NeoGAF

Loved this game as a kid. I remember my brother had an awesome T-shirt that came with it, I wonder if it's still in storage somewhere...

Man, this really takes me back to my childhood. I remember playing this game so much when I was younger.

I'm in this game. :3 (My name is "Seth")

It was the first game I saw that had my name in it. I was pretty pleased. Until, I got eaten by a fish. -.-

I didn't personally play too much of it, but I watched my dad play it a lot. I need to try and play through it all one of these days, I enjoyed what I played and saw.

Originally Posted by Celine

Use a spoiler.


Good, that's what I know.
There aren't two ending then.

The 50 red gem prize isn't worth the effort unless you just like the extra bonus dungeon challenge. The secret boss goes from really difficult to a joke if you know the trick to beat him.

This game, oh this game.
So good, so fond memories I have of it, and dat ending made me really puzzled when I was a kid, felt sad for a while ^^;

I was the only one who played this in my school (to my knowledge) and I never understood why it didn't reach the popularity of Chrono Trigger or Link to the Past. Such a charming and fun game.

I love you forever for creating this thread.

The Blazer Trilogy (Quadrilogy) is one of my favourite series in all of gaming. Illusion of Gaia was the first I played, and remains my preferred title (more so due to nostalgia). I'll always remember, it took me a year to figure out Angel Village. I got so stuck figuring out where to slide for those stupid flames, then I had a revelation. Otherwise, I love the use of historical landmarks and mythology as a basis for levels and enemies. And the music, just fantastic. The slow, mournful pieces will always remain in my mind; they possess a haunting quality atypical and unmatched in the genre.

I really have to give a shout-out to the other titles as well. Soul Blazer is a fantastic game with a lot of heart. The gameplay is quite addicting, especially the city building and levelling aspects, and the story is charming. I will always rue the fact that we didn't get Terranigma. Only years later was I able to experience it, and it is the perfect evolution of the series. I'll still give Gaia the edge due to nostalgia and music, but I can accept the arguement that Terranigma is the superior game.

Lastly, the bastard child, Granstream Saga. Unfairly maligned due to its graphics, it is a worthy spiritual successor to the series. Again, I think I'm biased because I like the thematic aspects. The ending is a true "wtf", and as bleak and depressing as anything. The combat may become slightly stagnant by the end, but I can appreciate the inventiveness.

Dammit, give me a trilogy re-release on physical or digital media. I've spammed Nintendo surveys for years asking for Terranigma.

Dammit, give me Quintet back :(

Originally Posted by BassForever

The 50 red gem prize isn't worth the effort unless you just like the extra bonus dungeon challenge. The secret boss goes from really difficult to a joke if you know the trick to beat him.

What's really fun about the optional boss is that the way to defeat him is the opposite one of another boss in another game (eh eh) ...

I have a weird memory of this game. In high school during computer class, I would play this game with a friend who had already beat it. I remember one of the ways to proceed was to run against a wall in a certain place for several seconds. It just blew my mind how anyone beat this without a guide or help.

Excellent OP! I love Illusion of Gaia and have been waiting forever for the chance to play it again on VC.

Those ancient civilizations. That music. Those ancient aliens!

oh yeah,i've played this game.
didn't like it though :(

Played this with a friend back at the time.
We were less enjoying it because we played this after Secret of Mana (it lack multiplayer) but I personally keep very good memories of it.

I like very much this town music theme you can listen in the OP, as well as the Nico name/character (for some reason) and the whole things about the underwater tunnel, being eaten by a whale etc...

I'm still remembering being mind blown when I found out the sequence of 3x2 rooms where you need to find the difference between the rooms.
Final one is the wind in your hairs and we got stuck for half an hour, going back and forth the rooms and clicking everything even if we were confident it wasn't it...
until I ordered my friend who had the controller at this moment to click the main protagonist hairs without saying I found out it was specifically the wind :)

Holy shit, has it really been 20 years?

A fantastic game and revolutionary for it's time. Plus the shirt was awesome, wish I still had it.

Waiting for my Retron 5 preorder so I can finally play this. The cartridge is waiting on my desk.

Never played it but if nintendo ever decided to bring it to WiiU or 3DS virtual console i'll definitely pick it up.

I think what I most remember about playing this game when I was so young was being slightly disturbed by some characters' deaths, even though I guess in the ending it didn't matter much.

Originally Posted by Celine

Some other JIFs:

Excellent OP ruined

Originally Posted by Ourobolus

I think what I most remember about playing this game when I was so young was being slightly disturbed by some characters' deaths, even though I guess in the ending it didn't matter much.

I think we are thinking about the same death... I mean, even if technically he was a villain, seeing this character being litteraly burned alive before my very eyes disturbed me to no end. Not to mention the one who commits suicide during the poison game.

I really enjoyed this game back in the day. A friend of mine had it and we played it together until we beat it. I wonder if it still holds up today.

Thank you OP for reminding of this game. Good times with it as a kid.

Rented it and played through it in one weekend. I did not like the graphical style but other than that, I don't remember a thing about it.
That video shows it tackled some pretty interesting themes like slavery, gambling and suicide[?] so I would've been too young to appreciate all this.

Originally Posted by KillerDark

I really enjoyed this game back in the day. A friend of mine had it and we played it together until we beat it. I wonder if it still holds up today.

I do a yearly playthrough of this (along with Soul Blazer 1 and Terranigma), Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana 1 and 2, Super Metroid, and a few other SNES classics.

Illusion of Gaia still definitely holds up. It's still fun as hell, the music is fantastic, and the thematic content is still stimulating even after growing up (if not more stimulating, because I understand things now that I didn't as a child). Like "Lol, human trafficking? What's that?" back when I was in elementary school.

Originally Posted by Nohar

I think we are thinking about the same death... I mean, even if technically he was a villain, seeing this character being litteraly burned alive before my very eyes disturbed me to no end. Not to mention the one who commits suicide during the poison game.

Those, and Seth and Hamlet

Only played a small bit of this game upon release and sadly only remember that I didn't enjoy it as much as Soul Blazer. I was knee-deep into Secret of Mana at the time, so a brief weekend rental was about all I was able to dedicate to it. Post-Mana I got into Shining Force, then Breath of Fire, and then FFIII (VI), Earthbound, and Chrono Trigger. Never found my way back to Gaia.

I'd love to give it another run, though. Being a US gamer, I never got to experience Terranigma (a crime) until well beyond the 16bit era, so I feel like I really missed out on two amazing games back then.

RIP Quintet. Truly a creative team over there.

I really need to play this series, as I've heard nothing but good things about it.

Anyway, has Tomoyoshi Miyazaki's disappearance ever been explained, or has he just fallen from the face of the earth?

Originally Posted by KillerDark

I really enjoyed this game back in the day. A friend of mine had it and we played it together until we beat it. I wonder if it still holds up today.

I think so. Sprite graphics have a certain charm that doesn't diminish over time. Also the music was pretty awesome. I played through it a few years ago and enjoyed it very much. Still can't beat the boss in the bonus dungeon. One day...

I absolutely adored this game as a kid - I think I still might have the promo t-shirt tucked away somewhere too! haha

I still have my original cart, but I would definitely double-dip if/when it gets released on Wii U's VC!

Such a great game. EU/US manual had such a good art.. I reme,ber it being quite thick and you had a separate list of all/most enemies on a different poster... ahh those were the days.

Hmm, I haven't played other games from the SoulBlazer series... I should really finish Terraenigma...

Originally Posted by TheChaos0

Such a great game. EU/US manual had such a good art.. I reme,ber it being quite thick and you had a separate list of all/most enemies on a different poster... ahh those were the days.

Hmm, I haven't played other games from the SoulBlazer series... I should really finish Terraenigma...

Yes. Yes you should. But I will say that Illusion of Gaia is my favorite of the series.

Originally Posted by monlo

so, yea, my memory was wrong. There's an alt dungeon... but I swear I though there was an alt ending too

Spoiler relating to getting all the gems:

The alt dungeon reveals a subplot throughout the game about slavery, so it kind of is another ending. If you don't get all the gems, this problem goes unsolved in the storyline.

Just played this a few months ago and it totally holds up. It was one of my favorites as a kid and it still is now. Wonderful, wonderful game. It, and the rest of the Quintet games need to come out on the Virtual Console. More people need to play these great games.

Originally Posted by Elvick

I'm in this game. :3 (My name is "Seth")

It was the first game I saw that had my name in it. I was pretty pleased. Until, I got eaten by a fish. -.-

I didn't personally play too much of it, but I watched my dad play it a lot. I need to try and play through it all one of these days, I enjoyed what I played and saw.

Ever play Phantasy Star 4?

Mhhhmmm, wonderful OP! Loved the game so much, especially the light-hearted settings at the beginning and the lovely music. I play the first few hours every once in a while on occasion.

Originally Posted by thomaser

The Angkor Wat area really fired up my imagination when I first played it. Became obsessed with the real Angkor Wat afterwards.

This is all I really remember from this game but the memory of it has always been off an excellent title, with this town as a particular highlight. Is this in Wii VC at least?

Ahh, the good old days of Quintet and their brilliant Action RPGs. From Legacy of the Wizard (back when they were still a part of Nihon Falcom) to the Quadrilogy, these were the only developers who could rival the Zelda series in the genre. I think my favorite part of Illusion of Gaia was the chapter with the Nazca Lines; such a brilliant blend of history and mythology. Brilliant OP, too.

Originally Posted by Alric

Never played it but if nintendo ever decided to bring it to WiiU or 3DS virtual console i'll definitely pick it up.

You might wanna talk to Square Enix about that, not Nintendo.

Great OP.

Illusions of Gaia is among my top ten SNES games, and my personal favorite of the Quintet games. People often say Tarranigma is a better game, but after playing it twice in more recent years, I don't see it. IoG is simply a much tighter and polished game. It might be the most linear of the Quintet games, but it works far more to the game's benefit than the backtracking filled dungeons in Soul Blazer and Terranigma. IoG's pacing is much better as well and doesn't have the obnoxious difficulty spikes in Terranigma (I'm looking at you, Bloody Mary). Illusions of Gaia is challenging but not filled with the nightmarish level designs you encounter in Terranigma's Louran and Norfest Forest.

I also appreciated that IoG tried to do more things with its story. Terrangima's story isn't bad, but it feels like a Saturday-morning cartoon mixed with religious themes (the annoying side-kick doesn't help). As others have already mentioned, IoG tackles much darker themes like slavery, suicide, and sacrifice. Its use of historical locations as a backdrop for its level design and story is brilliant, and IMHO unmatched by any other game. Although IoG makes no pretensions of being historically accurate, the way it explores various civilizations is oddly perceptive. One of my favorite parts, is when you finally find the Incan gold ship, the last remnant of that particular culture. At one point, you witness the full splendor of the Incas, but the next day everyone on the ship is dead, and a society that existed for hundreds of years is gone. IoG structure and level design hauntingly depicts the rise and fall of these civilizations. Terranigma also uses vaguely real-world locations, but it's not nearly as insightful.

The art and music is far more subjective, so I would say both have their strengths. IoG seems like a much more colorful game, whereas Terranigma is fond of using brown and blue. Terranigma's soundtrack is superior at many points but not as consistently good as IoG. There are many tracks in IoG that just ooze atmosphere like "Sign of the Past," and many of the dungeon themes are simply epic.

IoG is a great and extremely underrated game. I urge people who want to experience the best the SNES has to offer to play it.

The only thing that nagged me about the game is Seth. I thought for sure that you would fight the fish that ate him, especially since he contacts you later in the game.

Fantastic OP.

This and Terranigma had some great tunes going for them

Good work, OP !!!!

Kara with his pig reminds me of Breath Fire II Mina Wyndia with Suzy :).

Waiting for a Breath of Fire Thread.

Many thanks for highlighting!

Playing through this and Soul Blazer back in the day, still holds up as some of my best gaming memories ever.

First game I remember being disappointed with!

... Which clearly paled in comparison to later games I got disappointed with given that it left a lasting impact in my memory, I only didn't beat it because I got stuck on the final boss, and it was mostly over how backtracking wasn't possible until a certain point in the game, man imagine if my younger self was told that Final Fantasy would end up in the same place! Wanna get back to this sometime.