Monday, August 27, 2012

Update 8/26 - Zettai Zetsumei Toshi, Nausicaa, Ultimate Stuntman, Power Drift, 7th Dragon 2020, Chester Cheetah

This update is helmed by an article on the Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series, a trilogy of disaster escape games which were localized under the titles Disaster Report (the first game in North America), SOS: The Final Escape (the first game in Europe) and Raw Danger (the second game). The third game was for the PSP and was not translated into English, while the fourth was schedule to come out for the PS3 last year, but was cancelled in the wake of the tsunami and earthquake that hit Japan back in March 2011. Coincidentally, earlier this month 1up posted an interview with Kazuma Kujo, formerly of Irem, who discusses a bit about the fourth game and the reasons surrounding its cancellation.

Hayao Miyazaki, legendary director of many movies from Ghibli studio, like Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, as long been quoted as having a distaste for video games. That may trace back to a trilogy of computer games based on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, including two shooters and one arcade adventure game, all of which are varying degrees of awful. There have not been any games based on Ghibli movies since then, despite the huge influence that his movies have had on Japanese game artistry, a few examples of which are touched on in this article as well.

Rounding out this update is a review of Ultimate Stuntman, an amusing unlicensed NES game, and Power Drift, one of the lesser known Super Scaler racing games, courtesy of Sega and Yu Suzuki. Plus, installment 15 of our iOS Shooters piece, including reviews of AstroWings, AstroWings Returns, Aerial Assault, and AsciiArt Wars Free: The 2ch Strikes Back.

Our Spotlight Article covers 7th Dragon 2020, the sequel (or, rather, offshoot, if Sega is to be believed) of the 2009 DS JRPG that the company refused to publish or license outside of Japan, despite relatively significant demand for it. This follow up was releaed on the PSP late last year, and I hadn't bothered to play much of it, due to them significantly scaling back some elements (three characters in a party rather than four, five character classes rather than eight, an aesthetic that seemed to rip off Shin Megami Tensei rather than Dragon Quest), but I decided to give it a go anyway. It made a good gaming equivalent to a beach read - nothing particularly outstanding, but sold and enjoyable. The kusoge this week is Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool. There were more than a handful of games in the 16-bit era that were based off of food products, and some of them, like Mick and Mack in Global Gladiators and Cool Spot, were pretty good. This is not one of those games.

13 comments:

  1. There have not been any games based on Ghibli movies since then, despite the huge influence that his movies have had on Japanese game artistry, a few examples of which are touched on in this article as well.

    What about Ni no Kuni?

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  2. Sorry, my mistake, you do mention Ni no Kuni in the article. I jumped the gun.

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  3. Is Ni no Kuni based on a Ghibli film though? I thought it was just a game with their involvement.

    Here is a list of "almost Ghibli games" besides Nausicaa. Some of Miyazaki's older works (Conan, Lupin) sort of had games, but not actual Ghibli Studio stuff. That I know of, anyway.

    http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/multimedia/

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  4. There is a game based on Laputa for the old Playstation. Nicovideo has a full walkthrough of it. I can't really understand what's going on, but there seems to be a lot of random walking around. And it has not aged well visually, too.

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  5. I've always felt Laputa had a huge indirect influence on some classic JRPGs. Specifically Grandia (the shining stone and the boy hero's quest to follow his explorer father's footsteps) and Skies of Arcadia (the floating ruins and how the sky pirates operate (not to mention the similarity between Dola and Aika's hairstyle)).

    I suppose with fantasy movies as big as Ghibli's, their influence is inescapable. It's entirely possible those movies were as formative there as Tolkien was with RPGs here.

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  6. Thiago, do you have a link, by chance? I tried a Google Japan search and couldn't come up with anything.

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  7. RE the ZZT3 part:

    "the guide we link to is expertly written and gives maximum enjoyment while playing"

    Dammit, you just made me blush, dude. I did mean for it to be informative (albeit ridiculously wordy, which can and will put off the tl;dr crowd), but never expected it to be seen that way.

    Anyway, thanks. The appreciation is likewise appreciated.

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  8. It definitely made the game better. I printed the entire thing off, in THREE segments for easy carrying.

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  9. I have Disaster Report and Raw Danger, both games are brilliant! I wish the new one wasn't cancelled, but oh well. :(

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  10. Nicovideo is tricky to link to because you need to have an account to watch the videos. There is something on YouTube, though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTjdOjoP1Zk

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  11. Hadn't heard of the game before, but it doesn't look like it's related to the Ghibli movie. Here is the JP Wikipedia page: http://bit.ly/P0v9Pt

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  12. Oh jeez, that's nightmarish. I have no idea what to make of that. I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't have any connection to Ghibli, but the name and setting makes it seem kind of...lawsuit worthy.

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  13. Not intentionally double posting, or trying to derail this too much further, but looking up information about that game is like looking down a long, weird rabbit hole. The game is based on the illustrations of the fictional world of Iblard. Created by Naohisa Inoue, his work on Iblard predates Laputa, and while he had no connection to Ghibli then, he later did illustration work on Whisper of the Heart.
    http://www.nausicaa.net/wiki/Naohisa_Inoue
    I think the Laputa in the title of the Iblard game must just come from the same literary inspirations as the Ghibli movie.

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