Experience Points OUTWest: 90-93 and August 27th, 2014

Experience Points: Once Upon a Time in the West 90-93

(Original, longer post here)

(I am not super knowedgeable about this era of PC gaming.  Most of these I am relating in context to the JRPG genre or are important culturally in video games as a whole, there are far too many games to talk about all of them here)

The RPG scene in the West in the 1980's was transcendental.  The start of JRPG's is rooted firmly in Ultima and Wizardry, influenced by Dungeons and Dragons, and fed by J. R. R. Tolkien.  The Western RPG scene of the early 90's has largely been... forgotten.  In Japan, the descendants of Ultima's overhead movement style were reigning supreme with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest(Warrior) adopting this style.  In the West, at this time, it was Wizardry's first person dungeon experience that took hold.

By this era, we are getting into the 2nd and 3rd generation of the Wizardry descendants.  Earlier titles practically required you to have a sheet of graph paper and a notebook to write down important information and map data while you played.  Popular releases in the Might and Magic series were released in this time, but Eye of the Beholder is one of the standout titles of this era that was ported to other systems such as the SNES.  Many consider it the pinnacle of the style in its era.  It used the multiple window view to have first person, tactical, and cutscene presentation.  It also used the Dungeons and Dragons license to base its gameplay on.  The Nintendo Entertrainment System also got a pretty popular title in this genre with the release of Swords and Serpents, a very scaled down version of this type of gameplay.

That is not to say that non-First person RPG's did not have some big releases.  Ultima 6 is arguably one of the biggest overhauls to PC RPG's outside of transitioning to 3D.  Its detailed overhead graphics caused many of its competitors to look dated and go back to the drawing board.  The "Gold Box" set of games were in full swing as well.  They began in 1988 with Pool of Radiance, but in this era that were more than 8 titles using the game engine to create adventures with the Dungeons and Dragon licenses and various worlds including Forgotten Realms, DragonLance, and Dark Sun.

In the end, it was Technology and the rise of the JRPG that caused this era of gaming to be largely "forgotten".  With real time tactical overhead/Isometric/3D combat, and first person shooters, making the gameplay of these titles seem very old and clunky, the genre took a nose dive in a short amount of time.  What's more is that the gameplay still feels clunky and is hard for new players to pick up and become fans.  There have been a few revivals(including the critically acclaimed Grimrock), but few successful attempts have been made to bring back this era.

August 27th, 2014

So Hello Kitty is not a cat.  There's a 40th Anniversary celebration going on in Japan and with it there's a lot of new articles about the... cartoon character.  SO brace yourself, you're about to get schooled:  Hello Kitty is a cartoon character of a little girl.  Her name is Kitty White, and she's British.  Seriously, she lives outside of London.  She has a twin sister named Mimmy that does own a cat that looks exactly like her... so... there's that.  She has never been officially depicted on all 4's, and never shown with a tail.  It is said she started showing up in the asian areas of San Francisco in the 70's, where she is seen as very important to the kids that grew up there, as they saw her as "their Mickey mouse".

Shigeru Miyamoto is the "grandfather" of Japanese video games.  He's the creator of Mario, Zelda, and so many other games and is a major reason for Nintendo(and videogames) being successful today.  The Wii was one of those "flukes" of history, just like World of Warcraft, it did numbers that no one expected and no one can replicate in today's market, even though they spend millions and millions trying.  I, and many others, have said that the Wii "boom" was populated by the buying power of non-gamers.  Like the NES of old, it was the "it" thing for people to gift to other people, and it was cheap enough that people could impulse buy it.  The Wii, the Iphone, and Facebook became the driving force of the cash cow known as "casual" gamers.  Recently the gaming industry has gotten fed up with that group for a number of reasons.  First, they do not want to play above 99 cents even for full games(this is part the dev's fault for pushing so many free to play and then pay-but-still-pay-more scams), and then they get confused about the Wii U, and also do not purchase it as an "upgrade", leaving Nintendo is a very deep hole.  Miyamoto recently made comments lamenting the lack of motivation for "casual" players to buy new things, and experience gaming rather than watching a movie.  Pop-culture is fickle, and favor can turn on a dime(ask the Xbox team), Nintendo has a faithful crowd and they need to make sure that crowd is served before the others, because you're going to turn around and those others are going to be on to the next big thing.  For all the faults and hoops you have to jump through to make a "core" gamer happy, the one thing that is for certain is that they are consistant.  The "core" gamer that spent money on you in the past will be there to spend it on you in the future and will influence their friend's purchasing habits.

(I refuse that "core" is short for Hardcore when its used for gaming, most industry people that matter mean it as the middle, the focus audience that gives you the backbone to develop the rest of your business off of)

Still having a blast in Ni No Kuni.  One of the striking things about this game is how different all the towns are.  I look back at a lot of games in the PS2 and SNES era, and really the towns reused a lot of the same assets(the PS1 era's static pre-rendered screens actually had a lot of variety).  I find myself not only wanting to advance the story, but also I want to see what the next town's culture, leaders, and architecture is like.  There is a silliness to it that so few game companies get right, and yet even though they are based in silly, they are very magnificent to see.  Again I find myself wanting to be able to take screenshots while I play because it feels like I"m on an adventure and I want to share my travels with people.