Jingoistic Japanese Gamers

General Discussion
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@Stuart_Hayden I can explain why my posts are longer than average.

  1. I’m on Social Security disability. I don’t have a family. I’m kind of lonely, and have lots of free time. It’s my way to reach out and touch someone.

  2. These issues are not as simple as either a yes or no, or a single word, or a starting post of one paragraph. If I jsut said “Japanese games are jingoists.” and stopped there you’d say I’m flakey. When I counter with the fact that Sega was perceived as half-Amercian becuase of their history therefore not truly Japanese, and that Sega and Xbox are always 3rd in a 3 way race within Japan. Xbox and Sega has to basically write off Japan when they start. There may be something to my argument.

I’m not saying this holds true for individual game, but just systems.

I was surprised to hear an opinion that Americans were more jingoistic than the Japanese were. I guess it’s the difference between “obviously Japanese”, and a more “universal” theme. Games that are culturally specific tend to stay in the target culture. That’s why FIFA is the world’s most popular sports game, but Americans focus on Madden. I would expect 99% of Madden sales to be in Amercian households. I see AFL and Cricket as download games. (and this AFL is Australian Football League, not Arena Football League) It’s available to Americans, but not even close to a big enough seller to justify discs in America. But in Australia and regions where Cricket is big, they are probably disc games respectively. Likewise Madden is probably a download elsewhere in the world. With downloads it’s cheap enough to internationalize.

And I did say that Taito and Namco teamed with Bally/Midway for the American arcade versions of Space Invaders and Pac-Man. So Americans, even before the crash, were importing Japanese games. So even at the beginning, Americans were importing Japanese games. They were just slapping an American company name on them.

Did Japanese import American and European games before 1984? Did Europeans import American and Japanese games before 1984? I just know that Americans were importing games before the crash. I don’t know if it was reciprocated. Was there a Centipede infestation or a similar American game invasion in Japan or Europe?

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@gasaraki I understand quite a few Japanese people might not like First Person Shooters.

There were some Japanese attempts, like Sega’s Outtrigger for the Dremacast, and Nintendo’s Splatoon for the Wii U. They got rid of the heavy violence and gore in those games, and in Splatoon’s case, changed to third person and changed the objective from-shoot-to-kill to mark more territory.

In Japan, exposed guts WAS like nude boobies in America. I remember certain American games being considered too violent for Japanese. Americans love gore. (I’m not one of them, I’d rather be snuggly aroused than turned off sick.) We invented the “slasher movie.” Mortal Kombat competed against Street FIghter in America.

Enough Americans not only avoid boobies, but try to prevent fellow Americans who may be interested from enjoying them. It’s the Puritan moral code that’s engrained in US history. Thankfully it’s being diluted.

In Japan, at one point did survival horror games not have intense gore, with gore being unique to American audiences, and the scares were more psychological?

With enough world exposure, I believe, in general, the world’s peoples has been more tolerant of each other.

By the way what American games were hits in Japan, you just talk about the bombs like first person shooters, reinforcing my point. You dont know how to make a counter argument.

Me: Japanese gamers are Jingoists
You: No they are not.
Me: Any system perceived as American was in last place in Japan.
You: Japanese hate first-person shooters.

I would expect you to list some examples of successful American games, especially before the American Crash. Saying “Japanese hate first person shooters” solidifies my argument, not counters it.

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The systems themselves usually fail not because of being American made but because of the preferences in genre. Most western systems have western style games at their core, for Japan you see a western style RPG and only a small portion of gamers will be interested. Just like how a Final Fantasy game isn’t going to match a Madden or a modern CoD release domestically. People like certain games and if the system doesn’t support them people won’t buy it.

That is the main reason the Mega Drive in Japan was a failure while the Genesis outside of it. Or why the Saturn failed in the west but was well received in Japan. You can even through in the N64 which was popular enough in NA but a bomb for Nintendo unrivaled until the Wii U. It is the games, having one or two token titles isn’t enough to power a system to popularity.

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I agree it’s a style lineup. Nintendo and Sony are the most Japanese companies, so they ensure their number 1 and 2 spots. Sega and Microsoft had a tough time of catching on in Japan. Even though the Saturn was the best Sega system in Japan, it still was paltry compared to Playstation 1, (maybe not N64, I may give you that one)

I believe system identity was bigger before. You can distinguish an Atari 5200 vs a Colecovision version of a Game by a screenshot alone. Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro you’d have to be very nitpicky to find ANY difference, let alone one that is strong enough to prefer one version of the other.

I don’t know when the systems lines were so blurred that it was exclusively the exclusives which won the day. Even in the SNES/Genesis/TG16 days, differences were distinct enough to have obvious differences, usually scale tipping ones. The last scale-tipping difference for me was X-Men Vs Street Fighter. Sure the Saturn had double the frames, it that’s not what’s most noticed. What’s noticed most is anytime in the game, you can switch characters on the Saturn, and Playstation 1 you can’t. That was the number one game of the week in Electornics Boutique, and Sega abandoned the Saturn by then, and it beat all PS1 and N64 titles. Those Saturn imports gave Electornics Boutique a new revenue source that made them better than Funcoland at the time.

And the funny thing is that either Capcom or The Japanese government or the US Governemnet got involved and stopped the games in the US. Wish I would have gotten Marvel vs Street Fighter, too. I heard it was a legal kerfuffel about some personality or character who was licensed in Japan and for some reason raised dander in the US.

They localized it in the US for Playstaiton 1, but it was the Saturn version everyone wanted in the US, mainly because of tag teaming. Sega gave up the ship. Sega even encouraged people to use foreign adapters if yu told them that, when before, they invalidated your warrantee if you told them that.

But is my original claim true that Americans are less jingoistic about Japanese games than Japanese are about American ones?

My case in point, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Galaga, all Japanese creations, did well in America. Where was the Centipede infestation in Japan? Joust was so unheard of in Japan that most people there know Balloon Fight as the original “flap” game. not Joust. I’d like to know if Atari or Williams had any of their homegrown hits do well in Japan before the crash. What America hit games were hits in Japan, and not in an “art-cade”: an equivalent to a foreign film-showing small theater in the US?

And how did European games do in Japan and the US then, and how did US and Japanese game do in Europe? I know the consoles had national walls, but the games could break through.

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TLDR

…seriously

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@Sacr3D: To sum up:

  1. It seems the later you go the less differences between systems there are. The last game I played that had THAT a shcoking of a system difference was X-Men Vs. Street Fighter on the Saturn vs. Playstaiton1. Now PS4 and Xbox one for dual-systems games seem like 2-of-a-kind.

  2. America has been open to Japanese hits, (albeit released under American names.) for example Bally Midway released Taito’s Space Invaders and Namco’s Pac-Man.

Have any American-originated games back then (like from Atari or Williams) made the top of the Japanese charts (either arcade or home)?

  1. What’s Europe’s sitch before the Crash? Any American or Japanese titles hit big in Europe? Any European titles hit big on Amercian or Japanese soil?

If Japan never imported US games and Europe had a two-way wall, the American Gamers are the most open-minded and most game-culturually diverse gamers back then.

Of course since then the world got smaller and there’s a whole mess of cross-pollination,

P.S. I’m a jobless, family-less, social security recipient. I have no social life outside the virtual world, and no job in the real one, and no family to take care of. Of course my speeches will be long! …

Pardon me.

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Western games are Zionistic propaganda with the big gay.
Japan doesn’t want that shit and neither do most core Western gamers.

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:crazy_face:

  1. When were Israeli/Palestinian issues an issue with any game in either the US or Japan?

  2. The only 2 things I know about Homosexuality in video games that was different in Japan compared to the US was

a. Sega made a character in one of the Streets of Rage games homosexual in Japan, but changed it for the US Genesis version, just avoided the issue. By the way, in modern reprints, both versions are available with an option switch, all over the world.

b.And the Capcom character known as Guy in the west was, using greco-roman characters in Japan was originally spelled “Gai”, was phonetically respelled to “Guy” to avoid the US market from pronouncing “Gai” as “Gay”. I’ve heard Ninja Gaiden pronounced as both “Guy-Den” and “Gayd-en”. Same with Raiden: “Rye-den” in the Raiden shooter game fo Xbox One when they verbalize the word, and “Rayd-en” verbalized when he wins in Mortal Kombat games.

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Clearly Japan is 100% against the “Big Gay”.

:roll_eyes:

hqdefault

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Yep, the Cho Aniki series is proof Japanese isn’t against gays

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Don’t care, virgin.

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Hey, that’s no way to win an argument.
Going to debased insults in poor attempt to discredit someone just lacks any maturity at all.

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Maybe the most casual of Japanese gamers are more focused on titles from their own country but there is a contingent or audience that digs Western titles. Wizardry for instance is a Western product but they gained a lot of traction in Japan to the point of it helped forged several major JRPG franchises.

You can also look at Dark Souls which takes Western style and crafted that particular genre of games. The DS games are made by Japanese creators but the Western influence is undeniable. I can’t say for certain NA really does have the edge because in general the population of gamers out number those in Japan by a wide margin.

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Hell, Final Fantasy too alot of inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons.
So much so that the original Final Fantasy game has Spells per day instead of MP.

Dwarves, Elves, Dark Elves, Rust monsters, being able to choose the make up of your party roster off the start. FF even shares a few godly characters with D&D such as Bahamut and Tiamat

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I was thinking less a long the lines of influence, like Dungeons and Dragons inspiring RPGs.

I was thinking mre like how most people in Japan think the original “flap flap” game was Balloon Fight from Nintendo, NOT Joust from Williams.

I’m mainly focusing on pre-Crash arcades and home titles. I’m just saying Bally/Midway made a fortune off importing Taito and Namco games in the US market. Was there a similar “Japanese flagged importer” to Japanese audiences of either Williams or Atari games?

I know after the NES became popular, a lot of Americans adopted the Japanese game culture as their own, even though Bally/Midway had a disguised version with their import titles even before.

Most of the American NES titles in the NES era are “movie and other IP cash-ins” from Acclaim, most of them, if they didn’t have the movie title, would sell diddly squat. I don’t know too many American NES game makers other that Acclaim.

How does Europe involved in pre-Crash gaming? Were there any games importer getting US and Japanese titles before 1985? How about European originated titles that hit the US and Japan markets before 1985?

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There were not much from the European market making it into the US.

Which is a good thing as most European games are God awful.

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Probably the greatest game Europe ever birthed was during an era where there were 2 sides to the Iron Curatin, and that is the Russian classic known as Tetris.

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Europe for a long long time was on some cheap micro computer shit. One of the reasons, the Playstation brand is as loved as it is over on there is that was the first home console to be mainstream.

That goes to the preferences thing. In Japan, Balloon Fight was on their biggest system during that time period and like many Nintendo IP was pushed heavily. In comparison Joust may have been made available but it likely wasn’t pushed by Nintendo or whoever it’s publisher there as heavy as Balloon Fight. It also was more colorful being a later game if I remember right.

It’s preferences but it is similar to how for many the class based shooting is all based around Overwatch when Team Fortress 2 had been there on PC and Consoles for years.

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Tetris is the exception not the rule.
Also Russia was very isolated from Europe. As the country spans over two continents I usually do not include Russia in with Europe.

That they were, and it was mostly the UK.
Stupid cheap Micro computers like the BBC Micro, The Amstrad, the ZX (Zee Ewks, I will not say Zed) as the king of so cheap it’s shitty computers. They also had the Commodore 64 and the Atari Computers. Most of the games where at the shovelware varriety with Atari 2600 graphics and 5 to 10 min loading times due to their insistence of using a cassette tape as a drive .
At least the US counterparts to the cheap Micro Computer scene had the good sense of using Floppy drives and carts which had better loading times.
Hell until fairly recently most European games were not worth importing,

It also didn’t help for Nintendo that they had the toy company Matel making the European version of the NES for a while, they got roped into that toy category they were trying to avoid in the US.

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So you’re saying Nintendo, on concepts tat are similar to Amercian games like Baloon fight is to Joust, is a Japanese Amercian-culture appropriator

Not that that’s a bad thing. Americans took a humble peasant street food from Italy, and the American style elevated it to the culinary classic of main dish status known as Pizza. Just like there’s differences between Chicago style, New York Style, California Style, and too many unique styles to all them justice. Just like there are micro-differences a food-gourmet would appreciate, there are minor differences in types of shooters and other games of the same type that a game-gourmet may appreciate. And while a newbie may talk surface level stuff, the gourmet can explain what combination of things that work well or don’t, or how that effects skills or strategy.

2 game gourmet details I would have made different that what exists. both involve Nintendo Switch games:

Puyo Puyo Tetris: In the mode where puyos and Tetriminos exist together, if a tetrimino is droped on Puyos, the Puyos explode and get pushed up above the terramino, casing chain reactions. But if a tertimino sart legally on top of another tetrimino, a line of tertininos gets cleared, the tertimino doesn’t break up and fall and squish puyos and cause even bigger mixed chain reacitons. The puyos act as Jelly as loose 1x1 tertimino parts stay suspended instead of following the logical physically, and more dynamic in terms of chain making way of squishing the Puyos. I guess it’s becuase the Japanese have their own innovations like chained lines, T-Spins, and Back-to-Back tetrises, but don’t like the idea of loose pieces falling when there is all space below them and cause cascade reactions. Although I did like the multi color pieces in the Next Tertis breaking off, where cascades were introduced, I did not like the “fusion” elements which made the cascade game harder.

Arms: When I saw the preview, I always assumed you have to manually track your opponent and him you, and you can play a game of Mohammed Ali and float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, and confuse your opponent. But, in the actual game if you’re fighting against someone like that all you have to do is wait a half second when confused and not punch and you automatically face your opponent. Also why have twin sticks if the sticks must be symmetric in order to move? Why not Battlezone controls where forward on one stick and backwards on the other rotates you, and you can have varying degrees of going forward/backward, lateral shift, and pivoting, with the analog twin virtual sticks?