Experience Points: Prime 90-93 and August 19th, 2014

Experience Points: Prime 90-93

(Original post at my gaming Blog)

Dawn of the 16 Bit era

At the dawn of the 16-bit era the RPG was still a very niche market.  If you had asked anyone I knew what RPG games there were at the time, they'd look at you blankly as the term was more used in PC-gaming circles.  When looking at this early 16 bit era, we see Final Fantasy IV(2 US) get released and set the tone for the entire generation of RPG's.  Its hard to overstate its importance in this era, and can easily be compared to Final Fantasy 7 in opening the doors wider to more releases.  The majority of the RPG's to come in this era only come to NA/Euro after the success of Final Fantasy IV.  Other more traditional JRPG's include: 7th Saga(SNES), Lufia and the Fortress of Doom(SNES), Dragon Warrior 4(NES), Lunar: The Silver Star Story(Sega CD), Phantasy Star III(Gen)

Another huge influence was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  While its debatable if its an RPG, you can not deny that it was the Zelda series that sparked the Adventure RPG sub-genre.  By adding statistics, experience and levels to Zelda the "modern" adventure RPG was made.  Due to Zelda's popularity we got several games we might not have otherwise gotten, including: Secret of Mana, Lagoon, and Soul Blazer.  There was also some action RPG love for the Gameboy with the release of Final Fantasy Adventure, which was actually the first in the Secret of Mana series(Seiken Desetsu).

(Pictured: secret of Mana)

Tactical RPG's took root in Japan before the 1990's, but we barely got any of them over here.  In this 90-93 era, there was new effort to hook the US on tactical games.  We got  Warsong on the Genesis around this time.  Warsong was not yet quite as popular, though perhaps more influential in Japan than here.  Warsong was a part of the Langrisser series in Japan(4th in the series), a series that would inspire the creation of Fire Emblem and Shining Force itself.  Its influence would feed directly into Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, and its legacy is continued still today in Japan as the Growlanser series. A decade would pass bfeore we would get Fire Emblem, but we did get Shining Force.  Shining Force was a good ambassador of the genre, featuring typical JRPG mechanics, like town exploration, which was missing from earlier tactical RPG's.

(Shining Force: Battle animations)

So by and large, that's the RPG exprience that we got over here from Japan.  I will save my experiences and my final thoughts on this for the 4th and final post for this era.  That means we have 2 more posts before the end of the era.  Coming later will be the American RPG scene(there's a dominant sub-genre), and then the stuff that stayed in Japan.

August 19th, 2014

When it comes to 80's cartoons, there's this really weird thing that occurs.  The older studio guys are still afraid to depict moms and dads in shows for fear of having to show them being affectionate, or non-affectionate, and not being able to win either way back then.  This has lead to lots of shows where nieces and nephews go to live with uncles and grandparents.  Duck Tales has nephews going to live with what we can assume are grand-uncles?  I mean, they're nephews of Donald, but Scrooge is Donald's uncle, so at the very least he's a grand uncle to the boys.  Then we have Gummi bears, which seems to go out of its way to have everything but a mom and dad.  The kids are there, with a grumpy uncle?  or is he a family friend?  Then there's Gammi, she doesn't have a husband either, as the old wizard is her brother.  So... because Disney is so afraid to show a loving mom and dad, all these shows have some sort of horrible tragedy that no one ever speaks of.  Where are their parents?  I mean.. the ducks are missing Donald's sister/brother, Scrooge's son or daughter perhaps, and no one mentions or morns.  Gummi bears is even crazier, they have an entire abandoned city under their home FULL of paintings of bears ALL OVER THE WALLS, practically wallpaper, and no mention of why they're all dead or gone.  I just find is sort of nuts that to avoid a little affection display on Saturday morning, they had to kill entire families.

I have this weird thing with subtitles.  I can watch a foreign movie and forget it had subtitles.  Reading the subtitles and watching the action on screen is 2nd nature and very easy for me.  It is like reading in a book and having the voice in your head.  When I first watched Spirited Away, it was subtitled at the theater, and yet I never feel like I watched it otherwise.  BUT THEN, there are video games.  In video games they usually have subtitles for cutscenes even though they are in English.  My brain doesn't handle this well.  It is like, in a foreign movie, I can ignore the language, watch the scene, and read the titles.  In an English game with subtitles, I will listen to the voice, but then struggle with watching the scene or reading the subtitles, but I have difficulty in doing all 3.  I actually have to turn off the subtitles to keep my eyes from wanting to wander at the letters.  The closest conclusion I can come to is that its like having an echo on the voices when I read what's being said and I'm also comprehending what is being said.  So... Language, Subtitles, Scene: pick 2, I guess.