General gaming discussion
Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Join Date:Posts: 52416
Since I've been playing a wizardry game I've been looking up historical stuff about the series. It might well be one of the most influential game series ever made with stuff it pioneered in pretty much every game you've played.
But the weirdest thing is how the western and Japanese viewed the series. This more than likely contributed to all the dark fantasy we see in Japanese culture, stuff like Dark Souls and Berserk.
In the West the game takes after D&D. The first few games in the series are incredibly difficult and you are pretty much expected to lose party members permanently. Like in D&D you rip up the character sheet and roll a new character and get on with it. As a result there's a whimsical silliness to the game that carried over into later games and perfectly illustrated by the manual.
There's some really nasty stuff in the game, enemies that instantly kill you. A chance of permadeath when you revive characters, and a teleport spell that can randomly go wrong and teleport your party into a brick wall and party KO you. Also if you die you can only get your equipment back by reaching that spot in the dungeon with a new party. Sound familiar? You're meant to just roll with this stuff and treat the game more like a rogue like
In Japan it was different. When the japanese first got their hands on the game first it was likely through pirate copies and any text they weren't able to read. The game became massively popular in Japan. However without the context of D&D or the manual, what they perceived was a massively bleak and unforgiving game. A traversal into a dungeon where traps were cruel and every enemy encounter had the potential to be lethal. An atmosphere of bleak desolation was probably exasperated by the primitive graphics of white lines and text on a solid black background. The japanese found it kind of scary despite most of he enemies being puns or jokes.
When the official releases of the game came out, they were marketed with this in mind with some wonderful dark fantasy artwork which has persisted to this day. The series died in the west but the series continued in Japan with bleak dark fantasy settings and stories. This more than likely inspired a lot of manga writers, light novelists and game devs.
2 -
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
