This Week in Games

How To Accumulate Karma

Welcome back, folks! This past week saw the 21st anniversary of Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands!. My long-time readers know I have a ton of love for those games, having grown up with them and sunk my teeth into them long before I ever played a Metal Gear Solid game (fitting, since Hideo Kojima made both). I've discussed my love for the games in this column before. Heck, the first thing I wrote that was ever published online was about Boktai. I'd have said that the only other person who seems to remember Boktai is Hideo Kojima, but there's actually been a massive outpouring of fanart from fans in Japan who all fondly remember the adventures of Red Django and Master Otenko. I don't think Kojima will ever take the time to make something as singularly unique as Boktai, not with Death Stranding and his modern-day dalliances with cinema taking up his time. But it's nice that he remembers it. Last week was also the 30th anniversary of the Darkstalkers franchise, CAPCOM's goofy fighting game based on classic horror monsters. It mostly meant folks were drawing Morrigan and Lilith Aesland (which I won't refuse, even if nobody remembers Morrigan's bags under her eyes), but it would be nice to see Jedah Dohma again. Or, y'know, a new Darkstalkers game.

I've lived to see the Shin Megami Tensei games go from hyper-obscure cult fare to a borderline-household name, courtesy of its Persona spin-offs. Folks even seemed to come around on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. But that still leaves a lot of older Shin Megami Tensei spin-offs that are somewhat lost to the sands of time. And hey, Atlus doesn't seem to want to let that stand.

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (titled "Avatar Tuner" in Japanese) was a pair of RPGs released on the PS2 back in 2004 (2005 in the US). The games focus on a gang of youths in a post-apocalyptic setting who have awakened a new power from a mysterious lotus-shaped pod containing a mysterious woman. The power lets them turn into demons, granting them great power—and great hunger, specifically for the flesh of their enemies. Tasked by a disembodied voice who oversees their gang battles, the various teams are tasked with slaughtering and devouring each other to earn the right to scale the Tower of Karma and ascend. The cannibalism has a deeper meaning, of course; doing so allows you to earn the "karma" of the person you kill, and going too long without karma drives you into a feral frenzy. But turning into a demon also grants everyone emotion and individuality—as well as memories from the past...

Digital Devil Saga differs from other Shin Megami Tensei titles in that it doesn't feature the series' typical "Negotiation" function. Instead, you have a fixed group of individuals who have their own demon forms. Digital Devil Saga's systems are heavily based on Final Fantasy X's: battles have only three characters, but you can swap between them at any moment (at the cost of a Press Turn icon) to take advantage of enemy weaknesses or better cover your own. Killing enemies grants you points you can use to unlock new skills in the Mantra system (essentially a simplified take on the Spheregrid), allowing you to invest in stronger variants of a Demon's native skills or teach them other kinds of spells.

And, of course, there's the cannibalism. Like other Shin Megami Tensei games, the battle system hinges upon the Press Turn system, which encourages you to attack enemy weaknesses to earn extra Press Turn icons (granting you more actions) while covering your weaknesses with defensive spells to prevent enemies from gaining Press Turns by attacking your weaknesses. Attacking an enemy's weaknesses can also inflict the Fear ailment, however, which makes them vulnerable to skills with the "Devour" function. "Devour"ing enemies with Fear kills them in one hit and grants you a huge bonus to your Experience and Karma at the end of a battle... but also, you have to mind your diet because eating too many enemies can give you a stomachache and block you from earning any further experience or Karma until you heal it. Nothing is more amusing than a big, scary demon with a tummy ache.

Digital Devil Saga is also unique in that it heavily features Hindu mythology as its basis instead of the usual Judeo-Christian trappings seen in Shin Megami Tensei. All of the demon forms for the main characters are deities from Hindu mythology, and the journey through the Tower of Karma is heavily inspired by Hindu mythology (case in point: fighting Vasuki in the Sea of Milk, as in the Samudra Manthana). What's more, the main demons featured in Digital Devil Saga haven't really featured in any other Shin Megami Tensei title—even with how much Atlus loved recycling those old models throughout all those PS2 games.

Digital Devil Saga hasn't really been available outside of its original PS2 release, but with its 20th anniversary, incoming Atlus has been getting ready to give the game its time in the sun. For starters: the entire soundtrack has been made available on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. For another, Atlus has announced that they'll be selling anniversary merch in the near future, mentioning acrylic stands and t-shirts as being on the docket. Could we see a remaster? That'd be nice, especially if they could release both Digital Devil Saga titles in one release. But Digital Devil Saga isn't quite as iconic as Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, so I worry that it might be a tall order for Atlus. Still, it costs nothing to hope.

A few weeks ago, we discussed Nintendo's arcane policies for revealing new voice actors or studios working on their projects. I maintain the stance I held back then: not revealing the identity of a studio working on a title on the spot likely saves a lot of people a lot of unneeded scrutiny on behalf of the very reactionary peanut gallery. But the story is developing; last week, news broke on a number of anonymous translators claiming that they haven't been credited for their work in translating certain Nintendo titles, including big-hitters like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom or Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The complaints come from a number of anonymous sources who have worked on Nintendo titles through the localization companies Keywords and Localsoft. While Nintendo does their duty in crediting their internal translation team, any external staff gets short thrift by either being omitted entirely in exchange for just their company being credited, or with their company simply being squeezed into a "special thanks" credit. These jobs also come with decade-long NDAs, causing many translators to potentially lose work out of not being able to list these major projects—which would certainly be a crown jewel to any translator's career—on their resumes. So external translators who worked on Tears of the Kingdom won't be able to put the game onto their resume until years after the game has fallen from any kind of public consciousness. This goes for not only external translators but also localization testers, whose job is to scour the game for anything from misspelled words to weird formatting errors (words bleeding into message box borders, that kind of thing).

Yeah, this sucks. There's no real way to flip this: it's actively yanking the food out of the translator's mouth. The poor treatment of external staff is also consistent with Nintendo's poor treatment of contract workers, who also reported being treated as second-class employees at Nintendo that are "kept at arm's length" from full-time staff. This is doubly inexcusable given the ink spilled over Nintendo's efforts at watching for the rights of their employees; famously, belated former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata slashed his own salary to ensure better working wages for his employees at Nintendo during their lean years. Nintendo has always emphasized its first-class position in gaming as well as its first-class treatment of its employees. For whatever reason, they can't extend that same first-class treatment to their contract workers. It's a glaring omission that casts a pall on everything else they do.

It doesn't help that there is now such a reactionary push against any kind of English localization at all; a lot of would-be pundits on the Internet are itching for excuses to get rid of established translators or localization teams by any means necessary in the mistaken belief that generative AI would result in a "purer" translation (whatever that means). This is a time for any major player to stand by their translation staff and the work they put in. Without figures like Ted Woolsey or Alexander O. Smith, we don't have the classic scripts of games like Final Fantasy IV or Phoenix Wright. And the news that even world-class companies like Nintendo can't even be bothered to treat translation staff well is exactly the kind of detail the worst people on the Internet would love to mishandle into an excuse why translation as a field "needs" to be abolished.

With Nintendo being such a massive giant in the industry, they may believe themselves to be above any kind of reproach or criticism. Their solution to the issues with contractors this past March was to lay off the contract staff due to claims of "a lull in testing" ahead of the release of Nintendo's new console. Nintendo also claimed they were replacing many of those contract positions with full-time positions. But this kind of thing is inexcusable. It's bad when Microsoft does it, it's bad when Sony does it, it's bad when Nintendo does it. Big brand names don't make games, the little people sitting at their desk in front of a PC are the ones that make games. Nintendo may attempt to sweep this controversy under the rug because nothing makes a gamer forget any of their principles quite like a shiny new release of an anticipated title, but we need to remember that if we don't speak out for the devs, nobody else will. Devs have to work against the current to vouch for their own benefits or unionize, and companies aren't going to make that easy. Nintendo glaringly doesn't have an employee union—citing "employee satisfaction"—and that nevertheless speaks volumes. Any company so great and cares so much for its employees surely wouldn't have a problem with giving them a platform to collectively bargain.

And a lot of that does depend on us, the audience. We're the folks who can demand accountability from companies. We're the folks who can ask the hard questions without fear of reprisal. And if we don't like the answer, it's our dollars that can show corporate-types the consequences. A lot of would-be big-name gamers are really quick to retract their support of a game when the graphics aren't top-of-the-line or when they learn that the public-punching-bag-of-the-week is involved. Can they do that when a game has a human toll to it?

As a community, we need to let Nintendo know that the poor treatment of contractors or external translators is, nevertheless, poor treatment of employees. It's important for us to (politely) demand answers from the powers that be at Nintendo, and we need to stand by the people who suffered trying to bring to term the games we enjoy. This is the sentiment behind the folks who dislike Nintendo keeping the identity of studios under wraps; Nintendo is nothing without its developers, and we deserve to know not only their names but that they were properly supported and compensated for their efforts.

There's a stereotype that a certain subset of Nintendo fans don't actually play Nintendo games and only recognize the characters from Super Smash Bros—hence folks who can't explain why a "slot" in Super Smash Bros Ultimate was "wasted" on the likes of Terry Bogard instead of that darling of the industry that everyone knows and loves, Scrunt the loveable Scrimblo Bimblo. So there's a lot of consternation when games are added to the Nintendo Switch Online service because "nobody asked" for games like Joe & Mac or Wrecking Crew. But that's the thing: if you're in it for just the usual well-known stand-bys, you're rather hosed because there are only so many of those titles. I know nobody really likes Castlevania Legends, but sometimes preserving games means preserving bad ones. What else is Nintendo going to bring back? That other SNES Zelda game besides Link to the Past that doesn't exist?

Anyway, Nintendo announced the arrival of a trio of very unexpected games on the Nintendo Switch Online service. I say "unexpected" because these games were never released in the US.

Hardcore Nintendo fans might know of Tose's The Legendary Starfy games, a trilogy of platformers on the GameBoy Advance starring the legendary Starfy, a cute star-shaped lifeform (it's undecided if he's an actual star or a starfish) who goes on cute adventures in space and in the ocean. They're painfully charming games, not unlike the Kirby games but passed over for release in the US for being "too Japanese" (given the temperature of the US market at the time, I can't blame them for that call). The one time Nintendo actually brought one of the Starfy games to the US, it was the Nintendo DS title (known as Taiketsu! Daīru Kaizokudan in Japan). It was a fun game, but the fourth game in the series. Folks dug its charm, but were cold on how easy the game was—and the fact that it seemed to be tossed out the window, with no word of the previous three games ever coming to the US. I also have the personal anecdote of recommending it to a friend who loved Kirby games, who summarily walked away hating Starfy. Yeah, I don't know why, either.

Anyway, Nintendo is uploading the first three Legendary Starfy games for Game Boy Advance onto Nintendo Switch Online +. They're fun puzzle platformers, if a bit easy. They're loaded with fun puzzles and mini-games, with plenty of unlockables like costume bits for dressing up Starfy. Now, you might be asking yourself, "Hang on, these games were never released in the US! So when did Nintendo translate them?" And that's the fun part: they didn't! Nintendo released the Starfy trilogy completely untranslated! The upside is that the games are simplistic enough that you don't really need to read Japanese to make your way through—provided, you'll be missing out on a ton of the story. But it does raise a lot of questions, like what motivated Nintendo to just release a trilogy of hitherto unreleased games in the US without so much as a translation.

... And because a lot of people have a hard time letting things go, this of course has people wondering if Mother 3 is going to be slated for a release in the US. Because, y'know, if Nintendo doesn't want to translate it then the people who for some reason want to play Mother 3 but refuse to download the fan-translated version that's existed for ages will at least play an un-translated version. Stunning how things not even remotely related to Mother 3 will get folks clamoring for Mother 3.

Speaking in all seriousness, it's really unlikely Nintendo will ever release Mother 3 in the US. Despite the clamoring from people on the Internet, Nintendo has the actual hard marketing data from the '90s where Earthbound did poorly in the US. Sure, 30-year-old sales data isn't an ironclad precedent, but it's hard data, as opposed to a bunch of people on the Internet going "Trust me, bro!" A lot of people also point to the Magypsies, apparently a race of magic-users in Mother 3 who all look like stereotypical cross-dressers. Considering Nintendo has reinforced Vivian's queer background in the new Paper Mario & The Thousand-Year Door translation, I don't think this argument holds much weight anymore. I think the real issue, as many people have pointed out, is the music. A lot of the music in Mother 3 features references to popular songs, and there are a lot of those references in Mother 3—which could potentially land Nintendo in legal hot water. So this puts Nintendo into an awkward position: spend money changing the music to a very-not-mainstream video game with a very dedicated but small fanbase (that is likely going to get upset that you had to change the music), or not do that and release the game for the small-but-dedicated fanbase and risk lawsuits from lawsuit-happy musicians. Or, y'know, sidestep the whole thing. What else are Mother fans gonna do? Keep on not-playing Earthbound?

I know it's uncharacteristically weird of me to be so hard on Mother 3 getting a US release when I speak so much of "tiny miracles" and obscure games getting released in the US, but Mother really is in a different position. It's not like the Izuna games or the Shadow Heart series where there hasn't been anything released for the game in decades and the game is genuinely obscure—Retro Nintendo Youtubers have made sure Earthbound has stuck in the mind of people who haven't even played Earthbound on Nintendo Switch Online yet. Mother is practically the poster child for "quirky retro game". And that's the other thing: for all that people act like Nintendo is constantly dragging Mother behind the shed... they're really not? Again: Earthbound and even Earthbound Zero are on Nintendo Switch Online. And for the obvious question of "Why those games and not Mother 3?": Those games likely don't have the sheer amount of potentially infringing music that Mother 3 does.

I get it, these are answers that nobody wants to hear. I know for sure that I'd be heartbroken if the news broke that Izuna 3 wasn't going to get licensed because the game just wasn't worth the effort. Heck, we just had that a few months back with Retro Game Challenge. But I also think the difference is that the Retro Game Challenge community isn't nailing its collective self to a cross every time Shinya Arino's face pops up on Twitter. There's a reason why every time I encourage people to voice their opinions on stuff, I emphasize that people do it politely. Folks are much more inclined to listen to you when you're not acting more beast than man.

Last week, Nintendo had the Internet abuzz with a new trailer a teaser video asking fans, "Who is Emio?" The video consisted of a creepy guy in a smiling mask made out of a paper bag. The Internet was understandably abuzz since this kind of thing was extremely out-of-the-ordinary for Nintendo. Was it a new survival-horror game? From family-friendly Nintendo? Dare we dream of Nintendo releasing an M-rated game?

Well, we got an answer—and it's a tiny miracle!

Put another one up on the board! The Famicom Detective Club games were a pair of text-adventure titles released on the Famicom in the 80s. They never came stateside, possibly due to them containing murder as a theme—the most the games got was a single trophy featuring one of the female cast in Super Smash Bros Melee. Nintendo surprised us with a dual-release of remakes of both the Famicom Detective Club titles back in May of 2021, and I can only assume they've done pretty well because Nintendo has gone and decided to dust off this 30-year-old franchise for a new title! What times we live in!

The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with lots of folks stunned at Nintendo still having completely off-the-wall titles for the Switch even as the candles burn low on the console's lifespan. In hindsight, the attempt at an ARG-esque viral marketing campaign also helped Emio The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club stand out plenty. If we saw this game in a Direct, it was sure to be skipped over while folks scanned for news on Metroid. The Emio campaign definitely put it into people's faces and got them ready for its August 29th release. Oh, yeah, that's the other thing—it will be released on August 29th. Just a little over a month between reveal and release.

Of course, the news has been met with some disdain from folks on the Internet who had really fallen in love with the idea of Nintendo releasing a survival-horror title, but I don't want to dwell on those folks. I dunno, I've been witness to too many people bellyaching about Nintendo "not doing enough with their old franchises" for too long to want to be in the same room with folks who turn around and bellyache about Nintendo bringing back a 30-year franchise all because it's a text-adventure instead of... what, a new Donkey Kong Jr. Math? The Switch has been a goldmine of Nintendo getting absolutely weird with its properties, from dredging up Another Code after years of oblivion to a brand-new 2D Metroid title that was originally teased 20 years ago. I've used the phrase "embarrassment of riches" before. We can't even complain about Star Fox getting short thrift, Starlink on the Switch has a dedicated Star Fox mission.

Yoshio Sakamoto, who's mostly known for their involvement with the Metroid franchise, is returning to Famicom Detective Club with Emio The Smiling Man. More power to the guy for being able to return to his roots after what is basically an entire lifetime (fun fact: That Bitch™ wasn't even born yet when the first Famicom Detective Club came out). In his short discussion on the game shared on Twitter, Sakamoto warns that the ending might be "divisive" for some players... which I'm ready for. Famicom Detective Club is very clearly Sakamoto's baby, and being given a new entry to create in over 30 years means there's nothing for him to do but swing for the fences.

Emio The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club launches on August 29th for the Nintendo Switch for $49.99.

miHoYo is mostly making trails with the new Zenless Zone Zero this past week-and-change, courtesy of characters like Ellen Joe (a shark-girl), Natalie Demara (a curvy, sassy gyaru) and Von Lycaon (a werewolf butler). But Genshin Impact is still their big money-maker. I don't know if people are still down-bad for Ganyu or Mona Megistus, but miHoYo has folks by the pink squishy bits nevertheless through Genshin. And they're still adding expansions to the game after all this time! Famously, many of the expansions are based on real-world locations, but uh... a lot of folks are rather unhappy with the upcoming Natlan expansion...

So, the new Natlan region in Genshin Impact is extremely Latin American-coded. The setting seems to revolve around a ball-based sport that evokes the Mesoamerican ball game pokolpok, only with a modern stylized twist. For the record: the graffiti in the ball game arena seen in the trailer is really cool and would be phenomenal for some kind of Afro-futurist setting. But that's kinda the thing; all of the characters introduced in the trailer are white. Like, they might have a slightly darker skin tint compared to other pale-as-driven-snow Genshin Impact characters, but if you put the likes of Mualani or Mavuika next to actual dark-skinned characters like NIKKE's Volume or Granblue Fantasy's Spinnah, they're still extremely white. And, uh, this is supposed to be a Latin American setting. And characters like Olorun have Yoruba origins, which is specifically West African. More to the point, Olorun is named after an extremely important Yoruba deity, and in Genshin he's... a vaguely edgy-looking cat-boy who looks like he's standing in the shade. This is something that even many of Genshin Impact's biggest voice actors have criticized.

It's not the first time this topic has blown up with regards to a gacha game; just this past February we had a lot of people angry at the whitewashing of Elena, the Kenyan capoeira practitioner in Street Fighter Duel. Being Puerto Rican, this hits really close to home for me, especially since there isn't much Latin American representation in media even now (let alone for darker-skinned Latin American characters—colorism is an issue even back home). And while a lot of reactionary nerds would insist that voice actors or fans of color are a "recent" group attempting to hijack fandoms for their own, I'd like to point to Peter Fernandez, best known as the voice of Speed Racer in the original Speed Racer dub, was a man of Cuban descent. People of color have been a major part of anime as characters and creators for a lot longer than the people who claim they're "tourists" have been alive, from the Latino Ryu Jose from Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) to the half-African Jun Honoo from Great Mazinger (1974), to Pyunma from Cyborg 009 (1964).

The subject of race and its depictions in gaming (as well as media at large) is one that a lot of reactionary types are putting double-duty into poisoning under arguments of "just wanting a good story" or "wanting historical accuracy", even if this all just boils down to people really not wanting to see a black man fighting a dragon. Or be a samurai, actual historians be damned. It's not enough to make original characters of color. It's not enough for black developers to make their own studio and make their own games. Any kind of non-straight, non-white character is treated as some kind of invasive character or "disrespectful to Asian culture". (Imagine telling a hardcore Gundam otaku that Ryu Jose is a "forced" character, that would be a laugh.)

As can be told from my tone, I'm over that crap, man. It's a lot of people arguing from a position of bad faith, clamoring for a return to an era that didn't exist. Black characters have always existed. Black creators have always existed. Black gamers have always existed. Or queer, or Latino, or what have you. And if you're going to market your game to a global audience while referencing settings or characters off of real-world cultures, it behooves you to get that stuff right. Don't have folks in Japan eating bowls of rice with the chopsticks sticking straight up. Don't put people in Puerto Rico into ponchos and sombreros. Maybe don't make characters named after Yoruba deities white. It's just a matter of respect for your audience. There is a contingent of reactionaries that would point to something like Hades 2 claiming "historical inaccuracy" by making some of its deities darker-skinned, which just points to how a lot of folks really wanna argue by ignoring actual historical data (race in Greece was far more complicated than modern interpretations of "white" or "black", and that's before you consider Greece's reach to the Middle East or Northern Africa).

The creative industries, they be gaming or anime or whatever, belong to everyone and are enjoyed by everyone. I think it's fair to (politely) request that the powers that be do better with representing characters that are intended to be of foreign cultures or origins, especially if there's some kind of real-world context in place. Folks can complain about Latino or Black or Trans or Non-Binary characters or VAs being around, but we've been here for a while. And life is a lot better when you actually share your space with everyone else. These people are no less fans than you are, and no less passionate about characters or fiction. Fix your hearts or die.

And maybe, maybe stop being afraid of people having melanin.

That'll do it for this week. We talked about touchy subjects in this column, so I want to urge folks to think about what you type in the comments. This Week in Games—as well as Anime News Network in general—is the place for fans of all walks of life, and we have no space here for racism or bigotry. Mods will be scanning the thread, so don't be a cretin. Be good to each other, I'll see you in seven.