KREADEX'S PROFILE

Breath of Fire V.

Most specifically, the scenario overlay gimmick. It was advertised as a revolutionary feature which would change the game's content every new run and in the end, all we've got is a few additional rooms here and there, as well as "hidden" scenes which could have been included in the first run.

I worked my ass off to got a D-Ratio higher than Bosch's and it does absolutely nothing in the story at all.

You don't need friends to get drunk with. Coworkers are enough.

Personally, I used the word "tech demo" because it was the word Hanzo Kimura used himself to state that the goal of the demo was to show the game systems (notably the menu and lifeline) more than anything else.

Dispose the sprite holding the bitmap. Like this (@sprite is just the variable name in this case, replace it by the one you are using):
If you don't intend to use it again before a while, you can also dispose the bitmap itself beforehand.
If you are using RMXP, I would also suggest you to take care of the garbage collection between the scenes, because it's not done by default and you can end up with 300 MB of RAM used for old unused shit after a few hours of gameplay.

Personally, I like touch encounters the best. Especially with some flavors, like stated in the article Darken linked.
But aside from simply stunning a group of enemies, you can design a lot of traps to damage them before the battle starts, cause status ailments, or whatever you fancy. Remember Valkyrie Profile 2, for instance, where you could fire photons on enemies to transform them into a crystal, then fire a second one to swap your position with it...

There are various ways to make really something out of touch encounters.