Killer7 SINdicate

[Cat]

Anyway Animal Crossing in itself is possibly the most creative "life simulator" I've ever played because it really captures a specific mood, that is not necessairly all happy. The game can feel quite somber at times due to the music and lighting. I feel it really captures a sort of "paradise lost" feeling of childhood, you can see it in a lot of japanese pop media from the 90s and early 2000s with adult men living in cities reminiscing about their childhood hunting insects and having adventures and shit.

Were you referring to Katsuya Eguchi's own words here? I can't find the interview anywhere online, but I remember him mentioning his feelings of homesickness after his move to Kyoto to work for Nintendo as central to the design of the game. I believe it was in Edge magazine. If not, you managed to hit the nail on the head.
Boku no Natsuyasumi was also released just one year before Animal Crossing.

Anyway, Animal Crossing has one of the worst fan communities. Probably has something to do with it's enormous size now, but it was quite bad already with the 3DS game.
I'm a dedicated fan of the series. I bought my Switch so I could play New Horizons on release day.
It's a wonderful game obviously created with great care. However, the series has gotten a little more shallow with each installment.
I blame this principally on the introduction of childish elements under the management of Aya Kyogoku, although what set off this downward spiral was surely Wild World's multiplayer functionality, which she can't be blamed for.
The fanbase has deteriorated in concert with the games.

they relate to him and see him as a celebration of their values (he's technically an incel mass murderer lol,

Maybe I ought to give NMH a try after all

[CENSORED]

Were you referring to Katsuya Eguchi's own words here? I can't find the interview anywhere online, but I remember him mentioning his feelings of homesickness after his move to Kyoto to work for Nintendo as central to the design of the game. I believe it was in Edge magazine. If not, you managed to hit the nail on the head.

I've never actually read that interview. It's nice to have some confirmation that it was intentional. There is actually a similar feeling of nostalgia for pre-urbanization in certain italian shows, though it's a lot grimier. My father's generation went through a huge change from living in mostly countryside areas, to urbanized areas with office jobs within their life spans and it completely fucked with their minds.

This is the kind of world they grew up in the 50s and 60s, which was replaced entirely. I get the feeling it must have been similar to what Japan went through with the expansion of the Tokyo metropolis and the rise of office jobs (the salary man stereotypes) which led even people who were still in rural areas to move to the cities.

Moonlight Syndrome is actually an example of portraying the urbanization as horror. It doesn't show any flashbacks of pre-urbanized Hinashiro (except for a brief shot of the original school in the intro, which was also in Twilight Syndrome) but everything that happens in it revolves around the madness awakened in people by the shift to suburban cosmopolitanism.

https://www.paradisehotel51.com/sin/prologue/
https://www.paradisehotel51.com/sin/%e5 ... 8c-mowdei/

I don't think it's by chance that what suda describes as "the most primitive place of the soul" is portrayed as a grassy field, which also happens to be the only place where Rumi remembers her, Sumio, Kyoko and Ryo as being happy together.

Boku no Natsuyasumi was also released just one year before Animal Crossing.

I actually knew nothing of this series until today and it looks fantastic

Anyway, Animal Crossing has one of the worst fan communities. Probably has something to do with it's enormous size now, but it was quite bad already with the 3DS game.
I'm a dedicated fan of the series. I bought my Switch so I could play New Horizons on release day.
It's a wonderful game obviously created with great care. However, the series has gotten a little more shallow with each installment.

I agree with this. I can't really find the feeling of the original Animal Crossing in any of the sequels actually. They "technically" got better, but at the cost of the overall more raw mood of the original. I am glad it's being decompiled so eventually we'll have a version of it that is future proof. I never played the city life one because why the fuck would I lol. How was it?

I blame this principally on the introduction of childish elements under the management of Aya Kyogoku, although what set off this downward spiral was surely Wild World's multiplayer functionality, which she can't be blamed for.

Can you elaborate on this? I own New Horizons but I have never actually played it yet because I am thrown off by the crafting elements (which are in every single fucking japanese game now for some reason, and never add anything of value whatsoever) and the absence of Gyroids, though they did add those back in a patch I believe. The gyroids actually were important for the setting imo since they were based on Haniwa statues, which were buried with the dead. So in the original AC you'd dig them out of the ground after rainy days. Haniwas even appeared in Danganronpa V3 I think.

Maybe I ought to give NMH a try after all

The original No More Heroes is good. I have thought about excluding it from the website altogether a bunch of times, but every time I replay it I find there's a lot of stuff to like. The problem isn't really with the game itself, if Suda had moved on after that and made Kurayami we'd just think about as one of many games in his catalog. It definitely feels closer to his earlier output than it does to anything that came afterwards because it's still delving into a setting. The setting just so happens to be that a crazy man has completely shut himself off from reality by living in pop culture, which eroded at his sense of empathy to the point where he's able to go through a series of savage murders just to get laid.
The real problem is that the fanbase just took to Travis Touchdown as the hero of their generation, much like scott pilgrim (who is also a loser piece of shit) and subsequent entries in the suda catalog were made to cater to that specific demographic directly. The characters and settings of the following games (not even just the NMH titles but most GHM games in general) is just as shallow and nonsensical as most other videogames. Which granted, it's also partially true of the original, but that was the fucking joke. That the story ultimately breaks because in the last 20 minutes everyone turns out to be related to one another.
Producers latched on to the specific demographic which attracted the original NMH, which led to 2 being greenlit and Kurayami being turned into a "comedy" game in Shadows of the Damned and the rest is history

[Rake]

I can't really find the feeling of the original Animal Crossing in any of the sequels actually. They "technically" got better, but at the cost of the overall more raw mood of the original. I am glad it's being decompiled so eventually we'll have a version of it that is future proof.

The only addition I really enjoyed (or remember) was Café Pigeon's Nest. Having an underground coffee shop/karaoke bar within the museum felt as Japanese as anything from the original.

The real problem is that the fanbase just took to Travis Touchdown as the hero of their generation, much like scott pilgrim (who is also a loser piece of shit) and subsequent entries in the suda catalog were made to cater to that specific demographic directly. The characters and settings of the following games (not even just the NMH titles but most GHM games in general) is just as shallow and nonsensical as most other videogames. Which granted, it's also partially true of the original, but that was the fucking joke.

This has made me consider something I hadn't thought of.

Did Scott Pilgrim ruin No More Heroes?

The comparisons had been building since NMH's success in 2007 and became constant after the movie had been announced, to the point of Fishface O'Malley hiding Travis in a crowd near the end of the final volume (released just after Desperate Struggle):






http://web.archive.org/web/201107101705 ... -the-film/

(This reads like if you were writing a parody of Suda to be inserted into something else mocking him and GhM.)



Has Canada claimed another innocent victim?

[Cat]

My father's generation went through a huge change from living in mostly countryside areas, to urbanized areas with office jobs within their life spans and it completely fucked with their minds.

In the '60s there was a mania for rustic life in Scandinavia which also coincided with rapid urbanization. For example in the popularity of writers like Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, both beloved by the Japanese. The Moomin anime adaptation from the dawn of the Heisei era is well known and relevant to the wave of media closer to the millenium you mentioned. Less people know that it had already received the anime treatment as early as 1969. Jansson herself apparently hated it, but you'll probably appreciate it since you like '70s anime.

I don't think it's by chance that what suda describes as "the most primitive place of the soul" is portrayed as a grassy field, which also happens to be the only place where Rumi remembers her, Sumio, Kyoko and Ryo as being happy together.

Nature in Suda's work would be an interesting thread topic. He seems to like these type of names too. Morikawa, Morishima, Mokutaro, Sakura. Perhaps that's just Japan?

I actually knew nothing of this series until today and it looks fantastic

Last I checked there were no fan translations out there but that was a really long time ago. I think some can probably be enjoyed without knowing Japanese. The spin-off Bokura no Kazoku (the one I really want to play :lol: ) would be more difficult.

I never played the city life one because why the fuck would I lol. How was it?

After boasting about my Animal Crossing otaku pedigree I now have to admit I never played that one either. Didn't have a Wii.
I know a fair amount about it though.

Can you elaborate on this?

Happily.

Animal crossing currently has the reputation of being a social game with lots of customisation.
My view is that each of those things are not only compromises to the vision of the original but actually contrary to it entirely.

Both the n64 and Gamecube had plenty of multiplayer games. The Gamecube even had multiplayer online games. It was not a limitation of hardware that the game was single-player.
You had very little control in the original game. Everything from the appearance of the character, the map, placement of buildings was random or decided somewhat cryptically. Again, a design choice. In New Horizons everything can be changed whenever you feel like it. Once you progress far enough you can move buildings around and terraform the map and generally do whatever you want.
The first game is a game about being a stranger in a new place. Animals could be weird or hostile the way that strangers can be in real life. In New Horizons you're basically the king of the island (you were already the mayor in New Leaf) and everybody loves you. Animals have a wider variety of behaviours and habits but they feel one-dimensional in how they communicate.
This is basically the gist of it. There are technically more features but they serve to create something that is as accommodating as possible to the greatest number of people.

Having said all that I don't want to come across as Mr. "No trends, no fun". It's a very fine game for what it is.
You should play it with me and a certain rapist from this hotel. I haven't played for a bit and want to see some of the updates.

Edit: And yeah the crafting is a perfect example of something unnecessary added because it's familiar to people and comforting. I actually wish it was a bit more obnoxious, like you had to cook fish or your guy dies (New idea: a different game). How it is it's just sort of off to the side and arbitrary. You're forced to do some during the early stages.

[Cat]

Did Scott Pilgrim ruin No More Heroes?

Oh good new horrible information.
How dare Canada do this to a game I awarded a 30/40 to?

[Rake]

I don't think it's by chance that what suda describes as "the most primitive place of the soul" is portrayed as a grassy field, which also happens to be the only place where Rumi remembers her, Sumio, Kyoko and Ryo as being happy together.

The interior of the "moon" was the most striking transition in that game, I remember it better than anything else from any Zelda. Especially how frightening the children wandering around with masks are.

I wish you could get the Ghot mask, he was my favorite boss.