Samuel 💻✨ Messner Profile picture
Japanese translator, hacker, programmer – 3 for the price of 1! My Dear Detective; Apple Children of Aeon; a handful of video games and stage plays. 性懲りもない楽天家。
Apr 23, 2021 7 tweets 2 min read
I've recently seen some influential-ish people espousing this categorization, saying it's "how Japan sees it" – and… it's not!
Japan uses "adventure game" as an umbrella term for all "VN-like" games, with "novel game" as a subcategory. Let's talk Japanese genres. (1/?) Japan has a rich history of adventure games, text and graphical. Visual novels (or "novel games") are a later invention – but far from being separate, they occupy the same spot in Japan's cultural consciousness, and it is in fact a subgenre categorized as "adventure games" there.
Oct 21, 2020 14 tweets 13 min read
I recently found something unbelievable: Project EGG.
Virtual Console for vintage Japanese PC games!? A treasure trove of PC-98, MSX, X68000, etc., all digital, and there's a huge sale!
amusement-center.com/project/egg/
Why does no one talk about this!?
(Highlights 'n' info thread! 1/?) The home page of Project EG... The monetization model is a bit odd, but hey: a ¥550 (~€4; ~$5) monthly subscription gives you ~130 free games and access to buying paid games. You keep your games after canceling. Here's how to start!
amusement-center.com/user/month-new…
amusement-center.com/member/mypage.…
amusement-center.com/member/stoppro…
(2/?) Instructions on how to regi...Similarly, instructions on ...Instructions on how to get ...Instructions on how to canc...
Oct 13, 2020 4 tweets 3 min read
An underdocumented part of Japan's video game history: arcades had (and, to an extent, have!) communal notebooks in which people would write game tips, comments, ask questions, and generally communicate – GameFAQs before GameFAQs! These were core for Japan arcades' social aspect. The cover of Takadanobaba Mikado's retro game notebook. TheyA page from the notebook. On this one, people are using it aA diagram someone's drawn to explain a trick for the shoot-' Famously, The Tower of Druaga was a “community effort” based on sharing obtuse secrets – Western historians will often say people “shared secrets on the playground”, but I talked to some old-timers in person: in reality, these notebooks were at the heart of that communication! THREE OLD MEN IN A ROW PLAYING THE TOWER OF DRUAGA AT MIKADOA page from one of the notebooks – this one describes an a