by Ben Bateman

I think perhaps the first experience I had with Japanese video games—and I imagine that I am not alone in this—was with the almost-legendary Final Fantasy VII. Final Fantasy provided me, and thousands of other overjoyed Playstation owners, with something American developers had either been too cowardly or too unimaginative to produce: A world on a truly epic scale, characters that the player could emotionally connect to, and a story that still requires a minute or two to wrap my head around. In many ways, Final Fantasy VII encapsulates quite well what makes Japanese games exciting, and what keeps them flying off the shelves in the United States: They provide deep characterization, and a sense of the exotic—Japanese games give the western gamer the opportunity to peer behind the curtain of another culture.

Characters in American games exist only to advance the story—as much as many gamers may love the Master Chief, from Bungie's Halo games, his character is essentially limited to being a half-ton killing machine who drops dryly humorous quips from time to time and is almost inexpressibly hardcore. Characters in American video games usually follow this pattern: they exist in a world where their personality, history, etc, is only important insofar as it advances a larger plot. Contrast this with Final Fantasy VII, for instance; a game which spends a significant amount of time detailing the childhoods of several of the main characters, even allowing the player to walk around and directly interact with Cloud and Tifa's past, instead of keeping them confined to cutscenes and FMVs. By making their stories character-driven, instead of plot-driven, these games create an emotional connection with the player that American developers are only beginning to figure out.

Of course, not all games have memorable characters, some simply because of their nature: Scrolling shooters, for instance, generally aren't heavy on characterization. However, in such games, and in games like the ones described above, Japanese games have something for the American gamer that American games never will: They are from Japan. Japan has, over the years, adopted enough of western culture and ideas for it to be accessible to American gamers, while still retaining a very unique and pervasive culture of its own. Enough of this comes through when games are translated into English for American audiences that that taste of Japanese culture and sensibilities has become an important part of the rich mixture that is an imported Japanese game. Exactly how this manifests is difficult to say. Sometimes it is aforementioned focus on characterization, but just as often it is a unique, imaginative, and utterly bizarre idea that works startlingly well—Katamari Damacy comes to mind. In many ways, Japan is the birthplace of the video game, and it may be that edge, that search for innovation, that keeps American gamers coming back.