FURTHER READING
Gunparade March and the JRPG at the Turn of the New Millennium
Translation: RPG Legends ~ The 1990s Edition Vol. 3 – Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke
Translation: Nice Games Vol. 3 – Shoji Masuda Commentary
The following is a preview. For a limited time, the full article will be available to read for free on my Patreon, located here.
Note: Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke was originally released for the PlayStation in 1999. The game was later remade for the PlayStation Portable in 2011. This article covers the original PlayStation release of the game.
With the rich library of titles Japanese developers and their publishing companies were willing to localize in North America, the 1990s can be considered the golden age of JRPGs.1 During the 1998 holiday season, Squaresoft alone were promoting Parasite Eve, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, Final Fantasy Tactics, and SaGa Frontier, titles which were all localized in North America that year. However, as rightly celebrated as this era is, an equal number of JRPGs never saw release outside Japan. The titles that are fondly remembered—and that have influenced the perception of JRPGs abroad—only comprise a mere fraction of the games which were actually produced. Under different circumstances, Shōji Masuda might have attained a similar distinction to game directors who were able to break out during this time such as Takashi Tokita and Tetsuya Takahashi.
Masuda worked as a producer on both Metal Max (Crea-Tech and Data East, 1991) and Metal Max 2 (Crea-Tech and Data East, 1993), a series that drew influence from the spate of Cold War era post-apocalyptic media, such as Mad Max (George Miller, 1979) and Fist of the North Star (Buronson, Tetsuo Hara, 1983 – 1988), as much as it did Dragon Quest (Chunsoft, 1986).2 In between the first two Metal Max games, Masuda would also direct and write Tengai Makyō II: Manjimaru (Red Company, 1992). Like the previous Tengai Makyō game, Ziria (Red Company, 1989), Manjimaru takes place in the fictional country of “Jipang,” a setting so absurd in part because it’s based off the work of Paul Hieronymus Chada, a fictional East Asian scholar whose misconceptions of Japan cast it as a land of magic and myth. Ziria and Manjimaru took advantage of the PC Engine’s Super CD-ROM² add-on to take RPGs in a more “cinematic” direction. Featuring voice-acting and animated cutscenes, the game would release to critical acclaim.3 Then in 1995, Masuda would helm Linda³ (AlfaSystem Co., Ltd. and MARS Corporation, 1995), a game which combined monster-catching mechanics and the Old Testament with a psychosexual narrative that ponders on human desire . Suffice to say, none of the early RPGs Masuda worked on received an official English release.4
To label Masuda’s oeuvre simply as just parodic of RPGs implies an antagonism towards the genre or an absence of sincerity. Both humanism and mechanical depth underlies the humor and horror of his games. In this, Masuda is reminiscent of his contemporary, filmmaker Takeshi Kitano, whose penchant for extreme violence, coupled with slapstick comedy, gave way to a deeper examination of post-bubble Japan.5 Whereas Kitano’s early films focus by and large on the criminal underworld, Masuda’s own preoccupation instead centers on mortality and generational change—the plot of Linda³ hinges on the two main characters Ken and Linda becoming the new Adam and Eve. Ore no Shikabane o Koete Yuke (Alfa System and MARS Corporation, 1999) takes up similar concerns, centering its entire gameplay structure around birth and death.
- The same remains true in Europe albeit to a lesser extent as major titles such as Xenogears (Squaresoft, 1998), Chrono Cross (Squaresoft, 1999), and Dragon Quest VII (Heartbeat, 2000) went unlocalized in the continent. ↩︎
- Gēmu Saido Henshūbu (Henshū), “INTERVIEW: ‘Metaru Makkusu’ Shirīzu Kaihatsu-sha Intabyū” [Metal Max Series Developer Interview], Rōrupureingu Gēmu Saido, Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Micro Magazine, July 30, 2014), 57. ↩︎
- With specific regards to the PC Engine and cinematic games, cinema and games scholar Carl Therrien argues that the PC Engine’s cutting-edge technology was a method through which the console could more directly incorporate the influences of cinema and anime, leading to Therrien dubbing the machine as a “media snatcher.” Years later, with great success, Sony, Squaresoft, and other developers would adopt a similar approach with the PlayStation One. Final Fantasy VII ‘s (1997) advertising would emphasize the game’s cinematic qualities and Parasite Eve would be labeled as the “Cinematic RPG.” While Alfa System’s port of Ys I & II was localized for the PC Engine (otherwise known as the TurboGrafx-16) and did emphasize this new direction towards multimedia, the absence of Ziria and Manjimaru abroad, alongside a host of other titles, leads me to wonder if it allowed Squaresoft to monopolize the idea of being developers who brought a cinematic direction towards RPGs, at least in North America. ↩︎
- Ziria and Linda³ would see unofficial fan translations in 2023 and 2024, respectively. ↩︎
- Sean Redmond, The Cinema of Takeshi Kitano: Flowering Blood (London: Wallflower Press, 2013), 31. ↩︎