@JackGYarwood Thank you for the response first of!
Normally I'd agree that a game wouldn't have hinged on just one part of a marketing campaign, but... was there any other US marketing for the first Klonoa game outside of those magazine ads? I sure couldn't find anything else, so that's why I'm pointing the blame towards those ads.
I feel like, even if they made the Klonoa ads just have Klonoa having an attitude (even though that would be completely out of character for the game and the protagonist) and make the game be loud that way, then that would've at least meant it was part of the course of a mascot platformer character game for the time... But they didn't go that way AND made the screenshots and the character art for the game as small as possible, and when that's the only marketing material out there (unless there are TV commercials, which doesn't seem to be the case), then yeah, I feel like it'd be a reasonable assumption that's why Klonoa didn't catch on at all until roughly 22 years later.
"As for the "shooter on rails" comment, my best guess is he either misspoke or misremembered."
I thought about it more, my best guess would be that he does actually mean to call Klonoa a "shooter on rails".
The "Guided 3D" part is actually on the back of the box for the PS1 version of Klonoa, and being "guided" in a 3D space would mean you're "on-rails", so I think he does mean it... Perhaps he means "guided" as in "you're walking on a guided 2D path/spline in a 3D world"...
Maybe he misinterpreted the Wind Ring attacking animation that Klonoa does as "shooting" (since Klonoa does hold the ring in front of him and then does a "recoil"-like motion while the ring is "firing"), and then he might've combined those things to call it a "shooter on-rails" game...?
That feels like such a stretch, though that seems to me the most reasonable origin... But man, that's so wrong to call it that. lol
About the Sonic thing, it would make a bit more sense if he was asking them to create original IPs that lean more so into the popular thing, yeah, that would make a bit sense...
Oh, so he's the reason why Klonoa was so unpopular and obscure in the West for decades, since the ads weren't saying anything about the game, and it only started becoming popular after gaming influencers started talking about it in the late 2010s... We could've maybe gotten more than 2 home console Klonoa games if the first game would've actually been taken seriously by the marketing team. Thanks...
"The other thing I wanted to tell you about Klonoa was that it was a shooter on rails, right?"
What?! In what world is Klonoa an "on rails shooter"?
Klonoa is a 2.5D puzzle-platformer game... Picking up and throwing things is not "shooting". Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Doki Doki Panic one) is not a shooting game for letting you pick up and throw things either...
The game isn't on rails either, there's no automated "on rails" progression in this game. You can move Klonoa left or right whenever you want.
...Aside from a few sequences where the stage's gimmick makes Klonoa move automatically somewhere, like a moving platform into the background where the player has to react what's coming up, or that one part where streams of water push Klonoa forwards... but that's not what "on rails" means.
Is he confusing Klonoa with a light gun game? Or does he not know what Klonoa plays like? Or does he not know the meanings of game genres?
I'm so confused right now.
"But then, a lot of them were just, 'Let's take our old arcade hits and just port them as is,' and there was this expectation that those games would sell."
Okay, understandable, but then also
"Fischer used Super Monkey Ball as a game he felt understood the demands of modern gamers".
I don't understand him.
Super Monkey Ball is the arcade game "Monkey Ball" with some added content on top... didn't the article say he thought "they need to make multiplayer games where people can just compete against each other forever, or they need to be longer, narrative-driven story games that are a rich, deep, immersive experience, and explore adult themes"?
Sure, Super Monkey Ball has a few multiplayer minigames, like Monkey Target, but I doubt it was like a forever-multiplayer game, and definitely not the ladder. I wonder why he picked specifically Super Monkey Ball.
And how would he have thought it would've worked for the Sonic series whatsoever, if he didn't think Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) was good enough? SA2(B) already had multiplayer modes "where people can just compete against each other" (and a lot of later Sonic games during that era kept doing multiplayer modes with a lot of content too), and Sonic Adventure 2 arguably was a "narrative-driven story game" with some exploration of adult themes already.
What did he want out of Sonic if it wasn't already good enough to him? I'm so baffled, but also genuinely curious.
According to dass on bluesky, this seems to be developed by someone who doesn't really know what they're doing, as it only claims to have support for file formats for Crash Twinsanity, a multiplatform game, with files that aren't PS2 specific, and the code it has is apparently just basic disassembly and hardcoded file paths for ONLY Crash Twinsanity. https://bsky.app/profile/dass.bsky.social/post/3lmappwiz3s2f https://bsky.app/profile/dass.bsky.social/post/3lmat7g7wvc2f I kind of doubt that this project in particular will go anywhere close to supporting most PS2 games. I hope we'll get recompilation solutions for PS1/PS2/other platforms some day though.
Comments 3
Re: "It Sounds Like Some Kind Of STD" - The Birth Of Sonic, Xbox In Japan, & Why Namco's Advertising Hated The Name 'Klonoa'
@JackGYarwood Thank you for the response first of!
Normally I'd agree that a game wouldn't have hinged on just one part of a marketing campaign, but... was there any other US marketing for the first Klonoa game outside of those magazine ads? I sure couldn't find anything else, so that's why I'm pointing the blame towards those ads.
I feel like, even if they made the Klonoa ads just have Klonoa having an attitude (even though that would be completely out of character for the game and the protagonist) and make the game be loud that way, then that would've at least meant it was part of the course of a mascot platformer character game for the time... But they didn't go that way AND made the screenshots and the character art for the game as small as possible, and when that's the only marketing material out there (unless there are TV commercials, which doesn't seem to be the case), then yeah, I feel like it'd be a reasonable assumption that's why Klonoa didn't catch on at all until roughly 22 years later.
"As for the "shooter on rails" comment, my best guess is he either misspoke or misremembered."
I thought about it more, my best guess would be that he does actually mean to call Klonoa a "shooter on rails".
The "Guided 3D" part is actually on the back of the box for the PS1 version of Klonoa, and being "guided" in a 3D space would mean you're "on-rails", so I think he does mean it... Perhaps he means "guided" as in "you're walking on a guided 2D path/spline in a 3D world"...
Maybe he misinterpreted the Wind Ring attacking animation that Klonoa does as "shooting" (since Klonoa does hold the ring in front of him and then does a "recoil"-like motion while the ring is "firing"), and then he might've combined those things to call it a "shooter on-rails" game...?
That feels like such a stretch, though that seems to me the most reasonable origin... But man, that's so wrong to call it that. lol
About the Sonic thing, it would make a bit more sense if he was asking them to create original IPs that lean more so into the popular thing, yeah, that would make a bit sense...
Thank you again for this thorough response.
Re: "It Sounds Like Some Kind Of STD" - The Birth Of Sonic, Xbox In Japan, & Why Namco's Advertising Hated The Name 'Klonoa'
Oh, so he's the reason why Klonoa was so unpopular and obscure in the West for decades, since the ads weren't saying anything about the game, and it only started becoming popular after gaming influencers started talking about it in the late 2010s... We could've maybe gotten more than 2 home console Klonoa games if the first game would've actually been taken seriously by the marketing team. Thanks...
"The other thing I wanted to tell you about Klonoa was that it was a shooter on rails, right?"
What?! In what world is Klonoa an "on rails shooter"?
Klonoa is a 2.5D puzzle-platformer game... Picking up and throwing things is not "shooting". Super Mario Bros. 2 (the Doki Doki Panic one) is not a shooting game for letting you pick up and throw things either...
The game isn't on rails either, there's no automated "on rails" progression in this game. You can move Klonoa left or right whenever you want.
...Aside from a few sequences where the stage's gimmick makes Klonoa move automatically somewhere, like a moving platform into the background where the player has to react what's coming up, or that one part where streams of water push Klonoa forwards... but that's not what "on rails" means.
Is he confusing Klonoa with a light gun game? Or does he not know what Klonoa plays like? Or does he not know the meanings of game genres?
I'm so confused right now.
"But then, a lot of them were just, 'Let's take our old arcade hits and just port them as is,' and there was this expectation that those games would sell."
Okay, understandable, but then also
"Fischer used Super Monkey Ball as a game he felt understood the demands of modern gamers".
I don't understand him.
Super Monkey Ball is the arcade game "Monkey Ball" with some added content on top... didn't the article say he thought "they need to make multiplayer games where people can just compete against each other forever, or they need to be longer, narrative-driven story games that are a rich, deep, immersive experience, and explore adult themes"?
Sure, Super Monkey Ball has a few multiplayer minigames, like Monkey Target, but I doubt it was like a forever-multiplayer game, and definitely not the ladder. I wonder why he picked specifically Super Monkey Ball.
And how would he have thought it would've worked for the Sonic series whatsoever, if he didn't think Sonic Adventure 2 (Battle) was good enough? SA2(B) already had multiplayer modes "where people can just compete against each other" (and a lot of later Sonic games during that era kept doing multiplayer modes with a lot of content too), and Sonic Adventure 2 arguably was a "narrative-driven story game" with some exploration of adult themes already.
What did he want out of Sonic if it wasn't already good enough to him? I'm so baffled, but also genuinely curious.
Re: A New Recompilation Tool Is Being Developed To Enable Native PC Ports Of PS2 Games
According to dass on bluesky, this seems to be developed by someone who doesn't really know what they're doing, as it only claims to have support for file formats for Crash Twinsanity, a multiplatform game, with files that aren't PS2 specific, and the code it has is apparently just basic disassembly and hardcoded file paths for ONLY Crash Twinsanity. https://bsky.app/profile/dass.bsky.social/post/3lmappwiz3s2f
https://bsky.app/profile/dass.bsky.social/post/3lmat7g7wvc2f
I kind of doubt that this project in particular will go anywhere close to supporting most PS2 games. I hope we'll get recompilation solutions for PS1/PS2/other platforms some day though.