The Yi family are Korean immigrants who have moved from California to a new plot of land in Arkansas. There, the father, Jacob, hopes to grow Korean produce to sell to vendors in Dallas, Texas. He and his wife Monica also work sexing chicks at a nearby hatchery to make ends meet. Because of the demanding nature of their jobs, they arrange for Monica’s mother, Soon-ja, to travel from South Korea to live with them and watch over their kids.
Those who have been reading my writings for awhile know that I have made it a tradition to review every Oscar-nominated film before ranking them from worst to best. That is something I intend to uphold this year, although admittedly, it’s going to be much trickier due to the fact that it involves sifting through various streaming services seeing as how theaters aren’t exactly appealing right now. Nonetheless, I’ll try to make it work, and I already have at least one review ready to go.
Without any warning, U.S. Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens wakes up on a Metra commuter train en route to Chicago. He is a bit confused because the last thing he can remember is himself flying on a mission in Afghanistan. Even stranger, everyone around him fails to recognize him, believing him to be a schoolteacher named Sean Fentress. Before he can truly get his bearings, the train explodes, leaving no survivors.
Also known as the one where my choice of films results in a rather awkward article title.
Yeah, it’s been awhile since my last game review, huh? Sorry about that. At least I managed to talk about the first game in a series I’ve been meaning to tackle for awhile.
February of 1986 marked the release of the Famicom Disk System. A periphery unit for Nintendo’s highly successful Famicom console, the Famicom Disk System was capable of reading 3 ½-inch floppy disks. Not only did the disks boast superior storage capabilities to contemporary ROM cartridges, but the peripheral also added a new high-fidelity sound channel. These features allowed for the creation of games previously thought impossible. The Legend of Zelda and Metroid saw their debut on the Famicom Disk System. Between their open-ended design and the ability to save the player’s progress without the use of passwords, both games successfully broke the mold for console gaming.
Nintendo wished to release these games internationally following the console’s successful debut in North America in 1985, but plans to export the peripheral were eventually scrapped. It also wouldn’t be long before the pioneering periphery was rendered obsolete. In the years since the Famicom’s debut, Nintendo had vastly improved the semiconductor technology of their cartridges. Among other things, this allowed developers to embed a battery in the Famicom cartridges. Any cartridge with these batteries could record a player’s progress – a mainstay feature of Famicom Disk games. Because there was no reason to continue developing games on an increasingly outdated format, Nintendo deemed it necessary to convert many of the titles that originally debuted on the Famicom Disk System to cartridges. Needing a programmer to port the Famicom Disk System games to a standard ROM format, the company hired a man by the name of Toru Narihiro. He and his auxiliary program called themselves Intelligent Systems, working with Nintendo’s premier research and development branch led by Gunpei Yokoi to see these conversions through.
Using the experience he gained working alongside Mr. Yokoi’s team, Mr. Narihiro and his team switched gears, and began programming games of their own. The first title he programmed was Famicom Wars – a turn-based strategy game that proved to be a hit upon its 1988 release. The game’s development attracted the attention of one of Mr. Narihiro’s colleagues – one Shouzou Kaga. As a budding scenario writer, Mr. Kaga sought to take the strategic elements present in Famicom Wars and combine them with the story, characters, and world of a role-playing game. With this project, Mr. Kaga wished to create a scenario that allowed players to care about the characters. At the time, he observed that role-playing games had strong stories, but rather scant casts. Meanwhile, he felt tactical games had the exact opposite problem, having large casts, but weak stories. Therefore, he decided to provide a solution to this odd discrepancy with his game.
In its earliest advertisements, the game was dubbed Honō no Monshō (Emblem of Fire). By the time the game saw its release in April of 1990, Honō no Monshō was rendered in English – the full title being Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. When the game was released, Mr. Kaga noted that it received extensive criticism from Japanese publications. Despite the team’s efforts to avoid emphasizing stats and numerical data, critics found the gameplay too difficult to understand. Exacerbated by its simplistic presentation, and it would appear that Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was a failed experiment.
Mr. Kaga and his team saw Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light not as a commercial product, but as a dōjin project made on a whim. A dōjin project is a work intended to attract a group of people sharing the same interests. As many such projects are self-published, they are typically below the quality one would expect from a professional company, although many such artists use them as a springboard to bigger and better things. Because of this, it seemed only fitting that Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light would gain a new lease on life when one notable journalist devoted a column in Famitsu magazine to the game. Coupled with positive word of mouth, the game saw its sales increase significantly after two months’ worth of flat numbers. Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light would thus not enter the annals of gaming history as a failed experiment, but rather a sleeper hit.
As a possible consequence of its experimental nature, the game was not released internationally. In fact, it wouldn’t be until 2001 with the release of Nintendo’s mascot fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee that international fans even knew of the franchise’s existence. Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light would be remade twice with the latter version being released internationally. However, it wouldn’t be until 2020 when the game in its original form finally saw an official release outside of Japan, being offered for a limited time on the Nintendo Switch. In the end, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was a game that ran the risk of becoming an obscure footnote. What did those fans see in it that critics couldn’t?
This week had me revisiting another David Lean classic before going slightly off the rails (yet again).
Between the surreal aesthetics of The Tree of Life and Paprika and the grittiness of The Bridge on the River Kwai, this has been a week of contrasts, to say the least.
Some people would have you believe the 2020s didn’t actually start until 2021. Probably the same people who insist that, because there is no year 0, the 20th century didn’t start until January 1st 1901. Seems a little pedantic if you ask me.
