When it comes to shonen manga, anime and games, there are few with as much knowledge and love as the Shonen Otaku. Join me as we look at all different varieties of action-packed media.
The first Sengoku Basara wasn’t exactly a big hit in Japan, but it
was received well enough so a sequel was inevitable. The first game had a lot of room for
improvement, to put it lightly, so this was another chance to do the formula it
established better and boy did it ever.
Sengoku Basara 2 is where the franchise really starts. It’s like the Street Fighter 2 or Metal Gear
Solid of Sengoku Basara. Like those
franchises, the improvements are so drastic, and the story so unrelated, that the first game can be ignored.
In a well-lit office building on the top floor, an executive
of a major gaming company inhales a line of a white powdery substance through a
straw up his nose. We will call him
Crappy Com.
Shortly after, Crappy Com’s subordinate comes in.This subordinate knows a thing or two about
game design and what people like in a game.We will call him Captain Obvious.
“Sengoku Basara is a decent hit,” says Captain Obvious.“We should get it ready for America.”
Crappy twitches and stares at nothing in particular.“Yeah.Yeah.America.Yeah,” he says.“I have an idea though.What if we, like, do that, but make it NOT Japan?No Japan.Americans hate Japan.Yeah.”Crappy then sniffs a dribbling nose.
“That’s a terrible idea”, says Captain.“Being in Japan the entire premise.It’s where the title comes from.”
“Glad you like it.Let’s do it!”
And thus, Devil Kings was born.
No T.M. Revolution.We’re already off to a bad start.
Capcom has made some of my favorite game franchises of all
time and there was even a time when I considered them the best company in all
of gaming.The Viewtiful Joe franchise
is my favorite in both gaming and anime, Resident Evil is somewhere in the top 5
and Devil May Cry is somewhere in the top 15.I already did a long series all about both Capcom and SNK’s
accomplishments in the arcades, but just below Resident Evil and above Devil
May Cry in Capcom’s portfolio is the greatest crowd fighting beat-em-up
franchise ever and unfortunately one that Capcom has routinely squandered for
anyone outside Japan:
Sengoku Basara.
Sengoku Basara has an interesting history, particularly
for the western world. What used to be a shining example of Capcom’s brilliance
over a decade ago is now symbolic of why Capcom is now the worst company in gaming,
but to understand how the franchise got to that point, you have to know where
it came from up to where it is today. Everyone
who has ever held a controller who hasn’t already needs to play these games.
For this retrospective, I will go over each main game in
Sengoku Basara’s history, what makes them so great (or rather, what makes the
sequels great), what made/makes Capcom so bad or otherwise incompetent, and I have
a lot to say about some of the spin-off media too, of which there is much.I won’t go too into the production history because
what matters to me most is the end result and the context of when they were released.
The starting point of the whole franchise is of course the
very first game and its very first opening, performed by T.M. Revolution, who would come to establish themselves as THE rock band of Sengoku
Basara.
Like any medium, games have the potential to educate. Unlike a textbook, movie or documentary,
however, games have the unique property of being an interactive medium,
allowing for a whole new level of engagement.
When most people think of educational games, they think of the classic
educational games, particularly from the 90s, with games like the Liberty’s Kids game, the
Carmen Sandiego games, Zoombinis or the Cluefinders series. Nowadays most of us have moved on to more
traditional hardcore games, but the truth is that even those games have
something to teach us. More than you may
realize, in fact. Historical revisionism
is a pervasive issue in textbooks. They
are full of lies and disgusting sanitization, but games give us nothing but the
truth. The following are just a few
things games have taught us about true
world history over the years.
Warning! This article is one giant spoiler for every Ace Attorney game out, but mostly the newest one! It is practically a discussion of nothing but spoilers. If you have not played through Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice, do not read this! I repeat! Do not read this!
Talk about a total 180.Spirit of Justice does everything right that Dual Destinies did wrong
and may be one of the best games in the franchise.My big praises for Spirit of Justice can be
broken down to these key points:
Who doesn't still get a kick out of Guitar Hero? Average gamers may not have the dexterity to hold cords in specific fashions and tune real guitars, but we sure know how to rhythmically press buttons, and Guitar Hero used that to emulate a guitar's feel as well as challenge us with some of the most iconic guitar-heavy songs in music history.
Guitar Hero was a major party game franchise back in its heyday and is still a big favorite to this day even if all the old peripherals are no longer officially sold and all that's left is the new Guitar Hero Live.
I think the problem the original Guitar Hero games had was that they released too many games too fast and ran out of big-name songs to use, but that's only looking at the music industry. If the eligible songs expanded to games, there's an entire medium they could use, full of challenging, catchy guitar jamming up there with the best of them. Entire franchises are built on rocking tunes. Look at how puny all the sections on this TVtropes page are compared to the Video Game one.
It's not like music needs lyrics. Cliffs of Dover in Guitar Hero 3 and Frankenstein in the original game are both classics.
It's sad that the only thing qualifying for game music in a Guitar Hero game is recreations with the music creator and the Halo theme.
That's why to demonstrate the musical strength of games and just for fun, I'm making this list of 10 game/game franchise soundtracks that should be in a Guitar Hero game. To show how impactful and challenging they are, for each I will pick out what I think would be the most difficult song to play and the most iconic song that every fan should know (usually opening or credits music). There's only so much you can say about music in words, so this won't be especially text-heavy.
