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How Role-Playing Games Arrived In Japan With Black Onyx

Posted by Unknown on from the traIlblazers-don't-always-win dept.

eggboard writes "Henk Rogers was a Dutchman who arrived in Japan in the 1980s following a girlfriend (later, his wife). An inveterate D&D player, he became enthralled with the NEC-8801, and nearly killed himself trying to create a D&D-like world that he released as The Black Onyx. No one initially knew what to make of it, and the game sold slowly at first. Through savvy pricing, packaging, and press attention, sales grew, and the game jumpstarted RPGs in Japan. Rogers got left behind, though, as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy hit a local nerve better than his efforts. 'I also realized that I didn't quite understand the Japanese aesthetic and way. These games were quite different to mine, and just struck a more effective cultural chord.' Rogers went on to license Tetris to Nintendo, though, so he did just fine."

4 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. License? by o_ferguson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Rogers went on to license Tetris to Nintendo, though, so he did just fine." That's the most interesting part of the story - how the best video game product of communism got sidelined into the capitalist computer paradigm.

    --
    - In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
    1. Re:License? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Really? Based on what?

      Here's Wikipedia's version:

      Rogers discovered Tetris during a Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas in 1988. At the time, the game was being distributed in several countries under a master license agreement which the original licensee had not honored. Rogers went to Moscow (without an invitation) to see if he could obtain rights to distribute the game. Two other companies were simultaneously bidding for the same rights. Rogers brought Nintendo on board and secured the exclusive rights to market Tetris on video game consoles. Nintendo successfully used this grant to squeeze its rival Atari out of the market, as Atari had sought to market Tetris based on the original (invalid) license.

      During the negotiations in Moscow, Rogers also became friends with the game's Russian author Alexey Pajitnov. In 1990, he helped Pajitnov move to the United States and set up a new company, AnimaTek, to develop new computer graphic technologies.

      So what reason do you have to disparage Rogers?

  2. Not the first RPG in Japan by Majutsushi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    RPGs did not "arrive" in Japan with The Black Onyx, that is just a popular myth. Here is an attempt to chronicle all of the JRPGs that came earlier:

    http://blog.hardcoregaming101....

    1. Re:Not the first RPG in Japan by identity0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      This, pretty much. The Black Onyx was a 1984 game, but it's well known that 1981's Wizardry had a much bigger impact in Japan.

      They even made DS games on the Wizardry franchise because it's so famous over there