Welcome to holidaygirl1225's media theories and random stuff blog!
So, I finally met the creator of the circle Cat Petterz II mod... (not in person or anything, guys... i'm okay! XP)
He must be an expert developer or something because... he somehow got his hands on the ORIGINAL Dragon Blazers BETA BUILD??? For people who aren't up to speed with the Dragon Blazers restoration project... NO ONE has been able to recover ANY development builds of the game! (at most there are a few screenshots from gaming expos... but it's not the same as playing it! X/)
And some of you may be skeptical at this point... where's the evidence of this ACTUALLY being a beta build?
Sadly, I can't 100% confirm it is, but... everything seen in the beta build screenshots are here! (except the abandoned quiche room... i would've loved to see what it did! XP)
Anyways, on boot up, instead of showing "DRAGON BLAZERS" in that huge orange and black font, it instead said "MANTLE" which according to an old development interview, that was going to be the original title for the game!
Moving on from that... once you recruit Scarf in Dusty Dusty Desert, the game has another big difference. It's a lot more open than usual. Tutorials are gone, and so are the Dry Bushes that Scarf is usually meant to burn down.
This lets you skip the whole recuperating cutscene where he's able to rehone his magic. (would be super nice for speedrunners, but going through the game without fire magic is a struggle! yes, i did decide to challenge myself during this XP)
When you make it to the bottom of the map... where the Mailman usually is, something odd happens. This is when I really questioned if this is a beta build, because... when you walk into his domain to bargain for the Great Sword the game started flashing pink and yellow? Then that circle appeared again... the red one from the Cat Petterz II mod.
After about a minute I was prepared to close the game out, but then I appeared outside the Mailman's domain again. And when I checked my inventory? There it was! The Great Sword! (so... that was weird. but at least i got the weapon, right? XP. and yes, this makes the dealmakers unobtainable. trust me, i tried X/)
With the Great Sword I could actually engage in combat with enemies now...
Which is what I thought would happen when I ran into a yellow imp, but... instead I just got pushed back? Health bars appeared, and I took damage? I was so confused that my fingers fell and pressed every button on my controller! And then Sword slashed with the Great Sword????
Was this REALLY how Dragon Blazers was originally going to be? I wasn't really a fan of it. The battling, I mean. Everything else thus far had been like hot chocolate after a life-or-death snowball fight... (or after having snow shoved down the back of your sweater! >:[ )
Still, I wanted to get through it. The Dragon Blazers community deserves to see what we could've ended up with!
Since there were no actual battles, I could only fight enemies. And that's what I did!
I usually hate fighting enemies in Dragon Blazers, but... seeing as I'd need to get used to the combat here for the upcoming bosses (which i could only pray were in this build!), I familiarized myself.
Alongside the new battle system, there was a new strength system. For people who don't know, in Dragon Blazers, defeating enemies usually just raises your stats. It doesn't have a leveling system like a lot of other JRPGS. But in this build it actually had an EXP bar at the top!
I was curious to see how high of a level I could reach, since in Dragon Blazers, to this day I haven't been able to reach max stats. Weirdly enough though, when you return to an area where you defeated an enemy... they remain gone!
So, there goes max level, right? XP. Either way, I took out all the enemies on the map just in case, and wow! I reached max level! But... I kind of regret doing it? The music cut out to just be what I interpreted as heavy wind. (it's really hard to tell with the bit crushed audio... X/)
Also, Scarf had vanished. He wasn't helping with any of the fights strangely enough, so I didn't think about it too hard.
I roamed around the map for a bit... I figured this was just the end of the build, since there weren't any of the Desert Keys you needed to access the Pharaoh's Temple.
Though, when I made it to the bottom right half of the map... something changed.
There was a new path that opened up? In the full release build of Dragon Blazers, it's normally the only point on the map that has cacti as one of it's screen border walls. (people in the dragon blazers community know it all too well for all the whacky theories people would come up with XP)
There was a whole new screen to the right of it... that led to this miscolored area of the desert. My level dropped from MAX to 3 for whatever reason... and also the music cut back in. I shouldn't have, but... I was curious. Would taking out enemies unlock new parts of the beta? Areas of the game the community has never seen before... and so I continued defeating enemies until I was at the max level again.
The music cut out again, and then some text appeared... it had been the only actual dialogue in the beta so far. "He handed you the Ice Palace Key"
Then the game shut off.
???
Umm... so, yeah XD
I'm tired, so I won't write out too many of my thoughts, but... wow, that was weird.
If any of you have anymore information on any beta builds of Dragon Blazers, or on that circle mod... then PLEASE I implore you, sign my guestbook. First one to gets a free candy cane stamp from me! XP