Our Man in Japan: Console Patches
DeanRaker - Columns - Comments - 09/20/04
So we have three categories. 1) Games that are great but somehow demand remakes from the start. 2)Games with major problems ignored that could use a patch, yet never get one. 3) Games that evolve over successive, slightly different versions that mirror what would happen with successive PC patches. How did this happen?
Well, back in the Famicom age, Ys, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Contra, Metal Gear, Castlevania, any game you could think of most of the time got both a PC version and a console version, or many of both kinds. Japanese gamers and developers don't seem to, as a whole, believe there needs to be a lot of difference between the two. The only major influence was Nintendo's strong arm tactics, without which, we'd be in exactly the same position as the PC market and at least its never that bad. (Though on the flipside, the higher standards makes Japanese PC games on the whole more stable than their foreign counterparts.)
Skip forward a couple of years and the increasing sophistication of game programming is making the problem get a bit out of hand. The conventional wisdom for gamers is this: wait a while and buy the newest shrink-wrapped version you can get, it'll probably be the best. Back then, with cartridges, there often was no way to know. (These days, you'll even see companies with a gall to put the version number of the game in the options menu.) Nintendo's tactics, while they dramatically reduced the amount of completely broken games at first release, also drove the average price to about $90 or $100. No developer and no gamer could afford to buy multiple versions. Thus, we got clandestine, slightly changed versions. And in those slight changes, maniac fans began to notice, because without knowing and testing thoroughly that small changes would cause other bugs and exploits to appear.
This information marched through the gaming community at large, and a small market for selling information about console patches and the different exploits a gamer could achieve with bugs emerged. (Hey, look at this bug, but only in this version of the game!) I'm aware this occurs in the FAQs and websites of gaming around the world, but I think only in Japan could you sell a DVD or a guide that included such information as a bonus. (Know how to tell which version won't screw you over!)
Romancing Saga, Akitoshi Kawazu's masterpiece RPG still has elements of it within the SFC cartridge everyone knows was never used because they didn't have time to put it in.Years later, a ported version brings back this content. I bought a $5 magazine that promised to show me the difference. A really easy and obvious exploit in Final Fantasy X that allowed you get to infinite looping experience was cleaned for the US release and I don't think you can do in the Mega Hits or The Best version of the game, and this is quite standard for the series.
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