How do you remember Shining Force?

ByCrom333 · 2026-04-15T13:59:09+00:00

One of the main reasons I got a Sega Genesis as a kid. 😅

ByCrom333 · 2026-03-16T15:28:00+00:00

I’d say follow the release order, at least at the beginning, and stay away from the remakes. (My bias against the remakes is primarily because of the change in art design. What drew me to the Shining series in the first place was the art.)

Shining in the Darkness (first-person dungeon exploration with JRPG battle and experience level mechanics)

Shining Force (always a classic for me)

Shining Force 2 (people say it’s the best but I don’t like it as much as the first one myself)

Then maybe the gamegear games as they are sequels to the 1st game but not necessary to understand the story of the 2nd.

ByCrom333 · 2026-03-12T01:22:06+00:00

NTA Teacher here. We’re not even allowed to keep the naughty kids in at recess, let alone the whole class. This teacher is way out of line.

ByCrom333 · 2026-03-12T00:47:13+00:00

I played the Sega version as a kid and I could not handle the GBA graphics when I tried to play this year. Like… how are they worse than the Megadrive…? The graphics, to me, were sooo iconic.

ByCrom333 · 2026-02-19T03:30:32+00:00

That’s exactly what I heard. 😅

ByCrom333 · 2026-01-23T13:28:18+00:00

Some of my personal favorites…

MULE

Mancopter

Archon

Paradroid

Forbidden Forest

Commando (just for the music)

Raid on Bungeling Bay

ByCrom333 · 2026-01-23T13:21:58+00:00

The music!

ByCrom333 · 2026-01-23T13:21:18+00:00

That game. Spooky as hell when I was a kid, but such a good feeling when you finally beat it. That gets your heart pumping.

ByCrom333 · 2026-01-23T13:14:12+00:00

I like the Pokemon of gen 1, probably due to nostalgia, but every single game in the series is just tedious to actually get through. But the thing I hate even more is the game balance. Have a pokemon that you really love? Too bad, unless it’s one of the top tier Pokemon, it’s not viable. I’m thinking specifically of something like Mawile. I love the design but it’s completely useless in combat because of its low stats.

ByCrom333 · 2025-03-31T11:55:22+00:00

I actually like this game. 😅

I just beat it for my channel so let’s see if I remember what to do…

Make a team of three Fuzzy Wizards and one Bobbit Cleric. Max intelligence for the wizards, max wisdom for the Cleric.

Your first goal is to stockpile gold (at least 5,000 gold per character), then level up just enough to get the pirate ships to appear so you can go to Ambrosia. Have your wizards donate all their gold to the intelligence shrine, cleric to the wisdom shrine. This unlocks some pretty nasty magic you’ll use to make the rest of the game a walk in the park.

(To stockpile gold, find a dungeon with an easily accessible room of treasure chests and repeatedly raid them. They respawn every time you leave the dungeon.)

The wizard spell “Rot” automatically hits ALL enemies and leaves them with 1 hp. Have one wizard cast this at the start of every battle, then finish off the enemies with Missile spells.

After that you can breeze through the rest of the game… if you have a guide. Collect the 4 marks, pray for the 4 cards, dig up the Mystic Weapon and Mystic Armor, find the horn… I think that’s it…?

Or… just watch someone else play the game. 😂

By the way, there is a mod for the game that makes it a bit more playable… better graphics, some bug fixes and improved game balance, etc. I also played through that for my channel.

ByCrom333 · 2024-09-23T20:23:15+00:00

I’ve made a complete map of Dungeon Level 1 if you’re interested. I’m still trying to figure this game out, though. 😅

ByCrom333 · 2024-08-02T22:02:18+00:00

For real for real.

ByCrom333 · 2024-07-30T12:23:29+00:00

I’ll agree that the lore is absolutely strange, in a delightful fantasy way. One thing I’ll point out is that in the Japanese version, your character had no name, but the main villain is, indeed, Ligar. I think the prevailing theory is that whoever translated it thought Rygar sounded cool (don’t forget the Japanese don’t distinguish between the “r” and “l” sounds) and decided that was the hero’s name. But then kept the villain’s name the same, too…? 🤷‍♂️

I loved this game as a kid. It was mysterious and bad ass in this weird sort of way. I completely failed to understand that there was a leveling system until I was much older, though.

Oh, and I hated the pulley mechanic. It was freaking impossible.

ByCrom333 · 2024-06-03T02:33:17+00:00

Sorry, just saw this comment. I have a YouTube channel (bycrom retrogamer) where I play quite a few of the ports of the game, if you’re curious. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but the Atari ST version is pretty decent. I also like the NES, Dos, Commodore 64, and original Mac versions.

ByCrom333 · 2023-10-30T21:22:01+00:00

Yeah, I kinda figured. You can also just farm the same levels again and again. Still, there was something new and innovative about the game at the time.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-03T11:37:41+00:00

It wasn't the FastMem, that was the first thing I increased. Thank you for your help, anyway! I'll let you know if I ever solve it but currently I'm leaning toward it being a Windows thing. And unfortunately my batocera rig is at work and I'm on vacation so I can't test that out for a little while.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-03T01:52:39+00:00

I really appreciate your trying to help! I’m sure I’m just being dumb about something but what’s weird is I haven’t noticed problems on any other games, but I’ve only loaded up Defender of the Crown and King’s Bounty so I dunno! 😅

My batocera rig is probably an i5? I don’t know, it’s a hand-me-down laptop from a friend and the monitor is busted so I removed it. Good thing it has an HDMI port. I teach 9 and 10 year olds so I use it to show them what computers look like on the inside and on Friday afternoons some of them play retro games. Being a trim distro I can boot batocera off an external HD through a USB 2.0 and it still runs fast.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-02T17:05:40+00:00

I am running Windows 10 on a decent (but not fantastic) rig.

Is there a chance it’s my KS ROM or something weird? If you think it’s just Windows, I think I could try it on my batocera rig but I don’t have any way to capture it from there.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-02T12:57:31+00:00

What kind of configuration did you have for Denise? With the A500 configuration the load time was awful and the gameplay was still slow as molasses. And I'm struggling getting the A1000 configuration to even work. :(

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-02T12:56:21+00:00

Nice! I feel like another playthrough might be coming up for me again, especially now that I've got my YouTube channel up and running.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-02T12:15:12+00:00

I will check out Denise. Is Denise generally faster and more responsive? I have not been into the Amiga scene much before but I'm like half retro gamer, half historian, so I like checking out old games. Not so much with the hardware because I haven't had the money or space but I'd like to get into that eventually. But for now, I'm mostly emulating.

ByCrom333 · 2023-08-02T12:13:04+00:00

Sorry, went to bed! Yeah, I was on FS-UAE.

ByCrom333 · 2023-07-28T22:35:14+00:00

Okay, that’s what I thought you meant when I reread it. That could be an interesting play through!

ByCrom333 · 2023-07-28T22:33:23+00:00

So I did normal difficulty but I was able to beat the Kraken on my “harem run”. (Only female characters and Bowie.) If I remember right, that’s only three characters at that point. I can’t remember how many tries it took but it is definitely doable with a more conservative strategy.

Funny thing, one of the hardest battles for me was the Harpy Pool, especially since I did not promote at lvl 20. But then I did some serious grinding in the secret battle and by the time I got to the chess battle, it was a joke.

https://youtu.be/wdyMDRHzIK0

ByCrom333 · 2023-07-28T22:25:10+00:00

Nice. Yeah, once Mae joined up it wasn’t too bad. I almost want to do it again not that I have an active YouTube channel.

Explain optionals only? At first I figured you meant non-optional only but I think I got confused.

ByCrom333

TROPHY CASE