I had a fun dinner date with the creator of Undertale a few years before they would go on to release the Undertale demo. We had a lot of similar ideas for our modern take on what RPGs are / could be. Including action/puzzle elements into the battle menus was one of the shared ideas we had. A last boss that’s more a symbol, just like Giygas in EB, was another.
A significant part of what I think made Mother so great was Itoi’s prior life experience. He was a runaway as a teen, got involved in gangs and stuff. Similar to Taiyo Matsumoto, they hung out would unsavory sorts, drawing their portrait to make them look “bad ass”. Soon after playing Earthbound for the first time I too would run away and experience all sorts of stuff. Still am, every day that I live outside. Stuff that made me realize that maybe I don’t want to become famous, or make video games at all.
Still, the ideas come. I think about video games all the time. I write stuff down, it gets lost, I throw it away, whatever.
Maybe one day, when I’m old as shit, I’ll make my magnum opus of a video game. At this point in my life it would manifest as some kind of nonviolent overhead JRPG about the human condition. Something that would organically assemble into what would look like a Mother fangame to anyone familiar with the series.
Or, I mean, I’ve designed piddly little 4-way top down shooters, horror games, zelda-likes, as well. That’s a video game. That’s good stuff.
Somewhere along the line, “Idea Guy” became a toxic affinity. I’m here to say Shigesato Itoi is the premiere Ideas Guy. He is credited in early smash bros. games for “Ideas”. Ideas are important. A lot of people make games for no reason but self promotion, social climbing, or to prove their own self worth. Some people are just especially gifted with wild ideas that work and are always spot-on and relevant, even when no one else sees it. Not everyone has the time or education to learn programming from an early age. No one will ever be as epic as Satoru Iwata when it comes to programming games from the ground up in assembly. I’m an ideas guy. I’ve lived multiple lives. I’m worldly. I’m here, on the ground, living like a monk of video games, in extreme poverty. Playing video games and living.
I like the idea of games making the world a better place. Undertale accomplished that somewhat, bringing an emotional, maybe spiritual experience to zoomers during an age where everyone was being sapped by social media.
If you have access to a computer with internet or just living in the united states, that makes you among the more privileged class of the world.
In the early 2000’s when Katamari Damacy came out and changed a lot of things in the gaming scene, I was thirsty for any interviews with Keita Takahashi in english. There was like two in 2008. (my thirst has since been quenched, tenfold.) One thing that he was talking about that I think was on the right track was what he could do to bring world peace through video games. It came from a sense of awareness of the human condition that most games industry folk, in their high towers of excess, never become aware of.
Edit: deleted the section criticizing specific indie games creators. I’m disclosing a lot of personal info and I’m re evaluating how comfortable I am doing that.
