Episode 59 - Tom Eastman & Trinket Studios

We have an awesome show for you this week! We interview Tom Eastman fromTrinket Studios! Two of Trinket's games were featured at PAX East this year, Color Sheep and Orion's Forge. Listen to the interview for details about the creative process, launching a studio, and some insight into making mobile games. We mention the Woolson plushies during the episode. If you are tempted by adorable stuffed toys and pillows based on game characters, check out Valerie Schrag's Etsy Store and get one for yourself (Woolson available May1st).

The Trinket Studios Team: Tom, Ben, and Eric.

In our pop culture segment we talk about The Big Bang Theory Season 6, episode 18, “The Contractual Obligation Implementation."

Let us know what you think of the show and make sure to check out Color Sheep and Orion's Forge! Warning: Both are highly addictive! 

Until next time, game on!

Regina & Rhonda

Episode 59

GiGi 02.03

Dragon Power/Dragon Ball: Shen Long no Nazo (NES/Famicom)

Study #2 – Dragon Power/Dragon Ball: Shen Long no Nazo (Bandai, NES/Famicom)

Mangaka Akira Toriyama’s original Dragon Ball manga is one of the most popular ever created. The initial series, which highlights the adventures of an alien boy named Son Goku, has spun off into Dragon Ball Z and GT in more recent years, which became huge in America in the late 1990′s. When the manga was originally published in Japan, Bandai, a Japanese toy and video game manufacturer, decided to capitalize on the popularity of the license and make a NES game based on the series. The game did well enough in Japan for Bandai to consider bringing it overseas in 1988. However, America would be completely in the dark about this whole "Dragon Ball" thing. Beyond the very (very) early adopters of anime and manga in the States, the license simply could not be a selling point.

That didn't deter Bandai at all. The localization department decided to simply excise any significant trace of the license, instead catering to the martial arts market that did exist in North America with its localization with the rebranded Dragon Power. Their ultimate success wasn't all that hot, mind, which we'll get to momentarily. First, let's take a look at the boxes.

The Famicom original puts Toriyama's artwork front and center. It's a pretty showy box for the early days of the console.

Dragons and balls still appear on the NA cover, but the license itself is no longer present. It is trying really hard to appeal to the aforementioned martial arts crowd, or perhaps those interested in kung-fu flicks. Bandai was also notable for putting screen grabs on the front of the box, a somewhat rare practice.

A comparison between the Dragon Ball (left) and Dragon Power (right) protagonists can be seen above. Son Goku (on the left) lost his pointed hair and open mouth during localization, gaining a far more generic martial arts stereotype makeover complete with headband and a constant, giant grin. His gi has also lost its orange flair for a more subdued pink color. The enemies appear to be unchanged. I suppose that these goons were original foes built for this game alone, otherwise we’d be seeing some sort of modification to them.

Other Dragon Ball characters who appeared in the original game were also altered to fit in with the new motif. Master Roshi, one of the progenitors of the perverted guru trope in anime, has been modified into a wizard-esque appearance:

As you may also suspect, the whole "panty" element is eliminated from Dragon Power; sandwiches were instead substituted. Also, the dialogue is brutally maligned, as you can gather here. Bulma managed to make it into Dragon Power pretty much unaltered outside of name; she is called Nora in America:

The Dragon Balls became Crystal Balls, and there's plenty of other "cameos" from DB characters in Dragon Power; even the programming was shoddy enough that occasionally the game reverts to the original Japanese sprites!

The most curious thing to me about Dragon Power is that Bandai took such pains to remove the Dragonball essence from the NA release, but then decided to make the game's narrative all about The Journey to the West, which is one of the four great novels of Chinese literature (and the inspiration for Dragon Ball, for that matter). While that book has been translated and has seen success abroad, I find it a little odd that Bandai would resort to using a Chinese myth to drive their game's marketing over creating some other plot that may have better suited their desired American customers. And, while they did strip out a lot of the Dragon Ball elements, it still retains a flair of the Toriyama style in its final form. Such pains to remove the anime from the game, yet it didn't really accomplish that goal at all.

The -Isms of World of Warcraft pt. 1: Trollololol

After over a year of absence I started playing World of Warcraft again. I began playing in 2009 in the Wrath of the Lich King era. I was never a serious player (as you may already know if you’ve listened to some of the earlier GOG podcasts) and I mostly ran around exploring rather than doing instances, hunting down specific gear and items, etc. I stopped playing not long after the Cataclysm expansion was released, having gotten bored with the game and not having many friends who still played. My characters gathered dust and it wasn’t until a month or so ago when my boyfriend began playing again that I thought it would be cool to head back to Azeroth, Outland, Northrend and Pandaria (though I haven’t been to panda-land yet).

Beads hang in a straw hut in Sen'jin Village, DurotarI also decided, in the light of my relatively-recent immersion in feminist and social justice culture, that I would keep an eye out for tropes that tend to slant towards sexism or other -isms. I haven’t found too many that have actually made me angry, which says a lot; it doesn’t take much for me these days to want to fly off the handle when I see something that’s discriminatory in some shape or fashion. That being said, there have been two things that stood out plain as day – one when I made my main Troll character, and the other when I made my secondary Goblin character, which I’ll talk about in a follow-up piece soon. There are other little quibbles I have that may be addressed later as well.

A Troll witch doctor (in case the mask and tooth armbands and necklace didn't give it away)The Troll race in World of Warcraft is problematic in a couple of ways, both of which are evident as soon as your character is generated in the starting area. Firstly, their speech patterns are modeled after Jamaican / Caribbean / West African stereotypes. They speak with Caribbean accents, use phrases like “yeah mon”, and live on a chain of islands in tribal ‘savage-looking’ clusters of beach shacks with straw roofs. Secondly, the NPCs talk about “the voodoo”; there’s even a passive combat trait called ‘Da Voodoo Shuffle’ with “Trolls be flippin' out mon!” as a part of the description. In essence, Blizzard has boiled down an entire culture to an uncivilized, lanky-looking race and subbed in any depth in the voodoo (natively spelt ‘vodou’, I believe) religion with NPC witch doctors and shamans talking about “bad juju”. I don’t imagine the stereotyping is any better with the Pandaren, the panda race that (I’ve been told) was created simply to appeal to new players in China, but I’ll have to wait until I play a panda to have any original thoughts on that.

I’m guessing there will be a few people who think I’m overreacting to that, but you can’t tell me that you don’t instantly think of Caribbean citizens when you hear someone say “yeah, mon!” There’s really no other way to put it – the Trolls are basically a racist parody of an actual culture. It’s really unfortunate, because I enjoy the look of the characters and their general backstory, but I really don’t like having to interact with Troll NPCs and hearing those accents and colloquialisms.

Echo Isle, the starting zone for TrollsIt’s worth noting, I suppose, that female Troll player characters have a relatively inoffensive voice in terms of the stereotypical accent and speech mimicry. It still has a subtle accent that can be attributed to the Caribbean, but it isn’t so strong that it’s hitting you over the head going, “Do you get it?!” I have not, however, made a male Troll character – truth be told, I hadn’t thought about this until I went to post this article – and I suspect that their voices have stronger accents. I’ve found that male Troll NPCs are more obnoxious in this way and I have to wonder if that was carried over into playable characters; they tend to speak more loudly and over-enunciate their words, making the copied speech patterns and pronunciations outrageously obvious.

What I don’t understand is why Blizzard felt the need to hijack this culture and turn it into such an obvious joke that it really isn’t funny rather than inventing a brand new one for Trolls to flourish in. There is a ton of lore relating to Trolls as a fantasy race and very little of it seemed to make it into World of Warcraft. It’s an incredible waste of an amazing opportunity for exercising creativity in game design.

Episode 58 - LARPers Brandes and Rabbit

Before I get to the write up for this week's episode, I'd just like to take a moment and send some positive thoughts to the people of Boston. The bombings after the Boston Marathon were horrific. If you are able, please consider donating blood in your city. Find a Red Cross center near you. 

RabbitBrandes

This week we interview married gamers, LARPers, and game industry vets Brandes and Rabbit. They share some really fantastic stories of acceptance and engagement from their LARPing community. To learn more about the LARPs they participate in, check out Rule of 3 Productions, the game they run, Dust to Dust, and Eclipse. Brandes and Rabbit are also active bloggers so make sure to checkout their articles as well. 

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Until next time, game on!

Regina & Rhonda

Episode 58