I heard that in the late 2000s the western gaming press had a very strong dislike for JRPGs, which led to Japanese developers treating the term as derogatory. And while I still think that ideally we’d have better terminology that would try to capture the differences between the games rather than their place of origin (the most famous distinction being that “western RPGs” usually let you create your character and treat them as a blank slate in the story, whereas “JRPGs” usually put you in control of a predefined character with their own motivations and actions in the storyline), I think it’s nice that nowadays there are developers who are actually proud of the term “JRPG”.
There was a strong dislike of JRPGs and Japanese games in the 2000s.
Development struggles
From what I heard is, during the shift to HD development in early PS3 360 era, many western devs switched to use Unreal engine, while Japanese devs were sticking to their in house engines. But, in house engines were not cheap nor easy to build / maintain, so they struggled to recoup their expenses.
One of their strategies is to make their games more appealing to the west, but they were kinda doing it from the lens of what they think American games are appealing, so we get games that weren’t universally loved, like
It didn’t help when we got bangers like Mass Effect trilogy, Skyrim, Fallout 3. So Square definitely disliked the JRPG term. However if you were to ask smaller Japanese devs at the time, e.g. ATLUS or Nihon Falcom, they’d probably prefer the term, because their ‘niche’ games (at the time), sold quite well while Square struggled.
Not a really descriptive term anymore
But you’re right, JRPG is non-descriptive when it comes to reviews. I’d prefer that reviewers have a small box that lists out the mechanics of the game, e.g. turn-based, random loot drops, predesignated character, linear dungeons, etc. But even nowadays reviewers are recommending games like Jedi Survivor, while the game is still a broken mess, which made me wonder what’s the point of reviews anymore?
It’s great when the devs like the term, but it barely helps anyone when reviewers use it. Not to mention the political tension when they use the term JRPG for games developed by Chinese or Korean devs.
Of course I haven’t mentioned that some reviewers were just racists fucks. Also it’s the period when Famitsu will just give any games 40/40 if the publishers bought enough advertisements from them, FF13 got 39/40, and Square was probably wondering why the games were not well received outside Japan
I think it doesn’t truly mean “Japanese RPG’s”, even today. There are lots of Japanese games that don’t get called JRPG’s even though they are RPG’s or have those elements (there is ambiguitiy in what an RPG is too, admittedly), like Resident Evil games and Dark Souls games and Zelda games and Pokemon. Dark Souls especially, since they have the character building and stats as well as the roleplaying.
People don’t call Elden Ring a JRPG because JRPG is supposed to mean one thing but really it carries a lot connotations about mechanics, graphics, and the derogatory connotations about quality.
And Pokemon! Pokemon is very clearly a JRPG in the mechnical and graphics sense, but it doesn’t typically get called a JRPG. I think this is because of the negative connotations of JRPG, personally.
And on the other hand we have things like Chained Echoes, which is in all mechanical and graphical ways is a textbook JRPG, except it’s not made in Japan at all, but rather inspired by Japanese games.
I agree this is complicated, but I found Jimquisition’s video on the topic really persuasive. I recommend that one even for people normally don’t jive with Jimquisition’s style.
Within any group, there will always be some who don’t find a term offensive even while others do, but I think probably the best outcome in this case is for the general populace to move away from the term, while leaving space for Japanese video game devs to reclaim it and use it themselves if they wish to.
Maybe it will truly lose the negative connotations with time, but I don’t think we’re there yet, when people are only just starting to sometimes acknowledge it ever had those connotations in the first place.
Granted, most genre words are vague and confusing as hell - JRPG isn’t special in that sense - but most don’t have the racist history/implications or negative connotations. And when I try to think of another genre label that is used as an insult, the first that comes to mind is Visual Novel, which is another one that is heavily associated with Japan.
The gaming press had a pretty strong dislike for Japanese games all together for a bit bar Nintendo titles. Thats why we ended up with that rough era where companies like Capcom were trying to make more western styled titles.
Reverse engineering projects such as these are technically made legal because the developers involved do not use any leaked content or copyrighted assets. They also require players to provide their own legally-sourced ROMs for them to work.
This specific PC “port” comes from a team that has done several other PC ports of N64 games in recent months, all released under a similar legal framework. Nintendo has yet to challenge any of those previous releases, so one can imagine that they may actually be safe from Nintendo’s fury.
I went to the store the other day and found it amusing that they were advertising the switch 2. I thought pre orders are sold out, who the heck is going to be able to get one who is seeing this advertising?
i guess hype is still valuable to Nintendo, even if people can’t buy the thing right this second? Nintendo are the masters of intentionally restricting supply to increase demand and hype. They honed their strategy with the Amiibos, NES Classic, and SNES Classic, and then i’d say they mastered it around the time of the COVID Switch 1 shortages.
By all accounts, Nintendo is not artificially restricting supply with this launch. - it seems like they are really trying to have as many as possible available for launch day. But they still know how to make the most of a shortage.
I wish them the best of luck at these prices though. I get that the enthusiasts will clamor for it. There’s a couple million people that would buy a half eaten shoe for hundreds of dollars, if only Nintendo stamped their logo on it. Once the dust clears though (and this is a personal opinion and hunch), I bet Joe Public scoffs and it’s the WiiU#2.
They are making a remake, supposedly. But it appears to be in development (or possibly publishing) hell. Something that is caught up in all the other shit going on with Embracer Group.
tbh it seems okay except i’m not sure where the ring and pinky fingers are supposed to rest. The dual-mouse possibilities are very intriguing, but i remain cautiously optimistic. this vid didn’t change my feelings one way or the other.
Who gives a shit? I love Mario games as much as anyone but this is just free marketing for nintendo. It’s not news. It’s a nothingburger and you don’t even get a reacharound for posting it
For everyone chiming in with piracy (which I support): Layden is more calling Nintendo fans “junkies” than advocating for 80$ prices. His message (even in the face of Ryan’s LSG push) has always been “first party exclusivity sells consoles”.
It’s the only platform I have to play it on, and switch doesn’t support the new space age expansion.
It did get many of the 2.0 updates, like the extended belt reader, free circuit wires, and all inserters are filters.
As far as acceptable, I love it. I’m sure I can’t build the crazy 10k science per minute monstrosities I’ve seen on youtube, but I’ve never really run into an lag issues with the bases I’ve built.
I imagine it’ll run much better on the Switch 2, given how well it runs on my Steam Deck, though I imagine that it would take a lot of adjustment to get used to using joystick controls versus the touchpad controls of the Steam Deck. Perhaps however the new ‘mouse-like controls’ work will be more helpful in that regard, but I can’t imagine even that would match the precision of a trackpad.
Don’t intend on supporting Nintendo’s crazy price increases myself, and will only get a Switch 2 if a way to hardware mod it becomes available, but I think it’s a bit ironic that the one non-first party game someone would specifically want to play on the Switch is also the one that not only never goes on sale, but also got a price increase.
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