Retro Gaming & Japanese animation?

[XYXZYZ]

Hi, I lurk a lot of forums but never really have much to say, but this is the first forum I've kept up with in a long time where I feel like I really fit in. So, I wanna start posting and I guess this is as good a start as any! I hope you don't mind me opening with a little nostalgic babble... (Which I hope isn't too off-topic)

Like many of you, my obsessive gaming habit began in 1987 or thereabouts with the NES. As I evolved into the 16 bit era, I began noticing the "What's going on in Japan" sections of the game magazines, mostly EGM's "International Outlook" section. It was around the time the Super Famicom/ PC Engine CD ROM games were first being covered- the imagery in the cinema scenes, all those glossy, brightly colored characters looked so cartoonish (I've always loved cartoons) but they had the dynamics of the comic books I was reading at the time. They would cover games like Ys Books I & II, Valis, some wacky new thing called "Ranma 1/2" about some guy that turns into a girl, and the panda... I would just drool over that stuff, even the little character artworks they'd display in the article was nothing like the Jim Lee/Rob Liefeld art I was devouring with comic books. But being a 13 year old kid import gaming was way out of my reach, I was lucky to get enough money for a domestic SNES game. Reading reviews for Japanese games in '90-92 combined with some research in the comic book previews magazines I learned of anime, or "Japanimation" as we called it then...

Japanese animation was so damn hard to find back then, I would only read about it, but with fierce interest. Then one fateful day, as I was visiting my aunt/cousin out of state, I went into this small comic shop. Lo and behold they had a whole SHELF of Japanese animation... for rent! All of those titles I recognized; Project A-Ko, Dirty Pair, Fist of the North Star (A Nintendo game!), even the elusive Ranma 1/2, all there on video tape, right before my eyes. It was like finding Atlantis. I rented stacks of them, my cousin and I lurked in the garage like cavemen crowded around this little 13 inch TV/VCR combo. It was like another world, all these years of watching He-Man, Transformers and Ninja Turtles, and now THIS.. Fist of the North Star, Project A-Ko, GunBuster... BUBBLEGUM CRISIS!! The dynamic animation, the foriegn mystique of the Japanese language, the risqe violence, and *gasp* NUDITY? In a cartoon? some of them, (Dirty Pair, Outlanders and IczerOne) weren't even subtitled. But they still blew me away in spite of not knowing what the hell was goin on.

From then on when I'd go on a trip to my aunt's house, I'd bring my VCR and copy all the tapes I rented (We didn't have Suncoast and MediaPlay back then, the only way to buy it was through mail order)and watched them obsessively. That began my journey into Super DieHard Otaku land, which sort of died off at the end of the 90s. Since, I've become an anime fan heavily oriented towards old 80s stuff, much like my classic gamer habit. The new titles that are coming out rarely interest me, much like the video games of today. It's wedespread popularity hasn't helped either. (Produce crap that appeals to the lowest common denominator for the biggest profit, etc. You know how that stuff works.)


Thanks for reading all that. Can anyone else here include Japanese animation with their classic gaming memories?

[shopkins]

The Ranma SNES game is a big part of the reason I got into anime, too. I played the hell out of it because I liked the characters, although I think I'd seen an episode before. Takahashi series are still my favorites.

Part of the fun of playing old Japanese games is how they often incorporate the 80s anime style you'd see in things like Bubbblegum Crisis, Macross (Robotech) and Urusei Yatsura. I recently played Timegal to completion and I loved the old-style anime footage.

When I was younger I wasn't really exposed to that stuff, but I can look at game now and recognize, for instance, something like an Akira Toriyama design, or an anime theme or device. There's so much crossover between game and manga and anime design in Japan that they kind of have the same visual language, and it feels comfortable to go back and forth between them.

I like newer anime and manga, too.

[shopkins]

double post

[AlexKidd]

I kind of got into anime the same way. Reading old gaming magazines in the 90's and seeing all of the japanese games and art,especially Ys which you mentioned. I rented ghost in the shell sometime in the mid 90's and I've been into this stuff ever since. Now that I can find anime everywhere I have a pretty nice dvd collection too.

[Cryomancer]

Yeah, I went down a similar road too. I grew up watching Voltron and Ronin Warriors but wasn't aware of their status as import entertainment. Scifi channel played Project A-ko one year...and man. Even though at the time i didn't get all the references I knew it was something special.

I remember looking at mags and being amazed at the stuff they'd show, and how we never got it...I also remember being DAMN HAPPY finding a comic store that had ranma and whatnot for rent. I remember having to find a ride to fairly-distant college towns to scrounge up vhs (sometimes pirate ones no less). Pooling all the cash to try and get a show when suncoast finally came along...I remember it all.

These kids nowadays with their anime on TV everyday and their internet downloads...heh. However they do have to deal with an increased amount of censorship and "localizing" aka ruining the joke so they don't have to put a little explaination sub on the screen, or giving everyone stupid accents, ect. Sometimes I wonder which is worse. We didn't have much to choose from back then but at least most of it was relatively uncut.

[tylerwillis]

Oddly enough, I am into both... but not because of each other. Interest developed separately, though the same roommate showed me both retro-gaming and anime. Good guy, cost me a lot of money in the end.

[Graham Mitchell]

My situation is very similar to your, XYXZYZ. I first got fascinated with it when my friend got a Turbografx-CD player, and we were actually playing the Y's and Valis games, and loving those cinemas. The anime-style cinemas became the whole reason we were interested in the games, but unfortunately very few games containing them actually came over here. We would read the import ads in EGM and just drool.

Thing is, though we both still really appreciate the anime-style (and ONLY anime-style) cinematics in the games, neither of us really took to anime when it wasn't connected to games. I've got a couple movies, and I see stuff when it comes out if it's of particular interest to me but I'm not a huge fan of it. I won't watch something just because it's anime. I know plenty of people who do, though, and they're really odd.

The popularization of anime, as you have pointed out, has been somewhat disappointing. For every Akira or Cowboy Bebop there's 30 other undifferentiable titles sitting in the store, their only goal being to bring rediculous amounts of sex and violence to those who crave it. Not unlike what's happening to video games in the US, really.

[Alex Kidd]

This sounds Sooooo familiar.

I grew up thru the ages of 8-11 with a Sega Master System. Many of it games are very Japanes/Anime styled.

As well I was watching stuff like AstroBoy, Speed Racer and it just kinda clicked.
And then Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball started comin around when I was 14...getting me hooked at 15 and i've been lovin anime ever since!

Alex Kidd

[joshnickerson]

Japanese cartoons are weird man!

[NE146]

My situation is very dis-similar... throughout the 70's decade I grew up with a mix of jap cartoons (and tv, candy, groceries, magazines, & products in general) along with the U.S. stuff and craved more U.S. shows.

It kind of came with the territory being so close to Japan. I'll admit to one thing.. as a child you know what scared me most. No.. not monsters, but Jap cartoons and drawings! (especially their traditional samurai artwork.. gawdamn i hated it ) The big eyes (or the samurai growling faces)made me uncomfortable and the violence/action although tame now, seemed frightening to me. But hey, it was like 1974 and I was like 5 or 6. :P I wanted Jabberjaw, Shazam and Superfriends, I got what I think was Astro Boy and Lupin(?). I also remember Devilman or something like it. Freaked me out. Then later we had a bunch of giant robot ones which all look the same to me to be quite honest and another that I remember in later in the 80's that always showed was Captain Harlot or something like that.

Anyway, part of the problem for me was probably that none of these things were translated or subtitled for that matter.. I dunno what they were doing showing Samurai Soap operas, cartoons, and what not in their full blown jap. So watching it was pretty much just futile unless you knew the language. 'Course the jap connection was awesome once the late 70's hit and the videogame revolution started but that's another story

So yeah I kind of saw with some disinterest the rise of anime in the states as it happened. But to me it was just the same old jap cartoon thing... with the difference being I'm not frightened by them anymore I do like Fist of the North Star and Dragon Ball Z by the way..

[Trevor Belmont]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane, XYXZYZ. Your story sounds almost exactly like mine.

For me, all it took was one glance at the Sega CD game SNATCHER in an issue of Diehard Gamefan and I was hooked on Japanimation. Then I noticed a show called Ronin Warriors was playing very briefly on TV and I watched the hell out of that. When I started getting into it anime it wasn't as hard to find, as Blockbuster had the usual movies to rent (Fist of the North Star, my favorite to this day, Vampire Hunter D, and a guilty pleasure, Dagger of Kamui). But I watched the hell out of them. Still though, at that point, you couldn't just go out to a local store and buy some anime. And if you did luck out and find some anime, the prices were ridiculous.

Since then I find myself watching 80s and very early 90s anime only (it's weird, I know) and playing games from the early-mid 90s as well. I must be stuck in this nostalgia rut or something. But games that come out nowadays rarely excite me as much as they used to. But I find myself playing these older games and loving them. It's weird, but I find my situation nearly equals yours.

Welcome to the boards and stay awhile!