Suikoden

Suikoden is one of Konami's early attempts at an RPG, and the start of a long and fairly popular RPG series spanning five games in the main series, and several side-games. Based loosely on a Chinese folk tale, it's a story of a young man named Tir McDohl who, after being exiled from his home, forms an army and battles the repressive Scarlet Moon Empire.

A tad rough around the edges, but an enjoyable RPG experience; it could be considered a nice introduction for newcomers to the RPG genre.

To do: Document the unused sketch of the game`s artwork loaded into RAM when browsing books in the Library. source:1 Revisional Differences: There exists a USA REV 1 dump, please check if it has any bug fixes.

Unused Items#

There are three Rune crystals that can never actually be obtained.

• Shrike crystal - The only Shrike Rune in the game comes equipped on Kasumi, and it cannot be removed.
• Falcon crystal - Pretty much the same story here. The only Falcon Rune is owned by Valeria, and it can't be removed either.
• Flame crystal - The description of this item claims it's "Bell's rune". However, while Ronnie Bell does come with her own personal rune, it's called the "Hate Rune", although it was called the "Flame Rune" in the Japanese version. It doesn't seem this rune can be attached to anyone, either, making it even odder.

Hidden Weapon Names#

As characters' weapons are strengthened, their names will change at predetermined levels, with each weapon having three names total. However, many characters join with a weapon "pre-upgraded" into the second or third name change group, preventing you from ever seeing their initial weapon title.

(Note: Ted and Odessa have the same exact weapon, which is why they're lumped together. Technically, you never see Odessa's "original" weapon as her weapon starts a level too high, but it's the same as Ted's, the Steel Bow.)

It's worth pointing out that because these names are never seen, there are two weapon name themes that go unnoticed in-game.

The first is that Clive's weapons all have a wind naming scheme: Wind/Storm/Tornado. The second, and more interesting, is that Warren's weapons all refer to the Norse God Odin. His third weapon is just "Odin", while his first two weapons are mistranslations of Sleipnir (Odin's horse) and Gungnir (Odin's spear).

Also interestingly, many of these weapon names are repeated throughout the series... and continue to go unused, as the characters wielding them always start with their weapons at elevated levels. In particular, Futch's first weapon Verserk is (un)seen again when he reappears in Suikoden II and is later passed on to Sharon in Suikoden III... where it's still never seen! Several other weapons got the same treatment.

World Maps#

Suikoden doesn't actually HAVE a world map in the strictest sense of the word, but multiple regional maps that ... don't overlap all that often. Quite the contrary actually. You're encouraged to try and assemble one global map from the mess that they left us and upload it here; me, I know when the fight is lost.

Suikoden is also really buggy. Not only is the first horizontal scanline blanked every other half-frame; not only is the leftmost vertical pixel line always grey; due to (insert reasons) Suikoden letterboxes its output, thusly not producing square pixels unless a horizontal factor of 1.09375 is applied to each scanline. Oh, and each regional map wraps into itself, which is pretty lazy programming. I'll forgive them though because otherwise there would be NO WAY to capture the aforementioned leftmost pixel line of each map, because that pixel line is always greyed out.

Gregminster region#

Interestingly it contains Leknaat's Island despite never being observable in the actual game.

Kouan region#

Lake Toran#

Great Forest region#

Soniere region#

Hermitage region#

Kirov region#

Qlon region#

Dragon's Castle region#

Moravia region#

Regional Differences#

• In the international versions, towards the start of the game is a scene in which the player must rescue Varkas and Sydonia while they are tied to posts. In the Japanese release, the two are instead tied up to two crosses, resembling a crucifixion process.
• The name of Millia's dragon, Thrash, was originally Slash in the Japanese release.
• Barbarossa's name was changed to Red Beard in the Italian localization.