Princess Maker 2: Summary and Rating

From the final report.

      

Princess Maker 2

Japan
Gainax Co., Ltd. (developer and publisher), Adventions (English translation)
Released 1991 for PC-98, 1992 for MSX and DOS, 1995 for TurboGrafx CD; English DOS version from 1996
Date Started: 5 May 2024

Date Ended: 8 May 2024

Total Hours: 6

Difficulty: Easy (2.0/5), in the sense there's no way to "lose"; hard (4.0/5) to get the best ending

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

       

As my longtime readers know, I don't have any children of my own. This was mostly a conscious decision that Irene and I made in our 20s. She has never questioned the decision; I find myself questioning it more and more as I get older and reflect that it won't be many years before I have no family at all, and all the things that I treasure will end up in an estate auction or a landfill.

But when I think about such things, I am not missing the presence of a real child. I am missing the presence of a hypothetical happy, healthy child who survived to adulthood and is still speaking to me. I suppose that's the norm, but it's hardly a guarantee. The fact that it's not a guarantee is 50% of why I chose not to have children. It would be nice if raising them were like Princess Maker 2, where certain inputs lead inevitably to certain outcomes. In real life, you never know how a developing human being's psycho-biology is going to react to the most innocuous inputs--or fail to react to the most heartfelt ones. I read this harrowing account of a man's relationship with his son on Reddit four years ago and haven't gone a week without thinking about it since. That is simply not a risk I'm willing to take.

      

I would probably get the sort of daughter who spends $3,000 of my money on a leather dress.

   

Well, for a while, I got to have a virtual child whose accomplishments I could be proud of. What interests me is the qualitative difference between playing your character and playing an unseen, ephemeral character (the father) who in turn directs the action of a "child" character. Functionally, it ought to feel like the same thing. Except for the stupid butler constantly asking how I wanted to set Villainy's schedule for the month, it would be equally accurate to say that I played Villainy, particularly when she went on adventures and I controlled her avatar. But Princess Maker introduces that extra layer, and there's something oddly effective about it. After I finished with the main game, I briefly tried to engineer a "bad" outcome by assigning Villainy to work repeated shifts in a sleazy bar, increasing her "Sin" and decreasing her "Morality." That lasted only as long as she agreed to become the mistress for a middle-aged guy in exchange for a monthly stipend. I could role-play a character who did such a thing, but I didn't want to role-play the father of such a character, and particularly not a father whose own decisions had put his daughter in that kind of a situation. Weird.

        

And I'm done.

      

In my first entry on the game, I covered its basic premise and mechanics. I thought I'd give a year-by-year account of Villainy's life here:

   

Age 10

   

The game began on the girl's 10th birthday. For the first month, not knowing what I was doing, I assigned her to 10 days of combat training, 10 days of farm work, and 10 days of babysitting. The combat training improved her statistics, but it cost so much money that I spent most of the year impoverished. She wasn't strong enough to succeed at farm work. She did all right in babysitting. In subsequent months, I had her try other types of work, but she didn't bring back much money because her skills weren't very high yet.

         

That's nice, but my bank account is not.

       

I prematurely sent her into the wilderness because a video or image that I saw showed the character opening a treasure chest. I thought that might be an easy way to make some money. I had no idea how dangerous the forest was. I don't think she even had any weapons or armor; I couldn't have afforded them. She met one monster, was defeated, and had to be flown back home by Cube.

         

She should have paid attention to the sign.

     

Over the coming months, I tried to make up money by having her work, but I didn't realize how the whole stress/constitution system worked yet, so the experience just made her sick and disobedient. During the "Talk" phase, I gave her a lecture each month ("Scold"), which reduced some of the disobedience but presumably didn't do much for our relationship. She started having days of unpaid work not because she didn't have the skills for the job but because she simply refused.

   

Every October, there's a Harvest Festival in which you can enroll the girl into the combat tournament, the dance party, the art festival, or the cooking contest. I chose cooking, but I hadn't developed any of those skills, and she came in dead last.

      

Villainy goes for Star Baker.

    

As the year came to an end, my finances got worse. I scrimped to buy a club and suit of leather armor and sent Villainy out again to adventure, but she couldn't come close to defeating any enemies. When she turned 11, I didn't have enough money for a present for her. I was going into negative values every month just feeding her (this is the only debt the game lets you accrue).

     

Age 11

   

The year began without promise as a seer visited the house and predicted that Villainy would become "an ordinary housewife." But as the year passed, I got a handle on how work and training affected different skills. I was still primarily interested in getting her into fighting shape, so I had her take combat, dueling, and strategy lessons whenever I could afford it, and kept her working at jobs that built her constitution and strength otherwise.

     

Calm down. I'm still new to this fatherhood thing.

     

I had to buy her summer and winter dresses to replace the "plain dress" she had at the beginning, then remember to change her as the seasons changed, else she'd suffer a "Constitution" penalty. 

 

I upgraded her weapon to a longsword and sent her out on more adventures. She finally scored her first kill against a condor, but otherwise didn't last long in the east forest. When the Harvest Festival rolled around, I enrolled her in the combat tournament, which does this fun bracketing thing, but she lost her fist battle.

    

On the other hand, "Katana Terror" is someone you don't mind losing to.

      

Age 12

      

"Hunter" opened up as a job option, and I wasted a lot of time assigning her to it, since it improves both "Constitution" and "Combat Skill," although it increases sin. She could never make a wage at it, though, no matter how high she got in those skills. I discovered later that success at hunting depends partly on "Intelligence," which I hadn't been building.

   

I continued to send her to martial schools when I had the money. A couple of times during the year, some warlord showed up and decided to humiliate the school by stealing its standard. Villainy challenged the warlord each time, but lost the battles, and the school would get closed for a few months.

     

Wasn't this a plot point in Ultima VII?

    

But as her skills grew, she was visited by Valkyria, "the guardian of all true warriors," who gave her a further boost. 

Age 13

      

"Gravedigger" became a job, and I set her to it a couple of times, as it builds "Magical Defense" and some foes attack with magic. The seer visited again and now predicted that Villainy would become a soldier.

        

She finally started to get successful at adventuring, clearing the east forest and finding several treasure chests, which finally put my account books solidly in the black. She also cleared most of the northern glacier and southern islands. (Once the scale tips on combat, it tips fast.) She came in second in the combat tournament that year, after which random people started challenging her to duels a few times a year. Every successful duel increased her "Fighter Reputation."

     

A random fight in the street.

     

Her "Sin" went up from all the battles, so I had to keep donating to the church and having the girl work church jobs (which pays a pittance) in between her combat trainings.

   

One night while working graveyard duty, a skeleton knight came out of a grave and challenged her to combat. He ran away before she defeated him the first time, but the second time, she defeated him and got 2,539 gold pieces. This is one of several places in the game in which you get a special, large reward for completing a unique encounter. Thanks to this money and other winnings, I was able to buy her a katana and mithril armor, the best items that the store sells.

       

That was an awfully specific amount.

      

A traveling salesperson came to the house offering various artifacts. I bought Villainy the Venus Jewels. From that point, every birthday, one of Venus's minions showed up at the house and gave the girl +15 "Refinement," +15 "Charisma," and +15 "Sensitivity." She mostly squandered these boosts by working jobs that lowered the scores back to 0.

A couple years later.

     

Age 14

      

As the year began, she cleared out the western wastes. There were a couple of odd encounters there:

  

• A demon cave. When she entered, a demon confronted her and said that it "isn't a place for humans" and cast a spell that put her back outside. I'm not sure if there's any way around this.

       

It's nice that he warned me instead of killing me.

     

• A maze guarded by a dragon. He offered to let her pass for 200 gold pieces, but she chose to fight. She won easily, after which the dragon confessed he was only 13--a baby as dragons go. He slinked away. A commenter said that one of the endings has the girl marrying a young dragon; I imagine this is the one, though I don't know how it happens. She fought a couple of regular dragons in the maze and met an ancient one in the final chamber, but he was too old and tired to fight. A treasure chest held a Dragon's Fang, which increased "Fighter Reputation" by 20. 

       

I'm through doing what I'm told.

      

Back at home, a duelist named Anita Cassandra showed up at the house and proclaimed herself to be Villainy's archnemesis. "Don't come to the next Combat Tournament," she warned. "You'll only embarrass yourself." Villainy didn't take that well. 

       

A fateful meeting? She came to my house!

     

I explored the wilderness area some more and found a few things I  missed the first time. When the Harvest Festival rolled around, Villainy won the combat tournament, defeating Anita in the first round. The king gave her a Royal Sword and 3,000 gold pieces.

    

Age 15

      
Both I and Villainy were pretty pleased as to her martial accomplishments by now. I decided it was time to train her in some other areas and started enrolling her in dancing, poetry, theology, science, and particularly protocol classes, which increased her more courtly attributes like "Refinement," "Decorum," "Intelligence," and "Art." 

    

Villainy is getting a little arrogant.

    

I tried to help her out by buying a silk dress, but Cube said that--at 4'11" and 97 pounds--she was too heavy for it. I put her on a restricted diet, but it kept saying she was still too fat at 95 pounds, and the restricted diet took a toll on her constitution. I eventually gave up and put her back on normal rations.

     

Ah, yes. This happened at some point. I thought we'd encountered a "Paimon" in some previous game, but I couldn't find it.

       

As "Decorum" increased, she could visit higher and higher-ranked people at the castle, which in turn gave her boosts to reputation. I had neglected this for the first half of the game, so she struggled to catch up. I didn't want to sacrifice her strength, constitution, and martial skills, so every time they started to slip, I had her work a farm or sent her back for combat training. There wasn't much point to more adventuring, but I occasionally sent her out for money. She won the Combat Tournament again, easily.

   

Ages 16 and 17

       

I give her a book on her 16th birthday.

      

By now, she had job options to work at a sleazy bar or a cabaret. These jobs paid well and increased her "Charisma," but they lowered "Faith," "Morality," "Refinement," and "Temperament," and they increased "Sin." I only tried them once or twice. 

       

What good is sitting alone in your room?

        

Her "Decorum" got high enough that she could visit the king. 

 

All anyone wants to talk about is my father!

      

I threw myself at the War God in the northern glacier a few times, but I couldn't come close to defeating him even with my combat skill at maximum. My constitution and strength never got higher than 50% of maximum, so perhaps that was the solution.

         

I kept up the training and had her work a variety of jobs she hadn't done in the past to try to diversify her skill set. She won both combat tournaments in her final two years. I tried to enroll her in other things, but she begged to fight the tournament because of her rivalry with Anita Cassandra, and I capitulated.

   

The End

      

The endgame commenced when Villainy turned 18. The first thing I got was a letter from her tailored to the priorities that I set for her. Phrases included: "I've grown up so healthy"; "You must have been trying to make me strong in mind and body"; "I ended up becoming very good at farming."

     

I don't know why she felt compelled to write me a letter.

     

The king offered to make her a general in his army, but she declined: "I want to go out on my own into the wide world and test my strength." General Kruger (who runs the strategy school as well as the combat tournaments) made her promise to come home and tell of her adventures.

       

General Kruger might be hinting at some unresolved feelings.

     

The endgame text revealed that she had many adventures and eventually met a "kind knight" and married him and had her own daughter. Her travels took her to an eastern capital, where she destroyed a demon that was leading an army of bandits. She eventually came home, and we held a banquet in her honor.

     

She'd look relatively heroic here if her eyes weren't as large as tennis balls.

    

Finally, I was contacted by the angel who gave me the girl in the first place. She congratulated me and thanked me on fine parenting skills and ran through the final outcome:

• Villainy had become a hero.
• She performed well at her work.
• She found a good husband.
• Her maternal instincts leave something to be desired.
• The angel had planned to recall the girl to the heavens, but has decided to let her live a mortal life.

           

Maybe give her the choice? Or would that be too revolutionary for this game?

    

I then got a final score sheet that recapped her endgame attributes but also had a bunch of statistics I hadn't seen before showing that she had a very low maternal instinct, a very low "relationship with father," a high "relationship with butler," and absolutely no "relationship with Prince," who I didn't even know existed. To be fair, I didn't take her on many vacations, take her out to many meals, buy her many presents, or even talk to her very often. I mostly let "time off" handle stress-reduction instead of those other possibilities.

   

And I think I'm going to leave it there. I know some commenters wanted to see me run through it again, maybe more than once, but a full game takes at least 4 hours, even if you're quick about it. I don't want to spend that much more time on a game that's not really an RPG; it just weirdly has an RPG embedded in it as an option. I wonder if there are any other games like this, like if Fallout 4 wasn't an RPG, but I still felt I had to play and rate it because of the Grognak game you can play on the Pip-Boy.

       

Call us a bunch of Victorian prudes, but I'm glad this wouldn't fly in the U.S.

     

I can tell from online sources that there are 74 potential endings depending on your morality score, sin score, and various reputations. If you didn't get any reputation very high, I guess you end up working for the rest of your life at whatever job you worked most. If you got any of your attributes high enough but not any of the reputations, you can be anything from a maid to a ruling queen.

   

If you got a reputation high like I did with "Fighter Reputation," you end up with a job that reflects that reputation as well as some other attributes. "Hero" was the highest possible job I could have gotten on the warrior track, so that was pretty good for my first time out. But it's because I took lessons that brought my "Sensitivity" high. If I hadn't done that, I would have ended up as a general or a lower position like a knight or soldier. "Bounty Hunter" is the lowest you can go on the fighter track, and that's only if your morality is low.

        

He says, just before I defeat him.

       

There are separate ranks of jobs for characters who specialized in magic (from sorceress to magician hero), social skills (divorcee to queen by marriage), and art (dancer to jester). There is only one final job for a character who specialized in domestic skills: housewife.

   

There are a variety of "dark" endings if you have a high "Sin" score at the end, from "harlot" to "princess of darkness," with "bandit," "crime boss," and "bondage queen" along the way. 

  

I guess the girl's marriage prospects are quasi-independent of her job. To marry the prince and fulfill the title of the game, she has to meet the "young officer" at the castle every January, get a charisma over 200, and get a high "Refinement" score. She can also end up marrying Cube if she has a high enough charisma and relationship with him, and yes, if her relationship with her father is strong enough, she can (yuck) end up marrying him. The John Jarndyce jokes write themselves.

      

I don't know why the game often depicted her with one eye open and one eye closed.

     

I found the game cute. It's not the sort of game I'm addicted to, and I don't really want to play more of them, but it was an okay diversion for a few hours.

   

For the GIMLET, I decided to rate the totality of the game rather than just the "RPG part" of the game.

     

• 2 points for a generic game world that you don't learn very much about.

• 7 points for character creation and development. It's really the raison d'etre of the entire series. There are many statistics to manage, and together they determine success or failure at a variety of enterprises.

    

I wonder what kind of dance they're doing. I think I've seen that move before.

    

• 2 points for NPC interaction. The NPCs you meet in the wilderness don't really tell you anything interesting, and there isn't much to do with the folks at the castle. I'm regarding everyone else as "encounters."

• 5 points for encounters and foes. The enemies are nothing special, but the game deserves quite a bit of credit for the large variety of non-combat encounters that test the character's mettle.

      

That's a pretty cool dragon.

      

• 2 points for magic and combat. With essentially only one physical attack option, one magical attack option, and no other options, it's hard to give much credit here.

• 4 points for equipment. You have one weapon, one suit of armor, and a decent variety of artifact items that affect your statistics in various ways.

     

Villainy's stuff, around mid-game.

     

• 8 points for the economy. The game has almost everything I like here: Several ways to make money, several ways to spend money, and no point at which money stops being useful.

• 4 points for quests. The only quest is to end the game in as good a position as possible, but there are plenty of options for how to do that, and plenty of endings.

     

It's not a "quest," exactly, but Villainy completes a personal goal.

      

• 5 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics are nice. I wish the girl looked like a real person instead of a cartoon character, but otherwise the monster portraits and other NPC portraits were well-composed, as was the opening and closing artwork. The interface had redundant mouse and keyboard commands and flowed nicely. I give no points for the sound, which I mostly didn't experience because of the incessant, pounding music that couldn't be turned off independently. When I forced myself to leave it on just to listen for effects, there weren't enough to bother talking about.

• 6 points for gameplay. It points for the right difficulty level, just about the right length, and replayability. However, I suspect that successful games of any type look very similar to each other, and thus setting the girl's schedule month after month must get awfully boring after just a couple of games. I couldn't even bring myself to do it twice.

        

I wonder if this number is the same in the original Japanese.

      

That gives us a relatively high 45. If you told me a month ago that something called Princess Maker 2 would end up in the top 10% of games for 1993, I'd have said you were crazy. Again, though, I'm being a little generous. If I had just ranked the adventuring and combat part of the game independently, the score would have come out closer to 25. I don't mean for this entry to set a precedent for how I handle any further games of a different genre that happen to have an embedded RPG. I do hope there are not a lot of them.

   

I say that knowing that there will be at least one more. Gainax followed Princess Maker 2 with Princess Maker: Legend of Another World (1995), Princess Maker: Fairy Tales Come True (1997), Princess Maker: Go!Go! Princess (1999), and Princess Maker 5 (2007). Of these, MobyGames tags only the 1995 and 1997 games as RPGs, and the 1995 one was released only for the SNES. I don't know whether this is a case of different contributors having different standards, or whether the later games really do drop the adventuring/combat/RPG elements. 

   

MobyGames lists a small number of other combinations between "human life simulator" and RPG, including Real Lives (2002), some ports of The Sims 2 (2005), Kudos 2 (2008), Long Live the Queen (2012), and Her. (2018; the period is part of the title, apparently). However, this is a mashing of genres for which I expect personal opinion will create wildly inconsistent results as to RPG status. 

 

Centauri Alliance: Fist of Legend

 

The galaxy and its travel routes.

 

Unable to fix my problem with the Commodore 64 version, I restarted with the Apple II version and did not have the same problem. I made a new party with the same classes but different names. After loading up at the inventory shop, I decided to head out without grinding.

   

The starport at Lunabase had flights to Chronum, Epsilon Indi, and Veladron II. I wasted a bunch of time visiting each system (fortunately, flights do not cost any money) and making my own galaxy map before I remembered that the game had come with a map.

      

One of these is real, and it's not the one I would have expected.

     

I could get to all of the systems except for Kappa Var, which is "off limits due to civil uprisings." A member of the High Council named Renfrew signed the order. I assume I'll have to find a way to countermand it eventually.

   

At the Alliance Headquarters on Omicron, I got my first mission: investigate local smuggler activity "connected with the Daynab invasion." This isn't quite what the backstory told me (assassinate a Donsai mercenary captain who has been selling secrets to the Daynabs), but I suppose it relates.

       

Why is this man speaking to me in sentence fragments?

     

I set out mapping the 16 x 16 map of Omicron VII. The headquarters, starport, armory, and medical bay are all in the same section. The rest of the map is mostly empty. Before long, I had enough experience points to level up. The game tracks experience points by counting down from the number you need for the next level, which in some ways is nice, except that if you hit 0, any further combats are wasted until you level up. Unable to find a training academy on Omicron VII, I took a shuttle back to Lunabase and leveled up there, a process I repeated several times during this session. It's rather annoying. I also settled on the system of giving each character a point in his primary skill on even levels and other useful skills on odd levels. 

       

My map of Omicron VII. The unused areas annoy me, but I tested for secret doors.

           

As I mentioned last time, one of the game's oddities is that you don't get money from regular combats (although you can find equipment that you can sell). Instead, you get a salary when you level up. I soon had enough money for combat armor for all characters. I haven't investigated different sidearms yet since the 9mm options (Berettas and Uzis) work just fine and use interchangeable ammunition. I also experimented with shield belts, which are limited use items that add to your "Shield" score every time they're used, somewhat like the "Shield" spell in The Magic Candle games. You don't lose hit points until the shield value is depleted. 

    

The southwest corner of Omicron has a door with a sign that says: "Trader Drake's. No public admittance. Intruders will be severely punished." Beyond it is a series of 1 x 1 rooms leading to a stairway down. I eventually took this path and found myself in a new area of different textures. As I moved forward, I tripped some kind of alarm.

      

That's a bit of a cliche.

     

Despite the warning, I didn't encounter many battles on the level. The few that I fought had slightly different enemies than in the spaceport, but not harder. Enemies in this game are original to the game, and thus you have to learn about them slowly, taking careful notes lest you confuse Sandralks and Skarvaks or Hydraens and Hydraen Lions. There are also plenty of generic androids, mercenaries, slavers, smugglers, and warriors. The most annoying enemy so far has been the Skarvak, who has the ability to summon a new creature every round, although the party gets a chance to "disbelieve" it. Hydraens and their lions are also to be avoided as they have a breath attack. 

      

A Skarvak creates an illusory monster.

     

Health does not restore automatically, and there is no way to sleep or rest in the game. If you want to heal, you either have to visit the medical bay and pay for healing, find a Healing Pill (these have been rare so far), or cast healing spells. Fortunately, psionic points do regenerate, at a rate of 1 every 30 seconds at 100% speed. I've been running at 200%, but I figure that means I fight random battles more often, so it all evens out.

   

The area below the Omicron spaceport had two levels. On the first, I found the aforementioned Trader Drake's, a black market shop with better stuff than spaceport armories. I bought a Balrog Blade, the best melee weapon I've found so far, and riot helmets for all my characters. I exchanged my combat armor for "Berserker Frames," which seem to be a combination of armor and shield belts; that is, they offer some inherent protection but also have a limited number of uses in which they increase your "Shield" value. I upgraded my human's Uzi to a Viking 9mm, but I left most of my other characters with Berettas because they have a range of 4 hexes to the Uzi/Viking's 2.

     

I love that he seems to be posing for a photo.

     

As I explored the mostly-empty level, I started to miss the messages scrawled on the walls in The Bard's Tale. I eventually encountered two, although described more organically (and thus realistically) here than in those early 1980s games:

   

• A filing room with a stack of papers. One of them says: "This base has withstood both ALLIANCE and DAYNAB intrusion. Info code: FRACYTR." I'm not sure what to make of it. It doesn't sound like it's referring to Omicron VII, which is owned by the Alliance.

• Scratched into the wall of a prison cell: "Captain Erkhardt, Alliance forces. Daynab clearance is Vindicate. All I could find before captured."

        

It beats IRKM DESMET DAEM.

      

Moving down to the second level, we almost immediately ran across a "strange mechanoid" with the numbers on its chest. The game gave me a chance to input a number. There turned out to be five of these encounters on the level, and I'm happy to say that I got all the (fairly easy) number sequence puzzles correct. After each correct answer, the robot powered down, and I was able to take a treasure that it guarded. The sequences were:

      

• 2-4-16
• 32-16-8
• 1-4-7
• 10-7-4
• 4-12-36

Who do we appreciate?

      

The first one could have a couple of interpretations, but I chose the correct one (each number squares the one before). The treasures that they gave up were five pieces of a hand, each labeled "Fractyr"--specifically, Fractyr Finger 1, Fractyr Finger 2, Fractyr Finger 3, Fractyr Pinky, and Fractyr Thumb.

   

I don't know what to make of them, but a computer on the same level gave a clue. It gave me a chance to put in a codeword, and I chose FRACTYR. "The Palm is on Andrini," it said. "The 5 fingers are currently under guard on Omicron. Sources indicate that the Fist has been damaged and cannot function at full power." It then took me a while to get out of the computer interface because it kept asking me for keywords. No key would exit the interface, and neither did obvious words like QUIT or BYE, until I finally got it with EXIT.

        

I'm glad there was no password protection on this computer.

      

I realized later that the manual mentions the "Fractyr Fist," and I just forgot. It's an artifact of an ancient race that can devastate enemy armies with "sonic blasts and crushing blows." It was "used to decisively affect the outcome of the Bernard Conflict" a couple hundred years ago, at which point it was broken and lost. "The enemy's interest in the Fist is obvious," the report concludes. "A functional artifact of its caliber would do much to aid their cause." You know what else would do a good job with sonic blasts and crushing blows? A bomb. This is one of many situations in which I feel the game forgets its genre. That I'm fighting enemies with a "Balrog Blade" is another.

Either way, there wasn't anything else to do in the dungeons, and I was at 0 needed experience, so I headed back up to the surface, fleeing from as many battles as I could along the way.

Back at the starport, the Alliance headquarters didn't acknowledge that I'd done or found anything. I was hoping they'd take the five pieces off my hands so I wouldn't have to clutter my inventory with them. Every character only gets 8 spaces, so these pieces are taking up 10% of my available space.

   

I guess I'm off to Andrini next. I had hoped to get further with the game this session, but it's a bit slow-going, particularly with the battles, and I had a busy week. I think I might forgo manual mapping in the future and just take screenshots of the automap, perhaps with a few annotations.

     

Time so far: 5 hours

Playing out of: Still duty. This game would be acceptable as one's only game for a while, but it doesn't offer much in comparison to its peers.

Futurewar and Brief BRIEFs: Adventure Creator (1984) and Jajamaru Gekimaden: Maboroshi no Kinmajō (1990)

I managed to make it to Position #3. The only two characters above me are creations of the game's author.

     

Between Wednesday and Friday, I had to watch about 8 hours of interesting but not engrossing video, and I knew I could do it alongside a game that required a little mapping but not much concentration. Futurewar seemed perfect for that. I was confident that with another 8 hours invested in the game, I'd be able to show you the winning screen, and we could all move on. Instead, the game managed to chew up and spit out about a dozen characters, ultimately leaving me not much further than when I originally reported on the game a few weeks ago.

    

The pattern was predictable: I'd roll up a character, march out of the base, and start mapping some section of the dungeon that I'd not yet explored. I'd get up to character Level 3 or 4, maybe find a couple of good pieces of equipment. Then an enemy would pop up--usually a "worleyman"--surprise me, and get four attacks before I could even respond. My attempts to shoot him would all miss, and my attempts to flee would all fail. My hit points would descend alarmingly, and inevitably I'd get the "you have died" message. 

     

      

I'd erupt out of my chair, fists ready to fly, and have to remind myself that the monitor is just a dumb device. I'd scream a few obscenities, shut down the game, and vow to spend the rest of my video-watching time mapping the corridors of Centauri Alliance instead. After 10 minutes, I'd calm down, launch the terminal emulator again, and roll a new character.

   

Compounding the difficulty of the game is that encounters are not random. Once a dungeon level is completely cleared, it is re-seeded with enemies and mines. This is the best time to launch a new character because there are plenty of encounters close to the home base, where you'll need to frequently retreat for healing and restocking of ammunition. But as you clear these enemies, you have to move farther from the home base. If your character then dies, a new Level 0 character has to start on a dungeon level in which the first encounter is a few minutes away. This isn't dangerous (as long as you've mapped) because once cleared, corridors are safe. But it does take a lot of extra time. 

    

My map of the "American" level.

      

Finally, just a few hours ago, I managed to get a character relatively stabilized. Finding a bullet-proof vest (and remembering to put it on) was a key part of it. I almost have all of the first five levels mapped and I'm ready to take on the War Zone again. Since I blogged about the game last time, author Erik Witz wrote to me and agreed that the man-beasts were far too hard, and he either removed or nerfed them.

      

The vest is a game-changer.

     

So I'm going to keep at it and hopefully have something to report in another week or so. In the meantime, here are a couple of brief BRIEFs.

   

Time so far: 13 hours

   

****

     

        

Adventure Creator

United States

Spinnaker Software Corp. (developer and publisher)

Released 1984 for Atari 800 and Commodore 64

Rejected for: No character development

      

Adventure Creator is an extremely basic game writer in which you can create a custom dungeon (theoretically, anyway; I couldn't get that feature to work) or play a randomly-generated maze. Your goal in either case is to collect a certain amount of treasure or a certain type of treasure. You do this by making your way through a maze of monsters, obstacles, and treasure chests, avoiding (as best as possible) the first two and opening the third before your energy runs out. Obstacles blink in and out of existence, and you take constant damage if you're touching them. Monsters wander in fixed patterns and either damage you or knock you back to the other side of the area.

      

Getting through the maze.

      

Your only help is an inventory of ferrets, hobbles, nippers, torches, and shields, all of which do different things to monsters or obstacles (e.g., shields make you invulnerable to both; hobbles freeze monsters), none of which involve killing anything. Despite the fact that the adventurer is shown with a sword, you don't slay the monsters you come across. Some of them will even trade with you for better items. You also don't get any better during the dungeon run, just worse. It thus isn't an RPG by my definitions. I won a game anyway, because it's relatively easy and quick. 

          

Lots of obstacles in this room. They flash on and off.

       

The interface drives me crazy. It's all joystick except the "T" key, which rotates you through the different items in your inventory. For the millionth time, I cannot get into the mind of a developer who requires a joystick and requires the player to sit within reach of the keyboard. If you have to use the keyboard anyway, why not just map the game's five items, all of which start with a different letter, to separate letters?

       

Won!

         

The game is noteworthy for its author, Dale Disharoon, a prolific designer, programmer, and executive who transitioned right about this time between educational games and adventure games. He also transitioned the spelling of his last name to "DeSharone," a name adventure gamers will recognize from Below the Root (1984), Alice in Wonderland (1985), and the Magic Tales series (1995-1996). His last credit is 2005's Chris Moneymaker's World Poker Championship, a few years before he died of leukemia.

 

You knew it wasn't going to be good anyway because of the Title Interchangeability Rule.

            

Cambridge-based Spinnaker Software Corporation, I should mention, is notable for taking out a full-page ad in the March 1990 Computer Gaming World to promote Star Tribes; Myth of the DragonLord, a "futuristic role-playing adventure of epic proportions" that was never released, meaning we will not encounter them again. Though simple, Adventure Creator was remembered fondly enough by one fan that he created a modern remake. You can find more about Dale DeSharone from a 2012 HardcoreGaming101 article.

*******

I'll take their word for it on the translation, but it doesn't feel like there are that many words in the Japanese version.

      

Jajamaru Gekimaden: Maboroshi no Kinmajō

Japan

Jaleco (developer and publisher)

Released 1990 for NES

Rejected for: No character development 

      

Jajamaru--sometimes stylized JaJaMaru--debuted unnamed in a 1983 arcade game called Ninja-kun ("Ninja Kid"; there was an earlier unrelated MSX game of the same name). As I understand from this HardcoreGaming101 article, Jaleco was hired to port the arcade version to the NES, and they decided to develop the kid into their own IP, naming him "Jajamaru" along the way. He showed up next in Ninja Jajamaru-kun (1985), Jajamaru no Daibōken (1986), and Rad Action (1987), all side-scrolling action platformers.

But with the success of Dragon Quest (1987), Jaleco apparently decided to thrust Jajamaru into the same arena. Jajamaru Ninpō Chō (1989), which most sites list as an RPG, has the kid run through a top-down landscape, talk to NPCs, and find gold, often with the kidnapped Princess Sakura in tow. I don't have a strong opinion as to whether it's an RPG, as I've only been able to look at Japanese language versions. I'm told it has experience and leveling, and combat takes place on a Dragon Quest-like turn-based screen. When Gekimaden came up on a random roll, I did try to look at Jajamaru Ninpō Chō first, but the only English patch I could find didn't work with NEStopia (something the patch site warned about), and there's a limit to how much effort I'm going to put in for a console game.

     

The interface shows hit points, gold, and spell points but doesn't say anything about experience points.

     

In any event, most sites also list the next game, Gekimaden, as an RPG, too. Having played admittedly not much of it, I disagree. Where Ninpō Chō (1989) cloned Dragon Quest, Gekimaden clones Zelda, losing most of the features that made it an RPG. I don't see any sign of experience and leveling, nor do I see any mention of them in descriptions of the game, just possible increases to maximum health and magic power. I require leveling in some kind of skill or attribute to call a game an RPG. Combat now takes place on the main game map and is all action-oriented, with Jajamaru wielding a variety of weapons against enemies that bob and weave around him, again just like Zelda. 

     

Fighting samurai-like enemies.

      

The plot has something to do with monsters invading a land and kidnapping (again!) Princess Sakura. There's talk about the return of a Great Demon. One of the princess's subjects manages to make his way to Jajamaru's monastery, carrying the Holy Mandala. He explains that the demon's return can be stopped by collecting the spirits of 8 mini-bosses in the region. Jajamaru's master gives the Mandala to him and charges him with rescuing the princess and stopping the Great Demon.

     

A villager visits the ninja clan.

      

I guess maybe Jajamaru gains new powers with every mini-boss he traps in the Mandala, but I still don't consider it an RPG if character development comes at defined intervals without player agency. Descriptions indicate that the world is nonlinear but the plot is linear; you need items from each area before you can successfully complete the next one. The land is populated with NPCs who give one-line hints when you crash into them, and you can buy weapon upgrades and usable items like bombs at stores.

  

I don't know. You know how I feel about playing squat, child-like protagonists in toy games with repetitive music. I admit I'm predisposed to see games like this as non-RPGs just because they don't satisfy anything that I'm looking for with RPGs, even if they could squeak by definition-wise.

   

The character continues to appear in entries right up to the present day, but most sites agree that later releases are just straight action games.