Unearthed like a fine Grecian urn, The Battle of Olympus is being remade for modern appreciation and a 2027 release. Hopefully, the color palette will be more pleasing than that of most restored & recolored classic Grecian art, but with the original creators evidently at the helm of the project, I don't think we have to worry. The Battle of Olympus was my favorite NES title as a kid for its devotion to Greek mythology - with deep cuts such as the Graeae and Talos - its colorful, well-wrought graphics that made ample use of outdoor locations and the ancient Greek milieu, and its beautiful soundtrack, with two of my favorite SFX to this day (the Harp of Apollo and the dolphins' ocarina). Yes, the hero looks like Link, but this is a game with its own, strong identity, made with heart. I'm looking forward to reexperiencing it.
Over at Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games, the author notes a number of parallels between Lunar: The Silver Star and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom and asks: what's up with that? Well, friends, we've already answered this: it's Ys, as detailed copiously here. Lunar and Ys, as noted by the poster quoted here, shared some personnel, and Lunar took a hell of a lot of Ys's plot points, including the red-haired, sword-swinging hero and the naive blue-haired girl with a yen for him who's really an incarnation of a goddess. As for Lufia, the article asserts that the game began life as a PC-98 title, and it is impossible to overstate in the Japanese PC market around that era how Everything Is Ys or Hydlide (or eroge with curiously-intricate art).
I will note, though, that despite the parallels described by the author of that blog post, I've never found Lunar and Lufia ripoffs of another, really. Part of that is due to some very salient differences in the development of their respective parallel twists, as players familiar with both games will well know. Part of that, though, is What the Stories Are About is very different, and told in markedly different ways. But that...is a story for an upcoming post. (Or a revision of this one? Stay tuned.)
There are two types of fan arguments I assume are highly-personal issues being worked out in public generalities:
- When people get very insistent that well-regarded Western-developed shows (Avatar, Castlevania) should be classified as anime
- When people get very aggressive about what qualifies as "retro," usually accompanied by "YOU ARE NOW OLD" memes (yes? what do you want me to do about it?)
In the first case, I think it's some weirdly-derived inferiority complex involving being from a Western society yet having so much of their formative entertainment produced in Japan. I don't see why this is a problem at all—maybe, in the case of fans from the U.S., they're so used to life in the culturally-dominant society that having some of their entertainment not be produced domestically feels wrong to them, and something that has to be corrected; maybe, like the Western devs driven to take over traditionally-Japanese franchises, they feel they have to (or, at least, their society has to) produce the Exact Same Stuff as, or replacements for, the Japanese stuff they loved in childhood in order to have "made it" as creators and prove they're just as good—a sort of parental complex, with Japanese creators as the parents whose approval must be gained or who must be replaced. In any event: I skew toward reserving "anime" for stuff produced in Japan, but I'm not sure why it matters. If a show's good, it's good, regardless of origin.
The second, I think, is a plain age crisis. The people in question feel uncomfortable about seeing games they played at certain life milestones getting into double digits and what that means for their own age, and they think, like Shiori from the Utena movie, that if they make enough people feel bad about the same thing, that they won't feel bad, or at least will feel distracted from feeling bad by trying to spread hate and misery, or something. I can see both sides of the source argument here: that, obviously, consoles once new will eventually be outdated as time inevitably passes; and that "retro," in some gaming circles, refers to a certain style or styles of games identified with the consoles and arcades of the early '80s and '90s, and that the "anything older than ten years" label is kind of uselessly broad.
Hmmm. Guess that's three sides. Time for a distraction in the form of a timely gif:
Also: "I have serious misgivings about Belmont's Curse." (OK, that's not as catchy and widely-applicable as the other "Also"s.)
The past Summer Game Fest season was terrific! It seemed to have announcements and good news for everyone. (And not just because of my own announcements!) The Code Veronica remake, and the newfound prominence given to the title and Claire as the remake team figures out how to handle RE5 and 6, helped me decide to get a PS5 (used, right before everyone else thought of it!). It's disappointing that Until Dawn 2 doesn't have the same acclaimed writer as the original, but I'm willing to see where they go with this "documentary horror in paradise" concept. Folks actually got a Kingdom Hearts IV trailer! Ah, I see my newfound fave has jumped to a new, twinkier body. Give me back my beast! Did you know that if you preorder Silent Hill: Townfall, you can get an '80s pastel radio?!!?
I am not exaggerating when I say this was the clincher in my decision to get the PS5. (On a serious note, I think that the various current devs' decision to break with Silent Hill the town proper, leave it as a legacy title, and explore Otherworld scenarios across time, life circumstances, and the globe is very wise, injecting new blood into the core series concepts and putting 1–4 aside inviolate on a shelf and pedestal, where they belong as genre-foundational titles and unique, induplicable achievements.)
But one game was a big letdown for me, and that was Castlevania: Belmont's Curse. I don't have the huge problem with the art style others do (with one exception, which I'll address). Trevor's older design, and the design of the protagonist, looks great. It's precipitated a great resurgence in Castlevania fanart for characters new, recurring, and otherwise. But I have some major misgivings about the direction they're taking. (Spoilers from the promo and prerelease material behind the cut.)
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