Zoids VS III

[chris514]

I have been looking to try and find the best Zoids game for my personal tastes, and have come to determine that, of all the Zoids games I have learned about, Zoids VS III looks to be the best bet.

It has some decent arcade style gameplay, which looks to be as close to what I was looking for as it is going to get, and has more features than the rest of the VS series. Primarily being the only one which includes the ability for flying Zoids like the Pteras to actually fly.

It being a Japanese only release does not dissuade me from it, but does leave me with some questions:

I have both a GameCube and Wii, but both are North American models so what would be the easiest/cheapest method for me to play an imported GameCube game?

Also what kind of price range should I be looking to pay for the game in "like new" or comparable condition?

[Hanyoutai]

There's one on Ebay right now that includes Zoids VS II and III for $40. That seems typical-ish. It ranges from $30-$60.

To play on the gamecube you'll need a Freeloader disc. These are about $22 and the most cost effective way. You just put the disc in, wait for it to load, then swap in the game disc. Don't be frightened about it being defective if it doesn't work the first time, sometimes these things are glitchy and take a couple tries. (This goes for all the other ones like Swap Magic, Breaker Pro, etc.) After it loads you can play the game normally, though.

[Vig]

Might I also add you should use a separate memory card for this game. It will ask you to format the card and when it does it apparently formats it to Japanese, if you switch the memory card to a non-Japanese game it will be re-formatted for that language and all previous data erased. It happened to me some years ago and I was devastated.

[lordofdragons]

I would use an emulator (and the NGC controller on the PC if this is what you want). The game runs quite well on modern hardware and you do not have to worry about broken memory cards or region problems. Obviously this only works with the NGC version. Wii emulation requires quite the more potent hardware and without connecting an actual wiimote to the computer many games are hard to play. That said I don't see any advantage of using a wiimote on that game.

[Hanyoutai]

With 8 GB and a decent quad processor VS III still had a lot of lag for me on PC. I guess it's easy enough to get a 16GB machine nowadays but it's something to consider if your PC/Laptop/Whatever isn't already up to those specs. It's more than playable, but not lag free.

For PC play I also strongly recommend a USB adapter for your GC controller. One of VS III best features is flight, which is just annoying on the PC. You have to hold 3 buttons for flight (altitude, direction, and the support-equip button). That's not counting targeting and shooting. This is kind of second nature on the controller, and very easy to do since the top buttons are more like just 'holding' the controller, but on a keyboard it's clunky and kind of obnoxious. To me, at least, it took the fun out of using it.

(I'm totally not just saying that because I like to flutter around the Whale King level, and if you accidentally let up on the support equip button for /even a second/ you die)


Disclaimer: Liger Zero X cannot fly. Don't try this at home.

[Vig]

Feb 29, 2016 20:50:12 GMT -5 Hanyoutai said:

Disclaimer: Liger Zero X cannot fly. Don't try this at home.

You killed him!!

lmao 

I would like to try install on computer again, tried once, dolphin wouldn't recognize the file. I gave up.

[Falcarius]

Nice timing, I just finished unlocking everything in VS.III about an hour ago!

Apart from not needing to worry about all the hardware stuff, there's another reason emulation is great: save-states. I'm... not great at this game, so there were one or two levels I had to spam save-states on in order to get S rank (or even to beat them, in Battle Mode). On the other hand, with how old my laptop is by now, the game is stuttery at best, and sometimes half or less of normal speed.

By the way, you only need to hold the Support-Equip button on non-flying Zoids with flight units attached - proper flying critters like Pteras and Storm Sworder will always stay airborne unless badly damaged. If you're using the Jet Rayse Tiger or similar on the Whale King level, I'd suggest saving the flight ability so that if you accidentally fall off, you can get back on again. (...But of course that's not as much fun.)

Also I may have jumped off deliberately after killing the Brastle so that I would win while plummeting to my doom.

[chris514]

I do plan to rip the game to play it in emulators too. My computer should have good enough specs to run it either at or near perfect. Naturally no game would be complete without it's proper controller so I already have numerous USB adaprors for most controller types.

Though this does raise the question of whether or not I can rip the game properly on my North American Wii...

It is also good to know about the memory card formatting differences.

[pinkoctillery]

I play VS 3 and FMC on my gamecube using the freeloader's region unlocker. if you can get a gamecube with that to play it, it's way more fun than on PC haha one of the biggest reasons I still keep my gamecube is so I can play import zoids games

[lordofdragons]

Hanyoutai: Emulation of PSX/PS2/NGC on the PC is anyways only recommended if you have a game pad worth it's name (which >99% are not)


chris514: There's no point in trying to rip the game yourself. If you own it you can legit download an ISO from one of the major places like emuparadise and so forth. Emulators don't worry about regions at all so ripping yourself is not really useful.

[chris514]

Actually that is a myth. If you own the game and download it then it is still considered piracy and is illegal. Because a copy of the game has still changed hands. Granted typically they only go after the distributor and not the consumer of such downloads, but this is because it's not very practical not because they can't.

However, if you rip the game yourself then there truly is nothing they can do. Well technically they can sue you under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because these mini DVDs are encrypted and breaking their encryption can get you sued, but realistically it won't do them any good.