31 Most Important Japanese Games Ever Made (Kotaku)

In some ways, Raiders of the Lost Ark on 2600 is closer in design to Zelda than Cloudy Mountain, i.e. with the way inventory works like using explosives to open passages. It's possible Miyamoto played early action-adventures but it's also possible that the similarities are coincidental.

That's the problem with talking about influential games: unless the developer tells us their inspirations (like Westwood giving credit to Herzog Zwei for RTS influence), it's just guess work. Inspirations could be be obscure or popular. Japanese developers seems especially unlikely to credit other companies' works.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

That's the problem with talking about influential games: unless the developer tells us their inspirations (like Westwood giving credit to Herzog Zwei for RTS influence), it's just guess work. Inspirations could be be obscure or popular.

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More than identifying one single game that served as inspiration, I think the point of showing these early examples is that the design elements found in the early NES games DID exist beforehand in a lot of Japanese and western games. It's not the case that Miyamoto, Horii and co. just created these games from scratch. They added their take to some of the genres of games that were popular then.

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Japanese developers seems especially unlikely to credit other companies' works.

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I don't think that's the case since we've already talked about in this thread Horii crediting Wizardry and Ultima for inspiration when he made Dragon Quest. There are many examples of other devs talking about their inspirations. Of course no dev anywhere is going to come out and say "I'd like to thank ___ whose ideas I copiously stole!" but after the fact I'd say Japanese devs are just as open as talking about this as anyone else (if they're actually asked!).

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Originally Posted by goldenband

I think the Cloudy Mountain -> Zelda comparison is a bit of a stretch -- and I say that as someone who put tons of time into both games, and thinks Cloudy Mountain is a tour de force for the Intellivision. Maybe the team at Nintendo played it, but though they do both have a "find items to cross rivers, pass through trees, and open doors" thing going on, I don't see a whole lot of common ground otherwise.

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You begin the game on the overworld map. You have the freedom to explore the overworld, but you'll need to obtain items (like the boat/raft/ladder) to pass certain obstacles like small bodies of water. You seek out dungeons which are spread out across the overworld. Each dungeon features a boss and an item. There are keys to obtain to pass through locked gates/doors. When you get near the room with a dragon boss, you can hear it growling. The whole point of the game isn't just to acquire a particular McGuffin or to collect a certain number of tokens. The specific objective is to acquire the separate pieces of a shattered McGuffin and once you obtain the final piece, you have won and the game is over.

Gran Turismo is an awesome series fuck a hater.

The Hydlide vs Zelda debate let's be honest, Hydlide is hot garbage and Zelda 1 is a classic. Whichever came first is irrelevant when one of the two games is fucking awful

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

Gran Turismo is an awesome series fuck a hater.

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Not to Arcade racing fans.

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Originally Posted by Thief

Not to Arcade racing fans.

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There is an arcade racing mode in many of the GT games.

Gran Turismo did not kill arcade racing games. The death of arcades did.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

There is an arcade racing mode in many of the GT games.

Gran Turismo did not kill arcade racing games. The death of arcades did.

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Not the same.

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Originally Posted by Thief

Not the same.

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Arcade racing games still died because of the death of arcades.

Just how many GT games have you played, btw?

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

You begin the game on the overworld map. You have the freedom to explore the overworld, but you'll need to obtain items (like the boat/raft/ladder) to pass certain obstacles like small bodies of water. You seek out dungeons which are spread out across the overworld. Each dungeon features a boss and an item. There are keys to obtain to pass through locked gates/doors. When you get near the room with a dragon boss, you can hear it growling. The whole point of the game isn't just to acquire a particular McGuffin or to collect a certain number of tokens. The specific objective is to acquire the separate pieces of a shattered McGuffin and once you obtain the final piece, you have won and the game is over.

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That last part is a bit facile, since the two pieces of the crown are in the same dungeon (see, I can use bold type too!).

I think Superman for Atari 2600 is a more salient example of "finding the separate pieces of a shattered McGuffin", i.e. the bridge that blows up at the start, and that predates Cloudy Mountain by several years. Some of the other details you name, like items that enable free movement, are present in Adventure.

I do like the part about the growling dragon (BTW the snakes make noise too), and I think that and "items that let you pass certain obstacles" are the most interesting parallels between Cloudy Mountain and Zelda.

Cloudy Mountain's gameplay is radically different from Zelda's, though. Much of it is basically Hunt the Wumpus crossed with Venture, and the overworld has no actual gameplay, just navigation of a randomly generated landscape. (Venture is underrecognized as an inspiration for many of these games, BTW.)

Unlike Zelda, none of the items are required -- depending on the map layout, you can theoretically skip all of the caverns except the final one, though since you can't outrun the dragons you'll have to go to at least one grey cavern to build up your arrow supply.

That said, I think it's totally possible that the Zelda devs had played it. However, the Intellivision was released late and did very poorly in Japan, and I don't know if AD&D was sold over there:

http://intvfunhouse.com/games/varian...e=1&perpage=50

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/254307-bandai-games/

The game that really blows my mind is Tower of Doom. A highly sophisticated roguelike, half-finished by the end of 1983 and still way ahead of its time upon release in early 1987! Between that and Lord of the Dungeon for ColecoVision, there were things afoot in 1983/1984 that totally challenge the conventional, Japanocentric timeline for console RPGs.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Arcade racing games still died because of the death of arcades.

Just how many GT games have you played, btw?

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Arcade don't just have to mean Arcade or Arcade ports, but a style of racers too. And sure, you can still say there's still Arcade style racers, but for me personally, it's just not the same anymore (even though I still try a post 90s racer every now and then). So lucky for me there's still a lot of those 80s & 90s racers to catch up on when the mood hits me.

I've played and beat the first two GT games on PS1 back in the day and around year 2000. Seen my friend play the newer ones, but he's also a car buff into sports cars like the MR2 he owns.

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

The Hydlide vs Zelda debate let's be honest, Hydlide is hot garbage and Zelda 1 is a classic. Whichever came first is irrelevant when one of the two games is fucking awful

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Maybe in hindsight, but Hydlide was hot stuff when it came out.

The first Hydlide (across all platforms) outsold Legend of Zelda in Japan. Hydlide: 2 million sales. Zelda: 1.6 million sales.

Hydlide was first localized in the west in 1989 for the NES, by which time it seemed pretty lame compared to other releases (I mean, the MD was out at that point). But it's pretty amazing compared to other RPGs that came out in 1984.

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Originally Posted by goldenband

The game that really blows my mind is Tower of Doom. A highly sophisticated roguelike, half-finished by the end of 1983 and still way ahead of its time upon release in early 1987! Between that and Lord of the Dungeon for ColecoVision, there were things afoot in 1983/1984 that totally challenge the conventional, Japanocentric timeline for console RPGs.

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Yeah, Treasure of Tarmin and Dragonstomper are also impressive pre-NES console RPGs.

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Originally Posted by Crom

Maybe in hindsight, but Hydlide was hot stuff when it came out.

The first Hydlide (across all platforms) outsold Legend of Zelda in Japan. Hydlide: 2 million sales. Zelda: 1.6 million sales.

Hydlide was first localized in the west in 1989 for the NES, by which time it seemed pretty lame compared to other releases (I mean, the MD was out at that point). But it's pretty amazing compared to other RPGs that came out in 1984.

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Huh, that confuses me.

Mainly because a lot of 8-bit RPGs are pretty decent but Hydlide seems horribly repetitive, obtuse and just difficult to play for the most part.

^There are equally obtuse puzzles in a lot of Western RPGs and puzzle-adventure games from the early- to mid-1980s -- many of them have really arbitrary things you have to do to advance. 1980s computer games really liked to extend their shelf life with that kind of thing. (And then we have text adventures...)

I enjoyed Hydlide when it came out in the US, and I think I beat it right after Dragon Warrior and before Final Fantasy. One of its biggest perks -- a save-anywhere RAM disk -- is kind of lost today when playing in an emulator, but I appreciated it then.

Obviously it's very primitive in some ways, but generally its puzzles can be solved by paying careful attention or checking every single space. People often complain about the "hit two Wizards with one Wave" puzzle (which is only in the NES version IIRC), but I thought it was pretty obvious once you realize that, unlike the rest of the overworld, that screen lets you shoot projectiles through walls.

That kind of stuff was old hat for 1980s computer gamers, but I think most console gamers aren't used to it and find it irritating as hell.

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

Huh, that confuses me.

Mainly because a lot of 8-bit RPGs are pretty decent but Hydlide seems horribly repetitive, obtuse and just difficult to play for the most part.

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If you think Hydlide is difficult to play, then take a look at the original Dragon Slayer released a few months before Hydlide in 1984 on the PC-8801:



It's difficult to even watch that without getting a headache...

Yet it was one of the best-selling games in Japan in 1984 and started a franchise.

And here's Hydlide on the PC-8801 for comparison: