@Play: Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon Finally Localized Into English

‘@Play‘ is a frequently-appearing column which discusses the history, present, and future of the roguelike dungeon exploring genre.

Due to other things going on I haven’t done a recap of the recent Nintendo Directs, but there was one thing mentioned that was extremely relevant to this blog: at long last, Square Enix has released a localization of the first Mystery Dungeon game into English. Here’s a trailer. (2 minutes)

I’ve represented this game before as Taloon’s Great Adventure, and it’s long had a fan translation. Now it has an official way to play it, though it seems like Spike Chunsoft had nothing to do with this recreation. The play seems mechanically very similar to the original, just with much sharper graphics. The characters and monsters are still represented using the original 2D pixel art, just presented in 3D dungeons.

There are a few modern Mystery Dungeon niceties, like a bar showing progress towards the next experience level and an on-screen display for fullness, but other than that, and the graphics, and the names localized according to current Dragon Quest sensibilities (lots of onomatopoeia and puns), it’s presented as it was originally released back on the Super Famicom, only now there’s an option for English. (Japanese is still offered as a language option.)

While a surprising amount of Torneko 1 persists even into the most recent Mystery Dungeon game, Shiren 6, there were some minor rule changes that will catch players who haven’t played the earliest game:

• Equipping arrows uses a turn, even though it’s mostly a user interface help, for there is no play difference between using L to fire one or going into the menu to launch it.
• In more recent Mystery Dungeon games it is impossible for traps or pregenerated sleeping monsters to block the ways into rooms, but I’ve seen it happen three times here.
• Torneko 1 is the only Mystery Dungeon game to use Rogue’s idea that, you’re going down into the dungeon to get an item, and once you get it you have to come back out again, through all the levels, the monsters getting easier as you go but no items generating on the way back up. All the later games just have you progress through the dungeon to the goal.
• On changes I approve of, monsters are more likely to choose directions other than straight ahead in dark intersections, and character healing is much more in line with Rogue than in recent Shirens: it starts slow and increases as you gain levels, instead of starting fast, but decreasing in effect relative to your maximum HP as that goes up.

I always say that the first Torneko Mystery Dungeon game is a lot like Rogue, and the first Shiren is quite a bit like Hack. Well, Torneko is more like Rogue than Shiren’s like Hack. Many monsters have direct analogues. Drackys are much like Rogue’s Bats, Muddy Hands are like Venus Fly Traps, Mimics are similar in both games (some versions of Rogue call them Xerocs), Funghouls are similar to Rattlesnakes and Walking Corpses degrade shields similarly to Aquators degrading armor. And of course Torneko’s Green Dragons are like Rogue’s ordinary Dragons.

Torneko 1 is most interesting to play if you’re entirely new to the Mystery Dungeon series. Lots of great monsters and items would come in later games, but they’re all absent here. There are no dungeon shops, no pots/jars at all, no monster promotions (though they can gain levels), and no allies, dungeon NPCs or bosses.

The intended progression of Torneko’s Mystery Dungeon is to complete a “Minor Mystery Dungeon,” which teaches the basics. It can be pretty difficult for newbies, even though it’s just 10 levels.

After that’s over, you’re expected to play the normal Mystery Dungeon many times, dying often, but the money you earn going to increasing the size of your shop and the town around it, which adds more amenities to them and more conversations with NPCs there, who go on about their whimsical JRPG lives, engaging in their own petty adventures and dropping more hints to playing the dungeon.

There’s many of these shop upgrades you can earn, but if you know what you’re doing, if you’re experienced at playing Roguelikes in general and Torneko in particular, you can complete the main Mystery Dungeon quest quickly, even on your first try. The ending was written expecting you to have fully developed your shop by this point, so if you win before that point, when Torneko returns to town it’ll be instantly advanced to nearly its ultimate state, and characters you’ve never met will congratulate you on finishing the quest as if they were your oldest friends. All this was true of the original game too, and it was just as jarring there.

As a typical with Mystery Dungeon games, the main quest is not the biggest challenge. There awaits a bigger task, with more kinds of items and full item identification and that disallows taking items in with you, called the Major Mystery Dungeon. And both the normal and Major dungeons have 99 levels, so if you choose you can explore down to the bottom of both of them.

I should warn you about a problem that has caused great frustration in my experiences with this remake. Mystery Dungeon games let you hold the R button to constrain movement to diagonals. This is necessary because it is really difficult to press two directions on the control pad at once in a single frame. This Torneko remake has this feature, but by default it takes a half-second to kick in. This version plays more slowly than most MD titles, with enforced pauses after actions to make sure the player sees that the monsters don’t act simultaneously with you, that they take their turns after yours. This will make experienced players, like me, try to rush through, and that will result in them making unintended moves when the R button doesn’t kick in instantly, as it does in every other Mystery Dungeon game. This has directly caused me to lose at least two runs, and I hate it.

On top of that, probably the worst thing about this game, is its price: $25 for a glowed-up Super Famicom game. You can get its great-great-great-plus-several-more-greats-grandchild Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (Switch, Steam), for five dollars less, before any discounts, and at this moment on Steam it’s only four dollars! All the Shiren games are much deeper games, loaded with extra content and bonus dungeons. The recently-made Shiren 6 for $36/$40 (Steam currently half off, Switch) is a pretty good version.

I note that the credits to this game have a section for AI content. I don’t think that necessarily means it was used to make this game. On one hand, it would explain that concerning problem with the R button, and a couple of other UI problems. But on the other hand the credits are very long, and seem like they must list every employee at Square Enix. So I don’t know if they used it, but if they do then that’s despicable, and if they did it in order to avoid hiring Spike Chunsoft to port the game they made then that would be extra despicable, and then to charge so much for it on top of that. But I don’t know if is true at this point, so I won’t pass judgement… yet. It might explain the R button problem, and a couple of other weird sloppy bits I’ve noticed.

There is a charm to Torneko, and there are some changes in the later Chunsoft Mystery Dungeons that I don’t approve of, but it’s obvious that Square Enix made it mostly for the nostalgia money. It still makes for a good introduction, but you might want to wait until it goes on sale unless you’re desperate to have it.

But yeah, I was desperate.

What follows is my obsessive notes on this version, largely unedited, in case you’re desperate too.

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Some differences from the original:

• The game plays more slowly, with an enforced pause between player and monster turns
• Torneko doesn’t automatically turn to face attackers when struck
• The ‘R’ button doesn’t immediately constrain diagonals, it takes about a half second for it to activate, longer if there’s a message box on the screen (changing the setting “Lock Movement to Diagonal” to Either in Game Settings corrects this, but is annoying in other ways)
• You can change game balance options to customize your runs, although it might make run ineligible for high scores and achievements
• Items don’t have descriptions in their item menu like basically every other Mystery Dungeon game, including, I notice, the original. Instead, to find out an items function (provided that it’s identified), you press ZL while selecting it.
• In addition to the classic B+A button combination to pass turns in place, ZR also does it
• The game lets you retry a dungeon immediately after failing it, with a Large Loaf in your inventory
• Land mines destroy nearby items, which I don’t think happened until later Shiren games
• The options for naming items include a “guess” option that lets you pick from items discovered in all past runs, although it doesn’t seem to actually name the item, it just checks it off of a list
• In the Play Records menu in the dungeon, there are a number of interesting lists, including all the items and monsters you’ve found among all your runs.

Things it’s useful to know:

• Equipping arrows uses a turn, which is not common in Mystery Dungeon games
• High score tables return, a fun but largely unnecessary feature
• Misses are much more common, from both you and monsters, than in recent Shiren games, don’t be surprised if you miss four times in a row once in a while
• Herbs don’t give you any fullness
• Enemies gain experience and can gain levels, but don’t promote into new species as in Shiren
• Some general advice: Ledgerdemen (a.k.a. Magicians) can easily end your adventure at DL2.

Some other points of interest:

• This remake borrows the minus-charges convention from recent Sirens, for use of unidentified wands; if you use an unknown wand, it’ll say it’s “-1,” or minus-one, but this is just to remind you how often it’s been used
• It also displays Fullness on the display, and an experience progress bar
• The game makes you escape the dungeon after collecting a goal item; carrying the goal item turns off hunger, as it did in Rogue when you found the Amulet of Yendor (and were wearing no rings)
• No pots or dungeon shops in this game
• Food items eaten at full do not increase maximum fullness
• Traps can be generated in room doorways, unlike more recent MD games.

A list of enemy properties:

• SLIME: weak
• DRACKY: weak, may move randomly
• MAULUSC: weak
• GHOST: moves fast
• PLATYPUNK: average
• DROOLING GHOUL: divides sometimes when attacked
• FUNGHOUL: may caused poisoning
• BODKIN ARCHER: fires arrows
• LEGERDEMAN: can put you to sleep, always generates asleep, hard to awaken
• MUMMY BOY: strong
• BAG O’ LAUGHS: steals money, leaves money if defeated, may warp away when attacked
• IMP: Steals an item
• RESTLESS ARMOUR: high defense
• WALKING CORPSE: rusts shield
• LUMP SHAMAN: may teleport player away
• POWIE WOWIE: generates in groups of four, moves and attacks fast, whole group wakes up when one does
• LIVING STATUE: looks like dungeon feature statues, remains inert until you approach it, strong
• ROCKBOMB: stops moving and attacking when low on HP, may explode if then reduced in health without killing it (10 HP left), reducing a nearby player to 1 HP (explosion range 2 spaces in all directions)
• MUD MANNEQUIN: may perform a weird dance that drains a level
• MUDDY HAND: may grab Torneko and prevent escaping
• GOLEM: strong
• MIMIC: looks like an item until awakened
• GIGANTES: strong
• FLOAT-O-COPIER: weak, looks like another kind of enemy but doesn’t have its properties or strength
• POCUS POPPET: can reduce player maximum strength by 1, or maximum HP by 5
• SILVAPITHICUS: fast to move and act
• WINKY: can mess with player controls, can affect from anywhere in sight
• ARCHDEMON: strong
• SHADOW: invisible, may move randomly; if you try to move into a space but can’t for some reason, it’s because a Shadow is in the way
• GREEN DRAGON: strongest monster, may breathe fire, worth 3,000 XP

A few items:

• PEEP SCROLL: this game’s name for the famous Scroll of Identify
• SUSTAINING RING: Torneko doesn’t get hungry!
• MOD ROD: Transforms target into another monster
• PROFITIER RING: sells for a lot, that’s all, no other effect
• SANCTUARY SCROLL: prevents adjacent monsters from attacking in melee
• SNOOZE WAND: puts target to sleep
• EVAC SCROLL: escapes the dungeon
• CHEST OF CHEER: Your objective

Some items that appear, unidentified at first, in the Major Mystery Dungeon:

• SANDS OF TIME SCROLL: resets the dungeon level (including your stats, inventory and level) to the state it was in when you first entered it
• WANDERFUL SCROLL: asks you to pick an item like the Peep Scroll does, but charges a wand
• BREAD SCROLL: asks you to pick an item like the Peep and Wanderful Scrolls do, but turns the selected item into a Large Loaf
• COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO RING: doesn’t keep you awake as you may expect it to do, instead monsters wake up when you enter or leave a room.
• GOBSTOPPIBG SCROLL: player cannot use their mouth, meaning, no eating food or herbs or reading scrolls
• REVEALING RING: Shows invisible things
• SAFETY RING: Prevents being caught in traps