Thread by @DragEnRegalia

So, whenever talk about Tower of Druaga's community guides from the '80s comes up, I struggle to find good primary sources for that trend. After all, either arcades trashed those books/boards years after Druaga's peak, or they became private heirlooms.

Then comes this tweet!

Another example, this time for the console ports. It's neat how this game, with all its inscrutable traps & tricks, spawned a grassroots strategy guide scene. (Arguably less cool how it heralded an age of games only fun when using said strategy guides.)

This user points out the ubiquity of similar guides anywhere you'd find a Druaga cab, even ones in English! It's this "help a stranger help you" attitude, predating the Web even, that influenced the Souls series & others with similar kinds of mysteries.

Immediately after Druaga arrived & popularized the concept of games you can only beat by sharing tips & secrets (schoolyard knowledge!), Japanese PC developers adopted the concept for many new titles.

The original Xanadu, for instance, was very hard w/o knowing its secret items!

Druaga's closest sales competitor on J-PCs in 1984—The Black Onyx, a Wizardy-inspired dungeon crawler—also introduced Japanese players to more complex xRPGs which incentivized making maps & sharing "the meta" with friends & classmates (ex. which classes/party comps worked best).

Druaga, Black Onyx, Hydlide, & finally Xanadu were a quartet of popular but considerably lengthier, more difficult games vs. what one usually played in arcades & on consoles in '84 & '85.

They all shared one thing in common: an explicit or implicit push towards sharing strats.

When Druaga, Hydlide, & their ilk came West via console ports, little if any of this cultural context came with.

Nintendo's own take on the concept with Zelda & Metroid involved literally giving players maps & hints in box. Hydlide was both older & had a far worse help bundle!

Back home, Druaga had already done well enough to have a large presence in player fanzines like this one:

'Zines & big publications for both PC & console players filled a niche for learning to play these otherwise inscrutable games during their heyday.

I don't mean to say that Nintendo Power, EGM, etc. somehow weren't doing anything similar, but neither Druaga nor Hydlide got the kind of coverage & guides in those mags that they had back home (Dragon Quest fared better, but arguably didn't need as much help as its predecessors)

By the late-'80s, even Xanadu had its own console reimagining (Faxanadu) to accommodate players who couldn't easily afford mags/zines or get a friend's help. Meanwhile, Druaga had enough cachet for its sequel, Return of Ishtar, to require a second player!

It's useful to track how these regionally beloved, yet globally obscure & demanding games influenced design trends that people often just call "Nintendo Hard".

Only 2 years after Xanadu, Falcom famously launched their "age of kindness" with Ys & Sorcerian, both a lot easier.

Many new developers around that time themselves used guides for the games they enjoy. A schism opened between teams creating increasingly easier, more intuitive titles like Ys & Zavas vs. those still valuing difficulty & guide/hintbook usage for titles like Ishtar & Hydlide III.

When I see current design/fandom talk about whether or not games should cater to intuition or shared prior knowledge, I can always think back on this era & what trends arose from the confluence of meta-driven arcade & PC games.

Games had become more than just you @ the joystick!

I don't think I'm exaggerating the importance of these titles too much, either. Game Freak famously started as a fanzine covering arcade games, from Namco to Taito & beyond. The early mid-'80s saw many paradigm shifts in Japan's arcade & PC games communities which we feel today.

Anyhow, I need to get back to editing today's #PasokonSunday video. This one's another PC-98 game which, big surprise, really wants you to use the manual & share hints with friends! Only it's a decade after these greats, and a raising/survival sim at that.

Back to recording!