The X Button
Exist Tense
by Todd Ciolek,
How do you enter? I want you to humorously explain in 200 words or less why a classic video game is masterful high art in ways the designers never intended. Is Chubby Cherub a gripping eschatological tale of redemption? Is Iggy's Reckin' Balls all about gentrification? Is Kirby's Adventure a secret commentary on consumerism or the energy crisis of the 1970s?
You can choose just about any title prior to the current generation, but I think that the simpler a game is, the more fun you'll have grafting on ridiculous and elaborate interpretations. Submissions will be judged primarily on how amusing and thoughtfully bizarre they get in their arguments, with extra points for pure academic flourish.
One first-place winner will receive a prize pack with several artbooks, starting with the PlayStation 3. I consider Nier to be art because it adeptly subverts game conventions and molds diverse genres into a bleak, powerful edifice. I consider Drakengard 3 to be art because it makes people mad.
Two runners-up will receive Nier for the Xbox 360. And now we turn to the rules.
-Your submission should be an original creation. It'S.o.K to dust off an idea you've had in mind for years, but I'd prefer if you don't rehash something from an old forum gag.Yes, there's a category for the most deliberately terrible submission I receive. To enter, you must put “Worst Entry” in the subject line of your email. All of the above rules still apply, so don't submit your X-rated breakdown of The Krion Conquest.-As mentioned above, an entry should be about 200 words long at most. It'S.o.K to go a little over, but you should avoid writing a term paper.
-Keep things relatively tasteful. True art often goes to disturbing places, but don't get too graphic.
-I normally ask winners of previous contests to avoid entering later competitions, but it's been over a year since the last contest. With the exception of ANN employees and game-industry folks, anyone can have a go this time around.
-Readers are welcome to enter regardless of location, but there's a catch. If you win first place and you're outside of the U.S., you'll have to pay for shipping. Sorry, but these books are heavy.
-Only one entry counts per person. You can send later entries to replace earlier ones, however, and you can enter the general contest and the worst-entry division with separate essays.
If yours is the dumbest, most inept, or otherwise awful thing I see in this contest, you get Bullet Witch for the Xbox 360 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z for the PlayStation 3. They're generally considered terrible, but you might find them fascinating in their own trashy ways. And if you hate them...well, you might deserve that.
Entries must be sent to me (toddciolek at gmail.com) by midnight EST on Friday, January 29. That gives you a week longer than the usual contest deadline. I know that art takes time.
NEWS
KAGA CREATE SHUTS DOWN, ENDS A LEGACY
Last year couldn't leave without ending just one more Japanese game company. Kaga Create, the video-game division of Saki Zenkoku-hen. It's true that Kaga Create trafficked primarily in visual novels as far back as 2000 (which seems such an innocent age now), but their history goes much deeper.
Kaga Electronics started its video-game sector in 1988, giving it the name of NEC released them for the system's North American cousin, the TurboGrafx-16. Devil's Crush is the better game, but as someone who buys every bad Aliens comic he finds in quarter bins, my heart belongs to Alien Crush.
Compile and naxat also combined forces on one of history's best 2-D shooters, Seirei Senshi Spriggan for the PC Engine. I'd like to say that Spriggan came west to save the TurboGrafx-16 and its TurboDuo successor, but it remains a Japan-only release even today. Shooters were naxat's lifeblood for a good while, and they even backed Summer Carnival amateur creations like the Famicom's Recca and the PC Engine's unfortunately named Alzadick.
Most of naxat's console releases came on the PC Engine and occasionally filtered out to the TurboGrafx-16, but I'd bet that any Microsoft, got his start on Taxan-published fare like Burai Fighter and Low G Man. Taxan left the game-publishing racket in 1991, but they still exist as Kaga's North American electronics arm and apparently maintain an office in San Jose. Go down there and ask for a sequel to 8 Eyes if you're in the neighborhood!
Kaga Electronics kept naxat Soft going well into the PlayStation era, renaming the label Kaga Tech in 1998. From there the former naxat went through numerous company mergers, becoming Digital Gain before arriving at the name of Kaga Create in 2007. By then they favored visual novels, though one couldn't blame them for sticking with lower-budget titles. Kaga Create had no long-term series, and even the publisher's final message paints a grim portrait: they couldn't make money in an industry that leans on the crowded mobile-game field more and more.
And that's it for naxat Soft in name and spirit. The central Kaga Electronics branch and Taxan still exist, and I doubt they'll touch video games again. A shame, but we'll always have Alien Crush.
SQUARE TAKES DOWN SHINRA, AND THAT'S NOT GOOD
Kaga Create isn't the only video-game venture that faded recently. Square Enix established Shinra Technologies in 2014, billing the subsidiary as a “cloud-based” game company that would offer “new types of game experiences." The studio had offices in both New York and Tokyo, with former Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada in charge. Yet it failed to attract investors, and Square Enix shut it down this month. The New York location officially folds at the end of March while the Tokyo spot will hang on through June.
Square Enix also announced an incoming loss of two billion yen (roughly $16 million) for the end of the fiscal year, and that's discouraging. It would be one thing if Shinra Technologies was an elaborate attempt to put Wada out to pasture, as Japanese companies often do instead of firing executives (his division even bore the name of Final Fantasy VII's malfeasant corporation), but it's clearly cost the company more than Wada's salary. I only hope it won't cost us interesting, risky games like NieR:Automata in the future.
MARVELOUS: ANOTHER TREASURE ISLAND FAN-TRANSLATED IN FULL
Nintendo's old catalog has many small and fascinating projects lurking in between the Marios and Zeldas that even abstemious elders recognize by cultural osmosis. Some of these lesser-knowns seem ideal for the international scene. I can understand why Nintendo ruled Fire Emblem too unwieldy for localization during the NES and Super NES days, but it's strange that the company never translated For the Frog the Bell Tolls in the Game Boy era…or the action-RPG Marvelous: Another Treasure Island for the Super Nintendo's waning years.
Marvelous: Another Treasure Island even appears to be crafted with overseas audiences in mind. It's roughly based on Stevenson's old adventure classic, and it follows three kids through a Zelda-like overhead quest for pirate treasure. It's relatively lightweight in its story and puzzle design, but it has plenty to interest with its multi-character gameplay and varied tools. Its Japan-only fate likely stems more from timing than any cultural provisos; it came along in 1996 just as the Super NES gave way to Nintendo's promotional Nintendo 64 storm, and even among those last few Super NES releases, Super Mario RPG played better on the worldwide stage.
Nintendo never ported Marvelous to a later system or translated it for the Virtual Console, so it was up to fan groups to fill that void. A partial localization by someone named Tāshi made the rounds, and now DackR finished up the job last month. It's not an official Nintendo deal, but it's close to what the company would have (and should have) released twenty years ago.
IMPORT ROUNDUP: DECEMBER
ASSAULT SUIT LEYNOS Developer: Dracue Publisher: Dracue Platform: PlayStation 4 Some things are better served up in side-scrollers than modern venues, and anime Sega Genesis offering (known here as Target Earth) with tiny robots and brutal challenges, but Dracue Software has much more space in their remake. Everything is larger and richer in detail, from the player's own mecha to the hovering airships and cratered Jupiter moon colonies. One's assault suit hops and jets across lunar surfaces and through military outposts, swapping between three different weapons (including a shield) at a time. Enemies still throng around and disgorge missiles and lasers and bullets, and it's easy to get lost in the whirl of exploding mecha and stray gunfire. Stages also vary in their goals and even their physics. One might send your assault suit stomping through the verdant hills of a colony. Another might have you floating freely around an immense orbital battleship. Two versions of Assault Suit Leynos appear here. A Classic mode imitates the level layouts and soundtrack of the original, with minimal storytelling and more vicious enemies. The Arcade mode changes some level design, adds more bosses, and supplies voice-acting for the more copious dialogue and cutscenes. These run through the usual mecha-war staples of tragic sacrifice and Pyrrhic victories, complete with little portraits. My favorite is the game's rendition of bridge operator Leena, who looks completely, disdainfully bored even in the thick of horrifying battlefield chaos. Import Barrier: A domestic PlayStation 4 runs Japanese games just fine, and the gameplay isn't all that hard to grasp. Some of the level objectives in the Arcade mode need a little translation, though Domestic Release: No one's stepped up yet, but I imagine some companies are interested. Damascus Gear: Operation Tokyo made it over here, and that had less cachet than Assault Suits. Optimistic Prediction: This Leynos remake will spread far and wide, giving Dracue the go-ahead for a Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken revisiting far superior to the one we saw on the PlayStation 2. |
EXIST ARCHIVE: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY Developer: tri-Ace Publisher: NIS America, since they've handled Spike Chunsoft's material before. Optimistic Prediction: Exist Archive will stoke new interest in Valkyrie Profile, which in turn will inspire Valkyrie Profile sequels, remakes, toys, party favors, theme parks, animated movies with miscast celebrity voices, and, of course, smartphone puzzle games. |
| Digimon, and countless other tales where seemingly average kids befriend strange monsters and team up to explore the wonders of a new multimedia property. Really, the Monster Strike anime series has its bewildered teenage hero literally discovering a world of monster duels through the Monster Strike smartphone app. The 3DS game adopts many of the same characters in its story. Ren Homura is back in his hometown but lacking concrete recollections of his childhood, and only with the help of Monster Strike duels and a little red beastie named Oragon does he regain memories of his childhood friend Aoi and less important matters. The 3DS version of Monster Strike retains the gameplay of the smartphone title. Ren now roams town and duels strangers, but the battle mechanics remain much the same. Monsters sit in spheres of varying size, and players pull back and launch them around an arena, where they'll ricochet off walls and deal out damage. There's a vast array of special abilities to wield and new monsters to discover and hatch out, and the billiard-ball combat can get surprisingly complex. Naturally, the 3DS title allows for multiplayer battles and monster trades, even if you're still more likely to encounter people who have Monster Strike on smartphones than on the 3DS. At the rate the 3DS version is selling, though, that might not hold true for long. Import Barrier: The game mechanics are easily grasped if you've had a few spins on the Monster Strike mobile app, though the 3DS version's dialogue and text is mostly in Japanese. And the 3DS is region-locked. Domestic Release: No sign of one yet, but it's very likely. Nintendo brought over Puzzle & Dragons, even if it needed a Mario crossover. Optimistic Prediction: Monster Strike will grow so profitable that Okamoto will return to console game development (even though he retired from it) and make Folklore 2. |
For those who like the pneumatic ninja heroines of YouTube apparently banned the official Marvelous for a short while. The game's near-constant titillation might keep some Western publishers away, but the discovery of English-language trophies suggests that someone's interested in localizing it.
NEXT WEEK'S RELEASES
It's a dry week ahead for major releases, though you can check out some smaller projects like the harrowing semi-autobiographical That Dragon, Cancer and the strategy-RPG Echoes of Aetheria. And you also might catch up on some older games that you've put off for too long. Did you ever finish The Guardian Legend for the NES? Now isn't a bad time for that.
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