Due to differences in computer hardware, language, and culture, development of adventure games took a different course in Japan compared to Western markets. The most popular adventure game subgenres in Japan are visual novels and dating sims.
History of Japanese adventure games
Adventure game
Adventure game | History of Japanese adventure games
Yes, due to differences in computer hardware, language, and culture, development of adventure games took a different course in Japan compared to Western markets. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context. Sorry. I cannot find the answer based on the context.
what is sinestro corps war?
user
An American comic book crossover event
assistant
who is the writer?
user
Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons
assistant
who are the characters?
user
Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, John Stewart and Guy Gardner, and the rest of the Green Lantern Corps
assistant
what are some of the other works of the second writer you mentioned?
user
"The Trials of Nasty Tales", "Watchmen", "For the Man Who Has Everything"
assistant
has he worked on anything other than comics?
user
Yes, he did the cover art of album "The Madness", he served as a consultant on the film "Watchmen", background art for the 1994 computer game "Beneath a Steel Sky"
assistant
who developed the game you just mentioned?
user
British developer Revolution Software
assistant
did it perform well in the market?
user
Yes, Eurogamer's Simon Parkin later summarized that it "sold extremely well", with lifetime sales between 300,000 and 400,000 units by July 2009
assistant
what is the genre of the computer game?
user
cyberpunk, science fiction, point-and-click, adventure game
assistant
does the last genre you mentioned have subgenres?
user
Yes, Point-and-click adventure games, Graphic adventures, Puzzle adventure games
assistant
has it revolutionized the japanese games?
user
Due to differences in computer hardware, language, and culture, development of adventure games took a different course in Japan compared to Western markets. The most popular adventure game subgenres in Japan are visual novels and dating sims.
Adventure game | History of Japanese adventure games
A distinct form of Japanese adventure game that eventually emerged is the visual novel, a genre that was largely rooted in "Portopia Serial Murder Case", but gradually became more streamlined and uses many conventions that are distinct from Western adventures. They are almost universally first-person, and driven primarily by dialog. They also tend to use menu-based interactions and navigation, with point and click implementations that are quite different from Western adventure games. Inventory-based puzzles of the sort that form the basis of classic Western adventures, are quite rare. Logic puzzles like those found in "Myst" are likewise unusual. Because of this, Japanese visual novels tend to be streamlined, and often quite easy, relying more on storytelling than challenge to keep players interested.
Adventure game | Visual novels (1990–present)
In the early 1980s, computer adventure games began gaining popularity in Japan. The country's computer market was largely dominated by NEC's 8-bit PC-8801 (1981) and 16-bit PC-9801 (1982) platforms, which could display 8 simultaneous colors and had a resolution of 640×400, higher than Western computers at the time, in order to accommodate Japanese text. This in turn influenced game design, as NEC PCs became known for adventure games with detailed color graphics, which eventually evolved into visual novels. NEC soon had several competitors such as the FM-7 (1982), the AV (1985) version of which could display more than 4,000 colors in addition to featuring FM synthesis sound.
Adventure game | Early computer graphic adventures (1981–1988)
Its 16-bit successor, the FM Towns (1989), could display 24-bit color (16.8 million colors) and featured a CD-ROM drive. The most famous early Japanese computer adventure game was the murder mystery game "The Portopia Serial Murder Case", developed by Yūji Horii (of "Dragon Quest" fame) and published by Enix. Its development began in 1981, and was released in 1983. The game was viewed in a first-person perspective, followed a first-person narrative, and featured color graphics. Originally released for the PC-6001, the player interacts with the game using a verb-noun parser which requires typing precise commands with the keyboard; finding the exact words to type is considered part of the riddles that must be solved.
Adventure game | Early computer graphic adventures (1981–1988)
It utilized the command menu system and point-and-click cursor interface of both "Portopia Serial Murder Case" and "Hokkaido Chain Murders", in addition to introducing its own innovation: an overhead map. This gave the player direct control over the player character, who can be moved around in a top-down view to explore the area. In 1986, Square released the science fiction adventure game "Suishō no Dragon" for the NES console. The game featured several innovations, including the use of animation in many of the scenes rather than still images, and an interface resembling that of a point-and-click interface for a console, like "Portopia", but making use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions.
Adventure game | Early point-and-click adventures (1983–1995)
In recent years, Japanese visual novel games have been released in the West more frequently, particularly on the Nintendo DS handheld following the success of mystery-solving titles such as Capcom's "Ace Attorney" series (which began on the Game Boy Advance in 2001), Cing's "" series (beginning in 2006), and Level-5's "Professor Layton" series (beginning in 2007). English fan translations of visual novels such as Square's "" (a 1996 side story to the "Chrono" series of role-playing video games) and Key's "Clannad" (2004) have also been made available in recent years. The Nintendo DS in particular helped spark a resurgence in the genre's popularity through the introduction of otherwise unknown Japanese adventure games, typically visual novels localized for Western audiences.
Adventure game | Global expansion (2000–present)
Harold Murder Club" was one of the first Japanese adventure games released in the United States. The "J.B. Harold" series went on to sell 20 million copies on various platforms as of 2011.
Adventure game | Early point-and-click adventures (1983–1995)
Early Japanese RPGs were also influenced by visual novel adventure games, which were developed by companies such as Enix, Square, Nihon Falcom and Koei before they moved onto developing RPGs. In the 1980s, Japanese developers produced a diverse array of creative, experimental computer RPGs, prior to mainstream titles such as "Dragon Quest" and "Final Fantasy" eventually cementing genre tropes by the 1990s. Japan's earliest RPGs were released in 1982. The earliest was Koei's "Underground Exploration", released in March 1982. It was followed by Pony Canyon's "Spy Daisakusen", released in April 1982; based on the "" franchise, it replaced the traditional fantasy setting with a modern espionage setting.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Origins (early 1980s)
The first handheld electronic game was Electro Tic-Tac-Toe, released by Japanese manufacturer Waco in 1972. The first color video game was the 1973 arcade game "Playtron", developed by Japanese company Kasco (Kansei Seiki Seisakusho Co.), which only manufactured two cabinets of the game. The first video game to represent player characters as human sprite images was Taito's "Basketball", which was licensed in February 1974 to Midway, releasing it as "TV Basketball" in North America. Tomohiro Nishikado's arcade racing video game "Speed Race", released by Taito in 1974, introduced scrolling graphics, where the sprites move along a vertical scrolling overhead track.
History of science and technology in Japan | Games
R. R. Tolkien's works. As with other games, they often lacked functionalities such as saving. Proposed reasons for the absence of the ability to save included the fact that early computer games were often simple and gaming sessions were brief, as well as hardware limitations and costs. This may partly explain why earlier computer games were developed instead under the episodic structure, but such computer games whose source code could be accessed by anyone could be modified, and as designers wrote larger game worlds, gaming sessions lengthened, and the need to resume where left off became inevitable. This started in 1977 with Don Woods' revision of the 1976 text-based adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure" (later renamed to "Adventure"), which saw expanded gameplay and story and, notably, the ability to save.
Text-based game | History
The game has also been compared to the later-released "Shadowgate" where the player must examine and collect objects, and find their true purpose later on. According to Square Enix, "Portopia" was "the first real detective adventure" game. Japan's first domestic computer adventure games to be released were ASCII's "" (表参道アドベンチャー) and "Minami Aoyama Adventure" (南青山アドベンチャー), released for the PC-9801 in 1982. Another early Japanese adventure that same year was MicroCabin's "Mystery House", which was unrelated to (but inspired by) the On-Line Systems game of the same name. MicroCabin released a sequel, "Mystery House II", for the MSX that same year.
Adventure game | Early computer graphic adventures (1981–1988)
A key difference between Western and Japanese systems at the time was the latter's higher display resolutions (640x400) in order to accommodate Japanese text which in turn influenced game design. Japanese computers also employed Yamaha FM synthesis sound boards since the early 1980s, allowing video game music composers such as Yuzo Koshiro to produce highly regarded chiptune music for RPG companies such as Nihon Falcom. Due to hardware differences, only a small portion of Japanese computer games were released in North America, as ports to either consoles (like the NES or Genesis) or American PC platforms (like MS-DOS). The "Wizardry" series (translated by ASCII Entertainment) became popular and influential in Japan, even more so than at home.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Origins (early 1980s)
In the early 2000s, mobile games gained mainstream popularity in Japan, years before the United States and Europe. By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones, ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet titles that utilize camera phone technology to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics. Older arcade-style games became particularly popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. Graphics improved as handsets became more powerful, as demonstrated by the mobile version of "Ridge Racer" in 2003, though such titles typically cost twice as much as other mobile games.
Japanese mobile phone culture | Mobile gaming
The game was non-linear, which includes exploring an open world, a branching dialogue conversation system where the story develops through entering commands and receiving responses from other characters, and making choices that determine the dialogues and order of events as well as alternative endings. It also features a phone that could be used to dial any number to contact several non-player characters. The game was well received in Japan for its well-told storyline and surprising twist ending, and for allowing multiple ways to achieve objectives. Hideo Kojima praised the game for its mystery, drama, humor, 3D dungeons, for providing a proper background and explanation behind the murderer's motives, and expanding the potential of video games.
Adventure game | Early computer graphic adventures (1981–1988)
By 1978, video games were well established in the U.S. coin-operated amusement industry, but their popularity was secondary to the industry stalwarts of pool and pinball. That changed with the introduction of a new game developed in Japan. While video games had been introduced to Japan soon after hitting the United States, the Japanese arcade industry had remained primarily focused on electro-mechanical driving and shooting games and a type of slot machine called the "medal game" that accepted and paid out in medals instead of currency so as not to be classified as a gambling game. In 1977, the arrival of "Breakout", distributed locally by the Nakamura Manufacturing Company, and the advent of table-top game units, pioneered by Taito, created new demand for video games in snack bars and tea houses.
History of video games | Golden age of arcade video games (1978–1982)
It was followed by the first successful Japanese console, Nintendo's Color TV Game, in 1977. Sega's black and white boxing game "Heavyweight Champ" was released in 1976 as the first video game to feature fist fighting. The first stealth games were Hiroshi Suzuki's "Manbiki Shounen" (1979) and "Manbiki Shoujo" (1980), Taito's "Lupin III" (1980), and Sega's "005" (1981). Eventually, the 1978 arcade release of "Space Invaders" would mark the first major mainstream breakthrough for video games in Japan. Created by Nishikado at Japan's Taito Corporation, "Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed.
Video games in Japan | 1970s–early 1980s
A notable adventure game released in 1983 was "Planet Mephius", authored by Eiji Yokoyama and published by T&E Soft for the FM-7 in July 1983. In addition to being one of the earliest titles to use a command menu system, its key innovation was the introduction of a point-and-click interface to the genre, utilizing a cursor to interact with objects displayed on the screen. A similar point-and-click cursor interface was later used in the adventure game "Wingman", released for the PC-8801 in 1984. The NES version of "Portopia Serial Murder Case" was released in 1985 and became a major hit in Japan, where it sold over 700,000 copies.
Adventure game | Early point-and-click adventures (1983–1995)
With no keyboard, the NES version, developed by Chunsoft, replaced the verb-noun parser of the original with a command selection menu list, which included fourteen set commands selectable with the gamepad. It also featured a cursor that can be moved on the screen using the D-pad to look for clues and hotspots, like a point-and-click interface. Horii's second adventure game "Hokkaido Chain Murders" was later also ported to the NES in 1987. Yuji Horii's third mystery adventure game "Karuizawa Yūkai Annai" ("The Karuizawa Kidnapping Guide") was released for the PC-8801 in early 1985 and for the FM-7 in June that same year.
Adventure game | Early point-and-click adventures (1983–1995)
Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com argues that Japanese developers created a new brand of action role-playing game; these new Japanese games combined the role-playing genre with arcade-style action and action-adventure elements. Shaun Musgrave of TouchArcade also traces the genre's roots to Japan, noting that the "Western game industry of the time had a tendency to treat action games and RPGs as separate things for separate demographics". Jeremy Parish argues that action RPGs were popularized in Japan by "The Tower of Druaga". It was released for arcades in June 1984, and was intended as a "fantasy version of "Pac-Man", with puzzles to solve, monsters to battle, and hidden treasure to find".
Action role-playing game | 1970s and early 1980s
Initial adventure games developed in the 1970s and early 1980s were text-based, using text parsers to translate the player's input into commands. As personal computers became more powerful with better graphics, the graphic adventure-game format became popular, initially by augmenting player's text commands with graphics, but soon moving towards point-and-click interfaces. Further computer advances led to adventure games with more immersive graphics using real-time or pre-rendered three-dimensional scenes or full-motion video taken from the first- or third-person perspective. For markets in the Western hemisphere, the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1980s to mid-1990s when many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres, but it had become a niche genre in the early 2000s due to the popularity of first-person shooters, and it became difficult for developers to find publishers to support adventure-game ventures.
Adventure game | Introduction
Other examples of early games include Koei's "Danchi Tsuma no Yuwaku" (1982), "Sherwood Forest" (1982), Yuji Horii's "Portopia Serial Murder Case" (1983), "The Return of Heracles" (which faithfully portrayed Greek mythology) by Stuart Smith (1983), Dale Johnson's "Masquerade" (1983), Antonio Antiochia's "Transylvania" (1982, re-released in 1984), and "Adventure Construction Set" (1985), one of the early hits of Electronic Arts. As computers gained the ability to use pointing devices and point-and-click interfaces, graphical adventure games moved away from including the text interface and simply provided appropriate commands the player could interact with on-screen. The first known game with such an interface was "Enchanted Scepters" (1984) from Silicon Beach Software, which used drop-down menus for the player to select actions from while using a text window to describe results of those actions.
Adventure game | Graphical development (1980–1990)
He also conceived of a graphical format, with a picture on-screen representing what's happening and a command menu system to select an action, which later became the standard format for Japanese adventure games. Following its 1983 release, the game was ported to various Japanese personal computers. A Famicom port was then released in 1985 and was the first adventure game to be released on that platform. The Famicom version was also the first collaboration between Yuuji Horii and Koichi Nakamura of Chunsoft, before "Dragon Quest". The Famicom version was programmed by Nakamura, who was 19 years old at the time.
The Portopia Serial Murder Case | Development and release
To further this effect, the option to turn off the subtitles was included. Due to this more cinematic approach, Uchikoshi was able to make use of his experience with writing the anime series "Punch Line" (2015). The inspirations for the change in format were Telltale Games' adventure game series "The Walking Dead" (2012–2019) and Level-5's adventure game "Time Travelers" (2012). Uchikoshi said that this would make for a lower barrier of entry for people not necessarily interested in visual novels, and that mass appeal is important to Spike Chunsoft, as just a Japanese audience is not enough for the production of adventure games.
Zero Time Dilemma | Story and themes
In the 1970s, role-playing games themselves received little to no attention in Japan as games only had English titles. Several gaming magazines and computer magazines started introducing role-playing games in early 1980s. Some of the earliest Japanese RPGs were science fiction titles, including "Donkey Commando" in 1982 and "Enterprise: Role Play Game in Star Trek" in 1983. "Classic Traveller" was the first translated RPG in 1984, with "Dungeons & Dragons" (Mentzer basic red box edition) following in 1985. One of the earliest Japanese-designed traditional fantasy RPGs was titled "Roads to Lord", published in 1984.
Tabletop role-playing games in Japan | Early years
The first platform game to use scrolling graphics was "Jump Bug" (1981), a simple platform-shooter game developed by Alpha Denshi.
Video games in Japan | 1980s–early 2000s
Arcade culture is a major influence among young Japanese, with Akihabara Electric Town being a major nexus of so-called otaku culture in Japan, which overlaps with videogaming heavily. The Japanese role-playing game is a major game genre innovated by Japan and remains popular both domestically and internationally, with titles like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest selling millions.
Video games in Japan | Introduction
In 2005, Capcom re-released the courtroom-based visual novel game "", originally a 2001 Game Boy Advance game released only in Japan, for the Nintendo DS in both Asian and Western markets. The game and its sequels proved popular with Western audiences, and are credited for revitalizing the adventure game genre. Following on "Ace Attorney"s success, Level-5 and Nintendo published the "Professor Layton" series worldwide starting in 2007. Both have since become some of the best-selling adventure game franchises, with "Ace Attorney" selling more than 4 million units worldwide and "Professor Layton" selling nearly 12 million units worldwide. Other successful Japanese adventure games for the DS in Western markets include Cing's "" (2005) and "" (2006).
Adventure game | Global expansion (2000–present)
The game was originally released in Japan in 2011, but received significant attention on its remake and localization in 2014, in part due to its humorous concept, and its distribution was supported by Western publisher Devolver Digital.
Adventure game | Global expansion (2000–present)
One of the first action-adventure games was the Atari 2600 game "Adventure" (1980). It was directly inspired by the original text adventure, "Colossal Cave Adventure". In the process of adapting a text game to a console with only a joystick for control, designer Warren Robinett created an action-adventure game by incorporating action arcade game elements. The action-adventure later became an established genre with Shigeru Miyamoto's "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which became a success due to how it combined elements from different genres to create a compelling hybrid, including exploration, transport puzzles, adventure-style inventory puzzles, an action component, a monetary system, and simplified RPG-style level building without the experience points.
List of video game genres | Action-adventure
Whereas once adventure games were one of the most popular genres for computer games, by the mid-1990s the market share started to drastically decline. The forementioned saturation of "Myst"-like games on the market led to little innovation in the field and a drop in consumer confidence in the genre. "Computer Gaming World" reported that a "respected designer" felt it was impossible to design new and more difficult adventure puzzles as fans demanded, because Scott Adams had already created them all in his early games. Another factor that led to the decline of the adventure game market was the advent of first-person shooters, "Doom" and "Half-Life".
Adventure game | Decline (2000–2010)
Like the NES version of "Portopia", it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to examine the scenery, though the cursor in "Suishō no Dragon" was also used to click on the action icons. That same year saw the release of "J.B. Harold Murder Club", a point-and-click graphic adventure, for the PC-98. It featured character interaction as the major gameplay element and has a similar type of multiple phrase response to more recent titles such as the adventures "Shenmue" and "Shadow of Memories" as well as the role-playing game "". The TurboGrafx-CD port of "J.B.
Adventure game | Early point-and-click adventures (1983–1995)
While the Japanese video game industry has long been viewed as console-centric in the Western world, due to the worldwide success of Japanese consoles beginning with the NES, the country had in fact produced thousands of commercial personal computer games from the late 1970s up until the mid-1990s, in addition to "dōjin soft" independent games. The country's computer market was very fragmented at first; "Lode Runner", for example, reportedly required 34 conversions to different hardware platforms. The market eventually became dominated by the NEC PC-8801 and PC-9801, though with some competition from the Sharp X1 and X68000; FM-7 and FM Towns; and MSX and MSX2.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Origins (early 1980s)
While new gaming consoles like the Super Famicom and the Sony PlayStation flooded the market, most young people began to move in with their parents, and read manga. This is because they could not acquire a job that would permit them to live independently and have all the amenities that they are accustomed to. Many video games were released during this decade (especially for the Super Famicom). Popular American titles like "SimCity" and "SimEarth" gained popularity for Japanese video gamers. The 1990s was also the era for "Chrono Trigger", "Final Fantasy IV", "Final Fantasy VI", and "Final Fantasy VII". These games became multimillion-dollar blockbusters in Japan, Europe, and North America.
1990s in Japan | Video games
A writer of the ASCII magazine wrote that the Japanese input method and the Japanese video game industry were significantly developed in the PC-98 era. Because the PC-98 had a kanji character ROM, Japanese applications were developed for it, which influenced Japanese input methods being developed for them; the two built off of each other. Software companies that developed games for the PC-98 immediately expanded the video game business on the Famicom platform. He believed most programmers learned computer programming on the PC-98 at that time.
PC-9800 series | Legacy
In 1986, Square released the science fiction adventure game "Suishō no Dragon" for the NES console. The game featured several innovations, including the use of animation in many of the scenes rather than still images, and an interface resembling that of a point-and-click interface for a console, like "Portopia Serial Murder Case", but making use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions. Like the NES version of "Portopia Serial Murder Case", it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to examine the scenery, though the cursor in "Suishō no Dragon" was also used to click on the action icons.
Visual novel | Science fiction
and Chunsoft's "Zero Escape" series, which includes "Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors" and "". Online distribution has also helped lower the costs of bringing niche Japanese titles to consumers, which has enabled another outlet for visual novels and dating sims to be localized and released for Western markets. Localization and distribution can be performed by small teams, removing financial barriers to bringing these games, often released as dōjin soft or hobbyist titles, to Western countries. A noted example of this is "Hatoful Boyfriend", a comedy dating sim in which the player attempts to date pigeons in a high school setting.
Adventure game | Global expansion (2000–present)
It popularised a more interactive style of gameplay with the enemies responding to the player-controlled cannon's movement, and it was the first video game to popularise the concept of achieving a high score, being the first to save the player's score. The aliens of "Space Invaders" return fire at the protagonist, making them the first arcade game targets to do so. It set the template for the shoot 'em up genre, and has influenced most shooting games released since then. Taito's "Space Invaders", in 1978, proved to be the first blockbuster arcade video game. Its success marked the beginning of the golden age of arcade video games.
Video games in Japan | 1970s–early 1980s
The late 1980s to early 1990s is considered the golden age of Japanese computer gaming, which would flourish until its decline around the mid-1990s, as consoles eventually dominated the Japanese market. A notable Japanese computer RPG from around this time was "WiBArm", the earliest known RPG to feature 3D polygonal graphics. It was a 1986 role-playing shooter released by Arsys Software for the PC-88 in Japan and ported to MS-DOS for Western release by Brøderbund. In "WiBArm", the player controls a transformable mecha robot, switching between a 2D side-scrolling view during outdoor exploration to a fully 3D polygonal third-person perspective inside buildings, while bosses are fought in an arena-style 2D shoot 'em up battle.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Golden Age (late 1980s–early 1990s)
Use of color graphics and individualized antagonists were considered "strong evolutionary concepts" among space ship games. The Namco Galaxian arcade system board also introduced multi-colored animated sprites. That same year saw the release of SNK's debut shoot 'em up "Ozma Wars", notable for being the first action game to feature a supply of energy, resembling a life bar, a mechanic that has now become common in the majority of modern action games. It also featured vertically scrolling backgrounds and enemies. Japan's first home video game console was Epoch's TV Tennis Electrotennis, a licensed version of the ping-pong game from the Magnavox Odyssey.
Video games in Japan | 1970s–early 1980s
The game's character sprites were changed so that they face their direction of travel; in the Japanese versions, the sprites are smaller and face only forwards, requiring players to choose a direction for actions from a menu. Spells were given self-explanatory one-word titles instead of the made-up words of the Japanese version. Locations were renamed, and dialogue was rewritten from its whimsical style comparable to "Dragon Ball" to a style inspired by Elizabethan English, with sentences such as "Thy hit points have decreased by 1." Nintendo also removed salacious humor and religious connotations from the English-language version. For example, in the Japanese version, in the town where the hero first buys keys, a woman offers to sell puff-puff – a Japanese onomatopoeia for a girl rubbing her breasts in someone's face, or juggling her own breasts.
Dragon Quest (video game) | 1989 North American localization
Interactive movie games are considered a subgenre of adventure games. This subgenre has origins in Japanese interactive movie arcade games. The first interactive movie laserdisc video game was Sega's "Astron Belt", unveiled in 1982 and released in 1983, though it was more of a shooter game presented as an action movie using full motion video. A more story-driven interactive movie game was "Bega's Battle", released in 1983, which combined shooting stages with interactive anime cutscenes, where player input had an effect on the game's branching storyline. "Time Gal" (1985), in addition to featuring quick time events, added a time-stopping feature where specific moments in the game involve Reika stopping time; during these moments, players are presented with a list of three options and have seven seconds to choose one.
Adventure game | Interactive movie arcade games (1983–1985)
Since the early 1970s, Japan has been home to some of the most famous and influential video game companies in the world; some of the most well-known include Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Namco, Capcom, Konami and Square Enix. The games produced by the companies are extremely well known across the world, including famous arcade games such as "Space Invaders" and "Pac-Man", and incredibly popular franchises such as "Mario", "The Legend of Zelda", "Final Fantasy", "Metal Gear", "Street Fighter", "Sonic the Hedgehog", "Pokémon" and "Resident Evil". Numerous Japanese games have been ranked among the best games of all time, and have spawned sequels, remakes and adaptations.
Japanese pop culture in the United States | Video games
The success of these games has sparked a resurgence in the adventure game genre outside Japan. GameSpot has credited "" in particular for revitalizing the adventure game genre. The success of the "Ace Attorney" series was followed soon after by the even greater success of Level-5's "Professor Layton" in 2007. Both have since become some of the best selling adventure game franchises, with "Ace Attorney" selling over 3.9 million units worldwide and "Professor Layton" selling over 9.5 million units worldwide by 2010. Their success has led to an increase in Japanese visual novels being localized for release outside Japan, including: KID's "" (2002), Cing's "Another Code" series (2005 onwards), Marvelous Entertainment's "Lux-Pain" (2008), Chunsoft's "" (2010), and Capcom's "" (2010).
Visual novel | Visual novels in the Western world
American-based Atari struggled to compete in Japan but they couldn't defeat the Sega-Nintendo duopoly in the video arcade realm. Future Japanese game designers would cut their teeth during this era playing 8-bit games and end up designing video games on much more complicated architectures (systems like the Nintendo 64 and the Game Boy). But Japan was indifferent to American pop culture of the 1980s. Professional wrestling was declining in the 1980s in Japan, even though the WWF was experiencing a boom worldwide. Even the most predominant men's and women's wrestling leagues were losing popularity like America's World Wrestling Federation. By the 2000s, professional wrestling was relegated to the midnight hours by television broadcasting.
1980s in Japan | Entertainment
In the long feudal period governed by the samurai class, some methods that were used to train warriors were developed into well-ordered martial arts, in modern times referred to collectively as . Examples include , and sumo, all of which were established in the Edo period. After the rapid social change in the Meiji Restoration, some martial arts changed into modern sports, called . Judo was developed by , who studied some sects of jujutsu. These sports are still widely practiced in present-day Japan and other countries. Baseball, Association football, and other popular western sports were imported to Japan in the Meiji period.
Culture of Japan | Sports and leisure
While he did not believe he would win, he was motivated by his editor, who enjoyed the games and published Horii's articles on them. Later, when Enix began creating games for the NES, Fukushima held another contest. This time, Nakamura won with his "cartoonish and creative contest entry" "Door Door", which became Enix's first release for the NES. Horii's earliest inspiration for "Dragon Quest" is his own 1983 PC visual novel "The Portopia Serial Murder Case" – a murder mystery adventure game that bears some similarities to games such as "Mystery House", "Zork", "", and particularly "Déjà Vu". Horii wanted to advance the game's storyline by using dialogue.
Dragon Quest (video game) | Historical backdrop
This is a list of board games invented or developed in Japan.
List of Japanese board games | Introduction
Video gaming is a major industry in Japan. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games, including Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yamauchi, Sega during the same time period, and other companies such as Taito, Namco, Capcom, and Square Enix, among others.
Japanese popular culture | Video games
From the 1990s, a number of Japanese adventure games began using a 3D third-person direct control format, particularly on consoles like the PlayStation, Dreamcast and PlayStation 2. Examples include "" (1993), Human Entertainment's "Mizzurna Falls" (1998), Sega's "Shenmue" series (1999–2002), Konami's "Shadow of Memories" (2001), and Irem's "Disaster Report" series (2002–2009). Cing's "Glass Rose" (2003) for the PS2 uses a point-and-click interface with 3D graphics. The success of "Resident Evil" in 1996 was followed by the release of the survival horror graphic adventures "Clock Tower (Clock Tower 2)" and "" for the PlayStation. The "Clock Tower" games proved to be hits, capitalizing on the success of "Resident Evil", though both games stayed true to the graphic-adventure gameplay of the original "Clock Tower" rather than following the lead of "Resident Evil".
Adventure game | 3D adventure games (1993–present)
However, the Famicom went into decline and most game companies halved their production of new 8-bit games by 1994. Even the Nintendo Game Boy acquired popularity in Japan (spawning a lineup of Japan-exclusive video games) and eventually the Japanese release of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. Nintendo Power wrote an exposé about Japanese video games (using one of its first 50 issues). The exposé stated that Japanese video games were less censored than their North American counterparts. Video games that were released in Japan employed some form of sexual content, brought forth the invocation of religious symbols, utilized a level of violence never seen in North American games (until the release of "Doom" in the mid-1990s), and mentioning tobacco in addition to alcohol so that the story could have more flavor.
1990s in Japan | Video games
In the early 2000s (decade), mobile games had gained mainstream popularity in Japanese mobile phone culture, years before the United States or Europe. By 2003, a wide variety of mobile games were available on Japanese phones, ranging from puzzle games and virtual pet titles that use camera phone and fingerprint scanner technologies to 3D games with PlayStation-quality graphics. Older arcade-style games became very popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. Namco began making attempts to introduce mobile gaming culture to Europe in 2003. Mobile gaming interest was raised when Nokia launched its N-Gage phone and handheld gaming platform in 2003.
History of video games | Mobile games
Video game arcades sprang up in shopping malls, and small "corner arcades" appeared in restaurants, grocery stores, bars and movie theaters all over Japan and other countries during the late 1970s and early 1980s. "Space Invaders" (1978), "Galaxian" (1979), "Pac-Man" (1980) and "Bosconian" (1981) were especially popular. By 1981, the arcade video game industry was worth $8 billion ($ in ). Some games of this era were so popular that they entered popular culture. The first to do so was "Space Invaders". The game was so popular upon its release in 1978 that an urban legend blamed it for a national shortage of 100 yen coins in Japan, leading to a production increase of coins to meet demand for the game (although 100 yen coin production was lower in 1978 and 1979 than in previous or subsequent years, and the claim does not withstand logical scrutiny: arcade operators would have emptied out their machines and taken the money to the bank, thus keeping the coins in circulation).
Video games in Japan | 1970s–early 1980s
Early games borrowed heavily from the iconography and story conventions of "retro shoujo manga", "the archetypical girly heroines, the emphasis on pure, sexless, tranquil romance and on a peaceful, stable setting", but as the category expanded, other narrative and gameplay elements were introduced, including action, adventure, combat and plots in which "the heroine can 'save the world' and 'get the guy' at the same time". "McKenzie & Co" (1995) from American Laser Games and "Girl's Club" (1992) from Philips Interactive were simulation games for girls developed and released in the US in the past. The first Japanese "otome" game to be officially translated and sold in English was the visual novel "Yo-Jin-Bo" in 2006 for the PC.
Otome game | History
The game was conceived by Yuji Horii around 1981, when he was 27 years old, shortly after he bought his first computer and learned to program with it by modifying other games. During this time, he read a PC magazine article about a computer game genre in the United States, text adventures. Horii noticed the lack of such games in the Japanese market and decided to create an adventure game of his own. Horii also cited the manga authors Tetsuya Chiba, Mitsuru Adachi and Katsuhiro Otomo as influences. The game was developed using the BASIC programming language. Horii wanted to expand on the adventure game genre with his own ideas.
The Portopia Serial Murder Case | Development and release
It was then followed by Koei's "The Dragon and Princess" (ドラゴン＆プリンセス) for the PC-8001 in 1982; it featured adventure game elements and revolved around rescuing a kidnapped princess. Following a random encounter, the game transitions from a text adventure interface to a separate, graphical, overhead battle screen, where a tactical turn-based combat system is used. Also in 1982, Koei released another early Japanese RPG, "Danchizuma no Yuwaku" ("Seduction of the Condominium Wife"), a PC-8001 title that also featured adventure game elements in addition to "eroge" adult content. These early experimental Japanese RPGs from 1982 are considered "proto-JRPGs" and predated the arrival of "Wizardry" and "Ultima" in Japan.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Origins (early 1980s)
In the early 1970s, Kasco (Kansei Seiki Seisakusho) created a rhythm-based electro-mechanical arcade game, designed by Kenzou Furukawa and produced by Kenji Nagata. According to Nagata, it was Furukawa's "idea for a game where you’d lift girls skirts in time to some rhythm", inspired by the 1969 Japanese "Oh! Mouretsu" commercials. The arcade game was released in Japan. Arcades in Japan are called Game Center (ゲームセンター), or simply known as ゲセン (GaCen). Another early rhythm-based electronic game was the handheld game "Simon", created in 1978 by Ralph Baer (who created the Magnavox Odyssey) and Howard Morrison. The game used the "call and response" mechanic, in which players take turns repeating increasingly complicated sequences of button presses.
Rhythm game | Origins and popularity in Japan (1970s–2000)
The most successful example is "Machi", one of the most celebrated games in Japan, where it was voted No. 5 in a 2006 "Famitsu" reader poll of top 100 games of all time. The game resembled a live-action television drama, but allowing players to explore multiple character perspectives and affect the outcomes. Another successful example is "", which received a perfect score of 40 out of 40 from "Famitsu" magazine.
Visual novel | Style
In gaming hardware, the handheld Nintendo DS and subsequent units included a touch-screen, and the Nintendo Wii console with its Wii Remote allowed players to control a cursor through motion control. These new platforms helped decrease the cost of bringing an adventure game to market, providing an avenue to re-release older, less graphically advanced games like "The Secret of Monkey Island", "King's Quest" and "Space Quest" and attracting a new audience to adventure games. Further, the improvements in digital distribution led to the concept of episodic adventure games, delivering between three and five "chapters" of a full game over a course of several months via online storefronts, Steam, Xbox Live Marketplace, PlayStation Store, and Nintendo eShop.
Adventure game | New platforms and rebirth (2005–onward)
In 1997, Konami began releasing a number of music-based games that used unique peripherals to control the game in time to music, including "Beatmania" and "GuitarFreaks", culminating in the 1998 release of "Dance Dance Revolution" ("DDR") in Japan, a new style of arcade game that used a dance pad and required players to tap their feet on appropriate squares on the pad in time to notes on screen in synchronization to popular music. "DDR" later released in the West in 1999, and while it did not enjoy the same popularity in Japan initially, it led the trend of rhythm games in arcades.
History of arcade games | Ongoing technological improvements (1991−1999)
They said the game broke the mold of conventional video game titles by including a plot with cinematic cutscenes added between gameplay segments, adding that the concept of adding cinematics for a game's introduction, plot, and ending was a new concept which "naturally impressed the gaming public". The article noted the game's high level of difficulty, saying the game "threw up an immense challenge even for the veteran gamer, and almost dared you to complete it mentally and physically intact". Chris Kohler, in his 2004 book "", said, while it was not as far-reaching as "Tecmo Bowl", "it ended up revolutionizing video games with its courageous, unique, and trailblazing use of cinema scenes".
Ninja Gaiden (NES video game) | Legacy
In general, few Japanese arcade rhythm games were exported abroad because of the cost of producing the peripherals and the resulting increases in retail prices. The 1999 Bemani title "DrumMania" featured a drum kit controller, and could be linked with "GuitarFreaks" for simulated jam sessions. Similarly, this concept was later appropriated by Harmonix for their game "Rock Band". "Dance Dance Revolution", released in 1998, is a rhythm game in which players dance on pressure-sensitive pads in an order dictated by on-screen instructions. The game was highly successful both in and outside Japan, unlike games such as "GuitarFreaks", "DrumMania" and "Beatmania", though the latter had some success in Europe.
Rhythm game | Origins and popularity in Japan (1970s–2000)
Ben Bateman, the editor of the first two games' localizations, did this by looking at the writing from a wider view, examining it line by line or scene by scene, rather than word by word or sentence by sentence, and thinking about how to convey the same idea in English. Most parts of the games that include a joke in the localization also have a joke in the Japanese versions, but a different one; Bateman did try to make similar types of jokes with similar contents and ideas. He was given mostly free rein in what he could change or add to the writing, as long as it did not disrupt the plot.
Zero Escape | Localization
The following year, the Japanese company Starcraft released an enhanced remake of On-Line Systems' "Mystery House" with more realistic art work and depiction of blood.
Adventure game | Early computer graphic adventures (1981–1988)
The home video game industry was eventually revitalized with the third generation of game consoles over the next few years, which saw a shift in the dominance of the video game industry from the United States to Japan. This same time period saw the advent of the personal computer game, specialized gaming home computers, early online gaming, and the introduction of LED handheld electronic games and eventually handheld video games.
History of games | Electronic games
The localization team had to translate 1500 pages of text to make sure it made sense in a "native check", because of lack of plurals in the Japanese language and the large number of characters and conditional conversations that the player could interact with. The team recognized that certain elements of the game would not be recognized by Western audiences, but left enough text and details to allow the players to look up the information for themselves. Only one puzzle in the game had to be changed as it required knowledge of the steps in drawing a kanji character which would be readily known for Japanese audiences; for the Western release, these steps were demonstrated in the game.
Ōkami | Development
Japanese developers blended this gameplay style with that of Japanese action-adventure games like "The Legend of Zelda" to create games like "Land Stalker" and "Light Crusader". While these games are more generally classified as action adventures, they are also isometric platformers and an evolution of earlier conventions in the genre. This influence later traveled to Europe with Adeline Software's sprawling epic "Little Big Adventure", which blended RPG, adventure, and isometric platforming elements. Before consoles were able to display true polygonal 3D graphics, the ¾ isometric perspective was used to move some popular 2D platformers into three-dimensional gameplay. "Spot Goes To Hollywood" was a sequel to the popular "Cool Spot", and "Sonic 3D Blast" was Sonic's outing into the isometric subgenre.
Platform game | Isometric platform game
Unless Japanese people feel embarrassed from the experience of getting harsh comments, saying [new games] could have been better is not an opinion they would take seriously. When they're embarrassed and they feel obliged to change, it would make a difference." In 2012 at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, Inafune again disparaged the state of Japanese gaming. He said, "Back in the day Japanese games were used to winning and were used to success. We celebrated all sorts of victories. However at some point these winners became losers. Not accepting that fact has led to the tragic state of Japanese games today."
Keiji Inafune | Japanese games
Japanese-made video game consoles have been popular since the 1980s, and Japan dominated the industry until Microsoft's Xbox consoles began challenging Sony and Nintendo in the 2000s. , $6 billion of Japan's $20 billion gaming market is generated from arcades, which represent the largest sector of the Japanese video game market, followed by home console games and mobile games at $3.5 billion and $2 billion, respectively. Japan is now the world's largest market for mobile games; in 2014, Japan's consumer video game market grossed $9.6 billion, with $5.8 billion coming from mobile gaming.
Japan | Science and technology
As indicated by the game's subtitle, the game borrows heavily from traditional Japanese fairytales such as Momotarō and Princess Kaguya. Most text-based adventure games of the time were written in the style of mystery novels, where the player had to solve a murder or crime of some sort, but Shin Onigashima's fairytale-like plot gave a much softer and accessible feel to the genre. A conversion of the game was included as part of "Heisei Shin Onigashima", released for the Super Famicom in 1997 and 1998. It was also redone for the Game Boy Advance as part of the Famicom Mini series on August 4, 2004.
Shin Onigashima | Development
DigiCube was established in February 1996. It was formed to market and distribute games and related merchandising (toys, books, music, etc.) in Asia. It declared bankruptcy in October 2003. Escape, Inc. was established in 1998. They developed the racing game "Driving Emotion Type-S".
Square (video game company) | In Japan
Expanded by Don Woods in 1977 with an emphasis on the high fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien, "Adventure" established a new genre based around exploration and inventory-based puzzle solving that made the transition to personal computers in the late 1970s. While most games were created on hardware of limited graphic ability, one computer able to host more impressive games was the PLATO system developed at the University of Illinois. Intended as an educational computer, the system connected hundreds of users all over the United States via remote terminals that featured high-quality plasma displays and allowed users to interact with each other in real time.
History of video games | Mainframe computer games (1971–1979)
When personal computers gained the ability to display graphics, the text adventure genre began to wane, and by 1990 there were few if any commercial releases, though in the UK publisher Zenobi released many games that could be purchased via mail order during the first half of the 90s. Non-commercial text adventure games have been developed for many years within the genre of interactive fiction. Games are also being developed using the older term 'text adventure' with Adventuron, alongside some published titles for older 8-bit and 16-bit machines.
Adventure game | Text adventures (1976–1989)
These changes to sho shogi created what is essentially the modern game of shogi.
History of chess | Japan
During this period, comparatively few Eastern RPGs were released in Europe. The market for the genre was not as large as in Asia or North America, and the increasing amount of time and money required for translation as JRPGs became more text-heavy, in addition to the usual need to optimize the games for PAL systems, often made localizing the games to Europe a high-cost venture with little potential payoff. As a result, JRPG releases in Europe were largely limited to games which had previously been localized for North America, thus reducing the amount of translation required. In 1995, Square's "Chrono Trigger" raised the standards for the genre, with certain aspects that were considered revolutionary in its time, including its nonlinear gameplay, branching plot, the "Active Time Event Logic" system, more than a dozen different endings, plot-related sidequests, a unique battle system with innovations such as combo attacks, and lack of random encounters.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Late 1990s
It also introduced a day-night cycle that affects when certain NPCs appear in certain locations and offered three possible multiple endings depending on the time it took to complete the game. Square's "Cleopatra no Mahō" was an adventure RPG with a unique plot revolving around archeology. Square's original "Final Fantasy" for the NES had a character creation system that allowed the player to create their own parties and assign different character classes to party members, who in turn evolve through an early class change system later in the game. It also featured concepts such as time travel; side-view battles, with the player characters on the right and the enemies on the left, which soon became the norm for numerous console RPGs; and the use of transportation for travel, "by ship, canoe, and even flying airship." While creating "Final Fantasy", Hironobu Sakaguchi took inspiration from certain elements in Hayao Miyazaki's anime films, such as the airships being inspired by "Castle in the Sky".
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Evolution (late 1980s)
It was also the first video game to popularize the concept of achieving a high score, being the first game to save the player's score. It was also the first game where players had to repel hordes of creatures, take cover from enemy fire, and use destructible barriers, in addition to being the first game to use a continuous background soundtrack, with four simple chromatic descending bass notes repeating in a loop, though it was dynamic and changed pace during stages. It also moved the gaming industry away from "Pong"-inspired sports games grounded in real-world situations towards action games involving fantastical situations.
Tomohiro Nishikado | "Space Invaders"
"Animal Olympic Games", a 1928 animated short film directed by Yasuji Murata, is regarded by critics as the first sports anime. The film was inspired by the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam and was indicative of a western influence on sports that would come to shape the genre, as in the subsequent short animated films "Our Baseball Game" (1930) also directed by Murata and "Baseball in the Forest" (1934) directed by Siichi Harada. Though western sports have been played in Japan since the Meiji era, American forces during the occupation of Japan took an active role in encouraging the adoption of sports such as baseball, boxing, and wrestling.
Sports manga | History
While "Monster Hunter" had been successful in Japan, its popularity in Western markets (primarily North America and Europe) languished. In contrast to the Japanese culture, Western markets favored home consoles and computers during the mid-2000s, and because of a thinner population density, most players relied on Internet-based gaming rather than local ad hoc networking. The series also struggled with a difficult learning curve that had made the games off-putting in Western markets.
Monster Hunter | History
This was due to the fact that the original "II" and "III" on NES had not received a Western release. "The Final Fantasy Legend" was originally to be called "The Great Warrior Saga", but changed it to its current title to tie in with the "Final Fantasy" series, which was well-known and popular in North America. The prequel to Secret of Mana, "Seiken Densetsu", was similarly renamed "Final Fantasy Adventure" in its North American release, only to be later renamed again to "Mystic Quest" in Europe, in an attempt to tie it with the unrelated "Final Fantasy Mystic Quest". "Dragon Quest", one of the earliest successful Japanese role-playing games, had its title changed to "Dragon Warrior" so as not to confuse it with the similarly-titled tabletop role-playing game "DragonQuest".
Localization of Square Enix video games | Changes
Since the late 2000s, RPG fan replay videos have grown in popularity on Niconico, a Japanese video hosting service. In the replay videos, popular RPGs are Western "Call of Cthulhu" and "Paranoia". In 2013, Adventure Planning Service released "Kill Death Business", a TV-show concept PvP RPG, and it quickly spread in Niconico. Also, the rise of web novels has been a major influence to the Japanese fantasy and RPG scene. "Log Horizon TRPG" was released in 2014. "Role-playing fiction" "Red Dragon" was animated under the moniker "Chaos Dragon" in 2015. "Goblin Slayer TRPG" was published in 2019.
Tabletop role-playing games in Japan | Late 2000s and 2010s: resurgence by fan videos and web novels
In 1985, ICOM Simulations released "Déjà Vu", the first of its MacVenture series, utilized a more complete point-and-click interface, including the ability to drag objects around on the current scene, and was a commercial success. LucasArts' "Maniac Mansion", released in 1987, used a novel "verb-object" interface, showing all possible commands the player could use to interact with the game along with the player's inventory, which became a staple of LucasArts' own adventure games and in the genre overall. The point-and-click system also worked well for game consoles, with games like Chunsoft's "Portopia Serial Murder Case" (1985) and Square's "Suishō no Dragon" (1986), both on the Nintendo Entertainment System using the controller input instead of text-based actions.
Adventure game | Graphical development (1980–1990)
The game also had a limited inventory requiring item management, while the caves were dark, requiring the use of a torch to display a field of vision around the character. With "Dragon Quest" becoming widely popular in Japan, such that local municipalities were forced to place restrictions on where and when the game could be sold, the "Dragon Quest" series is still considered a bellwether for the Japanese video game market. "Dragon Quest" did not reach North America until 1989, when it was released as "Dragon Warrior", the first NES RPG to be released in North America. The release of "Dragon Quest" was followed by NES remakes of the early "Wizardry" and "Ultima" titles over the next several years by Pony Canyon.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Origins (mid-1980s)
Japanese developers have been increasingly considering Steam as a viable platform for the genre, with many Japanese RPGs available on the platform. By 2015, Japan had become the world's fourth largest PC game market, behind only China, the United States, and South Korea. The Japanese game development engine RPG Maker has also gained popularity, with hundreds of games being created with it and released on Steam by the late 2010s.
History of Eastern role-playing video games | Steam and resurgence (2010s)
The game plays as a command-style adventure game. The game's interface was also innovative, resembling that of a point-and-click graphic adventure interface for a console. The game made use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions, and it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the D-pad to click on the icons and examine parts of the scenery.
Suishō no Dragon | Gameplay
Two of those games, "The Magic of Scheherazade" and "Flying Warriors", were strongly redesigned by Culture Brain USA (the company's division in Redmond, Washington) to better appeal North American consumers. Culture Brain was distinct for its innovative gameplay and its mixture of role-playing video game elements with either action or adventure. However, like many other Japanese video game companies, Culture Brain ceased its operations in the United States in the 1990s. Ever since the demise of Culture Brain USA, video games developed by the parent company have rarely made it in America. An exception of the latter situation is the Nintendo 64 version of "Flying Dragon" which was published by Natsume.
Culture Brain | History
Hiroyuki Kanno (菅野 ひろゆき, 8 May 1968 – 19 December 2011) was a Japanese video game designer who wrote and directed visual novels and eroge adventure games starting in the 1990s. Some of his most well-known games include "Xenon", "Desire", "Eve Burst Error" (at C's Ware) and "" (at ELF Corporation), which had a major influence on the visual novel genre. He was friends with Ryu Umemoto, who often worked closely with him and composed music for the games. In December 1997, he founded Abel corporation and became its CEO. In 2011, Kanno died due to cerebral infarction and brain hemorrhage.
Hiroyuki Kanno (game designer) | Introduction
From 1980 to 1991, Nintendo produced a line of handheld electronic games called "Game & Watch". Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, each "Game & Watch" features a single game to be played on an LCD screen. It was the earliest Nintendo product to gain major success. Konami's "Scramble", released in 1981, is a side-scrolling shooter with forced scrolling. It was the first scrolling shooter to offer multiple, distinct levels. Vertical scrolling shooters emerged around the same time. Namco's "Xevious", released in 1982, is frequently cited as the first vertical scrolling shooter and, although it was in fact preceded by several other games of that type, it is considered one of the most influential.
Video games in Japan | 1980s–early 2000s
In Europe, computer gaming continued to boom for many years after. Computers such as the ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro were successful in the European market, where the NES was not as successful despite its monopoly in Japan and North America. The only 8-bit console to have any success in Europe would be the Sega Master System. Meanwhile, in Japan, both consoles and computers became major industries, with the console market dominated by Nintendo and the computer market dominated by NEC's PC-88 (1981) and PC-98 (1982). A key difference between Western and Japanese computers at the time was the display resolution, with Japanese systems using a higher resolution of 640x400 to accommodate Japanese text which in turn affected video game design and allowed more detailed graphics.
PC game | Industry crash and aftermath
"Space Invaders" pitted the player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing rate of speed. The game used alien creatures inspired by "The War of the Worlds" (by H. G. Wells) because the developers were unable to render the movement of aircraft; in turn, the aliens replaced human enemies because of moral concerns (regarding the portrayal of killing humans) on the part of Taito Corporation. As with subsequent shoot 'em ups of the time, the game was set in space as the available technology only permitted a black background. The game also introduced the idea of giving the player a number of "lives".
Video games in Japan | 1970s–early 1980s
The game marked several firsts for Square Enix, as it was their first game to be released on the same day in both Japan and internationally, as well as the first to use motion capture of Western voice actors. This resulted in the characters' lips speaking English synced to the spoken dialogue, rather than Japanese. The game was planned from the beginning of development to be released simultaneously worldwide and to be targeted to players worldwide, which impacted the character design and art direction. The design and dialogue were created to appeal to international and Japanese players, rather than being focused on the norms of the Japanese video game market alone.
The Last Remnant | Development
He also provided a series of smaller scenarios in order to build up the player's strength to achieve the final objective. He created an open world which is not blocked physically in any way except by monsters that can easily kill unprepared players; Gamasutra described this as one of the earliest examples of nonlinear gameplay. Horii used bridges to signify changes in difficulty and implemented a level progression with a high starting growth rate that decelerates over time, which contrasted to the random initial stats and constant growth rates of the early editions of "Dungeons & Dragons". To make the game appeal to a larger audience, manga artist and creator of "Dragon Ball", Akira Toriyama, was hired to produce the artwork.
Dragon Quest (video game) | Japanese development
Dwyer noted that while some situations and words were difficult to recreate in English, the elements of Japanese culture present in the game were not a hindrance during the localization. The box art was changed for the localization, both to appeal to American players and to better communicate the tough journey the player goes on in the game.
Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer | Release
Sega's ambitious "Shenmue" (1999) attempted to redefine the adventure game genre with its realistic 3D graphics, third-person perspective, direct character control interface, sandbox open-world gameplay, quick time events, and fighting game elements. Its creator Yu Suzuki originally touted it as a new kind of adventure game, "FREE" ("Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment"), offering an unparalleled level of player freedom, giving them full reign to explore expansive interactive city environments with its own day-night cycles and changing weather, and interact with fully voiced non-player characters going about their daily routines. Despite being a commercial failure, the game was critically acclaimed and has remained influential.
Adventure game | 3D adventure games (1993–present)
These uncensored Japanese games even used vulgar language. The Sega CD (known as the "Sega Mega CD" in Japan) first started to offer full motion video outside of the personal computer scene. It became trendy in the 1990s (and in the 2000s) for players to create their own role-playing video games. Game creation software like "" and "RPG Tsukūru 2" made it possible for players to create role-playing games on their Super Famicom systems. While these games were not as graphically enhanced as "Chrono Trigger" or "Final Fantasy VI" which dominated this decade for role-playing video games, these "game creation tools" would allow the gamers of the 1990s to become the game designers of the 2000s and beyond.
1990s in Japan | Video games
In 1986, to tie in with the original Japanese version of the film, a video game was released for the Japan-exclusive Famicom Disk System in 1986.
The Adventures of Milo and Otis | Video game adaptation
The series has been commercially and critically successful both in Japan and internationally, selling more than expected for the genre and helping establishing 5pb. as a game developer.
Science Adventure | Introduction
Role-playing games made in Japan made their first appearance during the 1980s. Today, there are hundreds of Japanese-designed games as well as several translated games. Tabletop RPGs are referred to as , a wasei-eigo term often shortened as TRPG in Japan to distinguish them from the video role-playing game genre.
Tabletop role-playing games in Japan | Introduction
It is based in Kyoto, Japan and produces a free magazine by the same name. Beyond Japan, Captivate Escape Rooms appeared in Australia and Singapore from 2011, the market growing to over 60 games by 2015. Kazuya Iwata, a friend of Kato, brought Real Escape Game to San Francisco in 2012. The following year, Seattle-based Puzzle Break founded by Nate Martin became the first American-based escape room company. Japanese games were primarily composed of logical puzzles, such as mathematical sequences or colour-coding, just like the video games that inspired them. Parapark, a Hungarian franchise that later operated in 20 locations in Europe and Australia, was founded in 2011 in Budapest.
Escape room | History
The game's difficulty is rather high, as very few hints are given in solving mysteries, and many circumstances can lead to the "game over" screen. Even so, the game's warm graphics and plot consisting of numerous interwoven Japanese fairytales was positively received by fans and critics alike. The in-game music, written by Koji Kondo, is regarded in equally high esteem, and the game is considered an undeniable success as Nintendo's first text-based adventure game. The 1989 "All Soft Catalog" issue of "Famicom Tsūshin" (now "Famitsu") included "Shin Onigashima" in its list of the best games of all time. In particular, they gave it the award for the best "Adventure" game of all time.
Shin Onigashima | Reception
Nevertheless, the American market research firm NPD FunWorld reported that adventure games were the best-selling genre of the 1990s, followed by strategy video games. Writer Mark H. Walker attributed this dominance in part to "Myst". The 1990s also saw the release of many adventure games from countries that had experienced dormant or fledgling video gaming industries up until that point. These games were generally inspired by their Western counterparts and a few years behind in terms of technological and graphical advancements. In particular the fall of the Soviet Union saw countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia release a string of popular adventure games including "Tajemnica Statuetki" (1993) and "The Secret of Monkey Island" parody "Tajemství Oslího ostrova" (1994).
Adventure game | Expansion (1990–2000)