There are two sides to the coin that is the Simple Series, aren’t there: There’s the beloved, much-discussed “far out” side, which is what this thread is about – but then there’s the more modest side. The original vision, which was, after all, “no-frills budget versions of basic concepts”. You know, like The Mahjong or The Bass Fishing & The Bowling Hyper (which, incidentally, is a candidate for the best video game title of all time).
I’ve been making my way through a few of these less glamorous Simple Series games on the PS1 lately, and lemme tell ya… there’s meat on them bones. Turns out, while the “big idea” games aim high and land just a bit lower, many of the unassuming games aim low and land higher than you’d expect.
Take, for example, The Dungeon RPG, which should just be a perfunctory roguelike. But then it hits you with beautiful lighting effects, smooth animations, and sprite rotation and scaling that warms the heart of anyone who’s ever been impressed by Mode 7 on the SNES.
Or what about The Putter Golf, which is far from a half-hearted minigolf game with its technicolor visuals, 3D ball (not even Everybody’s Golf does that, and that’s by the people who made Mario Golf!), and outlandish stage hazards?
Or one of my favorites, The Sentō, which pretends to be a nondescript business tycoon game in which you manage a public bath… until the legs from The Inugami Family (you may know them from Monster Party) show up as a patron, and it gets both funkier and freakier from there.
What might the modern equivalent of this be, do y’all think? Games that appear to be unassuming rehashes of typical concepts, but then it turns out the developers had fun with it. I’m hesitant to draw a parallel to subversive indie games (e.g. Frog Fractions), since those were made with the express purpose of subversion and surprise.
