Thursday, February 6, 2014

Early Japanese Computer Gaming: Emmy (エミー) (NSFW)



In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum published ELIZA, a computer program that was meant to replicate human conversation. In its most famous implementation, ELIZA acts as a psychologist, asking the user assorted questions, and then using the responses to formulate further questions.


In 1984, Kogado developed (and ASCII published) Emmy: The Funny Game, released for the Japanese PC8001 computer. It too mimics human conversation, except there's a visible representation of a girl. The goal is to get her to take her clothes off.

Some images further down are not safe for work!



The parser and response is incredibly simplistic, compared to even the earliest implementations of Eliza. If you say things she likes, she'll react positively. If you say something she doesn't like or doesn't understand, she'll react negatively. Occasionally she'll take note of the things you say and repeat them back. Sometimes she just sits there and giggles. If you manage to make her happy, eventually her image changes, slowly removing her clothes. If you irritate her, she'll show you the door and dump you at the command line. If you have a printer, you can have it print out a record of your little chat.



ELIZA was never really a game, and more of a Turing test, to find out how long it could fool users into thinking they were interacting with a real person instead of a computer program. This differentiates it from Emmy, where trying to figure out what she likes is ultimately the goal. Of course, what she likes is seemingly arbitrary, because the game's vocabulary recognition is not very extensive. Genial pleasantries like "ogenki desu ka" and "konnichiwa" tend to be shrugged off. You can get dirtier, and she may or may not like it. She's very hard to predict. There are canned phrases that she looks out for, like "kimi wa kirei" ("you're pretty") but you can't use them too often.



The art is designed in 160×100 pixels in 8 color mode. The coloring is stark - Emmy's outline is white, while both the background and her skin are dark black, with yellow used for her dress, red for her lips, and purple for her panties. In spite of the extremely low resolution, the artwork is quite expressive, and it makes it very clear when you've pissed her off. Some of the coloring of the "props" she poses around are very odd though.



A sequel, Emmy II, was later released. It was published later in 1984 for the PC8801 and FM-7, and in 1986 for the MSX2. In-game the title is "Emmy Virgin II", but the "Virgin" is crossed out and replaced with "Version". Ha ha! Sex humor.



The concept is identical, though this version of Emmy is easier, in both manners of speaking. She won't abruptly kick you out of the game like her predecessor, at least as often, and seems more willing to engage in nonsense lovey dovey talk. At one point I misspelled "konnichiwa", at which points she repeated by mangled word and then told me she loved me.



The cover of Emmy II uses a non-Asian model. In the PC8801 game, she's a manga-styled blonde. But the MSX2 game uses digitized photos for a real life Japanese girl. The "adult" aspects of this version were removed. The visuals in both versions are very much improved over the original game, though it is missing its unique stylization.



Considering that most ero games revolve around adventure games/visual novels, dirty mahjong competitions and gambling sims, the fact that the Emmy games are based around conversation makes it more noble than other similar types of games. It's also easy to imagine some poor sap purchasing this game back in 1984. "WHAT DOES SHE WANT FROM ME?!?" he might say. "I JUST WANT TO SEE SOME NUDITY!"

This 2009 article on Kotaku Japan suggests that Emmy might be the world's first "gal game". Of course, given the number of early Japanese computer games that focused on naked woman, that designation only makes sense depending on how you define "gal game".



Emmy's influence on Japanese PC games was not ignored. Yuji Horii's 1984 text adventure Hokkaido Serial Murders: Ohotsuku Ni Kiyu, the followup to Portopia Serial Murders, features a hostess named Emmy as an homage.

OTHER IMAGES

Emmy (PC8001)











Emmy II (PC8801)






Emmy II (MSX2)





Article on adult games on Japanese PCs
Blog article on Emmy
The works of Kogado (including Emmy)

Posted by Discoalucard at 4:14 PM 5 comments

Monday, February 3, 2014

Nintendo Power Retrospectives - Part 24

This time I'm taking a look at issue #14 of Nintendo Power, for July of 1990.

Games covered:

  • Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers - Capcom (Pick of the Issue)
  • Snake's Revenge - Konami
  • Golgo 13: The Mafat Conspiracy - Vic Tokai
  • Solstice - CSG Imagesoft
  • Crystalis - SNK
  • Double Dragon (Game Boy) - Tradewest
  • Wizards & Warriors X - Acclaim

Posted by CountZeroOr at 1:10 PM 0 comments
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Sunday, January 26, 2014

Dark Age of JRPGs (8) - Do Dutch Wives Dream of Electric Eels? (オランダ妻は電気ウナギの夢を見るか?) - PC-88 / FM-7 (1984) (NSFW)


Most computer RPGs in the early days (and even in the modern era) are based around some fantasy or swords and sorcery universe. Yet that wasn't entirely the case - see Danchizuma no Yuuwaku, previously featured in this column. This game here, Oranda Tsuma wa Denki Unagi no Yume Wo Miru ka? (オランダ妻は電気ウナギの夢を見るか?), is the successor to that game, another entry in Koei's "Strawberry Porno Game Series". It was released in November 1984 and both developed and published by Koei.

The title of this game translates to "Do Dutch Wives Dream of Electric Eels?" Two things to note: "dutch wife" is the Japanese term for a sex doll, and the title is a reference to the Phillip K. Dick story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the basis for the movie Blade Runner.

The game is half RPG, half adventure game. The story is that some advanced sex dolls, code name North Pole #6, have become sentient and are masquerading around the city as real women. Your goal is to find them.  At least, that's inasmuch as any internet guide can figure out, which mostly consist of listing very vague memories from when the game was released.


What follows is NSFW.

The game begins with a dice roll to determine your stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Physical Strength, and Vitality, as well as an indicator which determines how often enemies will appear.


The setting is Kabuki-cho, in Shinjuku, the major red light district in Tokyo. The area is divided into nine screens on a 3x3 grid. You begin in a different spot in the city every time you play, but the layout is the same. You can walk around with the numeric pad. Most actions are carried out by the function keys. You can press Enter to get a summary of what they all do. So let's do that.


So the options include Look, Talk, and...Rape? Yikes. Yes, this is that type of game. Since you're supposed to be finding a human-esque sex doll, one of the easiest ways to do this is by testing them first hand. You can do this to any of the female characters, which include schoolgirls and call girls. This will bring up "Fuck Mode".


Here, the function keys determine your actions - F1 is lick, F2 is massage, F3 is pinch, F4 is to use a toy (if you have one) and F5 is to move your hips. An indicator in the upper right corner indicates the sexual intensity of you and the women. If you perform poorly, you'll prematurely ejaculate, and the woman will get pissed off. This means she'll take some of your cash and then leave. It seems to imply that the "rape" option is really closer to "proposition", since all women in this game seem to be hookers, and are okay with anything you do as long as you can pay up. If not, you'll usually get attacked afterwards by someone else.


Of course, you can't just run around doing this willy nilly either. There are cops and yakuza around too, and they can and will engage you in combat. Here, again, the functions act as different attacks. I've never beaten anyone in combat, actually. Sometimes I end up facing the old guy cops, who seem to go down easily, but then more keep popping up and eventually wear me down.


You can also try to have sex with the male characters. On the map screen it'll just call you an idiot. Try it on one of the male sex shop workers though and they'll attack you.


Most of the stores in the city are either love hotels or sex toy shops. The game operates on a timer - one minute per move - and certain shops are open at different times of the day. Other areas include cafes, fast food joins and flower shops. The function keys also perform different commands. F2, F3 and F4 all determine the tone in how you talk to someone - carefully, normally, or threatening. F5 will seduce, F6 will fuck them (this is exactly what the help command reads - "fuck suru"), F7 to attack, F8 to run away, F9 to take (or eat) something, and F10 to give a present. You can buy flowers at the flower shop, or regain stamina buy eating food. Randomly, you'll find a naked waitress at a cafe, whom you can also engage in coitus, if you'd like.



There are also telephone booths and banks scattered about. Apparently actually winning the game requires calling certain people at certain times. You can also get a PIN code to use at the bank, though inputting the wrong one four times will get the cops called on you.


You can only enter love hotels by calling a certain phone number, which are found on certain phone booths. This will schedule an appointment, but the location of the love hotel is randomized every time you call. You only have thirty minutes to reach the hotel, and considering there are eight across the entire city, it's impossible to reach most of them in the time limit. So, you have to keep calling and calling them until they schedule a meetup at one of the hotels nearby.


The visuals were created by Yoichi Erikawa, one of the founders of Koei. According to a 2007 Forbes report, him and his wife (and co-founder) Keiko Erikawa have a net worth of $780 million. It probably says something about the early PC gaming industry that one of the richest people in Japan found their start developing games focused on raping random people in the streets. Nonetheless, it's regarded as something of a bizarre cult classic amongst the Japanese PC gaming retro scene.
Posted by Discoalucard at 3:22 PM 7 comments
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Friday, January 17, 2014

Kickstarter Alert - Chatbox Shamus: From Sloth to Sleuth


It's been a long time coming, but I've finally elected to go live with the Kickstarter campaign for my visual novel, The Chatbox Shamus: From Sloth to Sleuth. TCS is a detective mystery set in 1984 that follows 25-year-old Bastion Crowley, a failed college student who runs his amateur investigation service from a university BBS. He investigates everything from insurance fraud, to kidnapping, to drug distribution, and eventually even organized crime. Not all of it goes as well as expected, given Bastion's amateur nature.

For those who want something tangible to show that this is not just me blowing smoke, you can download Case 1 here, though it is missing character artwork and music. If you would prefer to get more information first, read on.

While TCS shoots for the style of a traditional film noir (monochromatic backgrounds, general moral ambiguity), it's not all dark and depressing. I've aimed for more of a deadpan humorous style throughout the story. It's not madcap zany like a Phoenix Wright game, but it's not dead serious like an episode of Perry Mason, either. Even though Bastion has spent a large chunk of his own life absorbing detective mysteries from books and movies alike, he really isn't as professional as he thinks he is.

TCS's planned five cases involve quite an array of unique people, but here are some of the recurring cast members and a little bit about them.

Bastion "Bass" Crowley
"That's 'bass' as in the fish. I swear, I spent all of high school trying to shake that stupid nickname."

Our protagonist (most of the time); Bastion was born a few years before the beginning of the Vietnam War, to which he lost his father. Since then, he grew up with a high respect of his father's military career, but mostly spent his school years watching Hitchcock and reading Hammett and Chandler. He never managed to get accepted into the local college, and spent the early portion of his twenties doing odd jobs and barely keeping on top of his rent. Somehow, though, he managed to scrape together enough money to purchase a Radio Shack TRS-80 home computer (already some years out of date by the time this story takes place) and a modem, which he uses to connect to the bulletin board of the college he failed to attend.

Antonia "Ruby" Travaglia
"Bastion, you dumbass! I spent two hours out here yesterday waiting for you to wake up, and you were already gone!"

Born to an Italian mother and an absentee father of dubious origin, Ruby works at the Pacific Daily News office as the editor of the police-blotter section. She has known Bastion since high school, even though she has not seen him since going away to college up-state. She is quick to anger and possesses quite a foul mouth, but she can show compassion when it counts, and is often more helpful to Bastion's investigations than either of them really want to admit. Despite the friendship, Ruby and Bastion reject the idea of a romantic relationship between them, as both of them realize that it would never work out. That said, though, Ruby does have some feelings for Bastion, though she would never confess to it.

Irma
"The cheese is fresh today, hon, it came from that farm down the freeway. Y'know, their cows are the only herd left in the state that don't have tracking devices on 'em?"

The owner and operator (and most of the time, sole employee) of Irma's Diner, a holdover from the 1950's in more ways than one. Although Irma cooks a mean grilled cheese with bacon, it's really her dinner theater (i.e. constant rambling about conspiracy theories) that keeps her customers coming back. She doesn't quite realize that she has become the butt of a few jokes, but her heart is at least in the right place, which is more than can be said for her understanding of social cues. Bastion is a frequent patron of her diner; neither he nor she can quite figure out why Ruby doesn't enjoy the diner.

Albert Cervantes
"You know work starts at seven, right? The chief doesn't like it when his people are tardy."

Ruby's arch-nemesis and the editor of the Pacific Daily News obituary column, Albert represents all that is wrong and unjust in the world of office ethics. Albert constantly defers his work to other employees in other departments, in addition to demanding that his co-workers fetch his coffee. He is especially harsh towards Ruby, who is the only Daily employee to ever actively resist his domineering personality. As Albert is the only qualified obituary writer in the Pacific Southeast, he is practically impossible to fire, a fact that he becomes increasingly aware of as the story stretches on. Although Bastion's primary career is investigation, Ruby "hires" him to observe and keep logs of all of Albert's behavior toward her.

Detective Greg Standish
"Alright...you there, state your business. I got a nap to get back to."

Since becoming a police detective, Standish has been relegated to the most boring desk in the entire department: Missing Persons. He is all too content to spend his on-duty time sleeping or working on crosswords in his office, until Bastion practically solves one of his cases for him. From that point on, Standish becomes a vital contact to Bastion, who does not always have the needed authority to order searches or seizures. That said, Standish's job is dead-end in more ways than one; there are avenues that even he cannot hope to enter, and he tends to be a victim of bureaucracy and red tape within his precinct. He does, however, possess a reasonable knowledge of most of the Pacific Southeast's defense lawyers, which Bastion finds useful on more than a few occasions.


The art style primarily consists of greyscale photo backdrops, though I plan for all characters to be represented on screen by sticky notes with portraits sketched on them. The above example is my crude attempt at it.

TCS's development has been progressing nicely; I currently have two cases finished with a third about half-done, and a further two planned. My major obstacles, however, are art and music, which is why I have set up a Kickstarter campaign. My funding goal is only $5,000 USD, but this will go entirely towards the hiring of a character artist and a musician to give the game the style it needs. Again, here is a link to the Kickstarter pitch, and if you'd rather play the first case beforehand, here is a link to that as well. I look forward to any feedback and suggestions.

Yours sincerely,
Corwin "wildweasel" Brence
Posted by weas at 4:01 PM 0 comments
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Wednesday, January 1, 2014

GC9X wishes you a Happy New Year!

We here at the GC9X crew would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year! And what better way to start off 2014 than to watch us fumble around with games for 3 hours? Presenting the first GC9X livecast of the year:


Posted by Snarboo at 10:50 PM 3 comments
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Nintendo Power Retrospectives - Part 23


This time on the Nintendo Power Retrospectives, we take a look at the Best of the Rest of the Nintendo Power Top 30 for the magazine's second year.

Games Reviewed:
  • Adventures of Lolo
  • Baseball Stars
  • Battle of Olympus
  • Back to the Future
  • Ghostbusters
  • Goal!
  • Nobunaga's Ambition
  • Jordan Vs. Bird
  • Wheel of Fortune

Posted by CountZeroOr at 6:34 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

The Game Club 199X New Year's Party!

And so, a new year is upon us once more. To celebrate, the GC9X crew will be hosting a special stream on January 5th, 8 PM CST! Join Bobinator and the rest of the rad GC9X crew as they look through a bunch of old comic ads. Like this one:

Now, you might be wondering what this game is, or what it plays like. And that's what we're wondering, too! So for this special New Year's stream, we'll be checking out ads just like this and playing games none of us have probably ever played! We hope to see you all there soon.

Posted by Bobinator at 4:59 PM 0 comments

Saturday, December 21, 2013

The Nintendo Power Retrospectives - Parts 21 & 22

After a long absence, the Nintendo Power Retrospectives return, with parts 21 & 22, as for some reason I didn't post part 21 on the blog. Well, it's time to rectify that.

Part 21 - covering the Super Mario Bros 3 Strategy Guide, and SMB 3 itself:


Part 22:

Read more »
Posted by CountZeroOr at 11:06 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, December 3, 2013

IGN Convention 2013, Bahrain

This year I had resigned myself to attending a so-so Sony convention and a more interesting TGXPO a month later, then something interesting happened. A botched attempt to perform Hajj ended with me vacationing with my parents at the Intercontinental Jubail on the other side of the country for a few days before rendezvousing with my friend for a short drive to Bahrain. Our objective was to attend the IGN Convention being held there at the Bahrain Exhibition Center and sponsored by IGN Middle East.





Having done their first successful convention a few months prior in Dubai, IGN ME set their sights on bottling that lightning again. The two-day October event cost roughly 13$ for a single day pass and a 130$ for a VIP pass that covered both days and came with additional perks.

We arrived an hour before the scheduled start of the event to scope the joint out and confirm our VIP tickets which we had booked in advance by phone. Although the registration methods seemed a bit spartan, there was no doubt that the staff had things under control. What caught my attention immediately was a slip of paper on the registration counter listing two of the guests who would not be showing up at the convention as scheduled: A Saudi comedian and WWE wrestler Kevin Nash. The loss of the latter was both a blessing and a curse as it a caused several people (including a second friend who had come along just to see Kevin) to return their VIP tickets and leave, but it did allow us more time with the other guest which I’ll get to in a bit.

By the time the convention was ready to start, the lobby was packed with people including several cosplayers. The convention floor was very spacious and easily allowed for people to move between exhibits.



















Game-wise, the software on display wasn’t particularly large. It mostly consisted of the PS4 lineup from SGD 2013 plus Yaiba, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Just Dance 2014 and a few other odds and ends. More interesting was actually all the other stuff they had on the floor: A retro museum featuring old donated consoles along with a demo booth for the Ouya, artist booths, indie dev booths, a casual competition area (complete with foosball machines) and even a miniature food court!





A large corridor off to the side of the convention floor housed several vendor booths (something noticeably lacking from TGXPO and SGD) selling video games, comics, anime, figures and other assorted knick knacks.







Present at the con was the Oculus Rift, which was being used to demo a non-interactive space scenario, a horror scenario where you had to keep pressing down on the controller's trigger buttons and Atajrubah, an Arabian-themed first person game by UAE-based developer Alan Robinson. On the first day the Rift had lines going all the way back to the convention entrance. At the behest of a new friend we made, I sat down to try the Rift on the second day thanks to the shorter waiting line afforded to me by my VIP ticket. After some explanation I started exploring around in Atajrubah’s desert area. Looking around by moving my head instead of the right analog stick took some getting used to, and I don’t figure out that I could actually interact with objects until the last two minutes or so of my allotted time. Overall, while the execution of the tech was sound, I’m going to wait for something a bit more substantial software-wise.











Another interesting attraction was gaming website GameOverviews showcasing what I initially mistook for Steam Boxes but were actually just custom gaming PCs. They had several different rigs doing things like running Mortal Kombat 9 at 1080P and Dead Space 2 on a really cool triple monitor setup. There’s also something endlessly amusing about being guided through each PC’s specs by a guy cosplaying as Street Fighter’s Sagat.



Eventually, we gathered around a stage at the edge of the convention floor to welcome IGNCon’s celebrity guest: Legendary video game producer Keiji Inafune, formerly of Capcom, presently of his own company Comcept, he of the many beloved games in the expansive Mega Man series.

Keiji was accompanied by Comcept producer Jon LeFlore (who also acted as his interpreter) and another guest: EVO player and Mad Catz sponsored Western Wolves member Ryan Hart. One fan came to convention dressed in a full Mega Man X costume, which everyone was so impressed by they let him up on stage to stand behind Keiji.



The guests sat down for a short interview by an IGN staffer followed by a Q&A session from the audience. It was during the latter that I came to two disappointing realizations: a) That a lot of gamers are rather annoyingly ignorant of how little say Keiji has in what Capcom plans to do with Mega Man after his departure from the company, and b) Shoehorning Ryan into the panel was completely unfair to the guy.



There's a time and place for any kind of celebrity, but as an organizer you need to understand that there are hierarchies that don't necessarily mix. Apart from being able to speak Japanese, Ryan had nothing else in common with Keiji and spent the majority of the Q&A session being ignored until the IGN staff intervened by asking him a question or two just to remind the audience that he was still there.



Anyway, once the questions were over people started lining up for signings and photographs. Normally we'd also be doing the same, but that's where another one of our VIP ticket perks kick in. We actually get access to a special lounge with free snacks and some extended hands on time with the celebrities after they finish with the normal attendees.



When the guests finally sat down in the VIP room, we formed our own small line. My friend who’s a huge fan of Zero gave Keiji a framed photograph of the D-Arts Zero action figure with the words “Thanks for creating my hero!” printed on it in Japanese, which was a pleasant surprise to Keiji and his companions.





After a few people were done with their own personal interviews with Keiji, we sat down with the man and exchanged pleasantries as best we could under the language barrier. It kind of sucked to be so close to the man and yet at the same time be separated by a wall of interpretation, but we play the hand we’re dealt.





Generally speaking, the above was a recount of both days of the convention since there wasn’t a large difference between the two event-wise. According to the staff, had Kevin Nash actually showed up as planned each guest would have gotten a day to themselves when it came to the meet and greet and VIP session.





Overall, I had a lot of fun at this convention. It felt great to be in one place with so many people who share the same passion for Mega Man and I loved the experience of attending new cons outside of my home country.









In closing, here's my friend's impression of meeting Keiji:

"On a spring day around mid-May or June, (or maybe even late summer) '97. I popped into my, now legendary, Sega Saturn console a CD. Little did I know that the game contained on said CD would influence my 12-year-old and lil bro's activities for the next 10 months or so non-stop, and immortalize to us what already was an iconic video gaming mascot at the time.

This CD contained the title "Mega Man" followed by an "X4". I had only heard of Mega Man on game ads via magazines and packed-in NES brochures on early 90's SNES games up until then. The intro of said game by itself blew our minds. Lush, colorful, and filled with action only Japanese imagination could capture via their animation techniques (or so our minds thought) at the time.

Long story short, we spent about 4 months until we beat the first (master robot) boss of the game. And ended up beating the entire thing first, a few months after that, with the character who was considered only suitable for experts. That character's name was Zero. And for various reasons, the character has remained possibly the only one from video games I continually nerd out on, even though I've since left the hobby as a full-time enjoyment medium and only keep track of said industry based mostly on my nostalgic "Hardcore" attitude of the past.

Ever since Zero's adventure during that specific game left an impression in my 12-year-old brain the size only a child of said age can consider massive, I've followed his progress through future games of the series (X), while looking back at the games that preceded X4 (with not even one "main" game which I haven't at least skimmed). And I've also wished to meet the man behind the legendary red character to express to him what the character, and the game(s) involved, has personally meant to me.

Mind you, at the time of writing this "story", if you told me 2 months ago that I would soon get the chance to meet the man behind Zero, I would've considered it just wishful thinking. However, around late September of 2013, the Middle East branch of IGN made an announcement that left me dazed for that entire day. I couldn't believe it, the organizing team behind the planned Bahrain convention managed to get ahold of Inafune, and he was more than happy to accept the offer and promote his (as of yet) KickStarter record breaking funded game Mighty No. 9 (which I'm proudly stating to be a personal "Becker").

On October the 18th of 2013, me and my friend were in awe to see a man we frequently "nerd'ed" on and relate to our childhood right in front of us in the flesh. We got our chance to lengthily meet him and his Comcept company team face to face thanks to our purchase of VIP passes (which turned out to be one of the best decisions of our lives). How did he react to our fandom and love culminated from his over 20 years of work on the Mega Man franchise? The attached picture says it all.

Rokku on, Inafune-san. 16 years later, I've finally realized what I was (partially) fighting for!"

-Sami Al-Madhi
Posted by Arshad at 1:43 PM 3 comments
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