Radio surprised me for a similar reason, Mother 3 (and really, the Mother trilogy in general) has a better story than a lot of movies and books i've seen.
i like Mother 3's soundtrack a lot, though for kind of the opposite reason as to why i like a soundtrack like Jet Set Radio's; obviously you can't fit full songs with lyrics onto a GBA cart, but the composer really did his absolute best with what he had, creating ~300 songs for one GBA game, with music that fits every aspect of this game, from it's more emotional moments, to its most intense, while still managing to keep a contemporary edge to most of the tracks to keep it from sounding too much like "filmscoremusic.mp3" or "videogamemusic.mp3", culminating in another one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time, and all things considered, a really impressive soundtrack for hardware that's infamously crippling when it comes to music.
a lot of my praises here also extend to the other 2 Mother games, and there are even aspects that i adore about Mother 1 and 2 that aren't really present in Mother 3 (Mother 1 in particular has a certain Pollyanna/Alice in Wonderland storybook charm and melancholy unique to it that's very hard to put into words. Mother 3 made me emotional, but Mother 1 actually made me cry, which is strange, since Mother 1 isn't even a very sad game).
there are aspects of all of these games, and Jet Set Radio, that i really like in particular that i feel like tons of other people, especially some indie devs and video essayists, miss the point of really hard, but that's a rant for another time.
>>115595
kirby is a really good series! i could probably write another essay on how much i liked super star ultra...

>>115598
I remember playing Earthbound on an emulator back in uhh... 2003 I think it was. It was a really surreal experience for similar reasons for what you've said about Mother 3 (which I still haven't played...). I was so accustomed to JRPGs being very specific in scope to medieval fantasy and a modern one set in modern not-America with children was a very unique and refreshing experience. It's easy to understand why people still fondly speak of it decades later.
It really was an amazing game both in theme and also gameplay, with the damage roll thing especially being unique.
Dang, what a great game. I wonder why it died out, there was going to be that N64 one but it was cancelled.

Mother 3 was really ahead of its time with its story, if not a bit on the nose with some things. It was a real tearjerker, but also the "twist" was incredibly obvious to the point where they shouldnt have hid it at all or swerved the audience. Some people also found Kumatora annoying, did you?

>>115600
i never found her annoying, though i was really shocked at how abrasive she was when i first played the game.
i'm surprised that some people felt that way, since a complaint i hear about all three games nowadays is that the characters don't speak or react to much of anything.

>>115598
>one of my favorite battle systems
Same. I tend to avoid enemy encounters in other RPGs, but I find that the rhythm aspect together with the catchy music makes them pretty fun in Mother 3. The rolling HP mechanic carried over from 2 is also really nice.
>one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time
Same. I like how it often plays with the same themes in various different styles (https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Fan/Forum/The-MOTHER-3-Soundtrack-Companion/page/1, link contains spoilers), sometimes to great dramatic effect.
Attached is a track from the cancelled N64 version. This theme is present in the GBA game in the tracks labeled under "Delivery" in the chart linked above.
>Mother 1 actually made me cry, which is strange, since Mother 1 isn't even a very sad game
Reminds me of the tagline used in the commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUN7QAnMp0).
「エンディングまで、泣くんじゃない」
¥ No crying until the ending.
So you aren't alone.

>>115599
>Dang, what a great game. I wonder why it died out, there was going to be that N64 one but it was cancelled.
If you mean why the N64 version of Mother 3 was cancelled, it seems like it was because the project was too big in scope and ambition (in part fueled by the craze over 3D) and had been in development for six years, changing platforms multiple times, and continuing its development any further would've taken away resources/energy from higher-priority projects like the GameCube.
source: https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin13/nin13_1.htm
rough translation: https://yomuka.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/earthbound-64-cancellation-interview-itoi-miyamoto-iwata/

If you mean why the series hasn't continued beyond 3, the creator/writer has repeatedly stated that he has no intention of making a sequel. In my opinion, it wouldn't be a Mother game without Itoi, and I imagine many others would agree, including Iwata, the main programmer of 2, who pretty much said as much according to one of the later pages in the source linked above:
「糸井さんにしか書けないものがいっぱい詰まっているものがＭＯＴＨＥＲだ」
¥ Something jam-packed with things only Itoi-san could write is what Mother is.

>>115600
Which "twist"? The mother's death? The Masked Man's identity? The identity of the main antagonist? The backstory that's dumped in chapter 8?

>>115602
People also think she's a shotacon, so that divides opinion even further

I wouldn't call it life-changing or eye-opening but Super Mario 74 was the romhack, no, the source for experiences which captivated me the most during my highschool days. I was just a bit younger than the creator(who made it between HS and college age) and while some levels were tedious, the overall image was bright and positive, there are original level designs like a village where you can explore each house plus sewer system or the desert level with multiple pyramids and towers or a level in a dungeon where you have to use multiple caps simultaenously to get a star. I have a hard time describing what I liked about it but the worlds seemed really fascinating, like all the wing cap levels are gorgeous.
SMB3 is the other grand platformer in my gaming CV, notoriously known for its difficulty but also having more items and easter eggs than all Mario games before and afterwards(at least by proportion), it must have been to the world of gaming what Matrix was to the world of movies(probably not but at least that's my pov). Mario being able to skip worlds, riding boats, getting into a tanuki or frog or hammerbro costume was like a dream where you're free to explore everything as you wish. The worlds are fantastic. The last dozens of levels are plain impossible to beat without savestates, the players must have been really the most agile of their kind back then.

>>115631
kinda me with SMW romhacks instead of SM64
if I picked just one that I could call 'captivating' out of many, it would be The Second Reality Project. that was an early hack that changed levels but not much else, still kept the same overworld, graphics, and music. it was notable for its good level design. it got a remake that gave it a facelift in all of those areas plus a secret world so in my eyes it was the hack that excelled in every aspect. I was obsessed with it in 2008--9.

What media have had the most impact on you throughout your life? The thought came to me after reflecting a fair bit on Akira Toriyama's death and how much I loved Dragon Ball as a kid to the point that it's probably what made me gravitate towards anime in the first place and do sports/exercise when I was in school. Still to this day I crave hot-blooded shounen and badass manly anime as a result of the series that had me glued to the tiny TV had. Getting all sorts of inspiration for imagination and fantasies that drove me as a young boy.

elfen lied gave me my taste for murderous pink haired girls and probably had a hand in shaping my absolutist view on humanity with how good the vindication felt alongside pushing me towards my infatuation with 2d girls

You mean the original Dragon Ball and not Z? I only watched Z as a kid and the original much later on. What date did the original air in your country if so?

As for the question I would say perhaps Evangelion. I probably wouldn't be here today or even have discovered imageboards at all if not for it. I had the opportunity of watching that before it was cool (also during my childhood, I think I was 10 or 11 when I first watched it). I had a thing for Rei and got one of my first bones in that scene where Shinji accidentally falls over on her and grabs her boob. It was definitely what kickstarted my love for 2d girls.

>>121324
It was Z, yeah.

Combining this thread with a pre-existing one of the same subject matter since OP was looking for it

>>121326
Good idea

The first Samurai Warriors game for the PS2 is what first got me into samurai and ninjas and eventually anime. I think what got me so hooked on this game was how exotic it was. I used to live out in the boonies and the only experience I had with Japanese media was through Pokemon and Moomins.

>>96100
>Do you have a game or show or anything else that you experienced when you were younger that has left a permanent impression on you? Not just nostalgia, but you feel as though it altered your way of thinking or what it is you desire.
The novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. The bleak outlook on life stuck with me. I don't mean the central idea of the novel the notion that consciousness is an evolutionary dead end because non-conscious beings are massively more efficient at thinking, it's more the way that every character in his novels is some variety of cynical asshole or another. You would not be surprised to learn after reading his books that he's the kind of guy who says "Life is an eternal struggle at the expense of other life". But it's a cynicism that comes from caring too much for his own good---one of the formative experiences of Peter Watts' life was when he was a boy, seeing some schoolboys torment a snake, and he tried to stop them because he felt bad for the snake, and the other boys ganged up on him for it. Anyway, the worldview articulated in his fiction dropped into me like a paving stone matching a gap in a paved path.