Home on the RNG

It was Russ' turn to pick a non-jRPG to play, and he picked the SNES "classic" Clock Tower, which was never officially released in America. Come join us in a trip to a randomly generated horror house with a scissor man.

Mother, officially known outside of Japan as EarthBound Beginnings, is a role-playing video game developed by Ape and published by Nintendo for the Famicom. The first entry in the Mother series, it was first released in Japan on July 27, 1989. It is modeled on the gameplay of the Dragon Quest series, but is set in the late 20th-century United States, unlike its fantasy genre contemporaries. Mother follows the young Ninten as he uses his great-grandfather's studies on psychic powers to fight hostile, formerly inanimate objects and other enemies. The game uses random encounters to enter a menu-based, first-person perspective battle system.

 Writer and director Shigesato Itoi pitched Mother's concept to Shigeru Miyamoto while visiting Nintendo's headquarters for other business. Though Miyamoto rejected the proposal at first, he eventually gave Itoi a development team. A North American version of the game was localized into English, but was abandoned as commercially nonviable. A copy of this prototype was later found and circulated on the Internet under the informal title EarthBound Zero. The game was eventually released worldwide under the name EarthBound Beginnings for the Wii U Virtual Console in June 2015.

It's going to be a little while before we do official reviews of the games in the Persona series, so we wanted to take a moment to talk about the series as a whole.

Lunar: The Silver Star (ルナ ザ・シルバースター, Runa Za Shirubā Sutā) is a role-playing video game developed by Game Arts and Studio Alex for the Sega/Mega-CD, originally published by Game Arts and released in Japan in 1992. After a successful release, the game was translated and localized by Working Designs for release in North America the following year.

Designed as a "different kind of RPG", Lunar: The Silver Star made use of the up-and-coming CD-ROM format by featuring high quality audio, full motion video, and voice acting to narrate a fantasy story set in a magical world. The game centers on the exploits of Alex, a young boy from a small town who dreams of one day becoming a great hero like his idol, Dragonmaster Dyne. When a childish adventure later turns to discovering an ancient dragon, Alex and his friends must journey across the world to gather the necessary power to become the next Dragonmaster, and save the world in the process.

This is a fairly normal out-take of what it's like trying to film an episode of Home on the RNG with Russ. He usually takes a little while to warm up.

Phantasy Star is a role-playing video game (RPG) developed by Sega and released for the Master System in 1987. One of the earliest Japanese RPGs for consoles, Phantasy Star tells the story of Alis on her journey to defeat the evil ruler of her star system, King Lassic, after her brother dies at his hands. She traverses between planets, gathering a party of fighters and collecting the items she needs to avenge her brother's death and return peace to the star system. The gameplay features traditional Japanese RPG elements including random encounters and experience points. All the characters have predefined personalities and abilities, a unique element compared to the customizable characters of other RPGs of the era.

Story time with Jeff and Russ, this time they talk about the night they camped out overnight in order to buy a Wii.

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals, known as Estpolis Denki II (エストポリス伝記II, officially translated Biography of Estpolis II) in Japan, and as Lufia in Europe and Australia, is a role-playing video game with puzzle elements developed by Neverland and published in Japan in 1995 by Taito, and in North America and Europe in 1996 by Natsume and Nintendo respectively, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Jeff wanted to introduce Russ to something new. So Jeff and Russ are going to review the SNES game Lost Vikings 2, which was later remade as Lost Vikings: Norse by Norsewest.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is a role-playing video game (RPG) developed by Square and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996. It was directed by Yoshihiko Maekawa and Chihiro Fujioka and produced by Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Yoko Shimomura composed the score, which was released on a soundtrack album in Japan.