Support NeoGAF

[stuminus3]

The OP is saying a game, which may be influencial, was a very popular game yet it does not have the sales figures to back it up.

It's often not about sales. The Ramones were one of the most influential bands in history but their albums sold very little to the masses. Same thing here I presume.

 

[djtiesto]

BTW, I'll take this chance to ask: Any of you can think of a JRPG heavily inspired by post-83 CRPGs?

It's a bit of a stretch, but Light Crusader by Treasure? It has the feel and art style of an isometric European PC title from the late 80's / early 90's (think Core Design's Heimdall or Solstice/Equinox from Software Creations)

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I mean, you have people like Yuji Horii citing TES as influential to DQ IX, but yes, he is an older creator.

Or look at say ARR and western MMO. Or, along those lines, MMO combat in, say, Xenoblade from another producer who says he has a fondness for western games.

I like using that specific example as it's so recent (and came out during a period of willful ignorance and Japanese Gaming Double Standard being the law of the land).

There's a lot more cross-pollination between east and west than people think. Recently I found out about a random Hudson RPG on PSX called Weltorv Estleia, here's a GameFAQs description.



Horii has cited Elder Scrolls as a direct influence on DQ9 (and Myst on DQ7 heh). Kawazu is always interpolating obtuse tabletop mechanics in his games and I'm sure there's some SaGa interview where he cites western classics. The Megaten franchise is filled with games with skill checks and choice and consequence. This stuff is all much more fluid than the labels "JRPG" and "WRPG" would have you believe, which tend to obscure rather than illuminate.

Matsuno is clearly clearly steeped in some grognard-ass grognard CRPGs to create his wündergames (or even rulebooks!)

 

[thecrpgbook]

Apparently it doesn't matter that the PC-98 was your best choice for computerized wargames, based on both military history and fantasy, nor do large multi-platform adventures like Illusion City, Emerald Dragon, Alshark (based in part on Binary Systems's Starflight), Star Cruiser, Rune Worth, games based on Lodoss War, &c. In addition to Falcom, companies like Telenet/Wolf Team (Yougekitai: Jashin Koumaroku, Suzaku), Right Stuff (Chilam Balam, Foresight Dolly), Glodia (Die Bahnwelt, Zavas II), Micro Cabin (Elm Knight, Xak III, Gal Act Heroism), and T&E Soft (Hydlide III, Sword World PC) all made xRPGs going into the PC-98 era. Some games went against expectation by achieving fluid movement on-screen (Brandish series, Elm Knight), others integrated elements from wargames and other genres in order to hybridize (Zavas II, Sword World PC).

I hesitate to call Falcom "barely known in the West" as of 2012, let alone this year thanks to Trails of Cold Steel II releasing on PSN. Hardy old Turbo-Grafx 16 players knew about the company and its Ys games since ages ago, with Telenet and Wold Team lagging behind.

I'm not saying "and thus no other JRPG was ever made for PCs!", but what's the real relevance of these titles? What happens when you put Dragon Quest III next to them? Neither of both Japanese books I used for this article even mention most of these games.

Look, I'm giving an overview here. I can talk about how awesome the Steel Panthers series was in the 90's, worthy successors to SSI 80's wargames that were actually were successful enough to warrant a long series, but that doesn't change the fact that turn-based wargames were obliterated by RTS games in the 90's, lost all relevance and SSI soon was sold and its brand abandoned.

And while the Legend of Heroes series is giving Falcom some renown, it's barely a blip in the radar next to Square-Enix, From Software, Capcom, Namco, Platinium, Koei, Nintendo, Konami, SNK, etc...

Hell, I doubt Legend of Heroes has much penetration outside die-hard JRPG fans. Trails in the Sky SC currently sits on Steam with 26k units sold. That's not the sales of a well-known series.

 

[MoonFrog]

I like using that specific example as it's so recent (and came out during a period of willful ignorance and Japanese Gaming Double Standard being the law of the land).

I mean you have both the people who put Japanese gaming on a pedestal and refuse to look at when and how it is inspired by the west because the west is just too inferior to matter and the people who see Japanese gaming as this parochial, inbred institution stifled by pride that is no longer warranted.

I don't really appreciate either side of that. I've got a soft spot for Japanese games, most of my favorite games are Japanese, etc. but I don't think they are in a world of their own in terms of quality and generation of new gameplay. I also think that Japanese gaming is more parochial than it used to be as you have young creators who came up playing almost exclusively Japanese games on consoles rather than creators of an older generation who played a more varied assortment of games on computers. But that's not to say Japan is closed off from the west, that it doesn't try to make games specifically for the west like it did in the 80s and 90s, etc.

But yeah, I imagine most people who have played on a console in the west have some Japanese game that inspired them. We play a lot of Japanese games, especially between NES and PS2.

 

[Cindi Mayweather]

Amazing resource.

 

[FStubbs]

I believe Chris Avellone has also cited Chrono Trigger as being an influence on Planescape Torment. (And I believe there is an interview floating around out there where it is stated that the game that wound up becoming PS:T started life as a "make a game like King's Field" project, interestingly enough.)

But as for Japanese RPGs cribbing from post-Wizardry and Ultima 3, I really can't think of any. King's Field and Souls have been noted above, but somebody should track down Naotoshi Zin (or someone else who was at From at the time), so we can get a clearer picture here.

With more Western games making some minor inroads into Japan, maybe we might see Japanese RPGs taking influence from more recent non-Japanese RPGs, but who knows?

DQ9 and Xenoblade were both said to have been influenced by Elder Scrolls.

 

[Aters]

Haha. Bonus information for how VNs became a thing in Japan and why they are rooted in PC unlike all other Japanese games.

 

[Sinople]

This thread pertains to my interests. I'll be sure to check the article and leave my two cents when I have the time.

 

[Watch Da Birdie]

Read some of your articles, really enjoyed them.

I could really relate to your thing about what makes an RPG because as a kid I was always confused and took it to just mean "had numbers", I didn't play many computer games so I wasn't really aware of the D&D-style classic CRPGs and thus saw stuff like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, and such as what made an RPG an RPG. I remember the old Nintendo.com listed Ocarina of Time as an RPG alongside Quest 64 and that always bothered me because no numbers = not an RPG in my mind. Then I learned the origin of the term "role playing" and things only got more confusing.

Interesting article about the history of JRPGs though. It actually kind of inspired me to consider one day doing an in-depth look at the evolution of the "Monster RPG" as one could call it, since I think one could say SMT (and later Dragon Quest games with monster recruitment) are probably the original in that regard even though most casual fans probably see Pokemon as starting that boom and influencing everything after.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I mean you have both the people who put Japanese gaming on a pedestal and refuse to look at when and how it is inspired by the west because the west is just too inferior to matter and the people who see Japanese gaming as this parochial, inbred institution stifled by pride that is no longer warranted.

I don't really appreciate either side of that. I've got a soft spot for Japanese games, most of my favorite games are Japanese, etc. but I don't think they are in a world of their own in terms of quality and generation of new gameplay. I also think that Japanese gaming is more parochial than it used to be as you have young creators who came up playing almost exclusively Japanese games on consoles rather than creators of an older generation who played a more varied assortment of games on computers. But that's not to say Japan is closed off from the west, that it doesn't try to make games specifically for the west like it did in the 80s and 90s, etc.

But yeah, I imagine most people who have played on a console in the west have some Japanese game that inspired them. We play a lot of Japanese games, especially between NES and PS2.

Friend, trust me, I was IN those trenches last gen. One sentence slams against a dumb policy move or tech shortcoming in long, link-filled careful posts and it would be only thing noticed. This thread will be linked in some "pre-req for posting" post I'm thinking on atm in those infamous generalist JRPG threads that threaten the land here from time to time.

But anyways, nah, it's not that closed off, but it the actual application on that narrowed quite a bit during the PS2 years; it's back for good and ill right now (going as well as can be expected really).

 

[thecrpgbook]

It actually kind of inspired me to consider one day doing an in-depth look at the evolution of the "Monster RPG" as one could call it, since I think one could say SMT (and later Dragon Quest games with monster recruitment) are probably the original in that regard even though most casual fans probably see Pokemon as starting that boom and influencing everything after.

That's a very interesting subject.

Megami Tensei is from 1987, but The Black Onyx (1984) already allowed you to recruit random NPCs into your party, and later Comic Soldier / コズミック・ソルジャー (1985) allowed you to recruit even some of the enemies while fighting. I'd be interesting to explore and see what else predated MT.

The only old western RPG I can recall that has something like that is the expansion to Bloodwych, The Extended Levels (1990), a multiplayer Dungeon Master clone which allows you to recruit monsters into your party.

There's also Dominus (1994) was a weird type of RTS where you could capture monsters and fuse them to defend your castle:

 

[BKK]

I have Dragon Slayer for the Super Cassette Vision. It's not a very fun game, but It was pretty influential. Not only in how game design influenced future games, but how game design influenced hardware.

As mentioned, there isn't much information on release dates etc from this period, but going through old articles from Japanese magazines I've been able to narrow the SCV release of Dragon Slayer to April 1986.

April 1986 SCV chart (yellow) from Beep magazine (Dragon Slayer is #1, with no position listed for the previous month).;

I think that makes it the first battery backed up RPG (It requires 2x AA batteries);

Whilst not the first game to have battery back up (Pop & Chips released on the SCV in 1985), it was probably the first game to really need it.

Hydlide II would follow on MSX in late 1986, and then Legend of Zelda in the US (Famicom Disk System also addressed this problem by being able to save to Disk for the JP disk release) in August 1987 (but it wasn't the first Western battery backed-up game, Pop & Chips also released in France), then Phantasy Star in December 1987. By that time Battery back-up in console RPGs started to become standard. All driven by JRPGs (IMO).