Despite the fact that many people seem to think that Japanese people don't like hard games, there is a significant community who seems to feel to the contrary. Additionally, they seem to like ridiculously hard and unfair games more then fair ones that are only very hard, strangely enough.
Here are some COMMERCIALLY RELEASED games that were pretty big in Japan.
1) Spelunker... for NES. This game had ludicrously unfair controls, and you couldn't even fall your height without dying. And yet it was popular enough to get a HD Remake, with an option to make jumping off of ropes and ladders less punishing. This one DID make it to the USA, but bombed horribly, though the HD remake was more appreciated. The Atari 8 bit original from the USA was easily as hard, but had more fair control.
2) Tower of Druaga, a game which you have no HOPE of beating without a guide. This was an ARCADE game originally! It got ported to many systems, and they added on "Another Tower" which is an even harder version of the game. Oh, and there was no guide for it at first. Only blind faith that the game is possible and sheer persistence (and a LOT of quarters) allows it to be beaten. This never made it to the usa, that I can remember, until the Namco Museum series, and they give you the guide. And it's STILL hard even with infinite continues!
So it's little surprise that Games such as
Kaizo Mario World
Syobon Action (cat mario)
The Life Ending Adventure of Owata
get created.
So I Wanna Be The Guy is right up their alley.
Pretty much if a game get hard and unfair enough, it crosses the line twice and becomes fun in their opinion. There's a video of a japanese female playing Spelunker for the first time. She starts LAUGHING after a couple deaths.
Topic: Some insight into the japanese community. (Read 2827 times)