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For those who followed the English fantranslation efforts of Japanese RPGs since the very first days, back when the idea of playing localized versions of Final Fantasy V, Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocean and Seiken Densetsu III seemed too good to be true and teams like RPGE and DeJap were like wizards inhabiting a different plane of existence, this scene was n
Among early Japanese RPG artists working from the mid ‘80s to the early ‘90s, it’s quite common to see a marked influence of Western sword and sorcery and pulp aesthetic, amid other influences that gave each one their own unique stylistic and thematic traits.
Unbeknownst to most outside South Korea, the ‘90s saw the rise of a number of diverse and ambitious single-player PC RPG efforts from local developers, inspired by both contemporary Japanese titles, though often not the ones one would expect, and a number of Western design traits, mixed with some unique Korean flair.
Writing is love, both for the topics one ends up discussing and for the act of turning thoughts and theories into words and words into long-winded essays.
Developer: Santa Entertainmemt
Developer: Namco Tales Studio - Seventh Chord
Developer: Yoshio Nishimura - Digitalis Publishing
Despite being a decent success in Japan and sporting some rather awesome character designs by Wizardry veteran Jun Suemi, many Western fans over the decades ended up treating Front Mission Second as a sort of afterthought, if not as the red-headed stepchild of Toshiro Tsuchida’s mecha-based sci-fi tactical JRPG franchise.
While the issues around the looming end of physical support for the videogame medium in the console space aren’t specifically related to those videogame RPGs I usually discuss on this platform, my Substack’s focus on videogame history, not to mention my own thoughts as a videogame collector and preservation enthusiast, mean this is a topic I want to address
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Developer: Imageepoch
Developer: Namco - Team Souls
Back in the early ‘90s, when tactical JRPGs were still a fairly young subgenre, Masaya and Team Career’s Langrisser franchise immediately left its mark on the Japanese audience due to its mix of unique systems involving both heroic units and regular soldiers, epic war stories with a German theme and a curious emphasis on sword worship and, last but certainly
Today, the first (and last) DLC for Spiders’ swashbuckling fantasy RPG, Greedfall: The Dying World, a sequel to the multi-million seller Greedfall, was finally released.
Quantity, as they say, can have a quality of its own, or at least that’s what I ended up thinking (rather self-indulgently, I admit) after I realized I had just published my hundredth long-form piece about videogame RPG history here on Substack.
This past week, Yoko Taro and Square Enix’s action JRPG franchise, Nier, celebrated its 15th anniversary, and it’s safe to say the series has come a long way since the alluringly dark, experimental and yet kinda janky action JRPG Taro and Cavia released in April 2010, including its peculiar main character redesign for the Western markets (and Japanese X360 u
Even fairly unique cultural contexts like RPG art can end up following broader economic trends, like with Turkish immigration contributing a fresh workforce to Western Germany's economic boom after the Third Reich’s defeat in the Second World War saw the death of millions of Germans under its arms.
Those invested in videogame RPGs have learned since the earliest days of this genre to expect tabletop RPGs being adapted into digital adventures, a trend whose most obvious exponents ended up being Dungeons & Dragons and a number of its campaign setting, like
So far, the Found in translation column has been devoted to English fantranslations of Japanese and Korean titles, but there are plenty of other unofficial localization efforts going on involving a variety of RPGs created in wildly different contexts, not just in terms of language but also regarding themes, art direction and local industry trends.
In the long history of artists contributing to the aesthetic trajectory of videogame RPGs, there are a few instances where one can observe the same trend that already affected classic art for centuries, with young painters learning from the masters and building their own manieristic islands by preserving their style while slowly improving on it in a variety
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