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I think "Japanese Retrofuturism" might be as much a symptom of Western culture rather than Japanese culture.
It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate.
I don't know if this represents anything fundamental, or just the influence of a few people like Tolkien and Gygax and how people responded to their works initially. Certainly in real life there was a period where guns and swords competed that lasted 500 or so years in the west and east.
> It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate.
One of the two most directly influential series for early JRPGs is Ultima, which for its first three incarnations (especially the first two) liberally combined science fiction with fantasy.
In America, the early '80s was a time where mixing fantasy and science fiction was popular. You had products like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and Thundarr the Barbarian, for example. Perhaps these influenced Richard Garriott (creator of Ultima).
Might and Magic series also always combined fantasy with sci-fi.
Sooo many upvotes for the Thundarr reference. That cartoon blew my mind as a kid.
> It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate.
Neither western fiction nor western RPGs universally keep technological advanced gadgets and magic/swords "entirely separate".
> I don't know if this represents anything fundamental, or just the influence of a few people like Tolkien and Gygax and how people responded to their works initially.
Gygax (and Gygax-era TSR) actually did quite a lot of mixing of these things, perhaps the most well-known example being Dungeon Module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
There is a lot of crossing between Fantasy and Sci-fi in the early stories.
The John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs have some weird technology with sword and sorcery tropes, IIRC.
The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey transitioned from one genre to the other.
And, of course, we have Star Wars. Would you characterize as sci-fi or Fantasy.
I believe Western culture has the tendency to specialization, while japanese blend a mish mash of tropes together. That's one of the things that attracted me to japanese anime, manga and games.
"... in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords), whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate."
If anyone is interested, Shadowrun is mixing gadgets and magic in its universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Its culture/context is mostly Western, with lots of Eastern elements thrown in.
I might as well take the opportunity to point out that there's a new Shadowrun title (from last year) that's being continually updated and features a complete map/campaign editor for anyone to use.
> whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate.
If you like books where they combine try the Incarnations of Immortality series or the Apprentice Adept series both by Piers Anthony.
>It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate.
I don't know, back in the Snes days where Chrono Trigger originated I remember playing Shadowrun (on the Snes) which was based upon a very successful western franchise by the same name which combined magic and technology.
Worth noting that magic and technology are still treated as fundamentally opposed forces in Shadowrun (essence loss and all that) compared to JRPGs like the Chrono games (though moreso in Chrono Cross than in Trigger), Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, et al. which treat them as essentially the same thing.
"It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two entirely separate."
Not true. There are many western RPGs that do that: Albion, Wizardry, Ultima, Arcanum, Might&Magic and that's just of the top of my head and some of these are whole series of games.
Hawkmoon? while set in the future it kind of had both the fantasy and the sci-fi,granted that magic was technological artefacts and monsters were mutant but it still took place in a middle-age like world.
Would like a video game set in that kind of world.
EDIT: while not a rpg, a better example would be "Thorgal" ,which mixes viking stuffs with sci-fi , a great cartoon,from Belgium.
I've only read the first volume of Thorgal. I've always wanted to read more of it, but never could find it. It doesn't seem to mix Sci-fi and Fantasy as much as just flat out state the Norse stories were all sci-fi to begin with and common humans at the time didn't understand such advanced technology.
The whole "sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" thing.
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun as well, but it's more confidential.
The two cultures. "ratio" and "intellectus". Positivism and interpretivism. Deleuze and Guattari's smooth and striated space. the external world of rationality, brute facts and "qualities" vs the internal world of feeling, intuition and associations.
Is it fundamental? I don't know, but there's a lot of culture behind that distinction.
It's worth pointing out that the most successful JRPG franchise, Dragon Quest, has no science fiction elements.
I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy is more successful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game...
Erm…
http://dragonquest.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_dragon http://dragonquest.wikia.com/wiki/Machine_Family
And DQ IX toads have cannons and mortars strapped to their backs
I think Starwars fits that bill quite well personally.
This is a great read, though I think the author could have dove a little deeper into the apocalyptic bleakness of 2300AD. (As mentioned, though, he wrote an entire book on the subject (www.amazon.com/Chrono-Trigger-Boss-Fight-Books-ebook/dp/B00J9VYD72/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407430124&sr=8-1&keywords=Chrono+Trigger+book), which is definitely worth checking out if you're a SNES RPG nerd like I am.)
If I were to throw the term 'retrofuturism' at a SNES game, though, I think I'd have to pick Earthbound/Mother 2 -- the 'juvenile future' described by the author fits perfectly in this world of star-shaped robots and perfectly spherical flying saucers.
Paragraphs 23 on are pretty interesting. The author talks about preserving outmoded technology for posterity. Surely, he must be aware of the emulation/rom scene, and online communities like AssemblerGames which are pertaining to do just that.
Sure, there is Satellaview content lost to time, and that is exactly where we are going to be 10 years from now when our current consoles' DRM servers go offline and we have no way of playing that WiiWare or XBLA exclusive game that is tied to specific machines. Remember how much phones preloaded with flappy bird were selling for on ebay?
And his takeaway is thought provoking. We're doing this to ourselves. In a way this is bad - if we don't understand our past mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them. But then again, like so many time traveling heroes in our stories, sometimes it takes ignoring the past or ignoring tradition to build a better future.
A friend and I recently tried to get a LAN game of Battlefield 1942 going. It was only possible with hacks and [available, well-trodden] anti-piracy circumvention.
This made me very sad. I'm not overly sentimental for that game, but it still has a lot of merit, and my computer can still play it. Should I have to wait for EA to repackage it in some kind of virtual console store? (No.)
Japanese Retrofuturism?
Are people forgetting that Star Wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away?? Star Wars takes place in the past.
There is a major scene in Episode 6 where a primitive band of Ewoks takes on Empire Walkers using nothing more than sticks, spears, and logs. Light-Sabers are melee weapons based on an ancient religion (very fantasy-esque). Beyond all the space future stuff, there is a lot of "retro-combat" and high-fantasy elements going on here.
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Even Star Trek has its "retrofuturism" if you squint hard enough. Elves have pointy ears and are good at magic. I mean... space elves (Vulcans) have pointy ears and are good at science.
Orcs are generally evil and have deformed faces. But they're super strong. I mean... Space Orcs (Klingons) are generally evil with deformed faces.
Watch out for the undead (Borg). They might turn you into a zombie / assimilate you.
FYI, link to book he mentions on amazon, had to look it up as a huge fan of the game, and was a bit dissapointed by the reviews. http://smile.amazon.com/Chrono-Trigger-Boss-Fight-Books-eboo...
Has anyone read and enjoyed it?
(no referal, but is a smile link)
Most of the Boss Fight series is good in general, but folks with knowledge about the topic of any given game may feel it's a little too high-level. I found the Chrono Trigger one basic, but acceptably-written[1] and mostly engaging. I'd recommend it if you're not very familiar with the genre and the game.
Outside of the CT one--I recommend the Earthbound one unreservedly, but I'd call the ZZT one in the series its (flashing red) weak point. a lot of research went into it and I appreciate the effort but it's hugely self-indulgent (which, to be fair, is pretty clearly tipped off in the Amazon summary so you do know what you're getting into) and it suffers from a really weak narrative voice[2]. It is also incomplete--I feel like Anthropy's desire to combine a discussion of ZZT with her personal evolution does a hatchet-job to the history of the ZZT community.
[1] - This is about as high a praise I give for games meta-writing. I don't think game journalism has many (any?) good writers, folks whose stuff I'd read even if I knew everything about the topic they were writing about. (Joe Posnanski fits that bill for sportswriting, I don't know of anybody similar in games writing.)
[2] - Weak even for games writing, so calibrate accordingly.
Yeah, those reviews are disappointing. One of them is basically "He didn't like Chrono Cross; therefore he gets a 1-star!!!" Another other is, more or less, "I didn't like this guy's use of big words."
We can do better than this. I haven't read his book, though I plan to. Until I read it, I can't comment upon what sort of review it really deserves. But if you read the book, and you enjoy it, please do the author a favor and go review it properly on Amazon. If you don't like it, that's cool. Either way, give a reasonable rundown of its strengths and weaknesses. The author deserves the benefits of a larger sample size and more thoughtful evaluations.
Ah, my childhood. Summer of 93, Link to the past. Summer of 94, Secret of mana. Summer of 95, FFIII. Summer of 96, Chrono Trigger. Summer of 97, Lufia II. Chrono trigger was and still is definitively the height of classical console RPGs. And never will a block of years will ever produce the technical vision and artistry that the Japanese developers put forth.
Blink and you'll miss it, but Chrono Trigger actually showed what the inside of the 1999 domes was like pre-apocalypse. It's in one of the secret endings; you can see it here starting around 4:10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WR0AmpABjk
FYI Chrono Trigger is available on iOS
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrono-trigger/id479431697?m...
Bought it a while back and tried to play it. The controls are pretty spotty IMHO. I kept bumping into walls and couldn't navigate with any kind of precision.
Can anyone comment on how saving works on the iOS version? If I get a call or switch apps, does it reliably save or am I liable to lose my progress?
> Satellaview, a satellite modem launched in 1995 that could receive new game data as it was broadcast. Although the cost of the system and the monthly subscription fees were high, the system was successful—it enjoyed a five-year run before it was discontinued in 2000.
I would never imagine such thing - games via satellite - ever existed, let alone for Famicom!
Living in Japan in the 90's might be have been pretty amazing, it was like living in a retro version of the future. I remember when my friend came back from Japan and brought payphone cards, something I would only see again 10 years later in my country.
So, it was before Satellaview, but I lived in Japan in 1993 when I was sixteen, and it was the best time in my life. But I also was a giant f*ing nerd. Here are some things I remember, with regard to "retrofuturism": a Blockbuster video VHS kiosk that rented you movies, ala Redbox (in 1993!); Minidisc everywhere; waitstaff with wireless "notepads" that looked like old TI calculators, to type in your order that would send it back to the kitchen automatically. Akihabara was literally like being in a cyberpunk novel, I would drift past a salvage electronics part store, squeeze between some shops and up a darkened, narrow staircase and wander into a backroom stuffed to the ceiling with laserdiscs and commercial 8MM video cassettes.
On the other hand, most places didn't take credit cards and I saw very few personal computers compared to the USA at the time. So it really was a strange, uneven retrofuturism.
A similarly poorly received service existed for the Sega Genesis, distributed over cable instead of satellite.
Interestingly, there was a game related to Chrono Trigger that was distributed by Satellaview: Radical Dreamers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Dreamers). I found funny that the article doesn't mention it, although I guess that the book will talk about it.
I just returned from a trip to Japan 2 weeks ago, and I immediately felt exactly that; transported to the future, as imagined by the 90s.
> I would never imagine such thing - games via satellite - ever existed, let alone for Famicom!
And the UK had BASIC games for the BBC Micro broadcast over terrestrial analog TV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telesoftware
can you imagine the same thing on atari 2600? in 1983?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameLine
A minor nit about Chrono Trigger's plot. It was actually based on the Chicxulub asteroid impact [1], which caused the K-Pg extinction event [2] and was followed by a severe impact winter. The game itself masterfully explores this event with a perfect dose of fictional flair.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_ex...
I'm a huge fan of Chrono Trigger, I've played through it multiple times, I just loved it. The author of this article states that he wrote a book about the game. The book can be found here: http://bossfightbooks.com/products/chrono-trigger-by-michael...
I hadn't heard about this before, but I may actually order it, because I like the game so much :)
I had no idea that such a book existed for one of my favorite games of all time (perhaps the only game where I've actually played through all of its New Game+ mode). Thanks!
The porcupine on the cover threw me for a second, but then I realized what he did there.
(Spoiler alert: it's Lavos).
Anyone recognize the CAI setup in the upper right inset of Williams4.jpg?
Edit: I think it's an IBM 1500¹ station, in which case the left-hand display is a mainframe-controlled 16mm film projector².
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1500
² Buck & Hunka, Deveopment of the IBM 1500 Computer-Assisted Instructional System http://digitallearning.ualberta.ca/-/media/digitallearning/i...
The Japanese retro-future consists of white people of European descent, immersed in a world full of katakana/hiragana/kanji signeage.
I think the most poignant part of this article is one no one has addressed here yet:
> I have trouble accepting a disappointing truth of human progress—there are things that have been forgotten, and they will never be re-remembered.
Thinking back on the millennia of our existence, how much of our experiences as a species have vanished forever, never to be rediscovered?
If we preserved everything, who'd have the time to experience it all?
What is the purpose of the paragraph numbers that hide/appear with mouseover? I found it to be a distraction.
Probably to help someone know what paragraph you're referencing if you're having a discussion. I could see it working better if it only appeared when you hovered over to the left of the paragraph.