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. Mostly games.
After Capcom released Ninja Theory’s Devil May Cry reboot, I
don’t think anyone was expecting a sequel to Devil May Cry 4. I think Ninja Theory’s game gets way too much
flak because of its title, but regardless of the merits of the game itself,
fans wanted a Devil May Cry 5. However,
in the intervening years Capcom came out with Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes,
which became a monster hit despite no advertising or promotion whatsoever, and
then later followed it up with Sengoku Basara 4 in Japan. Over the years Sengoku Basara 4 built itself
up as the most hyped English version of a game in the history of the human race
to the point that everyone forgot about wanting a Devil May Cry game. Something very strange happened though. Instead of releasing Sengoku Basara 4 in
English and bringing about world peace and a panacea for all diseases, Capcom
not only made Devil May Cry 5, but fully dubbed it and released it in English.
I am at least a moderate fan of the Devil May Cry
franchise. Devil May Cry 3 is one of my
favorite action games of all time and of course you know Devil May Cry 4 is good because it has the same producer as
Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.
That said, it’s curious that instead of translating and
dubbing a fully released, content-rich game being exalted as one of the
masterpieces of the gaming world that everyone and their dog wants, just like
they had already done for the previous game in its franchise, Capcom instead
made a new game from scratch with an English version. That would have to mean that Devil May Cry 5
is practically godlike and I had to take a look to see for myself if it truly
lives up to that hype.
With Nobunaga dead, the last 2 parts of the Extra History videos cover Hideyoshi, his death and the battle of Sekigahara. This post is going to be shorter than the other ones because, well, the videos go into a lot of backgrounds that Sengoku Basara chooses to push to the wayside for the sake of an exciting action story, but there is still a fair bit to note.
I've held off on discussing Nobunaga's Sengoku Basara design. Everyone knows it. He's portrayed as an evil overlord with a spiky and intimidating outfit with a blood red cape and he laughs at the carnage and atrocities he commits. Up to this point in the Extra History videos though, Nobunaga has just been a very tactical and pragmatic warlord, not a lot worse than the others. It's starting around here where we start to see where his reputation comes from.
We aren't done with Sengoku Basara yet. In the first part of my Sengoku Basara retrospective I directed people to a series of videos from Extra Creditz, specifically their Extra History sub-series. This 6-part series of short videos does a good job of detailing all the most important moments of the Sengoku period while making them fun and expressive through the use of artwork. Even more fun an expressive is one of my favorite franchises, Sengoku Basara.
It's always funny to me when I learn something about history and think back to how the madcap action of Sengoku Basara interpreted that, especially with Sanada Yukimura Den steering closer to real history. As such I thought it would be fun to go over some real history and how that was interpreted into what we see in the games. The Sengoku era of Japan is already pretty crazy, as the videos show, so watching it become more crazy is pretty entertaining.
I originally ended my Sengoku Basara retrospective at
Sengoku Basara 4 because the main series and all the English media was already
covered and the last game, Sanada Yukimura Den, is story-focused when fan
translations are already incomplete and sparse for Sengoku Basara 4, which is
still more than Sanada Yukimura Den got.
Since then I discovered a miracle.
An app for the iphone that, in a way, breaks through Capcom’s attempt to
stop American players from enjoying Sengoku Basara 4: the translate app.
With the translate app, players can take pictures of the
screen as the dialogue appears and form halfway comprehensible translation of
all the text.It doesn’t make the
Japanese voice acting any better, but with the help of the translation app I
can finally understand and somewhat enjoy the stories of Sengoku Basara 4,
which, it turns out, are wonderful.Sengoku Basara 4’s stories have something for everyone.It has stories that are funny, sad, cute,
awesome and everything in between.It’s
a pain to have to take constant pictures of the screen as the dialogue goes
along and it doesn’t alleviate the depression of Capcom’s vicious betrayal, but
it does make it partially possible to play the game to the potential it was made
to be played.
It also means that Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den is on
the table.Now that I can understand
this more story-centric game, I can give my thoughts on it proper.
I remember where I was when the first trailer for Sengoku
Basara 4 was released. I’ve never been
so hyped for a game in my entire life.
No other game can come close to the excitement and anticipation for a
sequel to one of the greatest games of all time and everything else in the
meantime was just something to occupy me until I could finally play it.
Years passed. The
game came out in Japan,
where it was promptly exalted as one of the all-time master works of gaming. People outside of Japan kept
importing it and sang the same praises. Then the updated version, Sengoku Basara 4: Sumeragi, came out and
importers further cemented it as the greatest game of its genre ever made.
I told those people to stop.
I told them to buy the English version when it comes out. Just like Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes,
Samurai Kings, Samurai Legends and End of Judgement, Sengoku Basara 4 was going
to have an amazing English release and those people importing it were both
buying a worse version and putting time into game progress that would not carry over. That’s what I believed. Why wouldn’t I? This was Capcom, the greatest game company there was. They were on fire in the
early 2010s, with hit after hit after hit after hit and the occasional Bionic Commando-shaped fumble,
but nobody’s perfect. I believed in
Capcom.
Year after year after year after year after year after year
I kept thinking that it would finally be the year we got the English version of
Sengoku Basara 4 and that with all that time being spent on it, the English
version was going to be as perfect as possible.
They must’ve been doing 100 takes on every single line of English
dialogue so that the sound of it touches the pleasure sensations of the brain. There was going to be more extra content in
the English version than the English release of Kingdom Hearts. I kept buying Capcom’s games, feeding them
money, comfortable in knowing it was going into the English version of the
greatest game ever created, maybe even the greatest thing ever created in the universe as a whole.
The hype grew with each passing year. Sengoku Basara 4’s English version is so
hyped up that playing it might put someone into cardiac arrest just from
starting the game! I took that built-up
hype to every Capcom showcase. “Maybe
we’ll get a release date for the English version of Sengoku Basara 4!” People kept telling me there wouldn’t be one, but there was no reason to believe that. Capcom made Sengoku Basara:
Samurai Heroes, one of the hallmark titles of gaming.
They gave us that game because they knew the world needed it and not
Devil Kings. There’s no reason why they
wouldn’t just do what they already did for one more game. That would be a complete and utter betrayal
to every single Capcom fan. I made the
foolish decision to believe in something.
Never believe.
It took many years for me to realize that Capcom is no
longer the good company that gave us Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes. They have no intention of delivering nirvana
to their fans. Sengoku Basara 4 will never
come out in English and they have made it their mission to make their fans as
miserable as possible, keeping the English version of Sengoku Basara 4 from
them just to watch them squirm. They are, simply put, evil.
When I came to grips with that, I finally just imported the
Japanese version after all those years of hype and it is the single most depressing,
soul-crushing game I’ve ever played in my life.
Not because it’s bad, but for the polar opposite reason.
With the success of Sengoku Basara 2 in Japan, it was
only natural that Capcom would ride the merchandise train and branch the
franchise off into other media as well as a few spin-off games. Eventually some of that media would come to America
alongside the first properly translated English game, but since the spin-off
games were made during Capcom’s terminally stupid era, they were not released
in English.
There was a pair of stripped-down PSP games, Sengoku Basara
Battle Heroes and Chronicle Heroes, as well as a fighting game called Sengoku
Basara X. Normally I wouldn’t bother
going over them because they’re not especially notable, not part of the main
games and I haven’t played them, but it just so happens as I was writing the
retrospective that a local arcade had Sengoku Basara X, so I can touch on that.
Capcom pretty much perfected the Sengoku Basara formula the
first game created with Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes. After riding that for a few years and
releasing a fighting game in the interim, it was time for Sengoku Basara to
evolve with the console hardware. With a
new game engine and new play style, the next Sengoku Basara game was indeed an
evolution, but the most important evolution of all was that IT’S IN
ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH! IT’S IN ENGLISH!
They even got T.M. Revolution to do the opening in
English! I don’t blame anyone for
thinking it’s not though.
When Capcom makes a hit game, it’s almost a compulsion for
them to also make an updated version of it later.It’s a practice almost synonymous with Capcom and Sengoku Basara 2
follows that tradition with Sengoku Basara 2 Heroes, or at least it kind of
does.
That is one of the best openings ever and it made me buy Blade Chord on the itunes store.
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 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, Devil May Cry is somewhere in the top 15 and 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 made and unfortunately one that Capcom has routinely squandered for
anyone outside Japan. That franchise is the historically questionable Sengoku Basara.
Sengoku Basara has an interesting history, mostly 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 currently holds the distinction of being the worst company in gaming. To understand how the franchise got to that point, you have to know where
it came from. Everyone
who has ever held a controller who hasn’t already needs to play these games and to explain why, I am writing this retrospective.
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) and what made/makes Capcom so bad or otherwise incompetent. I have
a lot to say about some of the spin-off media too, of which there is a lot.I won’t go into the production history because 1: what matters to me most is the end result and the context of when they were released and 2: only one game has anything related to its production officially translated into English.
The crazy story of this Sengoku-era epic starts with the very first Sengoku Basara 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.
