The history of video games is fascinating no matter what period you start in. You can talk about the earliest days of games when people could create marvels on the most basic machines. Then you can jump to the arcade era, where people flock to those cabinets and put in as many quarters as possible. Once you get to the console and handheld eras, you’ll see even more unique stories of the hardware and the software. A key fact of which was brought up by Final Fantasy VII producer Hironobu Sakaguchi at a panel who had some insight into why certain things in the modern era of gaming weren’t there in the earlier eras.
“I think that one of the main reasons for that is the fact that consoles like the NES and PlayStation were very specific hardware. This made it easier for Japanese developers to master the hardware, as we could ask Nintendo or Sony directly in Japanese.
This is why – I realize it might be impolite to say this – Japanese games were of a higher quality at the time. As a result, Japanese games were regarded as more fun, but when hardware became easier to develop for, things quickly changed.”
One of those changes could be seen in Final Fantasy VII when it originally came out on PlayStation 1. Before that game, all the titles in the franchise, which Hironobu created, were pixel art. They had been super popular that way, but as times changed, so did perceptions. That’s why the team went full tilt and had CGI elements in the RPG alongside the new 3D graphics. While they weren’t the best graphics ever, they were revolutionary for the time, and the game was incredibly successful thanks to the graphical leap. Among other things, of course.
As for his “history lesson” on Eastern and Western developers, he’s not wrong about how things from Japan were originally the “Gold Standard” for video games until the Western developers caught up. For example, look at Bioware in its prime and how they were able to make some of the best RPGs ever. Or you can look at Retro Studios, which works with Nintendo but is based in the US. They took one of their most popular IPs and made it even more popular thanks to a 3D overhaul and a grasp of what would be fun.
That’s not to say that Japanese games aren’t popular now. We all know they are. But there is more of a competition now for who makes better titles.
