River City Ransom: How an NES Classic Returned 20 Years On 39
An anonymous reader writes "River City Ransom: Underground is the latest high profile game campaign on Kickstarter but as an interview with the title's creators this week highlights, it's not exactly a new game. Rather, it's an official sequel to a Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom classic, belt-scroller River City Ransom. Remarkably, getting the license and the help of original River City creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto proved easy for the team, indie developers who were submitting game designs to Atari in crayon, aged six. 'I asked for the license and I asked Kishimoto-san if he had an interest in helping us make a better Kunio-kun game,' producer Daniel Crenna says. 'It's not particularly dramatic to say that, but I asked.' As the author points out, it's interesting to imagine what other games could be resurrected with a little bit of polite curiosity.""
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I think that the "san" is an honourary title in the same vein as "Mr". So here, instead of him calling him "Yoshihisa" or "Kishimoto" he effectively calls him Mr Kishimoto.
Good to see that some kids have some respect for their elders. Now get off my lawn!
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yeah it is.
they got some realistic style stuff too. but what do you expect, that the 1 cent comics would be drawn with same care as manara?
now back to the subject.. I didn't think that river city ransoms plot or world needed resurrecting. for the developers it just provided a venue to get some free press for their game - since there's soo many new games now made that there's real competition to get people even have a look at the game. so how many games could be resurrected by just asking? none - it needs s
Re:Help a poor, ignorant American out. "-san"? (Score:5, Informative)
I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but I will respond to the first point. Adding -San to a name is somewhat similar to saying Mr. but Japanese honorifics tend to be slightly more nuanced than the Mr, and Mrs, style honorifics of English. In japan it's considered very impolite to refer to someone by their given name rather than family name, unless you are very close friends. Likewise it is considered impolite in Japanese to leave off any honorific again unless you are very close friends.
Generally adding -san to a name indicates that the person is someone you do not have a close relationship with, and denotes a respectful tone. Other honorifics commonly used in modern japan include -sama, which would be given to someone you strongly look up to or who is highly above your social station, it's roughly the equivalent of calling someone 'boss' but again is more nuanced and respectful than that, -kun is generally used to refer to someone who is below your social station while still being respectful, it's common that in a work environment for a supervisor to speak to a (generally male) junior with -kun, while the junior would refer to their supervisor with -san, while the president of the company would be -sama. -chan is the last commonly used honorific, and is generally used in similar situations where -kun would be used for females, it's also used to indicate 'cuteness' or for small children. A mascot character might be referred to as Mascot-chan if they're supposed to be cute or childish, and it is common for adults to refer to elementary grade or younger children with -chan.
There's more nuances to Japanese honorifics than I give here, but that's the long and short of it, if you're ever in doubt which honorific would be appropriate to a given situation, generally going with -san is a safe fall back.
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OK, Herr Megol (Score:5, Funny)
OK, Herr Megol.
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And yet plenty of Japanese people will use Mr. or Mrs/Ms/Miss when referring to, talking to or writing about someone whose native language is English.
Of course, they will also use -san, -sama, -chan and -kun, depending on the situation, and the uses of these go far beyond what was outlined above, but for simplicity the stuff outlined above is fine ;)
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"san" just shows familiarity and endearment. Sometimes it's used ironically, or sometimes just to be familiar without the endearment attached.
Kishimoto is the guy's personal name, and Yoshihisa is the guy's family name.
The Japanese animation style is up for opinion. In my opinion it's meant to be drawn quickly and with a high level of conformity. This way you get similar quality across numerous hours of animation, with not much effort. "Cel shading" is used to give the most effect of depth and light with th
(I got the usage of "-san" wrong) (Score:2)
Oh, obviously I was misinformed about the use of "-san". But, I don't have a very deep or vested in interest in Japanese language or culture.
Reader, ignore my comments on the use of "-san". Others here have fleshed it out more accurately.
What a waste. (Score:1)
It's a shame that everything about this new game looks rather terrible. The art assets look like one of those horribly insulting re-draws for western audiences, except this time it was the initial assets to begin with. A lot of what you see on the Kickstarter page looks like they've outright thrown out the entire sense and sensibilities of the Riki-Kunio series in exchange for what looks like a bad shareware clone made by fans.
BARF! (Score:1)
I remember this from Nintendo World Championships (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there is something magical about games with good action mechanics with a little hackney RPG thrown on top. Another good example is Zelda. The reason these games are fun is that it typically rides you in a perfect difficulty. If the game is too easy, you push far without grinding your guy for levels until it is tough. If the game is too hard, you keep trying over and over, and your guy levels up in the process. Eventually you get strong enough to beat the levels and bosses even if you don't have a great deal of skill.
I shudder to think what a MMORPG would be like if it was quality action oriented combat first and RPG stats second. Instead of coming into fights and pressing 1,2,3,4,5 over and over again, you'd be actually engaging your brain.
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Instead of coming into fights and pressing 1,2,3,4,5 over and over again, you'd be actually engaging your brain.
We'll see how The Elder Scrolls handles as an MMO. I feel like the evolution from Morrowind through to Skyrim has been smooth. They've kept the same basic mechanics for the most part, though things have been refined quite a bit.
They've really blended a lot of Fallout and TES together (Bethesda), but playing Skyrim feels like their intention from the beginning was to build a great MMO, and each iteration in the series was simply a step in that direction.
Can they really re-capture it? (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the appeal of River City Ransom is just how much content -- quality content, much of it -- they packed into this little side-scrolling beat-em-up.
There are even weird hidden wonders like, if the enemy throws a baseball at your head but you deflect it with a stick, IT'S ON -- Stickball time, and you and the enemies get into formation and play a damn game of stickball.
And, it's a beat-em-up with role playing elements like items, skills, and stats. There are some other games like that for the same system (Little Ninja Brothers for example, with its Kung Fu Heroes style battle screens) but this game is modern and admittedly slick.
So, consider how powerful that was back in the 8-bit days, and consider how that still resonates as a "good game" today.
How in the hell do you capture that, again? You might say "well they are taking a good step in the right direction by retro-styling it as 8-bit", but is that all it is?
Think of it dynamically: there is potentially so much *more* that could be done with the game, today. This is the same problem all devs face when they're planning a franchise reboot from the 8-bit days to the modern, post-3d-playforming days. The devs have to ask "how much space of the new world of gaming should this game occupy".
I'm not saying that making RCR into a cartoonish Grand Theft Auto is going to somehow improve it, either. I'm saying that the envelope has changed.
The original game was explosive because it packed all of that game into that tiny 8-bit envelope, when there was nothing else to work with. Now, there's tons of other stuff to work with. You can still pack just as much game into just as small of a bit width, but the envelope is so much bigger, now, there's not going to be as much explosive force.
It's the big let down of retro-styled gaming. It seems like such an awesome idea to make more 8-bit games, as if the legacy didn't leave enough of them behind, but then you sit down and play it and your thumbs go "blah".
You're asking your thumbs to go back and enjoy tomato soup like they did back in the days when there was only tomato soup, only now they're more accustomed to gazpacho, borscht, and bloody marys.
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8 bit? ain't nothing 8 bit about it.
but if you can make a sidescroller beat'em'up and want someone to buy it, you're going to need a catch of some sort. because there's really a lot of competition in that. multiplayer just doesn't do it.hell, "retro" graphics wont do it. there's even a bunch of mmorpg's which are basically sideway beat'em'ups(not all of them localized for west tho..)
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Really?
(from the linked page) >> The original River City Ransom was an instant hit when it debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, and Underground promises to pick up directly where it left off, complete with a banging chiptune soundtrack, beautifully rendered 8-bit sprites and frantic button bashing action as you plugh through River Cityâ(TM)s different street gangs with little more than your fists.
You were saying?
Also, the "MMORPGs" you refer to
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Come on, nobody gets used to gazpacho!
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But did they use a GREEN crayon? (Score:2)
Uhhh... What???
I don't normally kibbitz over the typical low quality of our FP summaries suck, but I can't even parse that.
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River City Ransom? (Score:1)
Not much they can do.. (Score:3)
... to modernize the game given how unknown the game is to most gamers and how they barely scraped by with their kickstarter. It would have been nice to modernize the game but it is an old game that no one knows about or is really that interested in.
Oh, PLEASE bring back Autoduel. (Score:2)
It amazes me that no one seems to remember Autoduel [wikipedia.org]. It was a free-roamer, way before the Grand Theft Auto series. It was sent in a post-apocalyptic "Mad Max" sort of world. It was made by Lord British, the same guy that brought us the Ultima series. You could design new cars with an incredible level of detail, balancing features and power with weight. I spent months of my life on that game.
In modern times, there was Auto Assault [wikipedia.org], but that was one of those stupid MMORPG things. As if I want to hear 1