These are pictures from my visit to Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto during my winter vacation.
This shrine is the head shrine of Inari deity worship.
Did you know that video game Star Fox was inspired by this shrine, which is near Nintendo’s headquarters?
I was very excited to visit this shrine!
Shigeru Miyamoto settled on having a fox as the main character after visiting Fushimi Inari Shrine. The Inari is portrayed as being able to fly. The Inari shrines, (particularly this one in Kyoto) are surrounded by red gates called torii. This gave Miyamoto the idea that a fox that could fly through the gates. Star Fox’s face was modeled after the Inari’s. Star Fox also always wears a red ‘scarf’ around his neck, like the statues.
Of course, these games originate from Japan. For many young people, video games might be their first experience of Japanese culture.
I love these because they were involved games, before the today’s era of games and feeling as though you’re passively watching a movie.
You could get lost in these game. You cannot do that with a game where everything is spoon-fed to you.
My childhood memories are awash with playing the SuperNES. I suppose anyone else my age has the same memories.
Recently, I’ve been playing old video games again.
While I’ve been enjoying L.A. Noire, sometimes it’s nice to play something from childhood.
Tales of Phantasia (テイルズ オブ ファンタジア) is a Super Nintendo game in the RPG genre published by Namco and released in Japan in 1995. It is the first mothership title in the ‘Tales’ RPG series and was later remade/re-released on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable.
The original Super Famicom version was available in Japanese, but you can download the the English patch here.
Many fans were unhappy with the localized GBA port of Tales of Phantasia. In particular, the translations of many important characters’ names were different. Whether the GBA translators changed them in order to sound less awkward as English names is unknown, but existing fans were accustomed to the romanized names that had been used for almost a decade in Japan in either Phantasia’s marketing and merchandise, or in the original games themselves (the names are in the credits).
The game was unique for several reasons, namely the battle system! In the Linear Motion Battle System (LMBS), the fight is played out on a two-dimensional terrain that usually stretches wider than a single screen width, so the screen can scroll to the left and to the right, depending on where the characters and opponents are relatively located. LMBS contains a pause menu during battle which lets the player select a spell or item. As opposed to most other turn-based systems where the player control the individual actions of every party member, in LMBS, the player only directly controls one main character.
The opening song, which was quite a technical achievement for a Super Famicom game as it had fully voiced lyrics, was inexplicably removed in the North American GBA version and replaced by a considerably less impressive mix of the overworld music. Tales of Phantasia was the first Super Famicom game to be 48MBit in size, and was also the first to feature streamed audio voices. This sound engine was titled the “Flexible Voice Driver,” and overcame the Super Famicom’s small audio memory capacity by swapping short vocal samples on the fly.
UPDATE: I’m posting the ‘Tales of Phantasia’ opening for Playstation. It perfectly sums up the plot, and it’s rather beautiful!
I completely disassembled, repaired, and cleaned this old SNES I got at a pawn shop in my neighborhood.
It was nasty and yellow, dead bugs inside, dirty pins, burned out fuse and a missing lock-in tab.
I soaked the case in retr0bright for a few days to get rid of the yellow.
UV coating was sprayed on the case so that it never yellows again.
Now, it’s like new on the inside and out!
I was so scared that it wouldn’t power on, but it started up like a shot! Normally, there’s a little delay with this old machines, but not this one.
Fire it up!
First test
It’s funny that my art training is so helpful in this hobby. Knowledge of sanding, chemicals, cleaners, color theory, silk screening, LEDs, printed circuit boards, design theory, and attention to details.
Andrew tested out the Power Rangers game. Power Rangers is the US version of Dinosaur Sentai Zyuranger (恐竜戦隊ジュウレンジャー). The show was crazy popular when we were kids. Parents wanted it taken off TV, because they thought that the fighting scenes increased violence at school.
Originally from rural Kentucky, I live in central Japan in the shadow of Mt. Fuji.
I enjoy the artsy-fartsy, as well as film and digital photography.
My REAL hobbies include eating, and generally making a nuance of myself.
