Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 392: The History of Koei, the Koei of History

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

By patron request of Christopher Hansen, Jeremy Parish sets the Wayback Machine to sengoku-era Japan, sangoku-era China, and, uh, the airline business to discuss Koei's legacy of historic sim games with Aaron Littleton and Mat Bradley-Tschirgi. Art: Nick Wanserski; edits: Greg Leahy Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

Canadians were nice. Some say we're too nice. We are also being way too nice to AI. And it turns out being nice to AI uses up a lot of energy, which means every please, thank you, sorry that we feed to AI is kind of a waste of power. So Kit Kat is asking Canadians to have a break from politeness to AI because being nice to AI just isn't worth the energy. Besides, less time engaging with artificial intelligence means more time enjoying a kid cat. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. This week in Retronauts, the most romantic episode ever. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts episode 391. I looked it up in advance this time. I know the number.

It's 391. This is a patron request episode and a patron exclusive episode. It's all patrons all the way down, kind of like Discworld, but instead of turtles, it's patrons. This episode comes to us by request of someone pseudonymous. sometimes they emailed me as Chris Hansen and sometimes as AAK. And I don't think either of those are actually their real name. But whatever the case, this person asked more than a year ago for us to talk about Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

And that's what we're doing tonight, many, many moons later. This has been a long, a long brewing episode, one that's been a great challenge to make it come together just because it's really hard to find retronauts regulars who want to talk about Romance of the Three Kingdoms or KoA games in general. It's, you know, even, even one of the old Retronauts veterans who is many times talked about Romance of the Three Kingdoms and other Koi games when I asked him, he was like, I, yeah, I can't do that. So it's challenging because I'm not good at these games.

I suck immensely at all of Coe's games, the action games, the simulation games, the romance games, the porn games. I'm just terrible at all of them. And so we're just going to kind of wing it. But thankfully, thankfully, I was able to put out a call for help through the Greenlit Podcast Network's Slack. And two heroes stepped up to save the day. We are the, oh, I forgot their names. It's like Lou Bay and Guan Yu and someone else. We're like the three brothers of podcasting right here.

We've sworn a sacred vow, and now we're going to take down satsau. So please, gentlemen, introduce yourselves. Let's start with the newcomer to the show, someone who's never been on retronauts before. Yeah, I'm Matt Bradley Shurgi. My show in the Greenlit Podcast Network is called Sequelcast 2 and Friends. We look at movies in a franchise, one film at a time, and we also have kind of a sister series on the same feed that look called Sierra Quest, looking at all the Sierra Online Adventure Games

and the terrible pits you fall into as you play those games. All right. And also joining us again, I believe, let me double check this just so I don't get things out of sequence. But I believe you have recently been on Retronauts making

your debut in, oh no, that's the next episode. Oh, we're going asynchronous. So making a tech technical Retronaut's debut. Please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Aaron Littleton, and I keep myself going by imagining a juicy plum,

which is a quote from Romance of the Three Kingdoms Eight. I felt like it was a video game reference of some sort, but I really wasn't sure where that was going. Okay. So I'm mostly interested in how you can be bad at a porn game. How do you fail at a porn? That feels like that's kind of your issue. I don't think that's the porn games issue. She never took off her clothes.

No, I don't know. I was researching Koeh. And early in the company's history, like when they were first getting started, they made, you know, just all kinds of games. And they did make a handful of pornographic games. This was in like 1983, 84. And many years later, when someone asked the company founder about that, he seemed very embarrassed. I was like, you know, you have to try everything once, but it's one of those topics that they're happy to leave in the past. They have not made a porn game since 84. And I've never actually played one of them. I was just being funny. Yeah, I was, I was wondering, I know we're going to probably, oh man, I hate to start off right with the porn games, but since it was so early in there, in the existence of Koi, and it was pretty much the founder and his wife that were, that we're running Coe at that point.

I almost wonder if they're not like some kind of, you know, wholesome married couple porn games because I didn't look them up either. But like in my mind. One of them has the word Lolita in the title. Okay. Yeah, no, that's, I'm thinking maybe not. Okay, probably not. But yeah, like, it was it was the Wild West or the Wild East, I guess.

And they were, they were sorting things out. But the thing about Coet is actually pretty early on, they did sort things out. We're talking this episode, obviously, about romance of the Three Kingdoms. The first of those games came along in 1985, but Koei really kind of jumped right into simulation games in 1981 with Kawa Nakajima no Tatakai, which is a war sim based on the battle of Kawa Nakajima. I don't know anything about that battle, but I assume it was, I don't know, like, uh,

World War II or maybe some other time before that. Someone added to the notes here in green. That would be, who was that? That was Aaron. Tell us all about the battle of Kauai Nakajima. Well, like I said, it was the first game that Koe made. It was on a sharp MZ computer and he programmed it. Everything by himself.

I think it was something he wanted to do with a birthday present that his wife gave him, which at this point, it seems kind of apocryphal to say that, but maybe that's the story. I don't know. No, I mean, that story, you know, reading through various histories and wikis about Koe's past and interviews, the founder of the company, Yoichi Erikawa, whose alias for a long time was Ko Shibusawa,

got his start taking an interest in computers in the late 70s, early 80s, because his family owned a textile dye business in a rural area of Japan, and it collapsed in the late 70s. And basically, I think the idea was he would inherit that business, and then there was nothing to inherit. So he started to look to computers and business software. And his wife, Keiko, gave him a sharp MZ computer as a birthday gift. And he, I think, got into video gaming and was like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to make business applications? No, I'm going to make video.

games yeah i do think the battle was was not um would not be considered a modern battle uh i read about it some time ago and i want to i want to say it was uh it may have even come from the same era as uh the nobunaga games were set um but it was not with with guns i do believe it was it was a battle with you know swords and horses and spears and that sort of thing and the game itself is very much about um essentially small unit tactics and positioning of units on the battlefield. You can still play this, apparently. They re-released it as a part of the DLC

of Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13, the Fame and Strategy Expansion Pack. I don't know how easy it is to get that in the U.S. because there are a lot of Romance of the Three Kingdoms games that are technically available on Steam, and I don't know for sure which ones have English patches and which do not. I think received an official release.

That was just this previous generation of games. Right. So at this point, I think, I think Koe has been localizing their kind of mainline strategy games for quite a while since, maybe since like Romance of Three Kingdoms 11. I think they haven't missed one since, you know, for like the past 15 years or so. Yeah. So that, I would assume that would be available. You know, I just find this series so intimidating because each. game is basically like, hey, here's your life for the next few months.

And there's so many of them. Like at this point, you know, it's all kind of covering the same ground, which we'll talk about, like the same basic, uh, historic territory, but each of them, you know, takes a different approach. It adds new mechanics. It adds new variables. Some of them allow you to, you know, diverge very wildly from history. And, you know, some of them.

have like an organic approach to that and some of them have a just like hey you know what just go for it like this is a whole separate thing just do it and it's it's impressive but it's intimidating and you know you mentioned that um you know this original like the company's first game basically was was included as an expansion to one of their more recent games but i i think the kind of unique nature of co-e which is that it's still owned by the husband and wife who founded the company, like 45 years ago, there is a real sense of heritage and a sense of, for lack of a better word, I guess, the idea that, you know, the history there is actually important, unlike so many companies that are just like, oh, yeah, we made some stuff, but we're

not selling it anymore, buy our new stuff, and also, you know, buy all the downloads for it, and, you know, pays for some microtransactions, and they just never look back. Koei has been very good, you know, very active about remaking, republishing its games, especially some of its formative titles that, you know, helped establish the company in the early 80s and mid-80s. And so as a result, yeah, like, you know, if you are into Koe, it's pretty easy to really kind of experience the span of Koe's history because the company is really, I think, has a lot of affection for what has come before and a lot of respect for the foundations on which their current, very successful business is based.

Well, and even in the 80s and part of the 90s, you know, Coe was releasing stuff in the U.S. on PC, like Romance to the Three Kingdoms and Nubanaga's ambition. They might have been in CGA, might have looked, you know, a lot uglier than what we got later on Ness and SNS. But they always did a good job of having things available on different systems. And as you mentioned, just having such a rich history. of titles they could release a new version of every year and try different spin-offs to appeal to Western markets.

Yeah, that was something I found especially interesting when looking at some of the earlier co-a titles that came to the U.S. is they are very unabashedly Asian both in the production and in the setting in a way

that I think in the 80s you still had a little bit of hesitancy from the gaming media as a whole to sort of hide the fact that a lot of it was originating in Japan, at least the consoles at the time, Nintendo especially. And it didn't do that at all.

Like it's certainly, like you were playing a Japanese game set in China, and that was definitely something that it advertised pretty heavily. And I think that's continued through a lot of Coe's history, and is that they are

very clear about the fact that these are games set in a specific place, in a specific time, and they're reverent of, the history itself, not just their own history. Yeah, I think the company's focus, you know, not exclusively, but heavily on Asian history, not just Japanese history, which a lot of Japanese companies, game developers do, but also Chinese history, which is very uncommon in Japanese gaming.

You know, I think that's been a real strength for them, both, you know, in their desire to expand, And, you know, both into the West and into China. They were one of the first Japanese companies to really make inroads into China. And a lot of that has to do with Romance of the Three Kingdoms because the Chinese audience was like, whoa, people are making a game about like basically the most beloved novel in, you know, our thousands of years of history. Like, this is a formative work of our culture. And apparently, you know, before the country. company started making official inroads into China, their games were already being propagated throughout, you know, different Chinese territories with unofficial translations and patches and

that sort of thing. And, you know, the audience there just loved it. They were, they were like, wow, you know, here's some really great adaptations of something that we know inside out and it treats it with respect and handles it in an interesting way. And at the same time, you know, the 80s, there was the, the very marked xenophobia toward, not so much toward Asian things, but specifically toward Japanese things. And you definitely saw a lot of that in gaming, you know, Chris Stossel or, sorry, John Stossel, freaking out about Nintendo is taking over your children's brains or whatever in the late 80s. But at the same time, the kind of approach that Koe Games took to Asian and Japanese history was not the kind that really

set off alarms for most Americans. It was like, you know, Nobunaga's ambition kind of falls into the same sort of historical text that something like James Clavel's Shogun did. You know, it's, it feels, I guess, far enough removed from the, the current circumstances of, of, uh, Japanese business encroaching into the U.S. that people didn't necessarily think, oh, my God, you know, they're going to buy my company and put me out of a job or whatever, you know. They're going to put Detroit out of business making cheap import cars.

Like, you didn't look at Nobunaga's ambition and think, oh, Toyota, you thought like, oh, here's, you know, like ancient samurai warriors and ninjas and stuff, fighting. And, you know, it's the sort of thing we like to watch, you know, on Saturday afternoons, on the UHF or VHF, no, UHF, yeah, channels, you know, just like, we'll turn on TV and there's a Kung Fu movie with David Caridine. This was kind of the same, like it fell into the same sort of space, I guess, in the minds of most Americans.

That's my impression anyway. Yeah, I think there's an element of the audience they were courting with these games as well. I went back and tried to find the, like, the review of the. the first romance of the Three Kingdoms game in computer gaming world and to my surprise the review was written by Dave Arnison who is the co-creator

of Dungeons and Dragons it's not like a great review he's mostly most the review is focused on like how to win the game like strategies he found effective but there is some amount of like game critique in there as well and

you know Arnison he was part of TSR at the time and he was a war gamer and that was certainly something that was a tabletop war gaming that is and that was certainly something that um appealed to you know if not like a adult audience than a more mature audience than you might find for a lot of titles that were on like the NES at the time um so I think it was positioning itself as something for that audience and Arneson even says in the review he recommends the game to quote all serious game

players. So, hey, if you don't like Romance of the Three Kingdoms, you're not a serious game. Oh, no. I'm just a gamer with a lowercase G. And you look at the box art for all these games, even in the old computer versions, and it has in big font, number one seller in Japan. And I don't know if that was something to encourage sales or what, but it seems like a strange thing to put on there. But on the other hand, if you're in a store and you see something called Nubanaga's ambition and you're in the United States, you might not know what that means or what it is. have these very detailed paintings as the cover art and that they used for the PC and even the Ness games and all that. And it definitely looked at it was going to an older audience in computer gaming world,

especially back then, was so heavily focused on war games and RPGs to a lesser extent than other genres. It's almost like the other genres didn't count. Yeah, I think if you look back in kind of the mid to late 80s, you see a lot of games, at least on NES, I don't know so much about the other platforms, but on NES, you definitely saw a lot of games that had the little corner, you know, a little triangle on the top right corner that would basically broadcast how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of copies of this game sold in Japan.

I mean, off the top of my head, I can think of Grottius, Load Runner. Let's see. Oh, there, geez, I'm totally blinking. out now. I want to say the Tecmo games did that. CoA games definitely did that. There were a few others that would just be like, whoa, Japan love this game. It's got to be good enough for you too. They're so sophisticated over there. But at the time, the American gaming, like console gaming market was very wobbly. It was just getting back on its feet after taking a real slobber knocker to the chin, thanks to Atari and all the

the third parties that dragged the Atari market down. And at the same time, you know, video games were thriving in Japan on consoles with the Famicom and other systems. So that was like an easy kind of bullet point for marketing was to say, you know, like this is an untested market over here. It's uncharted waters, if you will. But over in Japan, like, you know, the business is booming and this game has sold. hundreds of thousands of copies. So, you know, it's popular. It's successful. If it's good enough

for all those players on the other side of the planet, you're probably going to like it too. So before we get into talking about some of Koe's games, specifically Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but also some of the others, I do want to kind of go over the timeline, the critical timeline of Koe games, which has shifted somewhat over the years. It used to be almost entirely war gaming, but has shifted more to the Muso games in later years. And also, you know, having acquired Tecmo in 2009 or so, that also changed the balance of their games. They just published a really bad remastering, if you want to call it that, of the Ninja Guidon trilogy for modern platforms. And apparently, even the really powerful platforms, not just Switch. They all kind of suck, which is a shame. But that's not, you know, I don't think indicative of kind of what Koi focuses on.

They do a lot of collaborations now. they do things like, hey, let's combine Nobunaga's ambition with Pokemon. Why not? It's so weird, but it works. So the company has definitely evolved and steadily grown bigger through a very sort of conservative business approach. They never really branched too far outside of their comfort zone, but they do push the boundaries and explore new areas and, you know, kind of gradually end up making things like the legend of the Zelda, where Link is killing 100,000 moblins with, you know, a single swing of a sword, which is a long way from Kawanakajima No Tatakai or Nobunaga's ambition, you know, like ancient Japanese war simulations. Yeah, I think that that slow change is a way of business that Koea iterates slowly on systems that it builds. If you look at at Nobunaga's

ambition. If you look at the original romance of the Three Kingdoms, you can tell there's a lot of DNA shared between those games, maybe not exactly. And I certainly have never taken a look at the source code, but you could imagine a world where there's a lot of resources, at least programmatically shared between those two games. And each subsequent game, at least in the Romance of the Three Kingdom series, seems to build, at least in the more classic era, build pretty directly on top of the previous one. You're right earlier in saying it covers a lot of the same

ground at least historically or through story-wise, but there is this iterative growth process on these games that probably has more to do with money, I would think, or at least at the beginning had a lot to do with money

because they would not have to develop a whole new game. They could just sort of add on to it and release a second title. And I think, I think it allowed them to function as a small team, but still release a large number of titles in a relatively short amount of time. Yeah, looking over their sort of CV, I was really surprised by how frequently they were releasing games, you know, early on. Like, these games, I have to assume they were, you know, mostly developed by the same kind of groups of people. So, you know, I think they had some kind of internal teams even early on.

But even so, like, I don't think they were spending a huge amount of time on these games. It probably, you know, takes more time to master romance of the Three Kingdoms than to create it. But you go back to 1981. That was their first game. We mentioned that before. Kawa Nakajima, no, Tatakai, the Battle of Kawa Nakajima. And then, you know, around the same time, they pretty much immediately followed up with those porn games I mentioned. And that was, you know, very early on.

And they got that out of their system, sewed their wild oats, as it were. And in 1983, released the first Nobunaga's Ambition game. And, you know, the interesting thing about these early games is that it wasn't exclusive to a system. They released these games for a lot of systems. Like, basically, if you could purchase a PC in Japan, you could buy a COA sim for that system. Yeah, I would think that might fit right in with that idea that they really try and maximize profit out of the amount of work that they do.

I mean, if there is a, if there's a path to releasing a game on another system that hits, you know, another segment of the market and it's, you know, less work than producing a whole new title. Like, why not do that? If you're going to recoup your money and you're a small company at scrabbling for every yen, why not like exploit what you've done and I mean I'm not I'm certainly not trying to cast any sort of shadow on them or speak illy of them I think that's just even in modern times I think you can see that approach well and by today's standards a lot of the sequel the early sequels to things like nubanaga's ambition and romance the three kingdoms would be considered something closer to what would be DLC or an expansion pack back in the day as opposed to oh this has number two this has to be a radical re-invention of what's going on. You know, it might be a difference between, oh, we have four scenarios instead of two,

instead of, you know, completely reinventing the mechanics each time. Well, and, you know, the thing about these strategy games, especially the early ones, is that they were pretty agnostic, agnostic, excuse me, to platforms. They weren't really tied to specific technology, and they were extremely, you know, flexible because there was no real action to speak of. that it was all very, you know, slow turn-based methodical. Even for an extremely slow computer that, you know, it was one of those systems that would draw the world map line by line,

painstakingly or like, you know, create some simple polygons and then fill them in a pixel at a time, you know, the way old computers did, it didn't matter because you were kind of, you know, like with a game like Nobodaga's ambition, you kind of just, you know, hunkered down for the night. And you knew you were going to spend several hours making decisions, taking turns, coming up with strategies, making plans. So, you know, if the systems that you were running it on were pretty pokey, it didn't really matter. It just meant you weren't going to take as many turns that night as you would on, you know, something that was a little more souped up. But these games really translated very easily and effectively, you know, across systems with almost no colors.

I mean, you know, they brought Nobu Nogga's ambition to Game Boy pretty early on. And when you're dealing with, you know, what is it, like 13 feudal lords or is it 52? I can't remember. It's a whole hell of a lot. There's a lot of feudal lords and territories. And each territory has its own, you know, on a normal system, it has its own color. But on Game Boy, it's like each territory has its own gray scale pattern. And, you know, I'm positive.

They just basically brought that over from whatever system, you know, it was originally made for. I think the MZ, the Sharp MZ, only had a few colors available. So, you know, that technology that worked in 1983 was basically pretty similar to the technology that Game Boy ran on in 1989, 1990. So, you know, seven years later, that same game would still work and still be viable on a completely different system. Because, again, it didn't really matter, like, what the technology was. They could make a simulation game work. Honestly, even if it were just like a text display, if it were Asky, it still would have worked. So you saw Nobunaga's ambition on Game Boy, on NES, on a bunch of other systems.

And it was basically the same game than it had been on PCs, you know, nearly a decade earlier. Yeah, I think Nobunaga's ambition actually got a release on at least Sega Genesis, if not the S&ES, as well. So you're looking at a release schedule where they were, they were releasing that game for upwards of eight plus years. Yeah. And, you know, when, when it says Nobunaga's ambition on Game Boy or Sega Genesis, it's not literally the exact same game as 1983. Those subsequent releases and conversions to consoles and other systems, they kind of took everything that to come before and sort of mash it into a new version. So I know the Game Boy version was basically Nobunaga's Ambition and Nobunaga's Ambition

2 combined into a single game, you know, like the best parts of each. And rather than just calling it Nobunaga's Ambition 2 on Game Boy, you know, I think the idea was just, hey, no one playing this on Game Boy has played this before. Like let's just assume that, you know, we're selling to a bunch of kids. Why confuse them by saying, hey, this is a sequel, because people will say, oh, maybe I should play the first one first. And there is no first one on Game Boy. Just call it Nobunaga's ambition. And yeah, it's a simple approach. Interesting. I had no idea that was the case. Not everything they did in the early 80s was a simulation, though. The same year that they released Nobunaga's ambition for PCs, they also released a PC sort of action-puzzler-ish sort of game called Stop That Roach,

which would end up showing up on Game Boy also. I think it's a pretty expensive rare game on Game Boy. it's a pretty far-removed concept from feudal Japan, you know, vying for domination. Here you are in an apartment trying to squish a roach. But the following year, they would also take another left turn with a side-scrolling game called Christ. I know Tabitachi. It's a side-scrolling game starring Jesus Christ, where you are running and jumping and trying to, like perform good deeds for people and you have to avoid being touched by, I guess,

Roman soldiers three times because they'll kill you. I guess they'll like stick a spear in your side or whatever. I don't even know what to say about this. It's such a wild idea for a video game. But at the same time, this was a company that had already put its stake down and said, you know, we're going to make games about history, not just Japanese history, but also the Western Bible and porn. And even later on to appeal to Western audiences, I mean, it wasn't quite a Christ side-scroller, but you had the dynasty warriors that was set in kind of like the Roman times and things like that, or even spinoffs of Romance of the Three Kingdoms where it's like

liberty or death, where it's set in the Revolutionary War, or Le Emperor, which is about Napoleonic France. So they did try and hit, you know, different parts of history and the ones that were successful, they kept making sequels to. And, you know, although we'd not get a Christ, uh, side scroller in the U.S., uh, I imagine it was to the revenge. Yes. Uh, I imagine it was more sensitive, say, than Squares, uh, infamous Tom Sawyer RPG for the Ness or for the Famicom that never came out over here.

It's hard to be less sensitive. Yeah. Don't Google that. It's too late. Absolutely not. Um. Yeah. So it's fun to joke about that. But at the same time, like, it was interesting because they did create a game about Jesus Christ, but they took it seriously. I mean, the approach sounds a little loopy. But, you know, it was treated with respect, which I think is more than you can say about Wisdom Tree, honestly. Like, that was very sort of mercenary. Like, hey, we make games about Jesus so that Nintendo won't sue us. Whereas this is more. was like, hey, here's an essential figure from world history, like, you know, one of the most

influential humans of all time, if you consider me human. So, you know, it's just a different approach, a different mindset. And I think speaks to the, one, the intentions of Koeh, and also two, to the fact that they were just willing, they weren't afraid of anything. They were just going to try it by God, literally by God. Anyway, the following year, they really, they really hit their stride with Sangokushi, which in English is called Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where they took the historical simulation and applied it to something much bigger than Nobunaga Oda's conquest of Japan to really one of the biggest, most ambitious, most complex. complex literary works based in history of all time, which is, you know, the same name,

the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the novel by a crap, I totally forgot his name. You can look it up, but basically this, like I said, it's considered one of the four great literary works of Chinese history and is something like 120 chapters and 800,000 words long, or characters, not even where it's characters. that's that's a really big chunk of text and it's all about conflict it's all about conquest it's about you know betrayal and political maneuverings and so many people so many characters oh my god just it's it's like i've tried reading the romance of the three kingdoms and wow it's it's overwhelming it's like from the start it's just this wall of text and names and

you really, you really want to sit down and take notes on it because there's so much happening and it just moves at a fast clip and it's like, here are these people, you know, they're part of the same family or they have, you know, the same family names. And if you're not paying attention, you'll get your characters confused, but you don't want to do that because one of them is like murdering eunuchs and the other is making a blood pact with his friends to overthrow the emperor. And the other one is like trying to stop the rebels. It's, there's a lot happening. And it is, I can't imagine, honestly, a more perfect choice for the topic of a strategy game. I mean, I know World War II is everyone's favorite, but World War II is tiny compared to the romance of

the three kingdoms, which spans like 150 years of history. Yeah. Anyway, I'm done, I'm done ranting now, please. Oh, no, it's a great. It's a, it's a really interesting, tough to read book. I've, I've read some of it. It's not something I think I'll ever finish in my life. But it is based on an original historical work called Records of the Three Kingdoms, which was written during the time period that the romance of the Three Kingdoms describes. And they think that the embellishments of which, you know, there's quite a few, I think I've heard that 7030 or 80, 20, like history versus embellishments. A lot of that stuff came from oral traditions that crept up in China about these events

over the like 1,400 years, 1,300 years in between the events of the history and when the novel was released. So really, if you look at Romans of the Three Kingdoms, like temporally, it's twice as close to us now here in 2021 as it was to the time period it, you know, purported to describe. So even like when Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written, it was already being a, inspired, I think, by the people that collected all these oral traditions that combined it with this history in a way that I think also just like in a meta way applies pretty closely to the way these video games let you take a part of the history. You can put your own personal spin on it. Like there's probably some historians out there that would that would say that the novel itself is very much a product of the 15th century or 14th century, excuse me, when it was. compiled. Yeah, that's a great perspective. It's also worth mentioning that the romance of the Three Kingdoms that we have access to today that's been translated several times into English is not the original novel that was written in the 15th century. It was revised and, you know, adapted and modified several times along the way people have cut out many, many chapters of it,

changed, you know, kind of how the verses and songs were approached, you know, refined some of the writing. I think there was a point at which some of the political figures and, like, subjects of, I think, Sao Sao, were kind of basically pushed out of the narrative because they didn't reflect well on, you know, the ideals of whoever was kind of running the show at the time that these revisions were made. So, you know, it's kind of like all the different revisions that the Bible has gone through in a way, like, you know, the different interpretations and kind of overhauls and some motivated by politics, some motivated by people who think, oh, you know, here's this like epical work. I am the one with the true vision to be able to hone it to its proper form.

So, yeah, it's a very mutable text. And you're right, that does, it does make the, the variability of the games and the way you can basically say, I'm not going to, you know, follow the original text. I'm just going to take history in its own direction and see what comes of it. That makes it a totally valid interpretation of the story. Yeah, this is, you know, it's a super important book in China and in a way that I think it's spilled over into a lot of other Asian countries, especially Japan, you know, the same sort of. of time period that it was written was a big cultural flourishing moment in

China. They had a pretty booming economy at the time. And in a pretty short order, they also put together Journey to the West, which I think everyone is probably familiar with. It's had many, many inspirations. You know, Dragon Ball, not the least

of which at all. You know, water margin was another book that came out of that time, which is what the Suey Coden series is based on. So, I think they pick the right horse for their games in a way. Like, it was, you know, what I heard was the very first piece of film ever recorded in China was actually a recording of an opera based on romance of the Three Kingdoms. Like, that is, that is how ingrained in the culture it is. And it's never been out of fashion, you know, through all kinds, you know, it might be mutable, like you said, like whoever's in charge of China might have a different opinion of it because there's so many people, so many people.

many events, you can bend it to however you like. But it is a book that has never really been on the outs, so to say. Yeah. In addition, you look at the source text and, you know, not unlike the Bible or the original King Arthur legends, so much happens in two sentences. You could base a whole game or a movie or a story on just the two sentences. It's very dense. It's, it's a challenging read. And I would love to get a hold of a great copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms with a lot of footnotes because it feels like I'm missing a lot. The version that I was reading through recently in preparation for this did have footnotes.

I think it's published by Tuttle. It's, I think, pretty highly recommended for people who are really serious about exploring the novel. But yeah, you know, what you said, Aaron, about it never really going out of fashion. And in a sense, it's kind of like Shakespeare, except actually based on history. as opposed to just kind of, you know, made up tales of fairy queens or whatever. So, yeah, it's kind of like all the works of Shakespeare together in one vast collection of words. Thank you.

Anyway, so yeah, that was a big moment for Koe, 1985, when they published that game, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms is now up to Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14. So, you know, the romance just never really ends. It's, uh, but we've still got a long time before the history of the series actually reaches the full span of the history of the war itself. So, you know, there is, there's a lot of substance to tackle. At the same time that Romance of the Three Kingdoms was first released for PCs. Koi also created kind of, you know, something set in different time, but same area of the world, sort of.

And that is Gingas Khan, which was called Aoki Okami no Shirokii Meghika in Japan. I don't know what that all that means. Okami is wolf. Beyond that, I don't know. But it's called Gingas Khan here, and that's much easier to say. Yeah, I think it actually stretches across all of Eurasia. And it features Western leaders as well. I think it's maybe, is it Richard the Lionhearted that is one of the playable generals in that game alongside Gingas Khan, which I may be completely wrong about that.

Yeah, no, it is. It's Richard the Lionhearted. which is something that I personally never put them together in the same historical era at all. But lo and behold, I looked it up and boy, those guys, I don't know if they fought the way that they did in this game, but they sure could have. Yeah, I don't think Genghis Khan actually made it out to England, but he definitely did range quite far to the West. And, yeah, made quite an impression across, as you say, all of Eurasia. So I admit I've never played this one, but it does sound like a, you know, kind of a way to sort of bring East and West together in a single simulation game that's not about World War II. That's how novel.

Right. So they started, you know, they continued to make a lot of iterations and sequels and conversions and ports of these games, the sort of big ones. I mean, Gingus Khan, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Nobunaga's ambition all made it to. the NES. So, you know, they ported those games to Famicom and other consoles. And at the same time, they continued to kind of explore new ideas. In 1988, Kauai published Ishin Noorashi, which was their first RPG slash Sim hybrid. And there were a few other games that they published through the years, including Uncharted Waters.

They kind of blended those two genres. And of course, you know, this first happened in 1988 because Dragon Quest exploded and, you know, it was released in 86, really just became huge in 87 with Dragon Quest 2. And, you know, within the following year, everyone was like, what if we did our game but Dragon Quest? And so here you have Kohe saying, what if we did a simulation, but Dragon Quest? And the answer is Ishin Noirashi, which I don't think it was ever released in the U.S. It means the storm of something. I don't know exactly what Ishin means, but it doesn't sound familiar. But Uncharted Waters did make it here and showed up on virtual console a couple of times. So it's relatively accessible,

I think, you know, compared to a lot of these games. Yeah, Uncharted Waters is a pretty fun game of controlling a ship or a captain of a ship and sailing around the world and making discoveries and you can get off at ports and there are little RPG towns that you can walk around in and hire crew and upgrade your ship. It's a very interesting.

It feels a lot like Sid Meyers Pirates, I think, but has that JRP, you know, 16-bit look about it. Yeah, and, you know, there's still so many simulation-type elements that you can trade and things like that. So it's, you know, an RPG, but with the immensity and scale that you associate with COA.

Yeah, I mean, I think I played New Horizons on the SNES and I think very early on I just decided I would sail around the world or discover America. I was like, I know it's over there. Let's go find it. And it was a I ended up sailing around the entire world

and only barely making it back to my home port without getting a mutiny called on me, which I think probably would have ended the game. But the fun of the thing is when you hire new crew, you can also fire your mutinous crew and keep all the gold for yourself. So there are some interesting ways to cheat that game. Oh, yeah, that's like starting a new RPG party, stripping them down of all their gear, kicking them out, selling their gear,

forming a new party. Yeah, a classic bastard tactic. Yeah. Pretty much in that the New Horizons, the second one, it has, you know, six different campaigns, you know, you can choose to be a Dutch person or Portuguese or whatnot, and maybe one of them is trying to find their lost sister, and they have this kind of loose plot that the more you build up your crew and your money and everything, that kind of unfolds the main storyline. So it gives you something to put your hat on as opposed to, oh, I guess I'm this guy in this town, I guess I'm going to make money. I don't know, you know, it's not really connected to a narrative as much in the first game. All right. So before Uncharted Waters happened, Kauai created a couple more simulation games.

There's Bandit Kings of Ancient China, which I've never played. That also made it, I believe, to N.S. I don't know how that's different than Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I don't know what period of time it encompasses. Is this more like based on Sweikadan maybe with the Bandit Kings? It's set roughly in, I think, 1,100 CE. From my experience with it, it's very similar to Romance to the Three Kingdoms, but it has an end goal more than just unifying China.

I think that is ultimately the goal, but there's something you have to do where you can get the permission of the emperor to be his guardian or his general. And you have to essentially unite the rest of China and then you can attack where the emperor is being held hostage. To me, it feels like almost like a romance of the three kingdoms with a little bit of a, like a forced plot in a way on you.

It is hysterically translated, though. Some of the people that you can play as, their names are like leopard-headed, blue-faced beast, hairy priest. Like, they're very fun names for playable characters. At the same time that Bandit Kings came out, Koi finally created a World War II Sim, Pacific Theater of Operations, another one that was localized. And then the following year, 1990, they created Lampur, which was based on the Napoleonic Conquest, as well as uncharted waters.

In 1991, they published Jimfire, which was their first true strategy game. That's another one that made it to the U.S. Same year, you also had Inindo, the Way of the Ninja, which I actually did not realize that was a Ko-A strategy sim. I saw it in like rental shops and just assumed it was some sort of ninja action game, but maybe I'm thinking of like Hagané or something. And then 92, you get to something something very different, which is AeroBiz. And I remember one of you had mentioned

they were a big fan of AeroBiz. So I would love for you to regale us with tales of what this game is about. Yeah, sure. I read about this in Nintendo Power, for whatever reason, Nintendo Power stressed AeroBiz and AeroBiz Supersonic at sequel for the SNS, both were amazing games.

And it's the first time I ever played a business simb or even knew anything about economics. And it's, I can't be, this came out in the United States. It's very strange. It's part of their executive series of games, but yet they got the license from McDonald-Douglas and Boeing and all these people to use real

names of airplanes, but you set up an airport, and you can also play, you know, locally co-op with up to four people on two controllers or even one controller, I think, passing them around. But you have, if you're just one player, you play against three CPU

opponents, you set up where the airport is, and then you set the campaign, which basically is what time period it takes in. And Arabis Supersonic is more like an expansion where if you have the Olympics or if it's like World War, I don't know, like some, the embassy gets attacked or something, you can't fly to that particular place. And you have to balance the planes that you buy, how much you pay your employees, what their benefits are, what advertising campaigns you do, it all gets extremely complicated.

And it's a bit much to control on a SNS controller. I wish they would have made a version for computers. The third entry in the series we never got in the U.S., but it was for PlayStation 1. I think it was called like Airplane Management, 96, and it was a remake of the original. But it's just one of those. It's such a wacky concept,

but my friends and I were all nerds, and we really would have them over for a sleepover, and we'd stay up all night playing this trying to beat each other at this game. It's better than it sounds, but it's also pretty dry because you're looking at numbers and charts. Airplane Management 96 sounds like the really boring sequel to Airplane 77 or Airports 77. Right. No, that's, oh, go ahead.

It does use like Mode 7, at least in the Supersonic was the one I owned, the second one. And it used Mode 7 to make it dramatic with the music of the airplane taking off and landing. But it's not really needed. I mean, you're basically manipulating figures and trying to pace your. yourself. If you try to open a zillion routes at once, you go out of business pretty quickly. Yeah, I played a little bit of AeroBiz. I had a friend that was fairly obsessed with that game. It's, it, I think I'm with Matt. It's, it's a difficult game to recommend on an S&ES. I don't know where else you'd play it, but it has that

co-e feel about it where it's a simulation that's going to run and you can try and master it or not. It doesn't really care all that much how well you're doing. It feels fair in a way, though, like that. Like a lot of Koa games, they may be complex or difficult or hard to approach, but when you understand what's going on with them, they are fair. All right. So 1994, the company, I think, finally made amends for the porn games.

Keiko Arikawa put together a division, like a team, within the company called Ruby Party and created Angelic, the first of several games from what was known as the Neo-Romance series that was designed for women and girls. And it actually turned out that a lot of men enjoyed playing these games also because they were very character-focused and, you know, a real change of pace from the usual. You didn't really see a lot of, you know, the, the Atome Games and visual novels. than that you do now. So this was pretty, pretty revolutionary at the time.

And I read that, you know, based on kind of the broad appeal of Angelique, Ruby Party actually kind of retooled its work to be more, you know, less about just trying to focus on appealing to women and just trying to be something that would appeal to everyone. This, I don't think, has ever made it officially into English. but is a pretty significant, pretty, I would say, influential game. 95, they took a brief swerve into creating games based on folklore as opposed to history with Celtic Tales Baylor of the Evil Eye, which is a PC exclusive game, I believe, and I had never heard of it before putting together notes for this.

Yeah, I have no idea. All right. one that I have heard of 1997 really sort of a big jumping off point for CoA although not immediately but that was the

establishment of the division Omega Force and the game Dynasty Warriors which was basically Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a massive brawler just a pure action game just dumb button mashing kill the hell out of

everyone, basically the opposite of how Romance of the Three Kingdoms plays despite the common setting. Yeah, I think Dynasty Warriors won was a one-on-one fighting game. Oh, was it? Which Yeah, it was like street fighter. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's, it was a very strange, uh, swerve from one to two. And I almost wonder if there was maybe if, if, if the second dynasty warriors was maybe a certain, you know, different name and then just kind of at the last minute. like renamed to Dynasty Warriors to try and get some kind of brand recognition. It's, it's, it's very, very strange. I'm saying it's a strange game.

It's just a strange change from one to two. It's wild. Yeah, in Japan, Dynasty Warriors 2 is known as Dynasty Warriors 1. And I forget what they called the original one. But for some reason in the States, they called the one that was like a street fighter. I guess Tekken is a better comparison. They called that one, you know, Dynastew Warriors, which I mean, yeah. But I do remember when the PlayStation 2 came out at the local electronics store, they had a demo unit you could play.

And Dynasty Warriors, too, was very popular on it. Just the novelty of being able to go into a battlefield and beat up, you know, hundreds of guys and have these crazy moves where your spear gets on fire and the camera moves around was really something impressive at the time. Okay. I've never played the original Dynasty Warriors. But now that you're mentioning that it was a fighting game, that is ringing a bell. remember kind of vaguely seeing that I'm thinking, another fighting game, who cares? But the

kind of weirdness with the naming and the inconsistency between the U.S. and Japan kind of reminds me of Samurai Showdown 64 Warriors Rage, where there was a game called Samurai Showdown Warriors Rage that was not the same game as

Samurai Showdown 64 Warriors Rage. Samurai Showdown Warriors Rage was a really bad PlayStation PlayStation 3D game and Samurai Showdown 64 Warriors Rage was also 3D but is

very highly regarded and considered a really great entry in the series but it's very confusing because for whatever reason they were like let's call both of these games the same thing even though they're not the same thing branding in the late 90s man

no one knew no one knew anything but this did kind of see Koea start to shift a little more toward action gaming. 1998, you had Destrega, which was kind of an arena fighting game, but again, it's one of those that I did not pay that much attention to.

Winback was sort of a 3D shooter. That was 1990. So they were kind of, you know, venturing out into action-y territory while at the same time, you know, continuing to develop their strategy series.

Yeah, I think Winback came out pretty close, I remember being people that were fans of the James Bond 007 game on N64 were big fans of win back as well in my circle. I think there was some multiplayer co-op. Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong game. I've always kind of conflated it in my head with siphon filter. That's sort of like, you know, people compare it to Metal Gear Solid,

but it's not really, it's much more of a shooter, much more of an action game. Right. If I'm not mistaken, I think Winback is the one that has a dude who looks just like me as a character and people like to show me pictures of that guy and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's great. Thank you. So Winback, an N64 game.

So that's why no one remembers it. Yep. Anyway, I would say really the next really enormous thing, the next huge twist of fate for Koea was in 2007 when they published Dynasty Warriors Gundam, which was their first crossover game, and that was basically like their ability to print money. Just make games based on other. people's properties that let other people's properties, characters just kill hundreds of

dudes, just mindlessly grind through them, slash and hack, and perform crazy superaction moves. But the interesting thing is that Dynasty Warriors Gundam was not something initiated by Koai. They did not go to Bandai and Sunrise and say, dude, Gundam, so cool. Let us take out the RX-78 and just kill the hell out of a thousand Zakus. That would be amazing, guys. Actually, Bondi came to them and it was like, you, like, we saw, we saw Dynasty Warriors. And it's really cool. And we want you to pretend all your Chinese warriors are actually giant robots.

Can you do that for us? And they kind of shrug their shoulders. Omega Force said, all right, we'll give it a shot. And it did really well. and now everyone has their own Dynasty Warriors game they've got Dragon Quest

Final Fantasy Zelda at some point there's going to be a Sonic Dynasty Warriors you just know it's going to happen Oh no

When Sonic colors the remake bombs that's Sega's next step They're like KoA Just let us mess up some robotic hordes from Dr. Robotnik Sorry Eggman

Don't you curse us with that it's been said it can't it can't be taken back no takebacks no no back no backs no back no takebacks i think that um this uh this sort of change for them where they are farming out in a sense the the musso system is is pretty similar i think in a funny way to some of their earlier days when they were re-skinned that strategy game um you know between romance of three kingdoms don't bonagas and bishops Genghis Khan this is things very much

in their wheelhouse is to develop a fun and robust system and exploit it using different properties so I think this is just this is classic Owey

in a lot of ways I mean Omega Force is definitely they kind of just pimp them out they're like all right guys go you know do your thing but with Zelda characters this time and I've played some

Muso games and they all kind of run together. I did enjoy the novelty of, of, you know, wrecking a thousand slimes in Dragon Quest Heroes, but I didn't even play all the way through that one. I played for a few hours and was like, yeah, you know, I think, I think I'm done. I think I've seen what this is about. And I just haven't felt compelled to try any of the others, but they keep making them. So I have to assume people keep buying them. So, There is this market out there that I just, I can't begin to grasp. I certainly have,

well, more than two or three of those games that I have had the exact same trajectory as you were for maybe five to 10 hours and then I'd gotten as much as I wanted out of it and I stopped playing it. But I also know people that will play those games until they have mastered every single character until they've collected every single item and leveled everything up. And they're very happy just playing those. same campaigns over and over and over again.

And it's not me, but there's, I respect it. That's fine. I play weird games too. I mean, there, I recognize that there is a certain appeal and just kind of the mindless trans like quality of playing a game like that. It can be very cathartic. And I also recognize the appeal of like, if you love a property, you do have all those unlockables, you have all those different things you can do. Like, you know, I played some of the Zalda Muso and the, I guess, Hyrule Warriors,

whichever, the one that came before it, like the Wii you one, was that also called Hyrule Warriors? I can't, can I keep them straight? Okay, so there you go. Yeah, to say it's a cheap caption, which I certainly didn't mean to imply, it's not right.

Like, they definitely do more than, you know, throw some pre-made skins on there and call it a day. Like, they take time to put the flavor of the game series. into it like that especially i think that dragon quest uh drag quest warriors is is an excellent game that feels like a dragon quest game and they've got all the music they've got all the sounds they've got shopping and saving at the inn or saving at the church like it feels like a dragon quest game yeah and and they they they do a lot of things with scale on that one too like you know one of the early missions you there's basically one of those big cyclopses uh cyclopes

looming over town and you're trying to like activate cannons or something to blast it away. So yeah, like they, they, you know, it's not just like always running around hitting the same massive mobs of a hundred goblins or whatever, but, you know, there, there's only so much you can do with that style, unfortunately. Sure. I mean, one interesting kind of combination, they, I don't know if they still come out with these, but for a while they have these dynasty warrior empire. games that kind of combined the dynasty warrior gameplay with like romance of the three kingdoms

kind of tactics to a limited degree. And I'm not quite sure who those are made for because I would think if you like the tactics, you'd rather play romance of the three kingdoms or if you like being up hordes of mobs, you'd rather do dynasty warriors. Yeah, but maybe you're the kind of person who likes one, but doesn't mind dabbling a little bit in the other, but you don't want to go all in. So I can see that. And, you know, hybrid genre. can be very interesting. Look at what they did with uncharted waters and that style of game,

where it's kind of the familiar Koea style, but also kind of final fantasy dragon quest-ish. There's a lot of potential for crossover ideas. So I'm happy to let them keep, you know, exploring that particular style. Because again, Koi's thing is to kind of keep doing the same thing

with minor tweaks that over time, I think, add up to something different and big and, you know, change the direction of things. So it's definitely made them very successful. I mean, they were able to buy Techmo like 12 or 13 years ago. That's kind of a big, you know, considering that they see themselves as the sort of small company and are always talking about how they really hope they can break out in the West, and I think they finally feel like they're starting to see, you know, based on some interviews I read, starting to see those hopes kind of come to fruition.

I can't remember where it was, that I read an interview where Koshiba Sawa was talking about how the company's ultimate goal is to create a game, an original property, that sells five million units. That's like the bullseye on their office dartboard is one game, our property, 5 million units. And Neo, they're sort of dark solgist, dark souls-ish, actiony RPG kind of thing from a few years back, I think hit more than 3 million. So, you know, that was the closest they've come to hitting that goal.

And people seem to like Neo. I think the Neo 2 sold pretty well. Or has that come out yet? I seem to remember people talking about it for a while, but I can't remember if that was just previews. I haven't really kept up. It came out and they did a compilation for PS5 of Neo 1 and 2, not that long ago.

Oh, well, how about that? Yeah, I think Neo was actually a PlayStation Plus freebie a few months back. I almost wonder if they would count that towards sales, if that got them over that 5 million hump. I think this interview was from like a year ago, maybe a year and a half. So I think it was before that would have happened. I don't think PlayStation Plus freebies count as sales.

I think they, you know, they're talking about like actually moving units and getting money. Right. Anyway, so really the company, you know, even though I think they have a bit of a reputation for just being like the strategy company, they've really have a very diverse lineup. And they've really grown over time to expand their approaches, you know, creating their internal divisions like Ruby Party and Omega Force, but also a acquiring Tecmo, they acquired Gust a while back, and I think kind of said, well, that was a mistake and killed off Gust, but that, you know, they kept kind of the talent, I think, and, you know, they do have access to those properties. And actually, no, that was, that was not fair. Gus has made some pretty good games. I actually really enjoyed Night of Azure. I think that was what it was called on PlayStation 4 a few years ago. It was just like this perfect distillation of, sort of janky PS2 action RPGs, like the kind of game you took for granted. You just totally took it for granted 15 years ago, and now they don't exist. And for this brief moment, Gus made that game.

And I was like, wow, that style of game does exist. And there's a lot more titties and a lot more very sort of overt, like, pandery, lesbian romance subtext here that that wasn't in those games. games before, but, you know, take that as it is. Like, it's still that kind of, you know, B-tier, heavy jank, sort of just mindless action, run around and hit stuff kind of game that, uh, you just, you don't see very often. So I respect them for that. That was good. Yeah, they, they've made some good choices, I think, with their acquisitions.

I mean, when you say that they purchased techno, like, Techmo was really, I feel like they were in a pretty good position when they and Coe combined. I mean, they were, they'd recently released those, the Ninja guiding games and those, those were pretty well respected at the time of release. They've had the, uh, dead or alive,

right? That series, maybe not the hottest at that point, but that was not a small acquisition. Yeah, I don't, I don't know the details, but, you know, just from what I read in, and some of these write-ups and interviews, um,

The general theme was that TECMO was not in a good place at the time of the acquisition. So, you know, that that kind of underscores the fact that Kauai taking a very conservative approach has never, you know, been massively profitable. They've never just been, you know, one of the biggest companies in Japan, one of the biggest companies in gaming, but they've been consistent. They've been profitable. They've never really, you know, faltered or had. huge problems. And, you know, Techmo, they did release the Ninja Guideon games. They did release the Dead or Alive games. But I feel like those fell off a cliff after a while. Like, you know, after Ninja Guide in Two, it took a while for three to come out. And I don't think people were

really that into it. Dead or Alive was really big, like around the time the PS2 launched and then kind of fell off a cliff. They just, yeah, I think they just had trouble sort of sustaining what they were doing. And I think they sank a lot of cash into their games. You know, kind of going for the big showcases, the big graphics, the impressive visuals and everything. And I just think they couldn't maintain it. So, you know, it's kind of a slow and said he wins the race, you know, where Koei never really had the big breakout moments. But they just kept plugging away. And at some point, they were like, hey, there's the company that made Ninja Guide and it was really, really big for a while. Let's buy them.

Well, and part of what Coe did, I think which is smart is just having really limited print runs and almost have digital only releases of these games, but keep them in Japanese with the English subtitles. Because otherwise, you know, not everything deserves an English dub, nor should it have it. And like I

had a bit of fun with, they did a Dynasty Warriors kind of spin off, based off, berserk. And it's really bloody and over the top. It's not a great game, but just to be able to have a hack and slash with characters cutting heads off and having blood everywhere has its place. Yeah, I know you wanted to talk a little bit about Berserk and the Band of the Hawk,

in part because of Kentaro Muras' sudden and shocking death a few weeks ago. Like, how is this game different than, you know, your other sort of Muso games? I would say, you know, the main difference with it is the single player campaign, it's all you're playing as guts the whole time. I don't know how familiar either of you are at the series, but it covers the 90s series and the OVA stuff and a little bit past that. I haven't seen the more recent series.

That was two seasons or so and not as well received. But they do use clips from the OVAs to tell some of the stories, and that's kind of cool to see clips from the recent movies based off the 90s series. And the missions are kind of dumbed down, but I think just that it really takes the M writing to hard. art and gets with the blood and gut stuff. And you can play as the other characters like Casica in this kind of dungeon, 100 level, kind of like super hard mode.

So, I mean, it's not the best game in the world, but that it came out in the U.S. at all. I'm pretty grateful for it. And it does capture kind of that savage feel of that series. And, I mean, that's just a huge loss that we lost, the creator of all that, because such detail and such artwork. And he was only, like, in his early 50s. he wasn't even that old.

So maybe they'll finish up the series. I don't know. I understand it. He still was working on it. It never got finished. Yeah. There's a whole conversation to be had there about the manga industry. But, you know, I think anyone who is curious about Berserk after hearing about Mura.

And, you know, a lot of people really came out and we were just saying, you know, he was an amazing, like just a giant in terms of talent and in terms of vision and his work was very influential and beloved. And, you know, I looked at picking up some volumes, but they're all kind of expensive

and there's so many of them. It's a little intimidating, but I feel like maybe the Berserk Muso game might be a good entry point for people who are interested in, you know, kind of getting a taste of what the series is about. That game probably cost about as much,

as one volume of the hardback manga. Sure. You know, it's, and you get a lot more encapsulation that way. Maybe the, the narrative isn't quite as good or as, as meaningful, and it doesn't have the amazing artwork, you know, the, just the, the, the gorgeously rendered pages that Mura created. But, you know, as with, as with all the Muso games, I'm sure not having played it myself, but I feel like I can confidently say that it captured the flavor and, you know, a certain essence of,

of the series and its appeal. So, yeah, that's a kind of a, I guess another underrated appeal of Koe's work is that they are really good at sort of taking a property and encapsulating it into the sort of, you know, hack and slash formula, but still finding, finding the sort of germ of the original property's appeal and, you know, highlighting that in a way. I think that's really it for this episode, a little shorter than usual, not much shorter, but a bit shorter than usual. But, you know, I feel like we could probably create standalone episodes on any one of these franchises at some point. But this is not the time for that.

And I would need to spend many hundreds of hours researching. So maybe when I'm very old and have that kind of free time. But thank you both for, bringing your expertise and experience to this conversation. I think it was a very interesting conversation. I enjoyed my part in it and I enjoyed hearing your perspectives and learning quite a bit from you guys. So thank you for taking the time out of your evening. Happy to be here. I would like to recommend if you are interested in playing Romance of the Three kingdoms, in my personal opinion, the series never got better than it did between seven and eight, seven and eight was a pretty interesting and radical departure for the series and that

you weren't forced into playing a ruler. You could play anywhere from a warlord to a prefect of a town to just a wondering Ronan doing what you wanted. And it really helped you get a feel for the like intricate clockwork that Coe has built up because you can see it spinning around you and you can interfere in it or change it or just go along with the movements.

It's a totally valid way to play Romance of the Three Kingdom, seven or eight to create an officer, find a ruler that you like or want to support and join up and literally just take commands from the computer for the rest of the game and actually the last time I played it, I very

specifically did that. Just to play an entire run of romance of the Three Kingdoms Eight as someone else's officer never made any major decisions you know maybe was given control over a city here or there but those are a little difficult to get a hold of the they're

from the ones I've played are from PlayStation 2 I don't I think those are some of the ones that it's hard to get an English translation of but those are fantastic titles that I would recommend anyone that's interested in the series to pick up because there's so much social

interaction in those games there's so much more than just building towns or it is very much about creating social links between these officers in ancient China. I think of I actually went through at one point and counted

the number of actions that a typical officer could take in a turn and depending on the title you held at the time that's a little bit different but there's 30 something things you could do and almost half of them are related to social interactions, not just tactical or

strategical interactions. And they are very, very good games. All right. Actually, before we go, I forgot, we have a few letters in the mailback. So I'm going to read these. And then we can sign off for the evening and go romance and kingdoms. Read them to you now. All right, from Cajun Baz.

With bestseller in Japan emblazoned on the NES cover of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it screamed by me. And so I did one 1988 afternoon without reading a single review beforehand. What I found in this two-megabit game was something unlike anything I had experienced on the Nintendo up to that point. The deep strategy and tactics required to beat this game gave me months of satisfaction, so much so that I loaned the cartridge to friends until we were all fans. Needless to say, when Gingas Khan was spotted at Toys R Us, I eagerly bought the cart and joined the horde. Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its strategy sim cousins knew exactly what its devotees craved,

that just one more turned dopamine hit, coupled with a history so rich that hundreds of Wikipedia pages can barely give coverage to its expansive roster of characters and battles. to this day I remain a co-a fanatic and am pleased that the company found so much success with their Warriors line of action games both licensed and otherwise I think that does speak to a lot of the appeal of the Three Kingdoms is playing it with friends

having that multiplayer option which has been in so many of the games just they take forever to play a game when you're having to pass it around between four or five different people but you can really turn through an afternoon and spend a lot of time coming up with the ridiculous strategies. I'm glad he enjoyed the game just buying it off the box cover art because, you know,

when I was his age, I bought the NES game based off the Adams family movie with Raul Julia, and I was not so fortunate in choosing a winner there. Oh, you didn't know the difference between the COA logo and the Ocean logo. hard life lesson. All right, from Thomas Young. I put in hundreds of hours into all sorts of Koa Sims. I still enjoy Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's ambition in their current incarnations, although the most time I put into a romance game would be the fourth one,

The Wall of Fire, on Super Nies. When it comes to Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I really enjoyed the resource management baked into the idea of officers. I play a lot of four-x games, and it took me a while to wrap my head around the idea that your actions were limited by officer availability. The idea of constraining the player's ability to strategically maneuver and have the effectiveness of those maneuvers tied to a limited pool of agents with their own strengths and weaknesses is still basically unheard of in modern strategy titles,

despite the amazing opportunities and difficult choices it presents. Also, the Uncharted Waters series Slaps. Slaps waves with paddles. Yes, because they're on boats. All right. And finally, from the person who requested this episode, who apparently is still named Chris Hanson. So maybe it is the guy who exposes pedophiles.

God bless you, sir. You're doing God's work. I remember renting Coe's Aerobiz from Blockbuster when I was 10 years old because I thought it would be a game similar to pilot weeks. But when I brought it home and found out that it was a game about managing an airline company, I was really surprised. I sat there for hours trying to figure out how not to go bankrupt within the first couple of years against the AI companies.

I rented it three more times after that, and it was eventually able to beat both scenarios. It was after playing AeroBiz, I went back and rented every other COA strategy game that my local blockbuster had available. It was from renting their other strategy and simulation games, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 3 and 4, that I discovered how much I enjoyed simulation games,

and history. I only wish that Koe would remember their simulation game roots nowadays and would stop releasing nothing but Dynasty Warriors. All right, Chris, thank you for your thoughts and for requesting this episode. Hopefully it has lived up to your expectations, even though we did range further afield than simply Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Aaron, Matthew, thank you both for, sorry, Matt. Thank you both for your time, as I mentioned before. This is a patron exclusive episode of Retronauts. So I don't have to give the spiel about how people can listen to Retronauts because you, listener, dear listener,

are among the literati of the podcast world. You know, you know what's up. You know how to find us and how to find cool, cool podcasts like this. So I'm not going to belabor the point. But I will ask Matt and Aaron to tell us how we can find their work on the internet. It's Matt. Sure. You can follow me on Twitter at M-A-T-W-B-T, and you can listen to my podcast, SQLCast2 at Sequelcast2.com. And I also have some books on Amazon.

Oh, what kind of books? Oh, non-fiction, mostly. I just came out with one called Podcast You Nerd. It's kind of a podcast memoir. Also came out with the first English language book on the Films of Uve-Bull called The Films of Louvre Bowl, Volume 1, the video game movies, and working slowly on volumes 2 and 3 for a small press publisher. I hope you said good things about them, because he's a very, very tough man who knows how to box. Yeah, I worked with his producer on adapting an unproduced screenplay into a JRP not that long ago, and Steam refused to do anything with it.

So, but that's its own story. Anyhow. Huh, interesting. All right. Aaron, yeah, you can listen to. to my podcast video death loop, also on the Greenlit podcast network. My friend and I watch a short video like a commercial or a movie trailer on repeat over and over again and sort of try and distract ourselves from what we're doing by doing a sort of long form improv

storytelling around the weird things we see. It's almost like someone was actually doing the mystery science theater experiment to themselves. It's a fun show. It comes out every Friday, TGIF. You can grab your video Deathloop and have a fun time. Also, if you happen to find yourself in the Knoxville, Tennessee area, you can come see my short form improv troupe perform. Every Tuesday, just Google Einstein Simplified Knoxville.

It's a fun show if you like that sort of thing. We're being very safe. We took so long off for the pandemic, and now we're back, and it's been a lot of fun. All right. And finally, you know me, Jeremy Parrish. you can find me on the internet. On Twitter is GameSpite. You can find me doing stuff at limited run games,

like telling everyone how cool Rondo Blood is, all that kind of thing. And also doing this year Retronauts stuff. So that's about it. Thanks again, guys, for helping me to discuss a topic for which I was tragically out of my depth. But I think we,

I would say we succeeded, despite myself. Thanks to your, bountiful knowledge and experience. So yes, that's it for Retronauts. And Aaron and I will both be back on Monday with an episode about Scott Pillogram. So look forward to it. It's quite a bit of topical whiplash. You know, Thank you.