Suikoden I & II HD Remaster with Aidan Moher, Return to Donkey Kong Country in Universal Studios Japan

[00:00:07] Welcome to Tokyo Game Life, a Tokyo-based video game podcast focusing on Nintendo and gaming culture in Japan's capital. Your host Mono here to bring you a slice of gaming life from Tokyo. Author Aidan Moher joins as we chat about Suikoden I and II HD Remaster from Konami. We dive into how these two classic games made their mark on the JRPG landscape, this new version, and get into Aidan's upcoming book about these two titles.

[00:00:31] And in the feature section, we return to Donkey Kong Country in Universal Studios Japan as I run down my recent trip. Let's get into the games with Suikoden I and II HD Remaster with Aidan Moher. Today in the game section, we're focusing on Konami's Suikoden I and II HD Remaster, Gate Rune and Dunning Unification Wars, a name I would definitely shorten in the podcast title.

[00:00:59] Joining me to chat all about it is a special guest. So guest, please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Aidan Moher. I'm the author of Fight Magic Items, the history of Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and the rise of Japanese RPGs in the West. I am also working on a book I've just announced for Boss Fight Books about Suikoden I and II. They'll be coming next year. Really excited to hop into this discussion about the remasters.

[00:01:22] Thanks for joining me. We talked about it before we recorded, but it has been a long time coming because Josh from the Still Loading Podcast, I talked to him quite often and he highly recommended you. He kept telling me you need to get Aidan on to promote his book or to promote JRPGs. And so I'm finally glad that you can talk about not one, but two really interesting games and also probably a little bit about the entire series. So let's lay the groundwork. Can you give us an overview on the Suikoden franchise?

[00:01:46] Yeah, so Suikoden came out, the first one in the mid-90s for the PlayStation. It was one of the first console RPGs on the PlayStation when Sony was sort of trying to wrest away that genre from Nintendo, who had been the king of the genre through the 8 and 16 bin eras. And Suikoden I came out and for me and my RPG-starved friends, we jumped on it right away, really enjoyed it. But it's fairly small or short by kind of modern standards, but it's like a 20-hour RPG.

[00:02:14] It was really distinct because it focused on the idea of war and conflict across sort of a broad spectrum of people in a country. And so you had 108 recruitable characters, which is obviously enormous. Even now, they spanned like all phases of life and all parts of culture and society. So you had knights and military leaders, strategists, but you also had basically regular people.

[00:02:40] You had farmers, musicians, people who were just basically, they would wash clothes and clean clothes for people. Joining your army, you were recruiting these people. And so it gave this idea that war is something that touches everybody. And so Suikoden I came out, it really thrived not just on having this large cast and this complex set of themes, but it took the idea that it established in I and then went into Suikoden II.

[00:03:06] And Suikoden II is one of those sequels that's just like the first but better in every way. And so you have something that's, instead of being 20 hours long, it's 45 to 50 hours long. You still have the 108 characters, but the complexity of their stories individually and as a collective whole is more complex, more fully fleshed out. Suikoden II had its issues. We'll probably get to that later.

[00:03:28] But it was this idea of taking like an interesting rough shape with the first game and polishing it up into something like really spectacular with the second game. What about Yoshitaka Murayama, who is often credited as the creator of Suikoden? Could you fill us in on his role in bringing the franchise to life? Yeah, so his role is pretty funny. And I cover this sort of in my book. And this is when I really dove into what he was to the franchise.

[00:03:52] Because the important thing about Murayama, and you see this reflected in the Suikoden games, is he understood how important it is to assemble a team around him that makes him better, makes the thing that they're working on together better. And so Murayama gets a lot of credit for Suikoden. But there was also Miki Hikashino, who was doing music. There was Junko Kawano, who was doing art and story elements. And people like that really allowed Suikoden to become something special.

[00:04:21] Murayama, when he started at Konami and when he kind of started on Suikoden, he was not an experienced game maker. He was specifically not experienced with RPGs. And he has this really funny anecdote where he had kind of been put in charge of a new project within Konami. And his boss wanted some ideas. And he was really into the Japanese manga Captain Tsubasa. And so he wanted to make a game that was focused on this really rich cast of secondary characters surrounding the protagonist.

[00:04:48] And he wanted to make maybe specifically Captain Tsubasa or something inspired by that. But his boss did not like manga or comics. So he went, oh, okay. I can't make a Captain Tsubasa reference. But what could I make that would be similar? Oh, the water margin. Which is a classic Chinese piece of literature about these bandits that gather together. A bunch of ragtag comrades to defeat an empire. And so he went in there and said, oh, I'd really like to make a game. It should be like the water margin or as it's also called Suikoden.

[00:05:18] And I would like to make a game like this. And his boss was like, okay, great. Water margin. RPG. You're on it. Let's go. And well, that's not what I wanted. That's not what I meant. I meant I wanted to make a game influenced by the water margin. And then his boss was like, no, RPG. Based on the water margin. Do it. And so he kind of fell backwards into this idea of making an RPG. And only then did he go, okay, well, now I need to know what makes a good RPG. And so he went back and started experiencing and exploring the genre.

[00:05:48] But I think that's one of the strengths of Suikoden is he went forward and took this really interesting influence with the water margin and said, I need to make and I want to make a water margin game and focus on the same things that makes water margin so interesting. Instead of saying, okay, I need to make an RPG. Here are the things I need for a good RPG. Now, how do I fit the water margin into it? And so he, you know, he took that forward and he created the first Suikoden and he learned a lot from that.

[00:06:14] Most importantly, he surrounded himself by other really talented people sort of near the beginnings of their career who grew with them as a series grew. Now, the franchise is called Gensou Suikoden in Japan. Are they cowards for just shortening it to Suikoden in the West? Like, I'll be honest, like even keeping the name Suikoden in the West was probably a very bold move. It was a foreign word that we had no context for. We didn't know what the water margin was.

[00:06:39] That didn't stop us because we were into RPGs and we were going to play whatever we could get our hands on at the time. But I do wonder if even that even going that far was sort of a challenge for the series going forward. I was looking at old advertisements and there's one for Suikoden too. And the whole advertisement is just these big flaming red letters. And it says Suikoden means war.

[00:07:01] And you can almost read in that that they were unsure how to market the game called Suikoden instead of something like translated or localized into something that would be more directly appealing or understandable to Western audiences. But at the same time, it worked. And I really admire that it was open about its influences rather than trying to hide those in the West. It is definitely an odd name to call a game, especially in the 90s when, like you said, they were very active in erasing anything that looked overly Japanese.

[00:07:30] Just compare the Suikoden 1 American box art to the Japanese box art and you can see. Did you play the originals back in the PS1 days? Yeah, we played all the originals. Like I said, we would have been in our early teens at that point. We were really into like Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo, Chrono Trigger. And we're like I said earlier, starved for RPGs. And one of my friends was the first to get a PlayStation. His dad bought it for them. They would play Tomb Raider, other jumping flash early PlayStation games. And then he borrowed Suikoden from an older friend.

[00:08:00] I remember going over there for the first time and watching him play the beginning. And there's a scene where very early on you get on Dragonback and kind of fly through the sky, this cloudy sky. I was just blown away by what the PlayStation could do. Even though in hindsight is sort of like a 16-bit plus RPG. Like it's not graphically very sophisticated, at least not a huge gap between that and like late generation Super Nintendo games. But it felt like new and rich. But my friend also didn't have a memory card.

[00:08:29] So he had to play Suikoden. He would just leave his PlayStation on constantly as he made his way through the game. And fortunately it was quite easy. I don't think he ever died. So he didn't ever lose his progress. But that was like my first experience with the game. And then eventually I got a PlayStation and played Suikoden. And then Suikoden 2 specifically was the one that really kind of set me over the edge in terms of really admiring what this series was and could be as it grew into more titles. And just a larger overarching story.

[00:08:57] For me, I didn't get into the series until Suikoden 3 on PS2. A game I absolutely loved. And it's definitely one of my favorite PS2 games. I'm talking maybe top three PS2 games. And I love the character recruitment system and how it felt more grounded than a lot of the more fantastical RPGs at the time. Like compare Suikoden 3 to Final Fantasy X and their settings and magic systems and whatnot. And I skipped four due to bad reviews. And also I didn't have any money at that time. So it was an easy skip. And I did get five.

[00:09:25] But the very next day I had some pretty major surgery. And I never felt like picking it up again post-surgery. So I only kind of played it for an hour. But I got into Suikoden Tier Chris on the DS. Which I did enjoy. And that DS game was the last major Suikoden title and the last Western release. But the series is finally back with these new remasters. Were you surprised to hear that Konami is bringing back Suikoden via these new remasters? I'm like floored.

[00:09:51] I think it was probably largely in response to what they saw from the Suikoden fan community's support of Ayuden Chronicle. Which is a new game from Yoshitaka Murayama and Jungo Kawano with their studio Rabbit and Bear. And so they went to Kickstarter to release basically a spiritual successor to Suikoden. Because they could no longer make Suikoden games. That was with Konami. But they wanted to return to that style of RPG. And they launched what turned out to be like an immensely successful Kickstarter.

[00:10:21] And that highlighted how much passion there still was for the Suikoden series. And I think at that point is when Konami probably said, oh, whoa, hey, we have something here. We need to kind of revitalize this series. And I've been playing the remaster for the last week and a half or so. And I think you can tell that they also took this revitalization of the series seriously. We've seen a lot of remasters in the current day that feel like a bit of a, not a cash grab.

[00:10:50] Because I don't think they make a lot of money. But like something that's sort of just trying to check off the box. Like, oh yeah, we remastered Grandia. Now people can play it. But we just use like a smeary up filter. The performance is awful, but it's there. Same thing with like Square Enix and the Chrono Cross on the Final Fantasy remasters. That just sort of like blandly up-resed the backgrounds. And might have gone with higher resolution characters if there were 3D models.

[00:11:16] But for the most part, they just didn't feel really loved and cared for. The Suikoden remaster is the opposite of that. It feels really strong like a company or a team behind it that knew what they had. And knew that they needed to do it right. It's not perfect. I have my quibbles. But the fact that it's just quibbles instead of me loading it up for 15 minutes. And saying, I cannot play this game in this state. Like the Grandia or the Chrono Cross remasters. Like a huge mark of approval for me. These games were unlikely to ever be perfect.

[00:11:46] But this one, it's like if there were a few more checkboxes that they'd filled out. It could have gotten pretty close to being a fairly strong version of the game. I think. Yeah, Konami, they've been pretty active recently in bringing back their past catalog. All the portable Castlevania games have a modern release. Something I would have not imagined five years ago. And I was very excited to hear that Suikoden is returning since. As we will get into, many hardcore JRPG fans say that Suikoden 2 specifically is one of the best JRPGs ever.

[00:12:15] So before we get into this version of the game, let's dig into what's so special about the first two Suikoden titles. The first game came out in late 1995 in Japan and late 1996 in the West. And if you know your history listeners, this is before Final Fantasy VII. So we touched on it a little bit in the series overview. But what did Suikoden 1 in particular do to stand out from other RPGs at the time?

[00:12:35] Yeah, I think just as the breadth of its story and the way that it centers the conflict of war as a personal story for many, many different people. War is something that touches nations from top to bottom. And Suikoden's focus on that was really revolutionary at the time. It didn't just highlight this special group of people like Final Fantasy VII pulls together this small group of very special people, which is great. I love Final Fantasy VII.

[00:13:04] But Suikoden, again, going back to bringing forward this idea that regular people are impacted by war was something that was a 14-year-old, which is really interesting to me. And I think also interesting to most people who were playing games at the time. And then it also had a lot of interesting systems. The 108 recruitable characters was always cool. And then it had one-on-one duels. It had these war battles, which were like rock, paper, scissors.

[00:13:31] So it went above and beyond just having a regular combat system. It wanted to show that, again, war spans huge conflicts between thousands of people at once or one-on-one conflicts between two people who are influential within that. And it's just a new way of telling stories. And I think that resonated with a lot of people in the mid-'90s. Yeah. And if I had to sum up what is the gimmick of Suikoden, something that we mentioned earlier is that there are 108 characters that you can recruit.

[00:13:58] Now, they're not all technically playable in battle, but they do join your team. And I was trying to think, is there a game that lets you play as this many characters? Did this have the record at the time? And I jumped into some monster-taming games. Megami Tensei on Famicom has about 60 demons you could recruit, and Dragon Quest V has 40 monsters. So Suikoden, in terms of playable characters, it might trump both of those. Do you think that this idea of recruiting 108 characters is the primary hook of Suikoden?

[00:14:25] Or would you say how it tells its story is a bit more intriguing to players? I think early on it was 108 characters and sort of the player agency within that, like recruit who you can find and then build parties. You got six characters in battle, so you could use more of them. I think that's sort of the main draw of the series early on. But I think that changes over the course of the Suikoden series as you get more games. And they reveal themselves to be a large overarching narrative that stretches across every title. And you don't really get that.

[00:14:54] Like Suikoden 1 is fairly straightforward. And its structure is fairly simple in the way that it tells the story. And it doesn't really necessarily surprise you in the way that it wants to engage with a larger narrative. But then as you move into Suikoden 2, you start seeing that like, oh, some of these things that happened in Suikoden 1 that seemed like side stories or seemed like the distance actually are impactful. And I'm seeing how that's playing out or how the resolution of the original has now had an effect on this other region of this world that I'm now exploring.

[00:15:23] What does that mean for future games? And by the end of Suikoden 2, you're starting to get characters and nations coming in playing small roles that then end up playing large roles in Suikoden 3. And it just keeps growing out of there. And you start to realize that this conflict between two characters named Uber and Pessmerga, which was sort of like an optional side story essentially in the first game, has really strong hooks in what's going on outside and above the games.

[00:15:50] And so I think it sort of starts with like, oh, Suikoden has all these unique gameplay systems, recruit 108 characters, use them in these big army battles. But the more and the deeper you get into the series, the more you realize that the draw is the scope of the story and the meta narrative that they're trying to tell. Now, Suikoden 1 is also one of those titles where you're like, oh, this had a Saturn version. Have you touched the Saturn version of this game? And how is it different from the PlayStation version? I've played around with the Saturn version.

[00:16:20] It's fairly similar to the PlayStation version, unlike other games like Grandia, where the Saturn version is superior for a variety of reasons, or Lunar, where you can play the Japanese Saturn version with an English translation, but retain the initial and original difficulty curve. Those versions, in a lot of ways, could be argued to be better. Suikoden had some improvements. It had some added content. So there's like a battle arena.

[00:16:48] There's some scenarios that play out with certain characters within the game. There's some extra scenes. But for the most part, it's Suikoden on Saturn. So it doesn't necessarily set itself apart. And they didn't implement any of that in the remaster, from what I can tell. But I think it's novel. If you have access to a Saturn and can check out the Japanese version, it's still interesting in its own right. Now, let's step into Suikoden 2, which is the game in the collection I think most people are interested in, including myself.

[00:17:16] It was released in 1998 in Japan and 99 in the US. So we are now in a post-Final Fantasy VII world between Suikoden 1 and 2. Now, the big question, can people skip to Suikoden 2 and play that first? Or should they play through Suikoden 1 first? I think you can absolutely play Suikoden 2 first. You will miss things because importing a save from Suikoden will add content to the second game. But it's not stuff that you're going to notice if you haven't played the original.

[00:17:43] Its story stands alone really nicely on its own. It's in a new region. It mostly has new characters. And the characters that are returning, you probably won't really even know that they were part of the original game. That said, Suikoden 1 is quite short. It's under 20 hours. The story is quite simple, but it just establishes a lot of series lore that I think is really important. So it establishes what the 27 true runes are, which are fundamental to the overarching conflict in the series.

[00:18:13] So I think you could play them in either order. Really, you could play Suikoden 2 and then go back to Suikoden 1 as sort of a prequel that you enjoy because it's filling in gaps that you might not have understood in the second game. Or I was revealing things that like, oh, okay, now I know why this happened or that happened because I have more depth of knowledge about the world. That said, Suikoden 2 is reputation is well earned. It's a much stronger and more tightly designed game.

[00:18:40] The story is much more complex and nuanced and deeper. And so going backwards might also just feel a little empty. You might find Suikoden feels oversimplified and just not as deep as what you're expecting. So if you're new to the series, I would say start with Suikoden, get through it because it's a good game. I've really been enjoying revisiting it. But know that like the real true gem awaits you with Suikoden 2.

[00:19:08] Now, this is a game that many people laud as one of the best JRPGs ever. Some even go as far as to say one of the best games of all time. But in the West, you got a very limited print run. So it was one of those games that managed to build up a reputation years after it was released instead of being an instant hit. So what would you say elevates Suikoden 2 over the first game? It's just bigger and like better and more polished and more ambitious.

[00:19:30] After you play it, you look back at Suikoden and say, oh, all these things that I felt were remarkable about Suikoden now sort of feel like blueprints or ideas or brainstorms rather than fleshed out to the degree that Suikoden 2 was able to take them to. It's cast of characters, even the secondary characters, just their conflicts feel more. They're just given more space to breathe, maybe more complex or take place over the course of longer periods of the game where the original Suikoden character conflicts there exist.

[00:20:00] But they're often kind of wrapped up in the same little plot arc and then forgotten. Whereas Suikoden 2, there's a lot more intricacy in terms of how the plot is constructed. And so it just took everything. Murayama and Kawano and their team were very inexperienced at the time, especially with telling a complex story across the length of an RPG. And you can just tell that they learned so much with the original Suikoden that they came into Suikoden 2 with more confidence, more ambition.

[00:20:28] And all of that plays out in a game that just feels so much more polished, so much more leveled up. Suikoden feels like a level 10 that just left their village. Suikoden 2 feels like an endgame character. Now, as somebody who hasn't touched the game yet, I've always heard one name, Luca Blight, the antagonist of the game. Where does he rank among the great RPG villains? He's amazing and his role within Suikoden 2 is phenomenal.

[00:20:53] And the way that it's handled with a lot of guts by Murayama and Kawano and that team really makes him not just somebody that you revile and hate. There are a lot of easily hateable villains and RPGs.

[00:21:08] But the way that Luca Blight signifies sort of like evil intent and then the way that the characters in the game have to approach defeating that evil intent and everything that comes after they've had victory over that creates a story that feels like it takes place after what would have been the ending of Suikoden. And so it deals a lot with conflict of power vacuums within empires.

[00:21:34] And what happens when somebody who has sucked up so much power, so much energy and dictated the course of a country in such a way, what happens in war when they are challenged by other people who have ideas of how that country should be run? And so Luca Blight sort of signifies what I would say is direct or implicit violence. And there are many different types of violence that are then contrasted against that throughout Suikoden 2.

[00:22:03] Are you aware that he is a playable character in Super Bomberman R2? I was not. And that's insane. That's insane. Yes. Also, the Suikoden 2 hero is also a playable character in Super Bomberman R2. So if you want to be a completionist, you've got to play Super Bomberman R2. You might need to add an addendum to your book solely about that game. I guess so. Yeah. It's a lot of Suikoden sequel. Now, beyond Luca, obviously, 1 and 2 have a lot of characters, literally hundreds of characters.

[00:22:32] So this might be a little hard, but what are some of your favorite characters from Suikoden 1 and 2? Yeah. So, like, a big one for me from when I first played the game as a teenager to now, I really love your elf, Kirkus. He washes up on shore of your castle in Suikoden 1. And he was always a mainstay in my party. Not just because I adored elves as a teenager. They were always, like, my favorite of the fantasy races. But he also, like, defies his people in an effort to save them, which I find really interesting.

[00:23:01] They are an isolationist society who want nothing to do with humans. But Kirkus sees the threat they're under and seeks out help from the Liberation Army, which is the army that you're building as a character. And I just think that that's a really fascinating bit of character building in an RPG from the mid-90s. He's also pretty good in combat. He's fast. He's a ranged character. He has decent magic. And so he was always a mainstay.

[00:23:24] I also really like Cleo, who is one of the protagonist's friends from Suikoden 1, one of his, like, retainers. And she has a fairly simple story and plot throughout Suikoden 1. But she's always by the main hero's side. She's very strong in battle. She's a good magician. And she just always would find a way into my party.

[00:23:48] And so Suikoden 1, the characters are all fairly outside of, like, a handful of them. They're all interesting, but they're all fairly, like, shallow. There's not a lot of depth to their conflicts. But Suikoden 2 kind of flips that on their head. And if I was to think of, like, two characters from that game that really stand out to me, it's the relationship between Joey, who is one of the main characters in the game, the best friend of the protagonist, and a young girl named Pilica.

[00:24:16] She lives through this tragedy as her village is burned down. And she doesn't speak after that. And she kind of gets taken in by Joey. She's orphaned and has nowhere to go. And he takes her in. The way that's handled with a lot of grace and perseverance from Joey outside of the character that you kind of expect him to be also shapes him through the second half of the game and undergirds a lot of the decisions that he's making, or at least his intentions for those decisions. Joey is very much defined.

[00:24:46] He's sort of like a Dalita from Final Fantasy Tactics who's making decisions towards goals that seem noble, but maybe his means to get there aren't always necessarily the correct way. And that is such an interesting conflict. As you also see this other simpler side where he's just trying to protect this young girl whose entire life was taken from her. What's something that somebody should know before diving into these games? I want to say in Suikoden 3, some of the characters you can recruit are actually missable. Is that also the case for the first two games?

[00:25:15] Yes, absolutely. And that's something that's true in all the Suikoden games. Knowing that there are missable characters is good. I would say going in. I'm the type of person who doesn't like to miss characters. So I can find that very frustrating. But also knowing and going back to original interviews with Murayama, he has spoken about how he wanted everybody's experience to be unique. For everybody to find a different assortment of characters.

[00:25:41] For collecting all 108, that should be the exceptional experience. And so play the games and play them through. And don't worry about getting all 108 characters. There are systems in the games that kind of help you find some of the more hidden characters. But there are also characters in the game that have very small recruitment windows. And if you don't use a guide, there's a high likelihood that you're just not going to recruit them. And that's also okay. Because that's part of the intended experience.

[00:26:09] If you really like it, you go back and you can do a 108 character run. There's lots of great walkthroughs online that are like spoiler free. And they'll just walk you through chronologically. Like here are the characters you want to make sure to recruit by this time. This is how you do it. If you have one of those, you can get through the games fairly painlessly without missing anybody. But yeah, I mean go in knowing that there's this huge cast of characters. The games are fairly easy. There's no right or wrong party configuration. Like recruit characters and use the ones that seem interesting to you.

[00:26:37] Like go after the ones that build the story that you're most interested in pursuing. Because that's really what it's about. Communities that are built up around a person's goals. And that we're so much more. That's our individual desires. We're the goals and the conflicts of everybody who surrounds us. And I think that's exemplified by the idea that you could play through Suikoden. Find 77 of the characters. Pick your six favorite and kind of go from there. Okay, let's get into this new version of the game. The HD remaster of the original PlayStation games.

[00:27:05] Now I actually didn't know this until a few weeks ago. But Konami already released this kind of on PSP. A collection of Suikoden 1 and 2. But only in Japan in 2006. So is this version an HD remaster of the existing PSP game? That's a good question. I didn't go and compare them directly. I compared the HD remaster in the newer version. But I think and I get the sense that there's more under the hood here than just taking an older version. Like the PSP version or the PlayStation Originals.

[00:27:33] And just sort of emulating the code and then trying to put a fresh coat of paint on top. It feels more like they've probably tried to build something from scratch. It certainly takes ideas from the PSP version. What uses widescreen ratio and stuff like that. But all the new backgrounds are like hand drawn at 4K. So it doesn't feel like a PSP game blown up onto a big screen. Are there any new additions to this game in terms of feature or quality of life adjustments?

[00:27:59] I would say that that's probably one of the areas where I felt like this remaster could have gone further. So you have the native 4K graphics which for the most part look okay. There are instances in the game especially in the heavily tiled environments where I feel like the new assets feel a little artificial. Feel a little photoshoppy. But other instances it looks really good. I think that I would have liked to have seen more quality of life improvements. So we can implement some.

[00:28:28] Like there's the ability to speed up combat. So you can double combat speed or you can triple combat speed. Which is pretty nice. They have a new party bag. So certain key items no longer reside in the character's inventory system. It used to be you would get the blinking mirror. And you use that and it warps you back to your team's castle. And that would have to sit in the protagonist's bag taking up one of his scant item slots. You'd have to carry that with you everywhere. You could also discard it by accident.

[00:28:56] So now they've separated that out. So there's a handful of key items that sit in this bag. But it's still only like eight. And the rest of the inventory management is exactly the same. So you have limited slots and limited characters. Armor takes up a slot in the bag. So like if you have 12 slots, you have six pieces of armor. You really only have six like slots available per character. Which like everybody disliked in the original game. They improved this a bit in Suikoden too. So you do have a party bag where you can keep your extra items.

[00:29:26] You can keep medicine. You can keep stuff in there. And then just transfer stuff over to characters to be used in battle. Much better. It's still not perfect, but it's much better. I would have liked to have seen them just implement that in Suikoden. Take that quality of life improvement from the sequel and bring it over to Suikoden. And so it's just little things like that that I think are sort of a step they could have taken a little bit further that would have made the experience feel that much better. Another one is they have auto saves in the game, which is great. It's 2025.

[00:29:56] We all have stuff going on. Sometimes we just need to drop a game, right? Like we can't wait for a save spot. So Suikoden has and Suikoden 2 have auto save, but it'll only trigger when you walk onto a screen with a save point, which is weird, right? They're very rare and they're always like mid dungeon. And so auto save will trigger when you walk into a room or a screen with a save point, but then you just walk over to the save point and save.

[00:30:21] And so I don't really understand why they wouldn't put in a full on auto save or even just like a quick save. My kids play games on my PlayStation and earlier today I was halfway through a dungeon. My daughter didn't know that, which is fine. She started up another game, which closed Suikoden and I lost all that progress because there wasn't any sort of auto save, which is just weird, right? Like it's 2025. This stuff is pretty standard across the board. And it's just one of those things that just take that extra little step forward.

[00:30:50] The games are technically sort of relocalized or retranslated, but Suikoden's translation and localization is fine. It was standard for the time. It was fairly clean. It had very little personality. It was bland. Suikoden 2, however, wasn't as known for having one of the worst localizations ever. So it's littered with like people will talk and there will be like eight exclamation marks after their sentence or ellipses with eight periods in them and stuff like that.

[00:31:18] Like just like totally over the top. And in my book, I talk to members of the localization team about how and why this happened and get to the like the bottom of like, why did this localization of a game that the Japanese version is so interesting and so story heavy, character heavy.

[00:31:33] Why did we end up with a localization that reads the way it does, especially because it was done by people like Jeremy Blaustein, who was responsible for the Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation, which at the time was known to be one of the greatest localizations of all time. And so how did he do the Metal Gear Solid localization when only like a couple years or no, when did Metal Gear Solid come out? Those might have been around the same year. 98. Yeah.

[00:31:58] So a year before he did Metal Gear Solid and then he followed that up with Suikoden 2, which is known to be just like such a mess. So anyway, talk about that in the book. Short story is it would have been really nice to see Konami go back to the drawing board and take the original Japanese scripts and relocalize these games. Instead, what they've done is they've taken the English scripts and they've obviously done a polished pass and a punch up pass. The localizations now are clean. They're not like they're not bad the way they were before, but they are also not special.

[00:32:28] They're not above and beyond. They're just fairly generic at this point, which is better than what they were, but also not what the series really could have like thrive from having. The story is so rich and complex that if they had had something that was localized from the original Japanese in a manner that is consistent with 2025 localizations, it could have been something really special. Something that I think really would have caught a lot of people by surprise.

[00:32:55] Whereas now you're getting something that no longer gets in the way of the story, especially in the second one, but it just doesn't add on top of what is a fairly good Japanese script. Now, I actually saw this game at Tokyo Game Show all the way back in the year 2022 and is now 2025. So any insight on why it kept getting pushed back? I couldn't really tell you. My guess is that they kept releasing content, right? On screenshots and stuff like that. There were promising features early on.

[00:33:23] It feels like something that's fairly polished and consistent. It runs fabulously on the PlayStation 5. Like it feels like a dream. It was probably my guess is just resourcing. They probably knew that they was something like Suikoden. They needed to release something. Even if it wasn't perfect, it had to be good and not undermined by simple things that should be done well that just aren't.

[00:33:46] Like I keep going back to like the Grandier remaster where if they had just given you an option in that game to do original graphics instead of like the smeary upres filter. Or they had gone through and redrawn sprites and textures. That game would have been so much better. And I think Konami knew they needed to do better by Suikoden than that. But it's also fairly obvious that the game didn't have an enormous budget, right? Like it would have been really nice if they had relocalized it. But that would have cost a lot of money.

[00:34:14] It would have been really nice if they had instead of taking like the textures and sort of like I don't think they're AI upscaled. I think they are sort of like redrawn because they're not consistent with the original game. Like if you look at the assets in the original game, the versions in the new one are similar, but they're not upright. They're different in color tone. But they also look like maybe they could have been a subject of budget constraint.

[00:34:39] If they had taken those games and those backgrounds and done something like bespoke, hand-drawn, non-tiled backgrounds for all the towns and dungeons, it could have been something really special, right? Take the idea of like pre-rendered backgrounds on the PlayStation, but do that in a hand-drawn style. That could have been really beautiful. Some of the modern retro revival RPGs like Sea of Stars or Chained Echoes or you look at other, even Iudan Chronicle.

[00:35:05] You look at some of those games and they revive that pixel art style from the PlayStation or the Super Nintendo in such a modern, beautiful way. And comparing that against some of like the art in Suikoden remasters, it just doesn't really hold up. And so I do wonder if there was like a point, like I keep looking at these games. I'm like, ah, I feel like Konami was probably like, oh, just AI upscale all the backgrounds. That's that'll be fine. Other people are doing that.

[00:35:33] And it feels like a team that was like, no, no, we can't do that. We care too much about the series. We want to do something that's better than that. And so Konami was like, okay, fine. Like here's some budget. But that budget didn't really go far enough to really execute on that idea. And I can see there just being some tension during the development period where the Konami team working on the game wanted to do better maybe than what they were budgeted for. There's like a trifecta that designers will often refer to and it'll be a triangle.

[00:36:02] And each point it'll be speed, cost or quality. And the idea is pick two. So if you want quality and you want speed, you're going to pay for it. If you want quality and cheap, it's going to take a long time and vice versa. You can only have two. And I can see in this instance that they probably went for quality and cost. And that comes at the expense of speed. Let's talk about the future of the franchise. Actually, in a few days, Konami did announce they were having some sort of Suikoden live stream. So they could technically announce Suikoden VI theoretically.

[00:36:30] But do you think Konami is going to try to put out a three to five collection or move on to a new game? Or what's your prediction? My prediction is they're not going to do anything. Murayama helped create the series and he left midway through Suikoden III. And he did so because he had set himself a personal goal to leave Konami after 10 years. So halfway through Suikoden III, he was like, okay, 10 years up, I'm out of here. I really like Suikoden III. But the series did sort of like, in a way, lose its way after that.

[00:36:59] So Suikoden IV famously is not very good. Suikoden V is a big return to form for the series. I think it's fabulous. But the big problem that I saw and a lot of people saw, I think, is that during this period after Murayama left, there was this overarching story that was leading towards this conclusion, probably in or against a nation called Harmonia. They were heavily involved in these true runes. And each game from I, II, and III was building towards this.

[00:37:26] After Murayama left, it felt like they knew they needed more Suikoden games because it was fairly popular. But they didn't necessarily want to push the plot forward towards this conclusion that Murayama had been building towards. And so I feel like the choice is now, you release one and two. Then you would have to go back to III, IV, and V because you absolutely need III to be able to tell any future stories in the Suikoden franchise. So if you wanted to go to VI, III has to be in there.

[00:37:56] IV and V you can probably skip because they are both set in the past. And so the latter half of the Suikoden series was just set in the past, sort of filling in gaps in this history. So you couldn't really launch straight into Suikoden VI because there's so much story that would be left on the table. Suikoden III, I love it dearly, but it is a hard game to go back to. I don't think personally you could just put out a remastered version of III. There's so much friction and gameplay friction in there that modern players would bounce off of.

[00:38:25] And even non-modern players like me, I would find it hard to go back and play 70 hours of Suikoden III. So there is just this, again, friction between the idea of like, oh, if we want to push the series forward to VI, we need players to have access to III, IV, and V. But III, IV, and V are all sort of like troubled in their own ways. How do we get people to buy into like three troubled 60 to 70 hour RPGs just so we can make Suikoden VI?

[00:38:52] And I just don't know that Konami in 2025 is a company that's really interested in committing to a series like Suikoden. In that way. I'd love to be wrong. We'll see. I think the announcement will happen after we recorded this before it comes out. So we'll see. I mean, obviously as a fan, my fingers are crossed that it's going to be something special. But of course, like Yoshitaka Moriyama passed away last year. And so he's not there to lead that series forward.

[00:39:19] Junko Kawano, who has been involved in Ayuden Chronicle, she would be a natural successor because she did lead parts of the later Suikoden games. But she's also working with Rabbit and Bear on Ayuden Chronicle. So what does that look like? What does Suikoden's future look like without Moriyama and Kawano sort of at the lead? Now you've written a book about JRPGs, Fight Magic Items, and now you're writing a new book about Suikoden 1 and 2 specifically. So what made you want to cover these two games amongst all the other RPGs you discussed in your previous book?

[00:39:47] Yeah, so Fight Magic Items was an overview of 30 to 40 years of Japanese RPG history. And it focused heavily on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and everything that sort of like spawned out from that point. Or anything that goes back to and sort of engages with the ideas of those games. I wrote about Suikoden 1 and 2 in the book. But it was a series that I felt like I could have written several chapters about. And I was only able to fit in half a chapter about Suikoden.

[00:40:17] And not just what made it interesting in the 90s, but the way that I feel like it has engaged with what was also happening in regular like fantasy fiction and fantasy television from the mid 90s through the 2000s. And also its influence on the genre. I think it's it had I don't think we get the Trails in the Sky series without Suikoden. I think that there's like a strong through line between those.

[00:40:42] And so it just felt like a series and a couple of games that I there was so much more story to tell when I was done writing Fight Magic Items. And so when I connected with the publisher at Boss Fight Books, who's publishing my Suikoden 1 and 2 book, he his name is Gabe. He asked me to pitch him on a few games. So I said, OK, sure. I pitched him on, I think, Xenogears, Lunar, maybe one other and then Suikoden 1 and 2.

[00:41:08] And we both like as I was writing out like my pitches for each of these games, Suikoden 1 and 2 was the one that like really felt like it came the easiest, despite my like interest and love for those other games. But specifically, I realized that I wanted to and needed to write about both Suikoden 1 and 2. I talked to Gabe, the publisher, about this.

[00:41:26] We both saw this vision of how we could sort of take a story that starts with small roots with Suikoden 1 and tell that foundational story and then see where that goes, how that created what then became like a beloved sequel. And that was kind of the gist of it. It was just as I dug into it, it just showed itself to be a more and more interesting story and narrative than I thought even while writing Fight Magic Items.

[00:41:53] You talked a little bit before about some interviews you did. Did you ever talk to Muriyama, for example? I did not, unfortunately. And I did approach both Konami and the Ayuden Chronicle team trying to get interviews with Kawano and Muriyama, but I was never able to secure those over the course of probably 18 months of trying. So that's a big regret of mine. I got lots of interviews with, I have people like Jason Schreier, who I spoke to for the book, who's a noted games journalist, who's a huge Suikoden fan.

[00:42:21] And so I reached out to a lot of content creators who have covered Suikoden, either now or in the past, and have a lot of their thoughts in the book. Unfortunately, I was never able to nail down the development team or the original creators. But as I said, I did have an extensive interview with Jeremy Blaustein, who led the localization team. Casey Lowe, who was also part of the localization team.

[00:42:43] And to me, that was the chapter that I sort of love about, like, in the book the most, because it is this deep dive into something that is such a contentious part of Suikoden 2. And there's not a lot of documentation about what happened there. We all know the localization was rough, but why and how? And so being able to talk to Jeremy and Casey and understand what the circumstances were that led to that really helped kind of bring that book home. And I'm sad I'll never, at this point, get to talk to Moriyama.

[00:43:11] What I really would have loved to have asked him is, like, who was he? Well, what did he kind of dream of as he was growing up? What did he love to do for entertainment? What was it that created the person that then created Suikoden? And I won't ever get to ask him that anymore, which is too bad. But I think you can also look to his works to understand the answer to some of those questions. So when can we expect the book? The book is slated for 2026, next year. It'll be part of Boss Fight Books. They have their seasons.

[00:43:39] Each season is usually four books, and it's supported via Kickstarter. So it'll be one of the Kickstarter books in 2026. Oh, nice. But it's all written. It's gone through revisions. It's edited. I'm just wrapping up a pass on it now. And so it's hopefully something that's going to be off my plate within a couple of weeks. And then I'll be moving on to what's next after that. But I'm pretty excited. I was able to reveal finally that I've been working on this book and be able to talk about it after a long time. I've been working on it on and off for about two years.

[00:44:07] And I'm really happy with how it's all come together. Nice. Is the cover of the book going to resemble the U.S. version of Sugiden 1's cover art? Oh, my gosh. I would love for it to. And I actually spent a fair bit of energy trying to track down the original artist. The team was never able to find any information on them, which was a bummer. Because for those who haven't seen it, it's this incredible array of characters from... They look like they'd be off the cover of Harlequin romance novels. But they are also reminiscent of actual characters in the game.

[00:44:36] So you can look at them. They don't look like any characters in the game. But you're like, I think this is probably Victor. I think this is probably Wendy. And it's so far-fetched and far out there compared to the Japanese art with its anime art that I love it dearly. The cover for Boss Fight books are all fairly standardized. So the cover will wear a ways off from revealing that. Unfortunately, it will not cross over with the cover for Sugiden.

[00:45:01] Though maybe, now that I'm thinking of it, maybe I'll try to find someone to commission some alternate cover art for it or something. Yes. And in the new version, you can interview the artist. You can add a chapter about Super Bomberman R2. So there's a lot that you can do in the future. But in the meantime, listeners, definitely check out or keep your eye on Aiden Mower's book about Sugiden 1 and 2. So that was a look at the new Sugiden 1 and 2 HD remaster. It's on all platforms right now, including Switch. Ironically, the only numbered Sugiden title to ever hit a Nintendo platform.

[00:45:30] So put it on your radar. Okay, Aiden, where can people find you? Yeah, the best place is I'm always on Blue Sky. Too much. Too often. But my handle there is Aidenisfun. A-I-D-A-N. I-S dot fun. And I also have a newsletter, which is probably the best place to get all the latest about my books, like Sugiden 1 and 2. And other projects that I'm working on, I also write regularly there. I publish features. I publish interviews all the time. It's called Astrolabe.

[00:45:57] You can get to it at astrolabe.adenmohert.com, which I expect will be down below in the show notes. Yes, all the links will be in the podcast description. So listeners, definitely check it out. Aiden Mohert, once again, thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for inviting me on the show. This episode's feature is about my recent trip to Donkey Kong Country in Universal Studios Japan.

[00:46:24] Earlier this year, I had on Nintendo superfan Don Koopman as he regaled us with his trip to DKC. But I also wanted to share my many, many thoughts on this new extension to Super Nintendo World. Now, normally I don't double dip on features, but there are definitely some things I want to cover again on the podcast or have a part two. And considering the scope and importance of this new addition to USJ, this is a good way to start the tradition. Plus, I wanted to share some real inside information and hot tips on how to get the most out of your trip to USJ.

[00:46:53] My wife actually surprised me with this trip. Originally, we had discussed going to DisneySea in February, so I assumed that was the plan. But she pivoted and decided that we should go to USJ instead because she knew that I wanted to visit the new Donkey Kong area. Also, getting into the Fantasy Springs section of DisneySea is still an insane hassle, even though it's been about, what, one year? I wanted to do the Nintendo Museum and a USJ combo trip, but I wasn't picked by the museum lottery.

[00:47:20] I'm convinced that if you don't apply, say, day one or day two, you aren't getting picked. I tried it mid-month, and yeah, I think secretly, all the slots had already been filled. The lottery is kind of an illusion. But there's always next time. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Universal Studios Japan, aka USJ, as I will say many, many times, you can freely enter all areas of the park except for Super Nintendo World. In this instance, you need either a special ticket you purchased beforehand called an Express Pass,

[00:47:48] which gives you a dedicated time to enter the section of the park, or you need to get an entry ticket on the day inside the park via the USJ app. My wife didn't get us the Express tickets, so I just had a regular old ticket with no guarantee at all that I could even get into Super Nintendo World, much less Donkey Kong Country. Now, what do you do if you find yourself in this situation? Well, you gotta get to the park early. I'm talking really, really early. USJ opens at 8.30am. Or does it?

[00:48:17] Because secretly, they opened their gates up about an hour beforehand. So you can enter the park much, much earlier than the vast majority of park goers if you get there before the secret, unadvertised opening time. So the plan was to get there before it opened and then rush straight to Donkey Kong, or worst case scenario, get a very early entry ticket via the app. Now, my wife is not up for this plan of attack. So the plan was to go by myself, then meet up with my wife when she entered the park later in the day. Now, what time did I start lining up?

[00:48:47] 5.30am. Seriously. My hotel was only about a two-minute walk from the actual park, so I woke up at 5, and by 5.30, I was in line. Oh, and you might have read that certain USJ-affiliated hotels are offering Alarmo, and one of those hotels was the one I stayed at, so I requested an Alarmo, and they sent it up to my room. Sadly, it doesn't come in a box, but instead a clear plastic bag. But I set it up and everything, and it went off with my other alarm clock at 5am just as planned.

[00:49:16] Though I didn't really know how to turn it off, so my wife and I were up at 5am trying to wrestle with the clock and trying to stop it from playing Jump Up Superstar. Anyways, after I woke up, I passed through the giant gate and was greeted with a sign saying, Hey, don't line up here. Line up at the security check. I last visited USJ in 2022, and they didn't have a security gate or anything, so I was a little bit confused about where it was, but I saw some other people sprinting through the park, so I just followed them. I found the area and then lined up at the security gate.

[00:49:45] Now, at 5.30am, I'd say there were definitely around maybe 200 or so people already there. The security gate isn't one long line, though. It's a row of many, many smaller lines, and I was about person number 20 in my line. I was wondering beforehand, is 5.30am too early? And honestly, no. It was perfect. Maybe I could have gotten there around 6 and then still smoothly been able to enter the park, but the number of people in line from 5.30 to 6 was honestly exponential.

[00:50:14] And I had to wait in line until about 6.30 before people started to go through the actual security gate, so I had to wait a good hour in the cold and the dark before I could actually move. But it was fun to see everybody decked out in Nintendo gear and see the sun come up over Universal Studios. It's not Mount Fuji, but it's still a nice place to view the sunrise. So, 6.30am, I go through the check and then line up right in front of the entrance gate. I can now actually see into Universal Studios Japan, and I may be the 10th person in my mini line.

[00:50:43] But even then, I still had to wait quite a while. But around 7.15am, the staff comes out to wave. Woody Woodpecker and the girl Woodpecker, whose name I don't know, appear. They open the gates, I scan my ticket, and off I go. Now, there were big signs saying, Don't run, but everyone is running. Maybe not full-blown Usain Bolt sprint, but definitely jogging, including myself. I mean, I am in a race against time. If I don't get there early enough, they're going to flip the switch and require time entry tickets.

[00:51:12] Keep in mind that I'm trying to do everything before my wife gets here so I can spend the rest of the day with her. And let me tell you, the entrance of the park to Super Nintendo World, it's way farther than you think. So by the time I got to the Jaws area, I was already pretty tired from jogging. But past Jaws was Waterworld, and I saw the Super Nintendo World attendees saying, Don't worry, you can freely enter this section of the park. So I breathlessly strolled into Super Nintendo World, mission accomplished. Or was it?

[00:51:42] Because even from the entrance to Super Nintendo World to DKC, it was pretty far. Oh, and I failed to mention this. I completely forgot my power-up band I bought during my first trip to Super Nintendo World years ago. So I was sans band. And if you've never been to Super Nintendo World, you gotta get the band. So many activities center around the band. Now, I was faced with a dilemma. Buy a new one, but potentially have to wait longer for the minecart ride, or do the minecart ride sans band, and then buy a new one.

[00:52:12] But since the stall selling the band was right at the entrance and only one person was in line, I decided to get a new band. A DK-themed one. But another kerfuffle here. They don't take cash. What? When has there ever been a single location in Japan that didn't take cash? And as I'm trying to dig out my credit card, I just see waves and waves of people dart past me, which gets me pretty worried that I won't be able to easily enter the minecart ride. But I dug out my card, got my band, then headed over straight to Donkey Kong Country.

[00:52:41] I didn't stop to take pics. I didn't stop to marvel at anything. I just made a straight beeline towards minecart madness. Super Nintendo World was relatively empty in that there wasn't a ton of people shoulder to shoulder, but clearly a lot of people in line with me at 5.30am went here first. The entrance to DKC is in the back of Super Nintendo World, demarcated by a giant round gate with Donkey Kong Country proudly written on top. But again, no pictures, no soaking it in. I just went straight for the minecart ride housed in the Golden Temple,

[00:53:10] which is basically a straight line from the gate. Now, I got there around 7.25am, and the sign said that it was a 30-minute wait for both the normal line and the single rider line. Single rider, if you don't know, is a separate line where you can get on the ride faster if you are by yourself. So for both to be the same wait, it seemed a little odd. The line for the ride was already pretty long, but I saw one person in line for the single rider area, so I followed him since I was by myself. And waiting 30 minutes in the single rider line?

[00:53:40] A total ruse. I was literally the second person in that line and pretty much walked straight onto the ride. Now, the caveat for being in the single rider line is that you often don't get to experience the fun things in the queue. Like, I saw Cranky Kong, but from kind of far away and not at a picture-taking angle. I also didn't scan anything nor see the giant arcade mural. So you are really prioritizing getting on the ride versus experiencing literally everything if you are in the single rider line. But hey, I had a time limit,

[00:54:09] and also I just kind of wanted to ride the ride, so I happily sacrificed a Cranky Kong picture for 30 minutes of extra time. I was finally at the docking station where I saw rows and rows of carts and people getting in and out. It's here where you can kind of understand how the ride actually works. The cart is not on a traditional track, but instead attached to this big arm that is attached to a track below the false track. So it is kind of holding you up as opposed to you sitting on a rail. But I barely had any time to wait at all, and before I knew it, I was on the ride.

[00:54:39] I sat in the back left seat, which is great since I am kind of tall, so I'd feel bad if somebody took a trip all the way to Osaka and then I just completely blocked their view. I want to say being on the left side is best since more of the animatronics are there, but you can't go wrong with either side. And I have to say, the ride does a great job in mimicking the look of the game. It does feel like you are really in the game, a 4K version of Donkey Kong Country. Our eyes are 4K, right? Small stuff like the designs for the trees and the tracks and other decorations,

[00:55:07] it looks and feels like it's just ripped straight out of the game. Specifically, Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Wii. And that is the strength of Super Nintendo World as a whole. It completely nails the immersion. I guess I really shouldn't spoil the ride, even though we did get into it in detail in the previous episode about DKC. But in short, I think the illusion of being on a mine cart on a broken track works. It completely works. You never see the arm attached to your cart and there aren't ever any carts ahead of you that break the illusion as well. You only see yourself.

[00:55:37] There are times where you see the quote unquote real track that you are attached to. The fake track is a cartoonishly silver one with wooden sections, but the real one is kind of beige and made of metal. You really only see the real track during the bigger drops that serve as scene transitions. And even then, you don't see the arm attached to it. There are two really standout moments of the ride, dodging another cart as it's about to crash into you and the dark area where you are swapping tracks. I do think these steeper drop sections are really good and a solid level of intensity.

[00:56:06] Not too much, but not too light either. I could have definitely handled a more intense ride, but I didn't think it was too soft, which was something I was a bit worried about. Ironically though, when you do pop out of the giant barrel at the top of the temple, there isn't a huge drop or anything. You're pretty flat and at a slow speed. It serves more as an interesting visual thing to put at the top of the ascent as opposed to working like it does in Mario Kart. I would say that this is easily the best ride of the three in Super Nintendo World. Yes, better than Mario Kart, which I did ride again and I will talk about in a bit.

[00:56:36] It's more of a traditional coaster, but with an interesting gimmick and good set pieces. I don't think it's perfect though. One element that's missing from the ride that really emulates how you ride the minecarts in the actual game is that there aren't a lot of vertical jumping moments. When I think of a minecart level from the game, I'm thinking of those moments where you need to make a huge leap and then land onto another track. There is a darkroom that sort of emulates this idea, but it's more of side-to-side jumping as opposed to jumping up and down. Similarly, I would have liked to have seen layers of the track.

[00:57:05] Again, going back to the idea of vertical jumping, oftentimes in the games, you make a choice between a higher track or a lower track. Here, the idea of having multiple tracks that you choose from doesn't exist. You are on one continuous track with some broken segments that you overcome and keep following. I think having a segment where you clearly see a higher track and a lower track, your kart jumps, and then you miss the top track and land on the bottom one, that would have been a fantastic moment. And it would have made you feel like, oh, something is going wrong and that you're about to fall off. I also have to note that the ride is very short,

[00:57:35] maybe sub two minutes, which is fine for me since I immediately got onto the ride and didn't have to wait long at all. But I wonder if people who waited over two hours for the ride only to be on it for two minutes are satisfied. I guess you do go in knowing that it is a short ride and you do get to see Cranky Kong up close, so take that as a consolation. The reason why it took so long to open up DKC in the first place was because of this ride. It's new tech, no ride in the world uses this idea of having a false track, and I imagine it took a lot of R&D and testing to get it just right. And so far,

[00:58:03] everything seems to be working smoothly. I have heard of instances where they needed to repair the ride or it did break down, but these seem to be very, very rare. So while the ride was a big risk in its idea and execution, the ride is a huge success and I highly recommend it. Now let's dive into the rest of the area. Finally, I could breathe easy and take some pictures since the biggest thing I wanted to do, honestly, I entered the park at 7.15 a.m., got to DKC at around 7.25, and by 7.30 a.m., I was done with Minecart Madness.

[00:58:33] I was making record time. I legit thought that I would maybe have to wait up to an hour to even get on the ride, and even at 7.30, the normal queue was gigantic. It was already going outside of the DKC area and into the Mario section. So if you're by yourself, single rider is really the way to go. Now for the rest of the area, the Golden Temple is really a great set piece. It's gigantic, it has a huge monkey head, and the glimmering gold color is a perfect contrast to the bright blue sky. The steam or mist that comes out of the mouth is also a really good touch.

[00:59:03] And you can stand pretty close to parts of the ride, including a water splash area where you see, yes, the blue Pikmin playing around. There are secret Pikmin in the DKC area, though secret is a bit of a stretch. You can see them pretty easily if you know where to look. Another standout landmark is DK's home, the big treehouse with Kong on the top and a horde of bananas on the bottom. This is where DK appears to jump around and you can take pictures with him. But again, I was there at 7.30 a.m., so he wasn't ready just yet, but put a pin on this for later. There are a lot of scan points for your power-up band as well,

[00:59:33] most noticeably the giant Kong letters. Like Don said in the past episode, these are very easy to find. They are basically in a line going from the starting gate. So unlike the real games, I actually found them all in one go. In the back corner of the park is a big barrel with balloons that you can actually scan and it will do the power-up roulette. So this is one of the more interactive and eye-catching scan points in the park. The whole layout really does feel like a narrow rectangle with the line for the ride bisecting it. The line actually doesn't snake until it leaves DKC and entering the Mario section, which is sparse

[01:00:03] since you don't want the entire section just to be a horde of people in line for one ride. Most of the stuff is to the right of the line, but the Rambi Bongo game is to the left side, so if you want to do that, you do need to kind of cut through the line. I didn't play the actual Bongo game, but I did see Rambi poke his head out a few times, which is what I would rather see instead of actually playing the game. It is kind of a weird feeling since most lines are kind of separated or hidden from others in the land, but in DKC, a huge chunk of the people actually in the land are just standing and waiting.

[01:00:32] Now at 7.30am, the food stalls were all closed, and this was one of the big things I wanted to do. I asked a gift shop attendee when it opened, and she said 8am, so I had about 30 minutes to kill. Thankfully, there's a huge Mario section right outside the gate, so I did Mario Kart, single rider, so maybe a 15-minute wait, and I did Yoshi's Adventure, which I had actually never done before, which was about a 10-minute wait. I did do an episode on Super Nintendo World on the podcast years ago, so go listen to that if you want really in-depth thoughts on the Mario section.

[01:01:02] The Mario Kart ride, though, I kind of wrestle with this one because while it is extremely cool, it's also pretty complicated for a ride, and there's always a struggle between do I pay attention to the digital elements or the real animatronics? I do think they nailed the Rainbow Road section, and hey, I won, so go Team Mario. The Yoshi ride, yeah, this is pretty much exclusively for young kids, but the decorations inside the queue look absolutely amazing. It has the watercolor picture book style of the Yoshi games, and the ride has

[01:01:31] fantastic animatronics of the Yoshis and the other Mario characters. Plus, you do get a good vantage point of the area. I think if the wait for this ride is over 20 minutes, you can skip it since it doesn't have a single rider line. But I do think a young kid would really like it since it does feel like you are riding on your own personal Yoshi. So I finished both rides in about 30 minutes, so back to the DKC area I went. I got a DK Wild Hot Dog, which was the big food item of the land. Should you eat a big hot dog at 8.30 a.m.? probably not, but DK would.

[01:02:01] This hot dog, let me tell you, way better than I expected. I was honestly thinking this is something that you would eat in two bites and then you're still hungry, but no, this was a lunch tier hot dog in size and flavor. First of all, it looks fantastic with the Aztec-inspired patterns on the bun and it comes in a very colorful box. The tortilla chips, you do kind of need to eat those individually, but that was also part of the fun. You take it out of the hot dog and then eat it like it's its own snack. It's kind of like a little separate snack you get with your hot dog. The sauce is a mix

[01:02:30] between cheese and avocado and I thought this was a great blend without being overwhelming. And the dog itself is very meaty and juicy. Now, around midday, I had yet another hot dog in another area and yes, the actual dog part is probably the exact same all over the park, but the DK hot dog is way better in terms of topic and form factor. So, DK Wild Hot Dog, highly recommended. It is way more filling than you'd think, so eat it on an empty stomach. Next up at the Jungle Shakes hut was, well, shakes. The big ticket item here

[01:03:00] is the DK mug that you can buy with your shake and of course, I did. The mug is probably the best DK themed souvenir as well, so I had to have it. There's a hot shake and a cold shake. Now, Don highly recommended the cold one and specifically said don't get the hot one, but man, it was cold, so I got the hot one. And yeah, Don was right. The hot one isn't that good. First of all, it's not hot at all and I don't like the mix of a hot drink and then a bunch of other stuff and snacks on top. It is big though,

[01:03:29] so if you're still hungry after that hot dog, the hot dog and shake combo would definitely fill your belly. And the last real thing you can do is Funky's Flying By, the merch shop shaped like Funky Kong's airplane. You can buy some DK merch here like hats and plushies, but honestly, nothing super crazy. There's way more merch outside of this area and at other Universal Studios shops. There's definitely a hundred variations of just DK and Diddy plushies, but they also have keychains, train card holders, a squeeze toy where Rambi can pop out, underwear, tissue boxes,

[01:04:00] banana chips, and so on. Not sure if there's any exclusive items in Flying By, but they do sell the power-up bands here just in case you didn't get one earlier. So around 8.30 a.m., my wife contacted me and said she was in the park, so I wrapped up some photos in Nintendo World and went to go meet her. However, another hack, while inside Super Nintendo World, I got a timed entry ticket for another time so I could return. I got a ticket for around 3 p.m., so yeah, keep this in mind. 8.30 a.m., tried to do a timed entry ticket

[01:04:29] and the earliest time was 3 p.m. So yeah, get to Universal Studios Japan as soon as you can. My wife actually reserved a time for herself around 1, so she must have reserved a time before she even contacted me, but another hack, if you miss your time, you can still go in with another person who has a later time. So I had a 3 p.m. entry ticket, my wife had a 1 p.m. entry ticket, we got there at 3, she showed her ticket and explained the situation and they let us both in

[01:04:59] because I had the correct time. Now, this won't work if only one of you has a timed entry ticket, so you both need it. But if you're coming at different times, it's a good strategy to reserve a time than go together with whoever has the latest time. My wife was interested in writing Minecart Madness, but when we actually got there around 3 p.m., there was a 2.5 hour wait. The single writer line was much shorter, but she decided to skip it. There's always next time. However, I did see DK in the flesh or in the fur at this time.

[01:05:28] If you want to get next to him, you do need to line up in a specific area and they call you on stage to take a picture. But it's not a smartphone picture. You got to pay for a physical photo of you and DK. So I just took some pictures of him from afar. But even from far away, he does look huge. Like, are there two people in here? It does look like somebody is kind of commanding In the future, I would like to see DK and Mario interact somehow in the park. Maybe they can meet on neutral ground? Maybe the Waterworld stunt show or something?

[01:05:57] Since DKC is the newest area, ads for it are all over the park. There are giant banners of Cranky Kong and Diddy Kong hanging from the lamppost. The stores have elaborate displays and science advertising the new Donkey Kong stuff. It is pretty amazing to see Donkey Kong really be the star of the entire park. This is the most attention DK has had in quite a while. Hard to believe he technically hasn't had a new game but maybe this year will change that. So in short, Donkey Kong Country in Universal Studios Japan, a nice extension to Super Nintendo World.

[01:06:27] It has the best ride at Super Nintendo World, some nice theming, some great food. Not nearly to the scope of the Mario section, but think of it like an expansion pack to Super Nintendo World. There's been a lot of rumors flying around about a Luigi's Bansion ride, a Zelda ride, and a Pokemon section that may or may not be coming to Universal Studios either in Japan or abroad. And if all these things are at the same standards of the Mario and the DK sections, everyone should be really, really excited about the future of Nintendo in Universal Studios.

[01:06:56] I think a lot of my listeners abroad, you're probably closer to Orlando than you are Tokyo. And soon, they will open up Epic Universe in Orlando, Florida featuring Super Nintendo World and the Donkey Kong Country expansion. So both highly recommended. Now, it's hard to say which one would be better, but if the Epic Universe one is, let's say, 80% as good as the USJ one, you should be very, very excited. That's it for the feature. Now for the news.

[01:07:27] Pokemon were presented, specifically the mods in Pokemon Legends ZA. Still no real release date outside of 2025, but we got a brand new trailer highlighting the game. And it is much closer to Legends Arceus than I imagined. I think a lot of people, including myself, saw this game takes place in a city and thought, huh, that's very different from the open landscapes of Arceus, so maybe the structure is completely new. But it seems to have the same idea of a hub area with excursions into wild areas where you can explore and catch Pokemon.

[01:07:56] So no signs of this being a city builder or time travel or a catacomb dungeon explorer like a lot of people guessed. It's still early and I'm sure there are many surprises, but it does seem like the concept of the first game squeezed into a single city. Let's get this out of the way. Is this game ugly? Yes. It doesn't look good. And I am one that likes the look of Arceus. A game that is still kind of ugly, but it has an interesting Ukiyo-e art style that goes a long way. And I love the skyboxes. Here the art style is bland.

[01:08:26] The character designs do look a bit closer to Sword and Shield than the doll-esque human designs of Scarlet and Violet, but the landscapes and buildings don't have any real flair or style to them. How about Impressionist Pokemon? That's from France, right? So you're in Lumio City from the excellent Pokemon X and Y games, and it's currently undergoing a major reconstruction overhaul that's led by maybe the two most evil-looking Pokemon characters I've ever seen. And certain sections of the city are wild areas where Pokemon seemingly roam freely. I don't know how safe

[01:08:56] I would feel if there was a district in Tokyo where just wild animals roamed freely, but maybe I would be okay if I had a water-blasting alligator in my pocket. One thing I gotta note is that unlike Arceus, the wild areas are all integrated into the city. So instead of exiting a gate and then warping off somewhere, you can enter them seamlessly from the hub. This makes me wonder, are these areas just a lot smaller? The zones in Arceus were quite expansive and encouraged you to revisit them after you've gained more abilities. Maybe I'm not that creative, but it's hard to imagine an Arceus-sized zone

[01:09:25] inside a single city, especially with seamless transitions from the hub. The one we got a peek at was a street. Okay, not exactly lighting the world on fire with that idea, but we do see some hints that other zones like a grassy area with water and maybe a sand area as well. We don't see a whole lot of zone exploration, so I really have to wonder how we will navigate through here and how they will encourage exploration. But we do see a little bit about the traversal though, as you can warp up to the rooftops and seemingly jump between buildings.

[01:09:55] So we might be parkouring across the city, maybe even outside of the wild zones. They show a battle on the roof, which is maybe the biggest new change. Battles are now real time. Moves have cooldowns and you need to think about dodging and positioning. Honestly, I'm very excited to see what they do with this new battle system. I love the strong and agile system from Arceus and how battles were overhauled in general when it came to level disparity in stats. So I have a lot of confidence that they can deliver a very engaging battle system without having to worry about the competitive meta.

[01:10:25] Which is another reason why I loved Legends Arceus. It felt completely unshackled by the typical battle conventions and competitive scene. I mean, the scene where the stealth rock stops the talent flame in its tracks. That's really cool. I'm really interested to see how these moves interact with each other. Some other details, the stars are Totodial, Chikorita, and Tepig. Kind of weird that we have two Gen 2 Pokemon and now all the Gen 2 Pokemon are selectable throughout the Legends games, but I gotta go with Totodial. Mega Feraligator? That's gonna happen. The trailer also teased

[01:10:55] promotion matches, which made me kind of think this could be similar to gyms. Since we don't have noble Pokemon in the game, at least it's not confirmed, I think traditional gym battles could replace them. The setting is just so different from Arceus that I wonder how they're going to be able to adapt those gameplay conventions into this new title. Like, is crafting in the game? Are we still gathering mats? To be honest, the ZA trailer wasn't that exciting. The graphics aren't that great. They don't go in depth about the interesting features. We see zero, count them, zero new Pokemon.

[01:11:23] But I do trust the Legends team. They made the best Pokemon game on Switch, so hopefully the height meter jumps up a bit before all the details are revealed. Also at the Pokemon Presents was Pokemon Champions, which seems to be somewhat similar to Pokemon Showdown in that it focuses purely on battles. You can transfer your Pokemon from home into Champions, and I wonder in the future, are VGC battles or online Pokemon battles in general going to be mostly through this game? I mean, the GTS is solely through an app now, so maybe online versus battles

[01:11:53] will be excised from the main games except for friends. We don't know a whole lot about it and we only got a CGI trailer. It is from Pokemon Works though, which is a collab between Game Freak and Ilka, so I wonder if this will be the start of several projects from them or will they mostly just be focused on this in the near future? Is Pokemon Works just the team that handles Pokemon Champions? But I welcome anything that makes Pokemon battles and training more streamlined. I do think you can make a really good modern Pokemon Stadium game if you give people a lot of Pokemon customization options and fun online modes

[01:12:22] like Team Draft or Random Battles, but this seems to be a more minimalistic tool to do comp battles. So yes, get ready for years and years of Pokemon Presents segments solely focused on Pokemon Champions, just like Unite and Go and Cafe and Masters and TCG Pocket and whatever else new game they announce. But let's wrap up the podcast before they announce a new Pokemon app. Thanks as always for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast on your favorite app. Leave a five-star review as well, it really helps. This podcast

[01:12:52] is also available on YouTube, so like and subscribe there as well. I'm on Twitter, Threads, Blue Sky, Instagram, just search for Tokyo Game Life or find the links in the podcast description. If you like the podcast, be sure to share it with your friends and on social media. The next episode will be on March 23rd, the last episode before the fabled Switch to Direct. See you next time. Mata ne!