Treasure Hunter G

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Treasure Hunter G
Image:TreasureHunterG boxart.jpg
Developer(s) Sting
Publisher(s) Squaresoft
Release date(s) May 24, 1996 (JP)
Genre(s) Role-playing game
Mode(s) Single player
Platform(s) Super Famicom
Media 24 megabit cartridge

Treasure Hunter G (トレジャーハンターG Torejā Hantā Jī?) is a Super Famicom turn-based tactical role playing game that was designed by Sting Entertainment (of Riviera: The Promised Land fame) and released by Squaresoft in 1996. The gameplay was unique at the time, using a grid-based system for battles, along with visible enemy encounters. The game which is closest to the battle system style is Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, since they both use strategic turn-based systems which implement things like traps, ranged spells, and Action Points which control the number of actions in a turn. The game was not was released outside of Japan, and it has gained limited popularity among emulation gamers due the lack of a complete fan translation.

The character sprites were pre-rendered from 3D models, rather than drawn by hand. This allowed for a feature unique among similar games for SNES: the character sprites were created for 8 directions instead of the usual 4, increasing the visual appeal of the game.

Also worth noting is that this was Squaresoft's last released game for a Nintendo console, released a scant two weeks before they announced their departure from Nintendo, until the release of Chocobo Land: A Game of Dice for the Game Boy Advance in 2002 (by the time Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was released, Square and Enix already merged).

Treasure Hunter G also makes use of the SNES' EPROM in order to store its massive (for the time) amount of data. This is because all of the characters are represented by prerendered sprites, similar to Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Due to this, the game experiences problems when using the save state function in emulators, often corrupting game data in strange ways. (e.g. causing events to repeat)

The main characters are the brothers Blue and Red, who would later go on to appear in one of Square's earlier PlayStation games, SaGa Frontier, albeit with radically different roles.