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Strangest Japanese Videogame Genres Discussed
Thanks to GameSpy for their column discussing a number of videogame genres that are popular in Japan, but not in the West. Picks include the more obvious such as dating sims ("Players look through the eyes of a young man and try to woo a variety of girls by making the proper dialogue choices"), pet raising sims ("where you raise and, uh, feed an everyday hamster... or a rhinoceros beetle"), and even voyeurism-based titles such as Primal Image, where "...poorly constructed 3D women with frightening facial features played brief animated sequences while you took pictures before the time limit ran out." Have Japanese-only genres such as dating got the capacity to take off in the States?
I'm almost surprised that dating sims haven't caught on yet... perhaps all they need is better Americanization before they become appealing (ie, make it so the girls don't get insanely embarrassed every 2 seconds by your social faux pas). But then again, perhaps North American children don't have the attention span for something like this...
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
...titles will find their niche market in the US. Two titles that Fresh Games released on the PS2 in the US (Mister Mosquito and Mad Maestro) are VERY Japanese, but can also find appeal in the US. The same could be said of a PSX game like Incredible Crisis.
However, I don't think too many people would be interested in the typical Japanese dating game (hentai or otherwise) in this country (remember, a nice majority of the casual gamers in the US prefer stuff like Madden or Super Trucks Racing over your average Eastern-developed game as it is). Games with that type of design seen (Disgaea being a recent example) usually end up being little more than "that title next to Def Jam Vendetta," which ends up being their loss.
Personally, I'd love to play some of the games that haven't made their way over here. As silly as I'd look playing something like Donkey Konga, it would still be a fun escape from most of the cookie-cutter games that dominate the market. But until more people feel this way, we'll probably never see a lot of "really Japanese" games over here.
When I was in Asia over a year ago I bought a couple of them... Guess what? Turned out that more than one of them had very adult material in them. However, it was interesting nevertheless to see how they differ from us when it comes to taste in gaming. The biggest hits in '99 such as Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 might just've been as popular as a certain tentacle rape games in Japan (sorry, I just had to cram in "tentacle rape" somewhere in this post...)
I've only played a couple of English translated dating games, and they were also adult oriented. Kind of sad since I'd like to see these type of weird genres become more popular here for the sake of stirring things up in the market. We're too stuck in the moment where everybody wants bullet time, realistic physics and graphics with heavy guns and big, powerful explotions.
The Sims is a fresh breath of air, very revolutionary too. But... There's just too little experimentation these days in the market. Which is really sad. Oh well.... Maybe some day we'll see a company spawn a growing market of translated japanese dating sims. For once I'd like to play one without it ending up having sex with the girl in the end (and no tentacles!).
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Hang about: How are dating sims any different from sims who date, like in The Sims: Hot Date?
And besides, many Japanese games which made it in the States contained dating sim elements, such as in Thousand Arms, Final Fantasy VII & VIII, and even the always successful Harvest Moon series.
Why don't they focus on the truly unusual games, like Boon-Ga Boon-Ga! (violate the buttocks of your least favorite people, like politicians), or the Densha de Go series (you can drive a train. You know, trains? The only vehicle with no steering?). They should at least have given a nod to the truly Japanese and truly odd games which did make it over here, like Stretch Panic.
"Shoddy Journalism" barely scratches the surface on this article.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Also, I'd be interested in a REAL perspective on who actually plays dating sims in Japan, as opposed to some blatantly offensive GameSpy article. Is it a publicly accepted genre? Or do people get mocked for playing them over there as they would inevitably be if they played them over here?
The last reason I don't think we should Americanize dating sims just yet is that the people who create mainstream entertainment in our culture still have yet to learn how to tell a good story. I mean, take a look at Hollywood for example, every now and then they turn out something decent, but for the most part its crap. Same with video games. And of all the types of games out there, dating sims require some of the BEST storytelling. You simply can't compensate in a dating sim with better graphics.
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