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A look at some old video games...
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The Birth of Japanese Console Role-Playing Games
Although role-playing games were introduced to the world in 1974 when Gary Gygax's company Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR) first published Dungeons & Dragons, the introduction of role-playing games to Japan took place much later, beginning in 1985 when Shinwa, Ltd. (株式会社新和) published Japanese translations of the D&D boxed sets. Around this time, Japan began to enjoy CRPGs like Wizardry (created in the USA by Sir-Tech Software, Inc. in 1981, translated into Japanese by ASCII Corporation (株式会社アスキー) in 1985), and Ultima (created in the USA by Richard Garriot and published by California Pacific Computer Co. in 1980 and, much later, re-released in December 23, 1986 by Origin Systems as Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness). Later, Japan would rock the US CRPG community by releasing console RPG giants like Dragon Warrior (July 1989) and Final Fantasy (July 12, 1990); ultimately, these games (and their sequels) would change CRPGs forever by adding a uniquely Japanese perspective ("jobs" or "occupations" as opposed to class, specific character development (no creation of PCs at the beginning), and anime-like designs), but in the beginning, these were obviously developed with the background that Dungeons & Dragons and its many imitator CRPGs provided. But how much of these games depended on its predecessors? Monsters Dragon Warrior, originally called Dragon Quest (ドラゴンクエスト) in Japan, was released by Enix, Corporation (株式会社エニックス) for the Family Computer in May 27, 1986. Although a simple RPG, it boasted the talents of Toriyama Akira (鳥山明), famous for his comics Dragonball and Dr. Slump, to create the game's characters and monsters. As a result, although the game's monsters' names may have been influenced by D&D to some extent, the monster designs themselves are original and unique (the popular slime (スライム), for example, went from being a horrid ooze-like creature in D&D, to being a cute, nearly-harmless blob of jelly in Dragon Quest) and Dragon Quest does not suffer from plagiarism. Final Fantasy (ファイナルファンタジー), on the other hand, released by Square Company, Limited (株式会社スクウェア) in December 18, 1987, apparently does suffer from quite a bit of plagiarism. This is most easily seen by viewing its various monsters, as listed in the table below (note that name changes are common, thus the many columns):
Obviously, quite a lot of these monsters appear to have similarly named entries in the Monster Manual (or Monster Manual II). While some of these are generic and thus not a problem (i.e. goblin, ogre, or troll), quite a few of them are obviously specific to the Dungeons & Dragons world; some of these are as follows:
I actually remember myself playing Final Fantasy when I was but a wee lad, saying to myself, "Gee, that's a mind flayer, isn't it?!" Mind flayers were of course one of the most memorable D&D monsters, and very distinct to the D&D world. An interesting specimen is the beholder (and "death beholder"), which Square apparently thought was TOO obviously plagiaristic, so they changed the art and name for this monster, who can be seen below:
In fact, none of Final Fantasy's later remakes or sequels included this monster, and thus records of it are sparse... except that you can see it, right here! It does seem futile to only change this one particular monster, however, when other very obvious victims of plagiarism were for some reason left alone. (Today, not only beholders, but also mind flayers, are considered "Product Identities" by Wizards of the Coast (the current owners of the D&D franchise) and not released under its Open Gaming License.) In terms of dragons, Final Fantasy also "borrowed" D&D's chromatic dragon schema, with red, blue, green, and white dragons appearing in the game, along with the already-mentioned Tiamat. Bahamut also appears in the game as a benevolent being; in later sequels he can be seen as a combatant or as a summoned creature. For example, Bahamut can be seen in Final Fantasy III as shown below:
Obviously, he appears quite similar to his D&D incarnation as the platinum dragon. (The purpose of this document is not to spur on new litigations at this point in time, or otherwise point an accusing finger at Square, but rather to demonstrate how important D&D was during the formative years of Japanese CRPGs (in particular Square).) Classes vs. Jobs? Originally, classes were intended to serve as a method of classifying PCs in certain basic types; thus at the very beginning of D&D there were just the cleric, the fighting man, and the magic-user. Names chosen for classes were both general and descriptive, as classes were intended to be separate from profession; for example, a fighting man could have several professions—general, soldier, blacksmith, or even scribe! However, his game statistics were based on his class—that of fighting man. Japanese translators, however, apparently did not understand the distinct idea of "class," and translated it to mean "occupation" instead. For example, in the Final Fantasy series, class became "job" (ジョブ), while in the Dragon Quest series, class became "occupation" (職業)—these mistranslations created a lasting misunderstanding that endures today. By the first edition of AD&D, the following classes were available to players: assassin, cleric, druid, fighter, illusionist, magic-user, monk, paladin, ranger, thief, and bard. Final Fantasy offered the following starting "jobs" (ジョブ) as well (upgradable later in the game):
Races in Japan Although D&D offered dwarves, elves, and hobbits (halflings) from the beginning, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest have always had a noticeable lack of PC demihumans, which has continued until the present. Dwarves and elves did appear as NPCs in certain earlier games (Final Fantasy IV, for example, had dwarves), but these races were never selectable as PC types. Some later Final Fantasy games did feature non-human races, but these were always new creations with no basis in folklore (one even used the name of a folklore legend to name a completely unrelated "new" race (i.e. Selkies)); often, they were anthropomorphic "furry"-type races. Even stranger, many Final Fantasy races seem to be single-sex only (note that no Final Fantasy game has ever allowed the player to choose sex!). For example:
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