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A Salute to Japanese Game Designers
thegamebiz writes "Amped IGO has a great tribute to Japanese game designers. From the article: 'In an industry where so much is owed to our friends across the Pacific it seems almost blasphemous to forget about the contributions of those that inhabit the Land of the Rising Sun. If it weren't for them, not only would we not have a lot of the franchises we love, but the industry as a whole would certainly not be as lively as it is today.'"
but the industry as a whole would certainly not be as lively as it is today. Other than the NES bringing the industry back from the brink, what do we owe Japanese developers? Personally I owe them a good bit. Most of my favorite games are from Japanese studios, but there are nearly an equal amount of western developed games that Ive enjoyed as well. Maybe even more. Salute to them for doing a good job, sure, but dont give them most of the credit.
---space.is.the.place---
Where's Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy? Granted, he doesn't seem very interested in continuing his career as a game designer.
The japaneese have done a lot with inovation in games, they also make interesting game which challenge you in different ways, and sometimes they just push the envolope in weird.
Electroplankton for the DS seems really inovative and i'm looking forward to being able to buy it, its nice to see an inovative take on something like that, using the microphone and it being a game where you don't have to go through levels, its more just for fun, no begining, no end, just fun.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Well, one of the sad things is that many really cool Japanese video games have never been translated for the US/UK/etc market, including many martial arts, bizarre graphics/music games, and samurai/bushido games.
At least there's Dance Dance Revolution and a few other ones like Pokemon to give us a glimmer of a land where FPS is not that big of a segment in gaming.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A lot of Japanese games are very good. But sometimes they are a little - strange. Take a look at this http://www.invertedcastle.com/archives/2005/12/01/ the-japanese-game-to-end-all-japanese-games/
Look, the article is called a "SALUTE TO JAPANESE GAME DESIGNERS" I wonder why it talks in reverence to them? Then you go on to diss Final Fantasy XII which is currently unreleased and still months away. The demo might've been disappointing to you, but who knows how old that demo might be. Just because it came out in November doesn't mean it was made in November. There have been a multitude of disappointing demos for other games too, including western games.
Japan really influenced the west in many ways. It's not only the games that are not quite like the western ones, it's also anime vs. cartoons, hentai vs. porn, japanese horrors vs. western horrors, karate/judo/aikido vs. box/wrestling, sushi vs. steak...
Even if Japan woulnt produce their own games there's tons of stuff that penetrated to the west that made our games cooler..
Can kiss my ass. The man is immature and a loudmouth. DOA is the worst fighter out there, and he has the gall to say the things he's said about the Namco fighters? How he can make a game that sucks as much as DOA:Ultimate and then make something like Ninja Gaiden is beyond me. It seems to me that he needs to stop dissing other designers in his press releases and spend more time working on Ninja Gaiden 2.
That link is to a "doujin soft", an amateur-produced game. Similar to doujinshi (fan comics), doujin soft are games made which either feature original characters or characters "borrowed" from mainstream game/anime/manga culture. Sometimes these doujin soft can be very good, for example, the Melty Blood doujin soft games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melty_Blood) are almost modern professional quality fighting games involving the characters from TYPE-MOON's Tsukihime visual novel game (which later became an anime and a manga).
My other first post is car post.
for still making the fighters and shumps I love so much.
America is obese, Japan is slender. So what? Got some more exotic clichés to share?
There's a point to it, though. While I happen to like some of the typical American game types you listed, it might be worth to mention that most of them come down to being brute and trying to mimic reality, if in the sense of winning the war after all, or crashing foreign cars. Of course, Japan has these types of games as well, albeit with a twist here and there, but those are marginal at best.
In contrast, Japanese games have all the futurism -- and I don't mean the UT type -- that American ones lack.
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
"Pixel" is his handle--now here is a completely unknown japanese guy who definitely deserves some acclaim. He single-handedly created Cave Story over the course of five years, and it's often described as being a "perfect" game. Think Castlevania, Metroid, and Yoshi's Island, among others--some great old-fashioned platforming gameplay to be found here. It has some amazing 8-bit era graphics and chiptunes, charming characters and plot, really fun boss battles; it appeals greatly to any nostalgic gamer out there. And it's freeware to boot. Check it out.
Game English Patch
"We would not have a game industry these days without Nintendo, Sega and yes, Sony, along with the developers that went along with them (and they were mainly Japanese as well)."
No, not Sony. Sony was a late comer. By 1995, it was pretty damn obvious that gaming was here to stay (having been back in vogue for 12 years) and also was moving to the point where, with the help of optical media, you could really cram some interesting stuff on. Sony only came because it smelt money, not because it was (at its core) a gaming company like Sega or Nintendo.
I will never credit Sony or Microsoft for saving or enhancing gaming in that way. They are only here for the money, as a side channel to diversify from their main income streams -- much like I would probably never take a Nintendo MP3 player or a Sega operating system as seriously as I would from a company that specializes in producing those. Your company cannot be core competent when you do this, especially once you grow to the size where one arms wants DRM in your other arm's fancy new device (the PSP).
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Ai ai ai
I'm your little butterfly
Green, black and blue
Make the colors in the sky
*shakes fist angrily*
DAMN YOU, GRANDPARENT!
DAMN YOUUUUUU!
There's also Kenta Cho aka "ABA Games".