Crossbone

Created by: Daniel Olsén
Released: August 2003
Engine: RM2000

It’s got pirates, robots, explosions and an old man who talks to birds! What more could you want? Back in the Gaming Ground Zero days I would occasionally browse the main site. There was no way to know of an upcoming game release or anything, no notifications or popups. You’d just go through your daily sites and hope to see an update. Games weren’t user submitted on GGZ you see, they were often approved and placed by the webmaster. One early morning, I happened across a game called Crossbone with only a couple of sentences and a title screen to go by. That was the thing about GGZ, you never really knew what you were going to get. Yet the games from that site were always a step above most RM games due to the curated nature of the members and the community.

Replaying this for the first time in 15 years, I realize this game still has a lot of heart. While the battles are a bit rough (enemies are sometimes higher HP than they need to be), the sequences are just so imaginatively crafted. A lot of the scenes often take a page out of a Final Fantasy’s idea of comedic relief. Where nameless henchmen have just as much personality as the main characters. A lot of the events play out like a Saturday-morning cartoon with a pint of seriousness. You play as Breeze, an anchor wielding (swords aren’t cool enough for him) freelancer who always has trouble following him wherever he goes. After getting entangled with some pirates he gets knocked out by a wave caused by an unknown being. This spirals into further crazy adventures.

“I was planning to pack so much into that game that it would have been unwieldy. I did learn a lot about being creative within limitations thinking back on it, even if it creeps up on me from time to time. Now my problem is usually the opposite, I tend to over-plan so I end up exhausted before I even begin haha.”
Daniel Olsén

The art is comprised mostly of original art overlayed on an RTP chipset framework. For example you might see the standard RTP ship tilset, but covered in metallic tiles made by the author himself. A lot of the scenes are accompanied by drawings that act as comic book panels of sorts. They give a really good cinematic emphasis in the flashbacks and important segments. I could talk about the individual aspects of this game, but it really comes down to it feeling like an adventure. I think RPGs always have that problem of sometimes starting out with hometown + chores or like fighting rats in a sewer dungeon. Crossbone just says screw that, you’re fighting a robot with an anchor in the first 6 minutes. There’s a sequence where this old man summons a giant owl god thing with a sword to fight this giant bug thing. There’s another section where a ship you’re on gets raided by dragon people using a slime infested coral reef that stops the ship from moving, but like, it can also turn into a mech? AND A UNICORN LOOKING BOAT ALSO TURNS INTO A MECH TO STOP IT.

“The ship battle sequence for Crossbone is made by the creator of Mog’s Adventure, in return I created the maps and such for the final dungeon of that game. A lot of the non-sprite art in the game is embarrassing looking back since I tended to draw the heads before the body so the proportions came out all janky. But it is what it is and every experience is valuable for the future. After Crossbone I went to college, I experience various things and worked as a freelance illustrators for a few years.”
Daniel Olsén

The dungeon in Mog’s Adventure that Daniel worked on

The author Daniel Olsén still works on game projects from time to time. His passion for fiction and art has never faded and mostly does art and comics. It’s easy to see the connection between how bombastic and theatrical Crossbone was and his current artwork. Although that can take a lot of effort and time, sometimes leaving an impression is worth it in the end. It certainly added to the surprise of browsing through RPG Maker games all those years ago.

Check out Daniel Olsén’s portfolio!

Estimated Length : 2 hours or so

Download Here (Archive)
GGZ Archive and History
Youtube Playthrough (Chapter 1)

Legion Saga Zenith

Created by: BusterManZero
Released: June 2003
Engine: RM2000

So what if I told you people not only made fan games in rpgmaker, but people made fan games of rpgmaker games in rpgmaker? Really makes you think doesn’t it? The catalyst for such a project came from the Legion Saga series by a user called Kamau. These were 3 full games made in RPG Maker loosely inspired by Suikoden and other RPGs. What made Legion Saga special was that it was proof that you really could make a “numbered” series with RPG Maker provided you had the motivation and drive to pull it off. The original Legion Saga was going to have a remake made in RPG Maker 2003 (though there’s even another still being made), and there was even a spinoff game featuring a side character that had an ABS. It was everything you’d expect from a “franchise” even having its own lore wiki before wikis were even a thing. Enter in people wanting to make fan games to further expand on this potential universe, 9 of them in fact. Many of them were never finished, but the most prominent was Legion Saga Zenith (Not to be confused with Legion Saga Zero) as it was one of the first.

This is a strange combo of things. At first, the system sets, the Roco facesets, the Luca Blight Battle midis and the political dialogue involving kings and assassins are all there to feel like Legion Saga. Now most common wisdom would say if it looks and quacks like a duck then… but wait – the wide open mapping with no concern for proportions, the constant spelling mistakes, dialogue prose that of a robot… this is a noob RTP game! It may be far from RTP in terms of resources, but the application of everything makes it feel very rudimentary. It’s not to say the actual Legion Saga series doesn’t always have its shortcomings, but there’s just something about the cutscenes in Zenith that feel “off” as if there isn’t any coherence to the narrative.

Important events will just happen and then resolve moments after. Typically a known Legion Saga character will come in to save the day only to leave faster than that. As if these characters were actors with limited billing to do a cameo in a straight to VHS sequel. The writing overall really does sit in the realm of Shattered Samurai. Instead of awkwardly appropriating Asian tropes though, it’s weirdly appropriating itself while collapsing in on the source material. When both the source game and fan game are made in the same engine and only mere years apart, it becomes interesting to separate the standards and differences between the two, a microcosm of fandom vs creator interaction.

“Okay that’s great and all” you interrupt, “but is this game deemed CANON?”

Looking at the handy rules and regulations, you wouldn’t even be considered a fan game if you set the events after Legion Saga 3. But what does it matter at this point? Star Wars is by all accounts being made by fans these days. Just about any long lasting franchise will be recycled into eternity thanks to copyright extensions (Several NES games would be entered in the public domain by now to give you an idea of an alternate history). RPG Maker 2k/3 pre-2013 was a wild west though, the Legion Saga games were made on an illegal program used along with illegally used graphics. There is no real jurisdiction to refer to, nothing was enforced except from the culture of the RM community itself. That’s what I like about the situation of Legion Saga fan-games, they just did not give a shit about the outside world, yet stood by these invisible rules by Kamau’s word anyway. One thing that’s for sure though… is that Space Funeral 2 and 3 are definitely canon.

I have no clue what I’m going to write when I get to like, the 10th Final Fantasy RM fan game…

Download Here (Archive) NOTE: May require RTP 1.8
Download (Queen’s Court Mirror)
RPG Town topic on the state of LS fan games (2003)
Legion Saga Downloads
Youtube Sample Playthrough

Shattered Samurai

Created by: ArCsLnGa StUdIoS
Date Released: January 2003
Engine: RM2000

The late 90s obsession with Japanese culture and anime could be felt throughout many geocities/angelfire fan pages. Often you’d find gifs of SNK Fighters and anime chibi characters without a clue of where the webmaster got them from, other than they probably got it from a similar site themselves. Shattered Samurai is an amalgamation of that all in an RPGMaker game. I recall this topping a lot of download lists on various sites probably because of the title or its liberal use of Rurouni Kenshin images. Regardless, it’s a pretty subpar action game with a story that focuses heavily on the death of the main characters parents (and by heavily I mean literally every NPC references it).

The biggest memory that stuck out to me back when playing it in 2003 was the CMS (Custom Menu System). It was very flashy and elaborate and cumbersome. But the strangest thing is that almost every menu option had a sound effect of (presumably) the author reading them out loud. We can only assume the Kenshin background image are supposed to be the two main characters. The lens flare over anime aesthetic also contributed a lot to a perceived “cool factor” at the time. The ABS combat was sluggish. You could hit enemies if they’re 1 or 2 tiles away making for predictable encounters, but some fights did try to mix it up.

What makes this game a notable time capsule is its ambiguous Japanese setting. The home town is filled with cherry blossom trees, NPCs with conical hats, advice giving ninjas, and kanji scrolls on every wall. Yet main characters will have super western names like Jennifer or Charles, and very modern background elements. Probably the most RM culture part of this game is the house full of characters from other games and media. The writing is sometimes conceited though, often injecting samurai tropes whenever possible and proverbs that come off as wise for the sake of it. There’s a lot of staged conflicts without any particular purpose other than that’s what happens in an anime with lots of swords. It’s a huge misunderstanding of eastern ideals, but the game itself is like lens in which you can see into an anime fan’s mind circa 2002.

Shattered Samurai has been the community proclaimed “asian game”. It seems like the community (mostly gamingw) is seeing it as a bad thing. Guess were all the great RPG ever made come from? Japan maybe? Anyways as an Asian person, I personally loved the storyline about two rival clans. It seems to fit the anime type storyline from many great shows. Although the battle system has its ups and down, I think anyone would be crazy to say that it wasn’t unique and enjoyable. With excellent graphics and a high potential storyline, I just can’t wait for version 2 to come out.
Aznluv’s Review

This game was eventually completed at the tail end of 2002, although there is an earlier demo version and a sequel. Also I’m pretty sure I wrote a review on Dark Dominion claiming it ripped off Rurouni Kenshin and someone commented and defended the game. That’s about all I remember.

Estimated length: 3 Hours

Download (Complete Version)
Download (2002 Demo)

Main website (archive)
GamingW Page (archive)
Dark Dominion Page (archive)
Golden Dragon page and Review + Download Mirror

Youtube Intro Playthrough (No Commentary)
Let’s Play Series by ShadowHawk2012