Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Birdo's Back, Tennis Rackets—and Comcept is Dead
|
Goto page 1, 2 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
tintor2
 Posts: 2706 |
|
|||||||||||
|
The Prince of Tennis always felt weird to me not because of the dinosaurs but because of how weird some characters socialize. Several members of the main cast have bullied others to the point it felt like it was making fun of itself when a bully's father turned out to be another bully. Same with the ages and designs. Tezuka looks more like an adult than a teenager similar to the gorila from the Slam Dunk whose cast even joked about it.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Nobody14
Posts: 47 |
|
|||||||||||
|
It’s funny how many events in the gaming industry that people don’t like have ties to Inafune in some way. Stuff like DmC and Capcom’s general mindset in the 7th Gen tie with his blatant racism towards Japanese games, even thanking Phil Fish for telling that poor guy “yeah all games your country makes suck”. The worst Ninja Gaiden game, Yaiba? Inafune’s there. Apollo Justice having Phoenix Wright in it? Inafune’s suggestion… I still can’t believe that’s real, at a meeting he said “yeah it won’t sell if you don’t put Phoenix in too.” It’s definitely unfair to say Inafune is a hex, but it’s also absurdly funny to do so.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2999 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
|||||||||||
|
To be fair to Prince of Tennis' notoriety, the infamous "Tezuka Killed the Dinosaurs" bit is apparently from one of the (non-canon) movies, & isn't from the original manga. Apparently Takeshi Konomi more or less allowed the anime staff to do whatever they wanted when it came to original concepts & embellishments, so someone seemingly decided "OK, how about we make Tezuka's smash so powerful that it'll be compared to the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?", and everyone else just went "Sure!".
I mean, props to Konomi for just letting the anime staff have fun.
That's just a standard thing you see done in certain works to establish a character as being "mature beyond their years". An easy way to give the feeling of "maturity" is to make them look older than their peers, and while Akagi in Slam Dunk was portrayed like he was partially for a gag Tezuka in PoT was portrayed like he was to emphasize why he was the captain of the team, since he looked serious, experienced, & straightlaced. It's something that's been done for literal decades. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2953 |
|
|||||||||||
|
-Mario: Yup, that's Yoshi. Also amusing how Yoshi is holding a Super Scope in the T-Rex scene
-Virtual Boy: This is going to be an interesting library to analyze as a lot of the games from what I understand aren't actually bad, they're just on the Virtual Boy -Comcept: Hoo boy, that company was an entire fiasco and clearly showed Inafune, for all of his whining at CAPCOM, was dependent on their corporate structure to avoid accountability which was something he could no longer do when he tried getting into indie development. He was the figurehead, so of course the buck would stop with him. The biggest problem is he also put the cart before the horse and had grand ideas for multimedia franchises before the initial project (the game) was ever released. Dude just severely overestimated his own ability |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Wyvern
 Posts: 1792 |
|
|||||||||||
|
Despite its title, the Mario Galaxy Movie is increasingly looking like it's going to be a mash-up of scenes from lots of different Mario games. Peach fighting Mouser and Birdo means we'll get something of Super Mario Bros 2, there's Frog Luigi from Mario 3, Yoshi's introduction recalls Super Mario World, the scene with the pyramid is from Mario Odyssey, and they even snuck Yoshi's Safari into there. I imagine we'll get some Mario Sunshine in there too, considering Bowser Junior is a major villain in this one.
Hopefully the movie can be more than a game of spot-the-reference. But if not, I hope they at least give us something from Mario 3D World. Everyone forgets about that one and it's fantastic! |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 941 |
|
|||||||||||
Yes it's from Futari no Samurai. It's also a movie that ends with a cruise ship being metaphorically annihilated as Ryoma and his brother fly in the air trying to reach for the Sun as a tennis ball. And it all fits pretty well, because the movie in general is directed and animated very surreally (which is part of what makes it actually pretty good, along with its plot being that a conman holds the team at gunpoint in an attempt to fix matches on a hastily constructed sham cruise liner full of gullible rich people) |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7201 |
|
|||||||||||
I don’t know how you equate his comments with racism. The Japanese video game industry did have issues when he made those comments. Issues that even in 2026 haven’t entirely went away.
As annoying as it was after the fact Apollo was not held in the same regard as Phoenix was when the 4th game was released which maybe why the 5th and 6th games brought back Edgeworth and Maya. But also why Capcom has been slow walking the 7th game.
Unless you preferred 3D Land. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
|
|||||||||||
|
In reagards to Inafune's comments about the state of the Japanese video game industry at that time, we have to remember that during the 7th generation of consoles there were a lot of rapid changes that affected the way games were developed and marketed, the most significant was the switch to HD development, not all Japanese developers were able to make a quick transition, that's why companies like Atlus kept making important games for the PS2, then there was also the fact that the PlayStation 3 had a lot of trouble which affected its sales in its early. The Xbox 360 was the most popular HD console worlwide for a long time, especially in the U.S., so that's why many Japanese developers started developing games for Microsoft consoles, since they obviously wanted their games to sell well, but I can imagine that some Xbox players weren't that accustomed to Japanese video games, which were receiving some criticism back in the mid 2000s and early 2010s, I do believe that was a reason why CAPCOM went so hard in making more Western-oriented games like the Bionic Commando reboot, or why there was proposal for a Mega Man X FPS reboot. I can go on, I didn't even mention how the 2011 Japanese earquake also affected tons of developers or the positive and negative impact the Wii had,
As for what happened with Comcept and the Mighty No. 9 kickstarter, I know it's been many years, though it doesn't feel like a long time has passed, but many things changed since then and it's kind of incredible in retrospect how excited people were for the project, but I do believe it's something that we'll probably aren't going to see anymore, at least in the same level. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Handyman 68
Posts: 37 |
|
|||||||||||
People co-op pretty much every character and piece of fiction under the sun for their own political ideology so I know this isn't a unique thing but it did always seem a bit strange to me how people do it for characters like Birdo, Vivian, and Poison since they are all meant to be jokes/jabs about the subject. Like, Poison was only called that because hitting women was frowned upon back in the day due to US censorship so they joked that Poison was actually a man which makes it okay like how Kiryu in Yakuza has no problem hitting crossdressers and transwomen despite his 'no hitting women' policy that doesn't apply to them. Or that Vivian is constantly made fun of + to the point when he admits his love for Mario and kisses him Mario freaks out when he learns Vivian is a man from feeling the stubble on his face and runs away in panic. I guess there's something about trying to "reclaim" jokes about the subject but it must be kinda annoying seeing how they're actually treated and it'd be nicer to pick actual positive depictions instead.
Damn. I'm aware of that Phil Fish incident of him being a racist heel during that Q&A with the Japanese guy in the audience but I didn't know Inafune agreed with him and thanked him. That sucks. Yeah I also wasn't a fan of Inafune's push to westernize the game industry and say Japan needed to pander to the west (something we're still seeing to this day and arguably is unlikely for us to see revert back to the glory days of Japanese gaming being for Japan) but that sucks to hear. His early work is still good but he really did fall off when he chased the trend of western appeal. Unfortunately Silver Kirin is also right in that Japan did have a struggle coming into the HD era that we're still seeing to this day. I'm actually hopeful that other Asian countries like China and Korea can pick up the slack. Mihoyo games and Blue Archive specifically have been amazing successes despite being mobile games. If they were full fledged console games I'd love them even more but as they are the fact the fact something like Blue Archive dominates Japaanese events like Comiket and has some of the most popular and iconic video game characters of the modern era is nice to see. Outside Persona 5 the Japanese side seems to have kind of floundered in that regard when it comes to home console games and making new titles that will be considered stand-out classics down the line like Japan did all throughout the 80s and 90s and 00s. MODERATOR’S NOTE: let’s all please watch our language. —F |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7201 |
|
|||||||||||
An era where many games from Japan were never released stateside or in Europe and some of the few that did saw changes that scrubbed the Japanese out of them to various degrees of success? |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 925 |
|
|||||||||||
You both make a lot of salient points; I wanna "yes, and" them with the major factor that developing games in HD just wasn't an expense/process many Japanese devs were ready for because they didn't have the same access to the tools American studios did. Major Japanese titles couldn't rely on the same kind of brand subsidies that American games could to supplement their budgets (not everyone could do the Bionic Commando thing of having indestructible Pepsi machines everywhere due to regional issues; it's why the American Code Geass broadcast lost the Pizza Hut branding stuff). Not to mention, the most popular tools of the time (stuff like the Havok physics engine or Unreal Engine) were inaccessible to many Japanese developers because of language barriers; they simply weren't available in Japanese, and the time zone difference made asking for help problematic. Studios like Square Enix wound up in deep binds trying to side-step the issue by developing their own engines, which was costly and complicated (the Fabula Nova Crystalis trilogy was upended because of this). It's a small wonder most Japanese studios stuck to handheld gaming; it was just easier to work with and just as lucrative, if not moreso, because of people playing games in transit. Monster Hunter was a game students would play together in a group at McDonalds after school. It's only been relatively recently with Unreal Engine 5 finally having language options for Japan that most Japanese devs are on equal footing.
Yeah, most of the games on the Virtual Boy are competent, if not halfway fun (Jack Bros., V-Tetris, Wario Land). It's just the realities of playing them on the Virtual Boy was a non-starter. Even Virtual Lab, considered the worst VB game, would be an otherwise-passable GameBoy title.
I have little hopes of the Galaxy movie not being a poorly-strung chain of 'member berries, since that was the predecessor. Sonic stumbled its way into success; nobody wants to acknowledge it, but the real point in its favor is how restrained those movies are with their references. It took two whole movies for actual Badniks to appear (Buzz Bombers), instead of generic military drones. Tails doesn't have a biplane, he just hijacked one in Hawai'i that just so happens to have the same paint scheme as the Tornado. The Flickies don't exist in the movies. I do want to say, I have never had a chance to play 3D World and I really want to change that. I love that game's aesthetic.
Yeah, it's so weird when I see purists talking about "the good old days," where none of this stuff ever came to America. Miss me with that--we're in an era where a Shiren the Wanderer title gets rave reviews across the board and Xenoblade Chronicles is a million-unit-seller for Nintendo. I grew up convinced we'd never get Namco X Capcom in the 'states to seeing TWO Project X-Zone titles come stateside, where Falcom's Trails series actually get attention, and Super Robot Wars games are released on the Switch--and not the Original Generations spin-offs. Every time I interview Japanese devs, these guys are ecstatic that folks in America love their games. And you're telling me this would all be better if we didn't do that and nobody got a chance to play Another Code? Jog on. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
AiddonValentine
Posts: 2953 |
|
|||||||||||
Basically, the Western dev scene (and Western gaming journalism) turned up its nose at handhelds but Japanese franchises were doing great on the DS and PSP. Monster Hunter blew up, Dragon Quest was going through a full on renaissance, and there just a ton of strange, oddball games on them that couldn't be done as big, bloated spectacle because it would have cost too much. It's also why Japanese devs flocked to the Switch which became the highest selling system in Japanese history. Turns out just going all AAA all the time was a bad idea. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 7201 |
|
|||||||||||
Do kinda wish that the PS2 remakes and The Gaiden game would somehow get a remaster or a fully translated rerelease. But it’s probably something not meant to be and lord knows it if were to happen it’d go in the same backlog that the Miles Edgeworth collection sits in and I waited years for Gyakuten Kenji 2 to come stateside. But it’ll be finished…eventually. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
|
|||||||||||
|
- The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: it was a nice trailer, I do believe Yoshi has the potential of being a sort of breakout character, akin to Stitch or Grogu, though it also felt like if Miyamoto had to reassure everyone that Yoshi was going to appear and that they didn't forget about that post-credits scene, but the thing is that I sometimes think that some Nintendo fans don't know how movies work, same thing is happening with The Legend of Zelda movie, they though that Nintendo and Sony Pictures should have shown a poster or at least a photo of Link and Zelda fighting Ganondorf, not realizing the movie is still being shot.
- Virtual Boy: I already mention what I though back when it was first announced, but I do wonder if the accessory is going to end up selling better than the original VB console, not counting the cardboard version. I was surprised by the fact that Nintendo added two unreleased games, which makes me wonder what else do they have under their vaults, we've seen some interesting things from the Giga Leak from a few years back, I know there could be some arguments in relation to video game history and preservation, a topic that has gained some notoriety in the last few years, but it's kind of diffucult if we don't know what do they have archived under wraps. That kind of reminds me that I recently saw a video about a cancelled Mega Man X interactive movie that was in development in the '90s, apparently someone in Japan found some documents that were thrown from CAPCOM's offices and they put them for auction, some U.S. fans wanted to buy those documents, but apparently some Japanese fans won the auction, but they decided to keep it secret out of respect of the developers identities/privacy, even if those documents are from 30 years ago. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Fluwm
Moderator
 Posts: 1625 |
|
|||||||||||
Allow me to add another “Yes, and,” to this conversation — the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_2011_Tōhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami_on_the_video_game_industry]Great Tohoku Earthquake[/url] of 2011, which caused a lot of damage to the Japanese games industry, leading to a fair number of cancelled games. Among the lost was Irem’s Bumpy Trot 2, a sequel to (what was retitled Steambot Chronicles overseas) one of my all-time favorite JsRPGs. Like, if any of y’all are into the genre and haven’t played the original Bumpy Trot/Steambot Chronicles, you really owe it to yourself to correct that. It was basically a nonlinear sandbox RPG with a bunch of different story paths/endings you could go down, not to mention a ton of really fun “jobs” you could ply in the form of minigames. Like this was a game where you could get a job working as a mecha-taxi driver, or go into paleontology, or join a gang of bandits to help finance their space program. An absolutely incredible game and the entire medium is worse off for never getting the chance to see how Irem might’ve iterated and improved on it with their sequel. So pair that with the increased development costs of HD games, and the explosion in popularity of mobile games, and the inaccessibility of dev tools, or the fact that Microsoft was buying up exclusivity deals in an ultimately-doomed effort to break into the Japanese console market… and there’s a whole host of reasons why the 7th console generation felt a bit empty, especially early on. Hell, there are even more factors that we haven’t really addressed — this was also around the time PC gaming was “dying” (due largely to rampant piracy) leading a lot of PC developers (like BioWare) to switch their focus to making console games instead; a change that was aided by the breakout popularity of the then-new Xbox which was really the start of video gaming finally breaking into mainstream culture. So, yeah: there’s a whole lot of complexity and context to consider here.
We did get some fairly niche stuff back in the day, but yeah, it’s a weird sentiment. If anything, I’d say we’re currently smack-dab in the middle of a whole new “golden age” of Japanese games. I think maybe some people tend to conflate “Japanese games,” with “Japanese RPGs,” specifically, in which case I guess we’re not exactly swimming in a comparable sea of quality or quantity to the genre’s peak years from the mid-90s to 00s, but, I mean, a lot of that is just due to JsRPGs no longer being one of the biggest genres on the planet any more, coupled with the fact that modern game development takes so much longer. But even in that light, we’re still getting a ton of really good JsRPGs, as well as incredibly niche ones, like Moon. The state of Japanese games, or Japanese-style RPGs specifically — no matter how I look at it — seems exceedingly good at present. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group