Wow, I can’t believe Dark Void didn’t just fly off the shelves.
Capcom was probably the worst offender, but Hudson made Bomberman dark, gritty and shitty with Act Zero and Namco made Ace Combat: Assault Horizon with QTEs and a NATO bootlicking plot, and gave Ridge Racer to FlatOut developers Bugbear to turn into a Burnout ripoff with Unbounded. Many such cases!
I actually liked all three games, and the third one might’ve been the most entertaining one. It was just really fun to see Capcom awkwardly trying to turn their incredibly Japanese samurai action game into something that would appeal (more) to Western gamers.
Their guesses as to what American audiences would like are also just fascinating. “Jean Reno? Paris? France? Americans think those are cool, right? Wait, I got it! Gladiators in Ancient Rome!”
I kind of want to check out Shadow of Rome at some point now 🤔
I greatly enjoy learning about and trying to figure out misconceptions about America from artists who aren’t. It’s like a mirror. Mirrors are distorted reflections (or a smart phone camera, an originally accurate depiction that gets fed through the digitally “enhanced”/altered filter and is no longer an accurate depiction).
Except, it’s genuine. There was a real team of people trying to figure it out and based off what America puts out into the noosphere this is the result. It’s a way to get an outside perspective. But for whatever reason I find it kinda funny when they get stuff wrong in a way I can’t figure out or have to put work into figuring out.
Alternatively: that game where the president is in a mech. Those devs totally understand. Amazing parody of us.
Capcom’s guesses weren’t completely off the mark. With regards to the Rome thing, you had the precedent of popular things with an antiquity setting like the God of War games and The Gladiator with Russell Crowe. With Onimusha 3, Jean Reno was a somewhat popular actor and Paris was a modern Western city
The thing is that none of those would be the kind of extremely cynical, safe choice you’d make if you were looking to pander to US audiences, which makes them interesting
If you want to see an extremely depressing case of a Japanese developer trying to capture the Xbox bro audience, look no further than Quantum Theory from Tecmo which is a painfully bad Japanese copy of Gears of War by the creator of Fatal Frame