Have any of you good gog folks tried this RPG bundle from DotEmu?

I am just having a BLAST with this. And it was so easy, even an idiot like me could do it. I just bought them, downloaded them, did the install, and it did the SEGA emulation for me. Then clicked on options, told it to use my USB gamepad (a SNES clone, but I'd bet there are SEGA Genesis USB clones out there too), and it was just so easy.

I never ever owned, nor knew anyone, that owned a Genesis back in the day, and never even saw one to know what they look like. And yeah these games look like they're kid games, and they are, in the same way Zelda was. But these actually have some really decent depth to them, although so far not a lot of choices, but still, these games are old and built for a controller. They're actually quite good IMO. I think anyone that liked the early Zelda games on the NES and SNES would find something to like here.

But dammit if it didn't somehow "lose" my save from last night. And the worst part is, I have no idea how it happened. Saving is a little confusing, in that in game the only way to save is to go to a save point and use one of four slots. BUT, the emulator itself will also save, right at a specific spot out in the open world. And I'm thinking that's what happened, maybe by using both last night, one somehow overwrote the other maybe???

Whatever the hell happened, I was up till 4 AM playing this damn game, made it to level 7, and I guess you could imagine my frustration when I just now brought it up and the only saves showing up are from way back at level 3. Yet I am absolutely, POSITIVELY, 100% certain, I saved it after level 3. In fact, I think I saved it several times after level 3.

Anyone with any experience with these know what might have happened??? I know I'm not getting all that data back, I'm more worried about not repeating it, because I just don't know what the heck happened.

But please folks, if you're okay with such "kid" games for fun, and a good little RPG depth to them, don't let my bad save experience shy you away, these are real charms, and it was most likely 100% my fault for somehow losing my saves. I just wish I knew how so I wouldn't repeat the mistake.

I remember liking Shining Force 2 a lot as a kid. Pretty sure that's the only one in that bundle that I have played, since I never owned a Genesis. I borrowed one for a long weekend and played a lot of Shining Force 2 though.

I wish I could still enjoy JRPGs, but I just can't.

Let me just say that Phantasy Star IV is awesome and still holds very well even up to this day. II+III, not so much.

Damn, I might seriously consider getting this, how hard is it to do a DotEmu account?

Oooh, THANK YOU very much!! That's exciting news, since I'm having a pretty good time with 2. I wouldn't ever mistake it for one of my top 10 all time favorites, but I'm having a good time with it. Now I'm really excited about moving forward in the series after reading this. (Assuming I can figure out my saves problem, THAT will undo any game, no matter how good. Just can't go starting all over every day)

I wasn't insulting them or anything, I just can't play them anymore. Something about growing up killed them for me.

It's hard to know exactly what happened, but here's my guess.

When you do the in-game save, what would normally happen is that the game would write something to a memory chip inside the cartridge, which would be kept powered by a battery. Obviously, this can't happen on an emulator, so instead this gets stored in a file.

The "open world" save is really a save state - the emulator saves the entire state of the console (memory, registers, etc.) to a file. If this is an automatic process, it is likely treated as a temporary resume point that gets deleted once re-loaded

A save state also contains the state of the "normal" save, because that memory chip is mapped to some address in the system. Loading an earlier save state will therefore also overwrite the normal save game.

I don't remember exactly how the Sega emulator works, but most likely one of these things happened:
a) You loaded an old save state by mistake,
b) You have been using a manual save state that you forgot to load
c) You haven't done an in-game save since level 3, and something made the emulator unable to resume from the normal save state (perhaps it wasn't able to make the state in the first place?)

For a) and b), you should be able to recover your progress if you can get the right save state loaded; for c), you're probably out of luck.

I don't recall it being any different from an account anywhere else, you know the drill, register, give 'em an email, then confirm the email by responding to a message is how I think it worked.

One thing though I can't recall if it takes many payment options. I know it takes Paypal, but I can't remember if it takes credit cards or not. That might be an issue for some. I should go check to see if it does take credit cards.

By the way, once you become a member there are about 4 or 5 free games but unlike here at gog, they aren't added automatically to your account. You have to go "buy" them, meaning put them in your cart, and checkout, but the cost is zero. I haven't really looked into any of them yet, but IIRC one of them looked at least mildly interesting.


ADDED: Okay, yes they take credit cards. They take MasterCard, Visa, and American Express, and Paypal. So I think the payment options are a little more limited there than other places (for example no Discover, and none of the other "internet payment functions" like Paypal).

Username, password, e-mail and captcha.

Thanks for the tips! I'm not a big fan of Paypal.

Thank you for this explanation. However, as I said, I am 100% sure that I made several ingame saves after level 3. I only made one (or maybe 2) of the "emulator" saves because it felt like "cheating" since I didn't think that was likely available on the platform the game was made for. But I made one or two just to see how it worked because the manual did include a piece saying one could save anywhere via the emulator.

But I made special trips back to town just to save, several times past level 3. In fact, once I reached a certain level (four or five, not sure) I got a new "technique" (like a skill) that allowed me to teleport back to the save point immediately if I had enough technique points to do so, and I took advantage of that on several occasions last night.

I just can't imagine what happened. Maybe I loaded up the emulator save, and it overwrote the in game saves??? I don't remember doing that, but I may have before falling to sleep. Would that be something that could have happened??

I second Grargar's comment, Phantasy Star IV is much better in that it is not nearly as grind heavy as PS II and the dungeons aren't a pain to navigate. If you find PS II getting on your nerves with that stuff then feel free to skip ahead to IV as the two aren't really heavily connected story wise, though there is one event early on in PS II that IV spoils. PS IV was actually the first one of the series I beat.

Now I will warn you that Phantasy Star III is kinda considered the "black sheep" of the series that had some interesting gameplay, but didn't quite execute it well. Still, I kinda liked it for some odd reason.

I found this thread on Steam. I am not sure how much it can help you:

Saving Issues

Ahh, yes it does, THANK YOU. Basically, that poster is saying one should use one save type or the other, and stick to it. I was planning on doing that anyway by just using the in game saves as was meant originally, but will make sure I do so now.

I kind of thought using both last night probably had something to do with it. Thank you for finding that.+1