“Shadow flopped. And Capcom concluded that Westernizing a game took more than ?turning eyes blue and changing the hair color,? Mr. Inafune said.”
this nigga right here, man… the irony.
What’s with this WRPG vs JRPG crap? Are they some sort of enemies?
All I know is that I found both Xenogears and Planescape: Torment to be amazing as story heavy games, and now we got stuff like FF13 and Mass Effect.
Past=Good. Present=BLEH.
BTW this whole generation of games which Capcom wants to catch up to is a one big quick time event.
Firstly, I want to thank you for taking the time to respond to my post in a thoughtful and reasonable way. It’s unfortunate these days how people make bullshit claims about games and expect said bullshit to pass as a reasonable argument. It’s refreshing to hear you state facts like how Halo 2 apparently copied Halo 1 levels wholesale, how the endings of Halo 1 and 3 are the same, and how burly soldiers seem to be the norm in scenarios where burly soldiers are required.
I must admit, I don’t recall Halo 2 copying levels, or Halo 3 having the same ending, but I do think it’s a little silly how, in settings where humanity is facing species-ending crisis from hostile alien forces, burly super soldiers would be the first thing you’d think of as a protagonist. I would’ve picked an anorexic, 16 year old teenager with some sort of combination gun/sword contraption and a “tragic past.”
As we all know, burly super soldiers all have the same personality and character. That’s why Master Chief, the Arbiter, Marcus Fenix, Dominique Santiago, Augustus Cole, Damon Baird, Noble Six, and their comrades/associates/etc. are all exactly the same person, devoid of their own personal or private conflicts. Without you to bring this to my attention, it would have surely been lost to the ages.
Indeed, I must confess I have not played any fighting game seriously. I am what you would call an enthusiast: I like to follow the games, I like to read about the high level strategies, the frame data, the mechanics and what have you, but I don’t devote a lot of my time to any particular fighter in an attempt to reach tournament-level ability.
And had you not come along to point out that this is not a good enough position with which to base an opinion, I would have foolishly continued to believe that one does not necessarily need to experience and/or witness something in order to have an opinion about it. Thank you again, good sir, for your kind depositing of pearls before this lowly swine called me, myself, and I.
But unfortunately, the world is fraught with people unwilling to follow your time-honored wisdom: people who study and make claims about the planet Venus without actually having visited Venus, people who dislike Superman 64 and Sonic Team games based solely on reviews and impressions, people who are allowed to vote in civic elections despite never having run as a city councilor or mayor. We must stop these charlatans: please PM me a time and place we can meet to take back our honor.
I’m so glad, again, you responded to my post. Without your sound observations, I would have continued to remember the various races of Mass Effect as having been comprised of both competent and incompetent individuals, each with their own conflict, agenda, goals, and manner of conduct. That certainly doesn’t happen in Japanese RPGs, like Phantasy Star.
I haven’t had my eyes so opened by any individual since Dr. B. Truly a delight!
I actually DID enjoy X as well, however it wasn’t close to the awesomeness of previous FF games. They lately seem to be all about crazy FMV’s and scenery, and lacking in actual gameplay.
I can only think of Barrett and Zaz from the FF games lol. Honestly, Japanese games feel weird, because sometimes you can’t really place a nationality on characters. Asian characters (Ken, M Bison, for instance) dont really look Japanese at all.
THEN WHY ARE COMPANIES BITCHING ABOUT NOT MAKING MONEY BECAUSE THEY’VE FALLEN BEHIND??? 10% of the game market is all thats left for Japan now, a market they had OVER 1/2 of the share of, not even 8 years ago…
Mario gets his name slapped on shit by Nintendo because nobody wants to buy a generic Nintendo Tennis title. But Mario Tennis might attract enough idiot parents who will get it for their kids.
He was referring to software sales not install base. That would also mean that Japanese companies are more successful in the console market too.
Barrett wasn’t a protagonist. FF7 had only one protagonist: Cloud. Was FF12 an ensemble cast? If so, than Zaz probably counts.
I really, really, really didn’t like Zeal. I enjoyed Chrono Trigger, but the moment I stepped foot in Zeal with the people speaking in metaphor and making vague allusions to thematic concepts that much, much better writing would do much, much better, something seemed… off. The whole story changed more at that point than Hancock did when it stopped being about a bitter Superman-like figure and instead introduced the whole “they’re ancient, immortal gods” nonsense.
Chrono Trigger was at its best when it was about an eldritch abomination from space slowly destroying the planet, and a group of mismatched adventurers from throughout time banded together, with the aid of a mysterious entity who could warp them throughout time, to stop said abomination and ensure the planet’s continued survival.
The moment Kato started injecting his unique brand of overly ambiguous, Eva-level meaningless symbolism, that premise was distorted. Now suddenly the planet is alive (!), has the power to manipulate its own history (!!), and an angry Lavos merged with the most Cinderella-like, pussy-ass-weak, makes Other M Samus look like a female Halo Spartan waste of a character to form an entity that would devour all space and time by splitting into magic dragons from another reality where Azala won and the guru of time created a Time Crash in 2400 AD wherein the El Nido archipelago was sent back in time with the sole purpose of giving birth to Serge so he could save Schala and Robo dies and holy shit I don’t even want to talk about this anymore.
Dr. B saved Schala in the end.
Wii Tennis. Also why are you criticizing these companies for doing what it takes to make money then you say they aren’t doing enough apparently? lol. Capcom is the one bitching btw. Nintendo has been very profitable on both ends of the spectrum this gen. Sega sonic titles are selling fine and SE are making a killing off their FF and DQ franchises.
Was just about to drop that on you haha, can’t believe there’s not been more hype for this since E3.
And Japan making horrible games has nothing to do with them being behind the times imo. Personally I feel there’s a false sense of complacency going around over there, especially with square-enix who seems to have fallen into the “We’re Square-enix, you’re gonna buy it” routine.
Another important point: software sales are the meat and potatoes of the market. Citing how much the PSP has such as huge installed base in Japan means shit because Japanese PSP owners only bought 2-3 games like Monster Hunter.
Japanese gamers in general buy a lot less games per system than Americans and Europeans do. That’s why you have stupidly high hardware sales of portables and other systems that are on par or better than Western hardware sales but the software market in Japan has fucking CRASHED in the last 10 years.
doing what it takes? Adding Mario to the title of a game, and making all the characters in the game Mario, Toad, Luigi, etc etc etc etc, is NOT ‘doing what it takes’. The whole point is that the rest of the world isn’t buying their games anymore, and doing so in LARGE numbers. They literally lost HALF (thats a 1 over a 2) of the game market (a $60 billion market, at current estimates) in less than half a decade. This entire generation, western gaming has exploded like Dr B’s nut on Spec’s neck (seriously, spec’s posts blow me away with their iron tight logic and humour).
RTFA dumbass. They are ALL bitching. Square’s president has complained, Capcom’s has, and several others as well. Do I need to fucking explain the math when you go from a greater than 50% market domination to less than 10%??? Square is not ‘making a killing’ off this gen lol. Nintendo is getting by on nostalgia and the fact they pretty much dominate the handheld market. Wii games almost don’t count, as they are a new start for nintendo. But there are still tons of games with Mario slapped on the front, just not so many on the Wii. Wii games sell on the strength of the fact they are the only 3D controllers out there (well, they WERE), so they dont need Mario on the cover. Non Wii games ain’t so lucky. Sonic games haven’t sold over 1.5 million since the first 2, not including Sonic and Mario at the olympics. Dont give me that “they’re selling fine” stupidity. Just because you own a game, doesn’t mean there isn’t anything wrong with it.
But it works though and honestly it comes down to the fans on whether they like there products or not.
Contra ReBirth Video Game, Review | Video Clip | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com (kinda old I know buy still a new contra)
That argument could work if you were just talking about the West. PSP software sells well in Japan, but it’s dismal elsewhere with a few exceptions. DS has great software sales everywhere.
EDIT: Japan software sales for 1st half of 2010, 6 handheld titles in top 10
Totally, that’s why I don’t think there will be much incentive to improve their work. They made do it anyway, maybe by accident, maybe because they had a morality attack and devs decide their artistic vision is too important to fuck up, but right now they’re gonna throw some nice looking shit at the wall and see what sticks, and so are a lot of Japanese Devs. Namco has been reworking Tales of Symphonia for like what 4 or 5 years now? 6? I think T.O.S. Super Turbo just came out on Wii.
But like you said, people are still gonna buy these games and Japanese game review media aren’t helping consumers with their biased opinions.
On the other hand, trying to do something different can also hurt your franchise, even if it was an okay game, we’ve all seen that before right?
Japan needs moar amnesia.
[Citation Needed]
lol at some of the logic here too.
You’re becoming silly. This is your quote
"Mario gets his name slapped on shit by Nintendo because nobody wants to buy a generic Nintendo Tennis title. But Mario Tennis might attract enough idiot parents who will get it for their kids."
Under that premise the company is simply using it’s branding and image to sell more units then they would have. If Mario sells games why bench the IP when thats what you want to accomplish?
[Citation Needed]
Square’s FF and DQ IP have made them a lot of money this generation you however said that they aren’t making money cause they continue to produce these games. Evidently the opposite is true.
It’s fascinating how you think you get to decide that Nintendo’s success is irrelevant when that’s exactly what we are discussing.
My points since I entered this thread are;
[LIST]
[*]The Japanese Market are thriving on handhelds yet we overlook that.
[*]Most Japanese developers are smaller than their western counter parts however they produce games on a smaller scale which would still be profitable to them (case in point Atlus.)
[*]Japnese companies are sticking to their proven IPs for the most part yet you bash them for doing such but them claim they aren’t doing enough by your standards.
[/LIST]
Do you wish to refute this?
So you don’t honestly feel the FF series has improved in quality over the years sans the online games?
I look at Final Fantasy games like I look at a TV series. Sure, I may end up watching the entire season, but there are chances I may miss an episode, or not watch it right away. 13 was the first one I rented instead of bought. Never even played 12, 11 was online and fuck paying fees. Somebody gets a FF game with the hopes the story will kick ass, and the gameplay will be decent. FMV’s started getting nuts in the games lately. FMV, walk 10 feet, FMV, then you can save, and then its another FMV. Even the storylines arent what they used to be. Old school games were about kingdoms and saving the world from a villain and his monsters. Now its always a company, or a country, that is evil, and attacks you with really weak (apparantly) guns bombs and fucked up versions of REAL final fantasy creatures of legend. ffs, you dont even get an airship anymore (or a world map).
a LOT of japanese games feel like anime movies, with a bit of gaming in between the clips.
Video Games, Charts, Articles, News, Reviews, Community, Forums at The VGChartz Network
Go read and learn something, dipshit.
Troll or trick question?