Gamasutra
September 11, 1998
Vol. 2: Issue 36
Introduction
Welcome to the Mega-Godzilla Tokyo Report, a new bi-weekly column bringing you the latest gaming news and views from Japan, along with Western perspectives on Japanese gaming trends and ideas.
I originally had the idea for this column whilst checking out Eurospeak, Gamasutra's European views page, and then realised that a similar perspective on the Land of the Rising Sun could be rather handy. So, here it is, like it or loathe it. Well, actually, I think you're going to like it, it's informative yet interesting, dontchaknow?
Chart Action
We'll go on to look at some of the upcoming events and recent news out in the East, but a good place to would be a recent Japanese all-formats chart. What titles really sell in Japan? Is their market very different to ours? And if so, how does it differ?
Here's some recent charts:
Japanese Top 10 week ending August 21st (courtesy Famitsu Magazine)
1.Star Ocean Second Story (Enix) PSX
2.Pokemon Stadium (Nintendo) N64
3.Private Justice School (Capcom) PSX
4.Powerful Pro Baseball '98 (Konami) PSX
5.Brave Fencer Musashiden (Square) PSX
6.Monster Capsule Breed & Battle(Konami)PSX
7.3D Fighter Maker (Ascii) PSX
8.Kagero (Tecmo) PSX
9.Ojosama Tokkyu (Media Works) PSX
10.XI [sai] (Sony) PSX
As we can see, format-wise, the Playstation dominates in Japan at the moment. Only one of the games in the Top 10 is not a Playstation title, and, until the release of Dreamcast, this dominance is clearly going to continue, with companies such as Square, Namco and Konami firmly behind the PSX.
Sony's in-house development teams are also coming up with an increasingly large amount of excellent titles, such as the addictive dice puzzler "XI", formerly as high as No.2 in the chart.
The N64 has a look-in, but, for one of the first times in Nintendo's history, they're in some trouble in Japan, but their markets outside the East are looking more promising. The Gameboy, as ever, keeps them going, and Pocket Monster (Pokemon) has been a smash, smash hit in Japan, but many of their other titles haven't come close to expectations. For example, F-Zero X isn't even in the Top 20 on this chart.
With the continuing delay of the 64DD and now even the postponing of SpaceWorld (more on this later), Nintendo is treading on shaky ground. But they have the Colour Gameboy to look forward to, and hopefully this will take some of the emphasis off Zelda to be the all-time killer app now needed to resurrect the N64 in Japan. But the pressure will still be there - Zelda is rumoured to be the reason why Shigeru Miyamoto has not made his announced trip to the ECTS show in London this week.
The Saturn is actually far more developed in Japan that anywhere else in the world right now. Although not having any titles in the Top 10 at the moment, there are still a number of new Saturn titles being released, mainly quite Jap-centric manga and RPG software. But there's very much a downward spiral taking place with Sega's official Dreamcast announcements and Sonic Adventure unveiling. Now people have actually seen what Sega's next console can do, well... au revoir Saturn.
That said, major companies such as Capcom are still supporting the Saturn, with Capcom Generations Vol.1 (their retro series, featuring the 194x series of shoot-em-ups) being a joint PSX/Saturn release very recently. Part of the Saturn's continued acceptability in Japan is, no doubt, its 2D ability.
Japanese customers seem much more happy not to get fixated on games having to be '3D' to be any good, and the many popular manga-based games in Japan often work better in 2D than three dimensions. American and European gamers and developers are much more fixated on 3D titles and therefore the Saturn, with its relatively poor 3D ability, has sunk without trace elsewhere.
The PC? Baking powder? Exsqueeze me?
Well, the home PC market in Japan is still almost non-existent for various reasons, not least the dominance of the arcade manufacturers as developers in the country - although companies like Sega have been making a half-hearted conversion efforts recently, it makes little sense for those people who've been putting out arcade titles for 20 years to suddenly switch to games that need 30 keys and a three-button mouse to even function properly.
Genre-bashing
Over the entire chart, the kind of games currently selling well in Japan aren't actually that far away from the sort of things popular in the US and Europe currently - there's a beat-em-up, a sports game, a puzzle game, some RPGs, and so on, not particularly different from any other Western chart. But it's not identical titles, even if it is similar genres, and the crossover is interestingly skewed.
At a rough guess, something like 40 percent of the titles currently in the Japanese Top Ten will go on to be popular in the USA and Europe, whereas, of the Europe/US-authored products currently in the charts in those continents, probably less than 1 percent will end up being popular in Japan. Why is this? It's something we'll try to look into in following issues of this column, but it's partly to do with the very specialised tastes of the Japanese - and perhaps the relative lack of sophistication of many non-Japanese console titles. Although that last point may be a little controversial.
Before we leave the chart, a special mention for a couple of titles-- Firstly, the No.1, Ocean: Second Story from Enix, the company famous for the Dragon Quest series of RPGs. SS is an RPG in a similar style to Final Fantasy 7, and looks frankly gorgeous. Hopefully this'll get translated in due course, and in the meantime, we in the West will just have to catch up on the good titles released 6 months ago in Japan and only just being translated!
3D Fighter Maker by ASCII is an excellent idea. This kind of entirely create-your-own approach seems to go down a lot better in the East - I believe this latest ASCII title is part of a series, and there's often a lot more customisable features in Japanese titles than American/European ones. Indeed, Capcom's Private Justice School, aka Rival Schools United By Fate, also riding high in the Japanese charts right now, has a second CD with the option to create your own fighter and train them up - but this option will be left out of the American version, by all accounts. Shame.
What's Up Next, Doc?
So that, in all its glory, was what has been going on. To finish off, some current news about what will be going on over the next few weeks. Forthcoming, and no doubt covered in this very column, are two major shows, the JAMMA show (for arcade manufacturers and distributors) later this month, and the Tokyo Game Show (largely for home systems) in October.
The JAMMA show, besides showcasing all kinds of new smartness from the usual suspects (SNK, Konami, Sega), will be especially intriguing because there are currently rumours of a Namco/Sony team-up on a System13 board, essentially the replacement for the current Namco System 12.
Why so interesting? Well, considering System 11 was basically an adaption of the Playstation hardware, could it be possible that this System13 will be some close relative of Playstation 2 hardware?
Software-wise, one of the highlights will be Arika, previously responsible for Street Fighter Ex and its sequel, getting further away from their SF roots with a new beat-em-up, Fighting Layer - perhaps Ken and Ryu are finally in for a kicking from their former colleagues?
The Tokyo Game Show blasts things out with the little black and white wonder (and Dreamcast-compatible to boot) Neo Geo Pocket. It'll also make a fuss over the Colour Game Boy, by then pretty close to release in Japan, and give everyone a chance to look at the Playstation PDA properly. And, of course, the Dreamcast - finally playable software? We darn well think trust and hope so.
With Nintendo's Space World show put back til next spring from its traditional Thanksgiving time slot, Nintendo will be dancing the light fantastic to woo back those disillusioned Japanese gamers.
End Notes
Ok, thanks for reading this first missive dealing with all things related to Japanese gaming. Hope you enjoyed it. Comments and suggestions about future topics or what you'd like to see dealt with in this column would be appreciated - mail me at mono@scene.org.
Also, whilst I do have Japanese contacts who help me out with this column, since I don't actually live in Japan myself, I'm still looking for more tipsters and videogame fans out there. So, if any regular Japanese correspondants would like to step forward, your views would be much appreciated - mail me at the same address. Thanks again.
h0l is a game designer and team leader at a well-known independent UK games developer. he has previously contributed to a number of UK computer magazines, and was the co-editor of www.videogamedesign.com, scooping interviews with such greats as Chris Crawford and Peter Molyneux. His game credits include design on titles for Eidos and GT Interactive, and, as a true otaku, he owns almost every console known to man (although the FM Towns still eludes him!) In his spare time he attends philosophy lectures at Harvard, and runs the virtual record label Mono. He can be contacted at mono@scene.org.