
Japanese Retrofuturism and Chrono Trigger - benbreen
http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/party-like-its-1999-japanese-retrofuturism-and-chrono-trigger
======
PaulHoule
I think "Japanese Retrofuturism" might be as much a symptom of Western culture
rather than Japanese culture.

It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction (advanced
gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world keeps the two
entirely separate.

I don't know if this represents anything fundamental, or just the influence of
a few people like Tolkien and Gygax and how people responded to their works
initially. Certainly in real life there was a period where guns and swords
competed that lasted 500 or so years in the west and east.

~~~
mratzloff
> _It seems most JRPGs are set in a world that combines science fiction
> (advanced gadgets) and fantasy (magic, swords) whereas the western world
> keeps the two entirely separate._

One of the two most directly influential series for early JRPGs is _Ultima_ ,
which for its first three incarnations (especially the first two) liberally
combined science fiction with fantasy.

In America, the early '80s was a time where mixing fantasy and science fiction
was popular. You had products like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and
Thundarr the Barbarian, for example. Perhaps these influenced Richard Garriott
(creator of _Ultima_ ).

~~~
zavulon
Might and Magic series also always combined fantasy with sci-fi.

~~~
klibertp
I still remember finding a frickin' blaster in a chest in some demon-infested
hive-like structure in M&M7. I didn't have much use for it at this point in
game, but I was really surprised and thought it was very interesting twist in
the plot... Which actually existed in 7 (not so much in 6 I'm told) too! Good
times.

------
jmduke
This is a great read, though I think the author could have dove a little
deeper into the apocalyptic bleakness of 2300AD. (As mentioned, though, he
wrote an entire book on the subject (www.amazon.com/Chrono-Trigger-Boss-Fight-
Books-
ebook/dp/B00J9VYD72/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407430124&sr=8-1&keywords=Chrono+Trigger+book),
which is definitely worth checking out if you're a SNES RPG nerd like I am.)

If I were to throw the term 'retrofuturism' at a SNES game, though, I think
I'd have to pick Earthbound/Mother 2 -- the 'juvenile future' described by the
author fits perfectly in this world of star-shaped robots and perfectly
spherical flying saucers.

------
dfxm12
Paragraphs 23 on are pretty interesting. The author talks about preserving
outmoded technology for posterity. Surely, he must be aware of the
emulation/rom scene, and online communities like AssemblerGames which are
pertaining to do just that.

Sure, there is Satellaview content lost to time, and that is exactly where we
are going to be 10 years from now when our current consoles' DRM servers go
offline and we have no way of playing that WiiWare or XBLA exclusive game that
is tied to specific machines. Remember how much phones preloaded with flappy
bird were selling for on ebay?

And his takeaway is thought provoking. We're doing this to ourselves. In a way
this is bad - if we don't understand our past mistakes, we are doomed to
repeat them. But then again, like so many time traveling heroes in our
stories, sometimes it takes ignoring the past or ignoring tradition to build a
better future.

~~~
boha
A friend and I recently tried to get a LAN game of Battlefield 1942 going. It
was only possible with hacks and [available, well-trodden] anti-piracy
circumvention.

This made me very sad. I'm not overly sentimental for that game, but it still
has a lot of merit, and my computer can still play it. Should I have to wait
for EA to repackage it in some kind of virtual console store? (No.)

~~~
jamesgeck0
>Should I have to wait for EA to repackage it in some kind of virtual console
store?

EA was giving away Battlefield 1942 on Origin last time I checked. Why is
anti-priacy circumvention required?

------
dragontamer
Japanese Retrofuturism?

Are people forgetting that Star Wars was a _long time ago_ in a galaxy far far
away?? Star Wars takes place in the _past_.

There is a major scene in Episode 6 where a primitive band of Ewoks takes on
Empire Walkers using nothing more than sticks, spears, and logs. Light-Sabers
are melee weapons based on an ancient religion (very fantasy-esque). Beyond
all the space future stuff, there is a lot of "retro-combat" and high-fantasy
elements going on here.

\------------

Even Star Trek has its "retrofuturism" if you squint hard enough. Elves have
pointy ears and are good at magic. I mean... space elves (Vulcans) have pointy
ears and are good at science.

Orcs are generally evil and have deformed faces. But they're super strong. I
mean... Space Orcs (Klingons) are generally evil with deformed faces.

Watch out for the undead (Borg). They might turn you into a zombie /
assimilate you.

------
dpeck
FYI, link to book he mentions on amazon, had to look it up as a huge fan of
the game, and was a bit dissapointed by the reviews.
[http://smile.amazon.com/Chrono-Trigger-Boss-Fight-Books-
eboo...](http://smile.amazon.com/Chrono-Trigger-Boss-Fight-Books-
ebook/dp/B00J9VYD72/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407430656&sr=8-1&keywords=chrono+trigger+book)

Has anyone read and enjoyed it?

(no referal, but is a smile link)

~~~
eropple
Most of the Boss Fight series is good in general, but folks with knowledge
about the topic of any given game may feel it's a little too high-level. I
found the Chrono Trigger one basic, but acceptably-written[1] and mostly
engaging. I'd recommend it if you're not very familiar with the genre and the
game.

Outside of the CT one--I recommend the Earthbound one unreservedly, but I'd
call the ZZT one in the series its (flashing red) weak point. a lot of
research went into it and I appreciate the effort but it's hugely self-
indulgent (which, to be fair, is pretty clearly tipped off in the Amazon
summary so you _do_ know what you're getting into) and it suffers from a
really weak narrative voice[2]. It is also incomplete--I feel like Anthropy's
desire to combine a discussion of ZZT with her personal evolution does a
hatchet-job to the history of the ZZT community.

[1] - This is about as high a praise I give for games meta-writing. I don't
think game journalism has many (any?) _good writers_ , folks whose stuff I'd
read even if I knew everything about the topic they were writing about. (Joe
Posnanski fits that bill for sportswriting, I don't know of anybody similar in
games writing.)

[2] - Weak even for games writing, so calibrate accordingly.

------
yesm
Ah, my childhood. Summer of 93, Link to the past. Summer of 94, Secret of
mana. Summer of 95, FFIII. Summer of 96, Chrono Trigger. Summer of 97, Lufia
II. Chrono trigger was and still is definitively the height of classical
console RPGs. And never will a block of years will ever produce the technical
vision and artistry that the Japanese developers put forth.

------
xamuel
Blink and you'll miss it, but Chrono Trigger actually showed what the inside
of the 1999 domes was like pre-apocalypse. It's in one of the secret endings;
you can see it here starting around 4:10:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WR0AmpABjk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WR0AmpABjk)

------
bengali3
FYI Chrono Trigger is available on iOS
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrono-
trigger/id479431697?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrono-
trigger/id479431697?mt=8)

~~~
ndrake
Can anyone comment on how saving works on the iOS version? If I get a call or
switch apps, does it reliably save or am I liable to lose my progress?

~~~
bengali3
When minimized the app goes into 'pause' -even mid battle. Also, they've added
a 'bookmark' feature which is a single-load save anywhere. so when you have to
go, you can bookmark without finding a save point (just not mid battle). If
your party dies, you cannot reload the bookmark point. you can't bookmark and
continue, its bookmark & exit to main menu - i guess think of it as a longer
term pause? where state is saved in your save game list?

~~~
chadgeidel
Thanks, that was a much more detailed answer than I could have given.

------
hcarvalhoalves
> Satellaview, a satellite modem launched in 1995 that could receive new game
> data as it was broadcast. Although the cost of the system and the monthly
> subscription fees were high, the system was successful—it enjoyed a five-
> year run before it was discontinued in 2000.

I would never imagine such thing - games via satellite - ever existed, let
alone for Famicom!

Living in Japan in the 90's might be have been pretty amazing, it was like
living in a retro version of the future. I remember when my friend came back
from Japan and brought payphone cards, something I would only see again 10
years later in my country.

~~~
Torgo
So, it was before Satellaview, but I lived in Japan in 1993 when I was
sixteen, and it was the best time in my life. But I also was a giant f*ing
nerd. Here are some things I remember, with regard to "retrofuturism": a
Blockbuster video VHS kiosk that rented you movies, ala Redbox (in 1993!);
Minidisc everywhere; waitstaff with wireless "notepads" that looked like old
TI calculators, to type in your order that would send it back to the kitchen
automatically. Akihabara was literally like being in a cyberpunk novel, I
would drift past a salvage electronics part store, squeeze between some shops
and up a darkened, narrow staircase and wander into a backroom stuffed to the
ceiling with laserdiscs and commercial 8MM video cassettes.

On the other hand, most places didn't take credit cards and I saw very few
personal computers compared to the USA at the time. So it really was a
strange, uneven retrofuturism.

~~~
bane
Japan in the 80s and into the 90s was like a vision of a an alternate future
where technology could keep growing and happening infinitely. Some _really_
interesting features from that time period. If people in the West thought all
the 8-bit micro computers was hard to deal with, in Japan there were nearly
countless models by many companies, sometimes competing with themselves! This
went on into the 16 and 32-bit eras even. Japan really had a stunning
alternative view of the future.

Do you want to buy a NEC PC-9801 or a Sharp X68000? How about a nice FM Towns
from Fujitsu, the first home computer with a built in optical drive? But all
my friends have a MSX computers! Okay, should I get the MSX 2+ or the turboR,
from which manufacturer? I like Panasonic's model, but I heard Yamaha's has a
good music interface. My friend has an old Fujitsu FM-7, but _man_ the X1 Twin
looks cool with it's integrated PC Engine!
[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/JPNcomputers/Japanesecomput...](http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/JPNcomputers/Japanesecomputers.htm)

Amazingly, not a single one of these machines made it to the U.S. Commodore
and Atari were simply far too dominant. Jack Tramiel even addresses keeping
the Japanese out of the U.S. market as a principle concern.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmODkpnjO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gmODkpnjO0)

Also, not a single one of these architectures lives on today. I think the FM-
Towns (an _almost_ PC clone) and the Sharp X68k series went on the longest.
But it's a tremendous surprise that _so_ many personal computers were
available, in a country that's never really been known for personal computer
ownership. Even today, the typical Japanese office space is piled full of file
cabinets and paper. It's like something right out of the 1970s and 80s.
[http://www.accountant-tokyo.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/J...](http://www.accountant-tokyo.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Japanese-Office-Space.jpg)

All of the basic system architectures dead-ended. Most were using Z80s, which
never evolved beyond the 16-bit-ish R800. 6502 variants were common, the NES
ran on this, the SNES ran on a 16-bit variant 65C816. But that's it. The
X68000 series ran on the Motorola 68k chips, which as we all know dead ended
with the switch to the PowerPC line (which BTW, still powers all sorts of
consoles _today_ ). The only system which picked up on the Intel lines was the
FMTowns, but architecturally deviated from normal PCs enough that it's not
compatible.

Japan during during and right after the bubble was _amazing_.

[http://www.thebubblebubble.com/japan-
bubble/](http://www.thebubblebubble.com/japan-bubble/)

~~~
Torgo
I played games on an FM-Towns Marty :-) I never met anybody who had any of
those other systems, unfortunately.

------
FD3SA
A minor nit about Chrono Trigger's plot. It was actually based on the
Chicxulub asteroid impact [1], which caused the K-Pg extinction event [2] and
was followed by a severe impact winter. The game itself masterfully explores
this event with a perfect dose of fictional flair.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater)

2\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_ex...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event)

------
terhechte
I'm a huge fan of Chrono Trigger, I've played through it multiple times, I
just loved it. The author of this article states that he wrote a book about
the game. The book can be found here:
[http://bossfightbooks.com/products/chrono-trigger-by-
michael...](http://bossfightbooks.com/products/chrono-trigger-by-michael-p-
williams)

I hadn't heard about this before, but I may actually order it, because I like
the game so much :)

~~~
thirdtruck
I had no idea that such a book existed for one of my favorite games of all
time (perhaps the only game where I've actually played through all of its New
Game+ mode). Thanks!

------
kps
Anyone recognize the CAI setup in the upper right inset of Williams4.jpg?

Edit: I think it's an IBM 1500¹ station, in which case the left-hand display
is a mainframe-controlled 16mm film projector².

¹
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1500](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1500)

² Buck & Hunka, _Deveopment of the IBM 1500 Computer-Assisted Instructional
System_
[http://digitallearning.ualberta.ca/-/media/digitallearning/i...](http://digitallearning.ualberta.ca/-/media/digitallearning/ibm-1500.pdf)

------
kazinator
The Japanese retro-future consists of white people of European descent,
immersed in a world full of katakana/hiragana/kanji signeage.

------
bovermyer
I think the most poignant part of this article is one no one has addressed
here yet:

> I have trouble accepting a disappointing truth of human progress—there are
> things that have been forgotten, and they will never be re-remembered.

Thinking back on the millennia of our existence, how much of our experiences
as a species have vanished forever, never to be rediscovered?

~~~
normloman
If we preserved everything, who'd have the time to experience it all?

------
kingnight
What is the purpose of the paragraph numbers that hide/appear with mouseover?
I found it to be a distraction.

~~~
infiniteri
Probably to help someone know what paragraph you're referencing if you're
having a discussion. I could see it working better if it only appeared when
you hovered over to the left of the paragraph.

~~~
kingnight
Makes some sense. Seems excessive.

Not trying to being entirely negative... This is a really great article!

~~~
Kurtz79
To be fair it did catch my attention as well, it´s just uncommon.

