I'm definitely a fan of the classics I grew up with. Since as a grownup I don't have much time for video games, I pretty much limit my gaming time these days to replaying old classics and playing the sequels or follow-ups to the games I loved most in my youth.
However, I've noticed that I have a harder time getting into more recent entries in many of my old favorites. I have started, but failed to finish to completion, Final Fantasy XII, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass, Super Mario Galaxy, and Dragon Quest IX. All of these are games I was excited to try out when they were first announced or released. I also was unable to play any of them when they were first released due to financial, time, or other constraints. And with each of these cases, though I was definitely enjoying each game, I got to a point where I ended up "taking a break", which break has still not ended for each of those games. And with the exception of Dragon Quest IX, I started all of those games years ago.
I've identified one common theme in all of these games, the identification of which has someone refocused my gaming goals within the last year. In each case, I initially get excited as I see the familiar elements of each series come to life within the new game. I get more excited as I see the evolution of the classic formulas, and think of all the things I'm excited to try out in the game. I think about striking an appropriate balance between finishing the game and exploring the games' side quests and additional content. And then I remember--I had all these same feelings about previous entries that I played after coming home from my mission (or in the case of Dragon Quest, when I played through the series over the last few years). But in each case, I was so excited to "catch up" to current games, that I just played straight through and didn't take time to enjoy most of the side quests or additional content the way I would have in my youth.
I told myself back then that after I caught up, I would go back and replay the series to get the full experience. But, I never did. I played Halo instead, with the very occasional other game put in there in an effort to try and stay current in my gaming. The problem I have now is, for every exciting new entry in a classic series, it reminds me of everything I left undone in the previous entries.
Most of the examples I listed above mark at least a few years since the last entry I tried. But just this year, I identified the problem again when, after completing Dragon Quest VII and VIII last year, I started on Dragon Quest IX this year. Because our finances were too tight for an impulse buy, I agonized over the wait from the beginning of the year when I finished the last game until my birthday in June, when I finally got the chance to try it out. The game is very well done, and very fun to play. But as my characters leveled up and learned new abilities, and as I learned and tried out various alchemy recipes and went through various side quests, I kept thinking about all the abilities, alchemy recipes, and other things I never tried out on Dragon Quest VIII, which led me back to not fleshing out my characters on Dragon Quest VII, and so on back a ways.
Meanwhile, I had a long commute for work, and was looking for apps on my phone to entertain me. I had recently quit Candy Crush, an addiction from last year that was so not worth the time I spent with it, and was looking for something better to replace it. I had already purchased and completed the original Dragon Quest on my phone, but in the midst of all this I had an idea to keep me entertained for a little while. I had read on gamefaqs.com about someone who had completed the original Dragon Quest without any equipment. I decided I wanted to give it a try.
I had also this year set up my "man cave" in the house we bought this year, where I hooked up all my old game systems, some for the first time in years. I decided to boot up the original Dragon Warrior on my NES and try the same challenge there. In both cases, I surprised myself at how entertaining it was to revisit an old game in a new way. It was definitely a challenge, particularly on the NES version, but I learned things about the game that I didn't really know before. In particular, I developed a new appreciation for the spell Hurtmore/Firebane, which I had seldom used in past play, due to my desire to conserve MP. I also surprised myself when I beat it two levels before the game's maximum level, which was also two levels earlier than the guy on gamefaqs.com had beaten it.
I subsequently devised a new challenge for myself to see if it could help give me a similar appreciation for seldom-used items. I decided to try and finish the game with no magic. I had wanted to review the Famicom version for a language refresher, and replay my Game Boy Color version for a comparison of the dialog with the Android version, so I decided to try it on both of those. It was similarly fun, though I have not been able to finish it on the remake version, which features a stronger final boss.
I decided that I want to replay the series in more detail, and for the games I have already completed more than once I want to try some of these types of challenge quests. I want to really take time to enjoy each game in the series without feeling so rushed. Somewhere I need to strike the right balance between playing old and new games.
I haven't actually fully backed away from Dragon Quest IX, which I look at on my 3DS menu every day and do still sometimes play a bit. I am just finishing up another game on my 3DS and am planning to dive back into DQIX. But I'm thinking to myself, what's the rush? The next (English accessible) Dragon Quest game will not be released for over a year in Japan, and who knows when in the U.S., so I have time to flesh out my experience. And flesh out my experience with previous games as well, if that's what it takes to enjoy the new games. It's been rather fun so far, and I expect it will continue to be so.
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
Learning Japanese to Play Old, Missed Classics
Before writing about some of my current gaming experiences, I want to touch briefly on some of what I've been doing for the last few years. I'll try and briefly summarize my amazing experience of learning enough Japanese to stumble my way through some amazing games I always wanted to play, but which never came out in the U.S.
Back in 2003 or so, when I first sampled the online game Final Fantasy XI, which places players from the U.S., Europe, and Japan together on the same server, I decided I had more than a passing interest in learning Japanese. I saw two useful purposes. First, I could interact more fully with the prominent Japanese population on Final Fantasy XI. Second, I could use the knowledge to play Japanese entries to my favorite series that didn't get released in the U.S.
Back then I used resources I found on the internet to learn some basic fundamentals of Japanese kana and some very basic vocabulary. But it wasn't long before I realized how intimidating my task would be, and I sort of dead-ended.
Later on, I came up with a brilliant plan. I figured the best way to start learning was to expose myself to Japanese writing with a subject that was compelling enough to actually motivate me to wade through it. I also realized that it would be beneficial if that material initially was written in Japanese kana (basic letter-like characters), rather than kanji (pictographs), to make it more accessible to a novice like me. So when I had some extra money, I decided to purchase the Nintendo Famicom on Ebay, along with a copy of Dragon Quest I, the Japanese version of my favorite NES game of all time, to begin my Japanese study in earnest.
Unfortunately, I discovered that the system I had purchased didn't work on my TV. And in trying to diagnose the issue, I got a little too aggressive and opened up the system, accidentally breaking off a resistor in the process. Later on I learned that the system had probably worked fine, but it takes just the right setup to get a Japanese system from that era to work on a U.S. TV. But I had broken the system and was now demotivated and went back to my Halo.
After I got married, I found my Dragon Quest cartridge and decided I wanted to try again. I purchased a Famicom, and with my wife's help I was able to find a TV that I could get the system working on. I started up to the classic Dragon Quest march that I loved so much as a child, entered my name as close as I could approximate it with Japanese characters, and started my journey.
It was a slow start at first as I began learning the ins and outs of basic Japanese grammar and vocabulary. I found an online dictionary, www.jisho.org, that was invaluable to me in learning the meanings of the words I entered. Japanese doesn't use word breaks the same way we do, so it often took me several different tries to figure out what I actually had to look up. Since I knew the English version, Dragon Warrior, in and out, I could usually tell when I had got it about right. I was able to accelerate my efforts when I discovered the entire Japanese game script published, with a rudimentary translation, on www.gamefaqs.com, by user xloto. It took me over a year, but I was finally able to complete the whole game, translating for myself most of the dialogue to a point I was confident in most of the meaning.
In 2012, my efforts increased considerably. By this time, I understood the basics of Japanese grammar and had a rudimentary video game related vocabulary. So it wasn't near as slow a start when I purchased and started playing through Dragon Quest II. Furthermore, as this was near the time I decided to quit Halo, I found myself able to devote a lot more time to it. At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to complete the game by the end of the year. But by the time my daughter was born in May of that year, I had completed Dragon Quest II and Dragon Quest III, and had started Dragon Quest IV!
My efforts slowed after my daughter was born. She was hospitalized for the first four months of her life, and most of my gaming efforts were put on hold or at very slow progress during that time. And of course, even after she came home, kids eat up a lot of time, so I didn't progress quite as fast. Nevertheless, by the end of 2013 I had completed Dragon Quest IV (the first game I played not to have a transcript by xloto), as well as Final Fantasy I, II, and III.
The latter two were hugely significant for me, because unlike the others before, I had never played an English version of those games. They were lost pieces of my childhood, entries in my favorite game series of all time that I had never had a chance to play, finally available to me for the first time because of the effort I had put forth in learning the language. I was able to piece together lost pieces of the history of Final Fantasy. It was surprising to me how many features of the series were introduced in those two games, and in particular how much Final Fantasy III laid the groundwork for Final Fantasy IV, one of my favorite games of all time. Both games were a tremendous experience to play through after all those years, and I particularly enjoyed Final Fantasy III.
After playing those, at the beginning of 2013, I dropped some money down to import a Super Famicom and play through Dragon Quest V and VI. These were harder because they used kanji, the Japanese pictographs, in their dialog. But I had a decent enough background by now in Dragon Quest-type vocabulary to begin to learn common kanji. I familiarized myself over time with how I could look kanji up on www.jisho.org, and I was able to play both games through in a little over a year. They were both amazing games, but Dragon Quest V in particular really spoke to me. I think it might have a place now on my favorite games of all time. It's a tragedy that I could not play it back when it was first released, as I know I would have loved it. But it's also the rare sort of game that is easier to appreciate as an adult with a family, because that is tied into the game's main themes.
After Dragon Quest VI, I resumed the series in English, since they have been released stateside from that point. I eventually want to import other Japanese games, and have a strong interest in Dragon Quest X, which is Japanese only. But with the exception of the Super Famicom Dragon Quest I, which I played through a couple of months ago, I haven't played any Japanese games since Dragon Quest VI. However, I have recently begun to revisit the game which started it all for me, Final Fantasy XI, and my interest in learning more Japanese is going up again. Hopefully I'll have some more amazing opportunities here in the future.
Back in 2003 or so, when I first sampled the online game Final Fantasy XI, which places players from the U.S., Europe, and Japan together on the same server, I decided I had more than a passing interest in learning Japanese. I saw two useful purposes. First, I could interact more fully with the prominent Japanese population on Final Fantasy XI. Second, I could use the knowledge to play Japanese entries to my favorite series that didn't get released in the U.S.
Back then I used resources I found on the internet to learn some basic fundamentals of Japanese kana and some very basic vocabulary. But it wasn't long before I realized how intimidating my task would be, and I sort of dead-ended.
Later on, I came up with a brilliant plan. I figured the best way to start learning was to expose myself to Japanese writing with a subject that was compelling enough to actually motivate me to wade through it. I also realized that it would be beneficial if that material initially was written in Japanese kana (basic letter-like characters), rather than kanji (pictographs), to make it more accessible to a novice like me. So when I had some extra money, I decided to purchase the Nintendo Famicom on Ebay, along with a copy of Dragon Quest I, the Japanese version of my favorite NES game of all time, to begin my Japanese study in earnest.
Unfortunately, I discovered that the system I had purchased didn't work on my TV. And in trying to diagnose the issue, I got a little too aggressive and opened up the system, accidentally breaking off a resistor in the process. Later on I learned that the system had probably worked fine, but it takes just the right setup to get a Japanese system from that era to work on a U.S. TV. But I had broken the system and was now demotivated and went back to my Halo.
After I got married, I found my Dragon Quest cartridge and decided I wanted to try again. I purchased a Famicom, and with my wife's help I was able to find a TV that I could get the system working on. I started up to the classic Dragon Quest march that I loved so much as a child, entered my name as close as I could approximate it with Japanese characters, and started my journey.
It was a slow start at first as I began learning the ins and outs of basic Japanese grammar and vocabulary. I found an online dictionary, www.jisho.org, that was invaluable to me in learning the meanings of the words I entered. Japanese doesn't use word breaks the same way we do, so it often took me several different tries to figure out what I actually had to look up. Since I knew the English version, Dragon Warrior, in and out, I could usually tell when I had got it about right. I was able to accelerate my efforts when I discovered the entire Japanese game script published, with a rudimentary translation, on www.gamefaqs.com, by user xloto. It took me over a year, but I was finally able to complete the whole game, translating for myself most of the dialogue to a point I was confident in most of the meaning.
In 2012, my efforts increased considerably. By this time, I understood the basics of Japanese grammar and had a rudimentary video game related vocabulary. So it wasn't near as slow a start when I purchased and started playing through Dragon Quest II. Furthermore, as this was near the time I decided to quit Halo, I found myself able to devote a lot more time to it. At the beginning of the year, I set a goal to complete the game by the end of the year. But by the time my daughter was born in May of that year, I had completed Dragon Quest II and Dragon Quest III, and had started Dragon Quest IV!
My efforts slowed after my daughter was born. She was hospitalized for the first four months of her life, and most of my gaming efforts were put on hold or at very slow progress during that time. And of course, even after she came home, kids eat up a lot of time, so I didn't progress quite as fast. Nevertheless, by the end of 2013 I had completed Dragon Quest IV (the first game I played not to have a transcript by xloto), as well as Final Fantasy I, II, and III.
The latter two were hugely significant for me, because unlike the others before, I had never played an English version of those games. They were lost pieces of my childhood, entries in my favorite game series of all time that I had never had a chance to play, finally available to me for the first time because of the effort I had put forth in learning the language. I was able to piece together lost pieces of the history of Final Fantasy. It was surprising to me how many features of the series were introduced in those two games, and in particular how much Final Fantasy III laid the groundwork for Final Fantasy IV, one of my favorite games of all time. Both games were a tremendous experience to play through after all those years, and I particularly enjoyed Final Fantasy III.
After playing those, at the beginning of 2013, I dropped some money down to import a Super Famicom and play through Dragon Quest V and VI. These were harder because they used kanji, the Japanese pictographs, in their dialog. But I had a decent enough background by now in Dragon Quest-type vocabulary to begin to learn common kanji. I familiarized myself over time with how I could look kanji up on www.jisho.org, and I was able to play both games through in a little over a year. They were both amazing games, but Dragon Quest V in particular really spoke to me. I think it might have a place now on my favorite games of all time. It's a tragedy that I could not play it back when it was first released, as I know I would have loved it. But it's also the rare sort of game that is easier to appreciate as an adult with a family, because that is tied into the game's main themes.
After Dragon Quest VI, I resumed the series in English, since they have been released stateside from that point. I eventually want to import other Japanese games, and have a strong interest in Dragon Quest X, which is Japanese only. But with the exception of the Super Famicom Dragon Quest I, which I played through a couple of months ago, I haven't played any Japanese games since Dragon Quest VI. However, I have recently begun to revisit the game which started it all for me, Final Fantasy XI, and my interest in learning more Japanese is going up again. Hopefully I'll have some more amazing opportunities here in the future.