Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2017 March 23

= March 23 =

Russian (?) sci-fi comedy
Does anyone happen to know the title and author of this sci-fi comedy novella or short story (probably Russian, at any rate originally written in a Slavic language)? The plot is as follows: A cosmonaut (as I recall, his name was Gregory, but I could be wrong about this) is to fly to a distant planet, and is put into hibernation before launch (unusual for sci-fi, I know), but the launch is aborted for some reason and the spaceship comes down somewhere in a field on a big farm -- and when the cosmonaut comes out of hibernation, he mistakes farm machinery for exoplanetary monsters and starts attacking them. Anyone know which story/novella I'm talking about? 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:FD58:9940:89EE:DFD5 (talk) 08:39, 23 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Sounds a bit like Stanislaw Lem but I can´f find anything fitting in his oeuvre. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 20:44, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Help identifying a PS1 game
Can you please help me remember the name of a game? I played it when I was a kid/teenager.

These characteristics could probably encompass a lot of games, I know:
 * It was a PlayStation game (not Playstation 2, 3 or 4).
 * It was a 3D game with anime graphics.
 * It had a lot of anime cutscenes. I'm pretty sure the cutscenes were dubbed in English.
 * You would visit various towns as the storyline progresses.
 * I'm pretty sure the towns were safe to walk, and you would visit other places full of enemies walking around.
 * I'm pretty sure it was an action-adventure game.
 * Based on List of PlayStation games, there were PS1 games released from 199X to 2004. I think I started playing it in 2001 or 2002, so apparently it was not one of the latest games released.

I only remember this characteristic that may be unique to that game:
 * One of the towns was full of old people. It was because the inhabitants of the town didn't have children in decades for some reason.

Actually, I do remember other things, but the details are fuzzy, so I could be wrong: For example, I'm pretty sure that there was a "battle mode" every time when you met an enemy, but it was a battle in "real time", not turn-based. Also, I'm pretty sure the camera followed you around and you couldn't manually change the camera position.

Thanks in advance. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 18:04, 23 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Some partial matches : Grandia, Legend of Mana, Yuukyuu no Kizuna
 * ApLundell (talk) 14:43, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll check them. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you remember if you controlled one character or a party of characters? There were many RPG games. Every popular one, like Final Fantasy, spawned dozens more. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:27, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * A party of characters, if I remember correctly. I think you started with a single male character and befriended a female character along the way, and she would help in battles. I don't remember having more than two characters in the party. Daniel Carrero (talk) 19:23, 24 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Was it one of the Final Fantasy games? Your description matches many of them, including Final Fantasy VII, which was one of the killer aps for the PS1.  -- Jayron 32 00:32, 27 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Main line FF games of that era used turn based combat, and and FFVII had no anime cut scenes, they were all 3D CGI, not the 2D cel shaded stuff of anime. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Maybe one of the Star Ocean games. Staecker (talk) 11:09, 28 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Tales_(series) all have real-time action battles, and many of them have anime cut scenes. I first played one on the game cube, but there were three released for PS1- one SNES port and two just for PS1. It sounds like a very close match on the details you remember, check out those three for sure. Tales of Eternia came out in 2001 in North America, fitting your time line pretty well. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:54, 28 March 2017 (UTC)