Fatal Limits by JPC

 

We're in a the far future: Locke and Richter are two soldiers that have to rescue their friend Laine from the Aegil Corporation. During the prison break they meet the princess Ayame, another prisoner that was kept to get informations about the three Lunar Keystones, items that will unlock a great power... so the four join forces against the evil corporation and their leaders.

 

Fatal Limits is a futuristic rpgmaker game, a demo of an epic techno-fantasy adventure about the confrontation of the rebel heroes with the Aegil Corporation (ehm *not Shinra*) while bumping into a princess who has connections with a very anti-technology civilization. The game is a classic adventure that surprisingly uses a custom side-view battle system despite being made with Rpgmaker 2000, where the characters simply appear in screen to simulate what that would look like.

 

Graphics and mapping are probably the best aspects of this game, after all this was made by JPC, the author of Haze, Daze & Curiousness (HDC), the incredble collection of maps and art that I posted months ago.

 

Download Link

Mirror Link 

Rmarchiv.de 

Rpgmaker Historia 

Random Fact: They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and in fact this game was clearly influenced by FFVII: the evil Aegil Corp logo is a variant of the Shinra logo but in blue, the director looks exactly like Rufus Shinra, and the protagonist is a sort of proto-Cloud Strife that is going to rescue his Aeris from the bad corporation. The battle system was in fact turned from the classic front view of Rpgmaker 2000 battles akin to Dragon Questo to a side view perspective to mimick the original source of inspiration.

 

Final Verdict: a very old game that's still impressive mainly for the futuristic maps. The most impressive part is the city, District 7, at the end of the game: this offers a series of really crowded cyberpunk locations, from conveyor belt sushi restaurants (with real moving conveyor belts!) to shops and nightclubs, all found on a rainy city illuminated by neon anime signs constantly cycling in and out. Impressive for the time, and still good looking now, it really recreates a cyberpunk urban enviroment rarely seen in other similar games.

Haze, Daze & Curiousness (HDC) by JPC

This is a collection of maps, pictures, animations, scenes and musics from JPC, not a real game but rather an interactive showcase of some unused game fragments and locations made by this developer. This project was released in 2005 for a "release something" event. 

 

The game has no real plot, is just the journey of the girl (Alethea) inside an eerie, mysterious world...

Mind that this is unfinished and glitchy, for example avoid entering the Gallery and being arrested ot it will crash. However you can save at any time! When you reach the snowy town after taking the train you'll be at the end of the journey.

 

Download Link

Rmarchiv.de

 

Random Fact: These resources were supposed to be used in a game, Eldritch by Legion. Apparently it was a Lovecraftian-horror type deal set in England in I think the 1960s or 1970s with a sanity system and a heavily customized DBS with guns and reloading, and the latest version of it I remember playing (an unfinished demo) had custom sprites and battle sprites by Ocean's Dream. The game was about two mercenaries named I think Marlowe and Chambers trying to steal an arcane grimoire from a collector in a spooky British neighborhood called Crouch End and running into standard Lovecraftian horror stuff. Some of the resources of the demo of Eldritch were reused in Finding Forever Eden (that I'll probably discuss next week). 

 

 Here's for comparison a screens from the lost Eldritch demo:

 

 

Final Verdict: ok, this is not a game, but let me say that I wish that there are more collections like this one! It surely shows that a lot can be accomplished by those who have creativity and skill! Well done!