Seriously, initially I wanted to write something about the “hidden diamonds of the game industry” or about the games of parodies ridicuating whole genres and other things from games. But in the end, I decided, if I am going to talk about the game whose essence is ridicurating and parodying a whole game genre, then why not laugh at the fact that some people about writing blogs or something else, try to pour more water so that their text seemed more and filled with meaning … so … Wait a minute … wait a minute ..
OK. Let’s start ..
Creating a game.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure-Role-released game released on October 16, 1997 for PlayStation 1, and developed by Love-de -lic.
Love-DE-CHIC-was founded in 1995. One of the founder was Kenichi Nish – a video game designer who once worked on Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger. Niches along with other Square employees (now Squareenix) decided to leave the company to create their own independent games.
In general, this was the main basic information about the development that can be found, at least this is what I managed to find. Not surprising, given the little fame of the game, and even more so the developers ..
But I think it is obvious-given the experience of developing JRPG-IGR and the widespread popularity of the genre, especially in Japan, the developers decided to go to a small experiment. What if you take all the main elements of the genre and turn them upside down, and look at it from a different angle.
And now, after all this, we begin to talk about the game!
Plot
The game begins rather unusual. We play for a boy who, in turn, begins to play a game called Moon.
The game begins with the katsen that explains that the plot, the world, the characters and … other Belleberd on which everyone does not read. And the game puts on us Suiya So A lot of text that is so fast that you do not have time to read a pair of lines ..
The game itself begins in the throne room, where in the role of a knight named – a hero, we get a task from the king, our goal is to defeat the dragon that terrorizes these lands. Having left the castle, we find ourselves in a city where the inhabitants are happy with the hero, they sing him praises, and even allow you to take all things that they have at home, because this will help the hero in the fight against the dragon.
The hero begins his journey! He kills a terrible slug, saves the girl from a terrible sparkled monster, and already on the way to the dragon castle, easily overcome the whole horde of monsters.
And finally, the hero begins the battle with the dragon, inflicting 9999 damage to him for every blow! And already at the moment when the dragon was almost falling, we hear ..
"Hey! Stop playing this game and go to sleep."
We immediately return to the boy who has already played until late at night and whose mother sends to sleep. Having turned off the TV, the boy goes to bed, but unexpectedly the TV turns on and interference begins on it. The boy goes back and tries to turn off the TV. But suddenly, he falls into the TV and begins to fall down from the sky.
The boy fell right into the courtyard of the castle, where the residents of the city were already gathered. He tries to talk to people in the form of a barren spirit, but no one pays attention to him. Entering the castle, he turns to the guards, but they do not see the boy either. And entering the hall in front of him, a familiar scene appears painfully.
When the hero leaves, the boy tries to talk with the king and his minister, but he obviously does not receive help from them. After that, the boy begins to walk around the city studying him and trying to understand what happened? Outside the city, he stumbles on a small house. And entering inside, he meets the grandmother. Hearing a familiar voice, she turns to us and asks us if we are her grandson? Answering yes, granny is incredibly happy about this. Even despite the fact that everyone said that her grandson was gone and probably died, she believed that he was alive and would definitely return. After this, the gram is putting the boy to sleep and he falls asleep.
And suddenly he dreams of an unusual dream. A certain woman in the form of a head addresses him. She explains to him the foundation of the world Moon, namely – love. Our goal is to get love from the inhabitants of this world, the more love we get the stronger we will. And in this way we will be able to help this world.
Every time we go to bed, the woman will evaluate the amount of love received, and all that we did. Along the way, recalling that the main thing in this world is love!
Having woken up, the granny gives the boy the favorite clothes of her grandson and thus, even a strange, but still body. Having dressed, the gram gives us an order to go to the bakery and buy her a bun of bread, giving us a little cookies with a bonus.
Iiiiiiiiii after all this! Let’s talk about gameplay.
Gameplay
The game is particularly attributed to the RPG genre, although this is not entirely. Gameplayo game is more likely an adventure with RPG elements – where we go and explore this world. From RPG there are only that there are elements of pumping, but more on that later. Unfortunately, we will not work for a long time to explore this world, because one of the main gameplayers is – time.
The fact is that in Moon everything goes in real time. The game has a change of day and night, as well as a change of days of the week that are similar to the usual days of the week. And in this regard, the world does not stand still. Each NPC in the game has its own schedule, and depending on the day of the week and time of the day they will be engaged in certain matters. For example, during the local resurrection, most city residents are resting and doing their own business, and almost all shops are closed.
For example, a local bar ruled by a woman named Wanda, it is closed during the day and opens only at night. Also, some characters will come here on certain days.
Returning to restrictions on the study of the world, we have a time limit during which we can move around the world. Когда время заканчиваться мы начинаем уставать и передвигаться крайне медленно, ну, а когда время иссякнет герой упадет без сил и мы получим Game over. To extend the time of wakefulness, you can eat food, however, to fully make up for the supply of forces, we must go to bed. Sleep is also the only way to preserve in the game. To increase the energy limit, we just have to save love. Having collected a certain amount of love, we get a new level, which to increase our strip of energy. At first, we are active no longer than a day, but we can calmly move around the world for the end of the game.
A logical question arises – how to get so important for us love?
There are two ways. The first is quite Bcgame-casino obvious. We must perform the tasks of the characters, somehow help them or fulfill their various desires. Well, the second way is quite interesting.
At one point, leaving the city, we observe how the hero brutally kills a sweet slug with a magic lightning, after which his spirit comes out of the body, and the hero is cynical. Following him, we suddenly see an unusual person. His name is Dolottola and he is very saddened by the death of this innocent creature, but not everything is lost yet. He explains that the monster can be saved, for this you need to catch his soul, after which it will return back to the body. Having made this mucus comes to life, and a strange alien flies behind it on a flying saucer, which collects the slug, after which he leaves us a little money, and in addition we get a little love. Dulottole will thank us after which he will give us an encyclopedia where every beast in this world is described
This mechanics of salvation of monsters is one of the main ones in the game, and it is interesting. There are 51 monsters in the game and almost every of them has its own unique mechanics of capture. Someone appears only at a certain time of the day, someone only when performing some actions on the part of the player, and to appear some, you just need to stand in place and do nothing, or vice versa, to catch the soul you need to get into a timing and grab the soul in time. In order to understand how to catch the soul, we must approach the body and get involved with it, then the encyclopedia will open where there will be a brief description of the creature from which it can be understood how to save it.
Later in the game you will find a TV with the program "Love and Animals", where Dalottola will say how many creatures we have already saved and how much more is left.
Since I mentioned the earlier money, let’s do a little more about them.
Local currency – Yomen, is needed to buy items in stores. Namely, you can buy baking from the baker, and in the store at a strange seller in the Kurio turban can take a fishing rod, a bait for it, a bone and poster of the hero. He can also sell different things and also receive money for them.
In the evening, Kurio go down from the store to your room and going inside you can buy completely new items. Some of which will be needed to pass.
The inventory of our character, although large, but limited. However, at any moment we can remove things in an endless warehouse in which things are sorted by different categories. Among them there are characters;Using the card on the character, he can tell something about the character to whom this card belongs.
In principle, these were all the main gameplay features of the game. So let’s discuss the visual part of the game.
Graphics and visual style
The game graphics are made in an unusual 2D, drawn characters against the background of three -dimensional backdrops;Outwardly, somewhat resembles a third part of the legend of Kiranty, where a similar style of graphics was applied. Plasticine graphics are also sometimes used, for example, all models of monsters and their animation are performed in this way.
The visual style of the game looks pretty unusual. The world of the game is inhabited by many characters whose design is made in a simple caricature style, which, taking into account the main idea of the game, suits it perfectly.
I would like to touch on the topic of music a little, in Moon there is a lot of it at the same time and at the same time it is almost gone. Music plays only on some locations, the rest of the time we will only hear the silence. But the developers gave us a rather unusual solution. Our hero has a musical player in which we can put the music that we will find in any order set by us. For the player, we will need disks with music. You will receive a couple of disks after the completion of some quests, and one can be found in the room of one of the characters. The rest of the discs should be bought from Ruker Burn, who sits in a cave and trains to play solo on his guitar. Each disk costs only 100 yomenens. All tracks are written in different styles and genres and sound quite well (some of the tracks I even have in the playlist), and during the passage you are required Buy them all! I did it and you must. Break all the tracks of Burn to whom I say.
There is a small quest with Bern himself, where we should guess the name of the track 3 times in a row, the passage of which we heard. For this we get a little love.
The main idea of the game and meaning
It is not difficult to guess from the described above that Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is one big parody of the entire JRPG genre. This is evidenced by the gameplay himself, where we are pumped not at the expense of the murder of monsters, but on the contrary, by saving their lives and friendship with the inhabitants of this world;So the plot moments in the game itself, for example, residents do not like the fact that the hero just walks around their homes, takes everything that he wants and sometimes creates any chaos for for no reason, for example, tries to kill the harmless dog Tao. It is funny that some points from the prologue occur in the main game, but from a different angle and a completely different context and from this prospect of the hero’s actions look not only cruel, and sometimes simply absurd.
For comparison, this is what the first meeting with the dog Tao in the prologue looks like.
And how it looks in the game itself. The psychopath in lance armor is simply trying to beat the defenseless dog for the sake of shitty exp`.
All of the above is an obvious stem over the popular JRPG of the time Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Nowadays there is a bunch of parodies games, in which not only specific genres and games are ridiculed, but also the gaming itself as a whole. And at that time, such an idea was a novelty for many. And therefore, the developers once used this and positioned the game as “the first anti-RPG in history” and t.p
Well. Having discussed all the main aspects of this game. Let’s move on to her minuses. For unfortunately they are here ..
Cons of the game
The main disadvantage of the game is, oddly enough, its main fig is time.
Everything in the game takes place in real time and each of the NPC has its own schedule for every day of the week, and this is the problem ..
To complete the quests of some characters you must On a certain day, At a certain hour, to be where the game is needed. And if you did not have time, then everything! Wait for the next time you can do what you need.
For a clear example, take the quest guard Bilby.
The fact is that in the plot, his wife left him, taking the child with her. He misses them strongly and how a gift to his son Bilby wants to make a toy aircraft. Every local resurrection he goes to the castle’s balcony and begins to test it, but the flight is still not given. Our goal is to just talk to him. And you need to do this once a week, 3 times in a row … In the end, Bilby will manage to make a working airplane and he will thank us for supporting him all this time.
The quest, although not bad, is not very complicated, the problem is that you will take a lot of time for its execution … Of course you can go and perform the rest of the quests in parallel, but during this time you can easily forget about the quest itself, because there is no diary or some kind of list of tasks in the game, so you must remember all the events and important plot moments, well, or at least write them out separately.
Another problem, slowness. We walk not spikes quickly, and the world of the game is not very small. Fortunately, the game has its own likeness Fastreval. A speaking plant is growing at the house of our hero, which is ready to send us to different points of the world, but for this he needs to bring different delicious ones, so we can move from our house to one of three points: near the city, in the jungle and in front of the house with contrivations. However, this works only one way ..
In order to vice versa, quickly return to your home for sleeping or as another Fastravel, we need to eat special octopuses. You can buy them from a mustachioed peasant in a cave between the jungle and the well.
Well, my favorite) problem that haunts me in most of these games is called – “And what is the pancake now to do now!?".
Seriously, often in the game, I stopped and did not mean what to do next. How to fulfill this quest? How to catch the soul of this monster? Well, how can I even move on the plot?! Perhaps this is not my best knowledge of English (Although in the game the text is not very complicated, and with the average level of knowledge of the language you can understand the game), or that a little stupid, who knows. But in the end, already somewhere in the last third of the game, I spat and began to pass with guides. Yes, Zashkvar! But I don’t feel bad about this, and even more so as without Gaids to finish to some points in the game, I can’t imagine.
Okay … They bummed a little and enough.
Having raised this story you can ask a small question: “Why the game didn’t take off?"
Well, the answer is quite simple.
Why the game has not become popular?
The game befell the fate that most Japanese titles – the original game came out only In Japan. It was planned to be launched on the Western market at one time, but at that time the plans did not implement. Perhaps one of the reasons is the closure of Love-DE-CC in 2000. But before that, the developers managed to do something else.
After Moon, 2 more games were released: ufo: a day in the life and l.ABOUT.L: Lack of Love. In the first, our goal is to catch the invisible aliens who fell to the ground, and in the second we, being a strange creature, should survive on the planet, transforming into new forms and communicating with other creatures, simultaneously devoting time for sleep and on hiking on “natural needs” … Do not ask I do not understand ..
UFO cover: A day in the Life for PlayStation 1. The game was released on June 24, 1999.
Cover l.O.L: Lack of Love for Dreamcast. The game was released on November 2, 2000.
And it would seem that Moon is waiting for oblivion and they are unlikely to find out about it … but!
Many years later, one of the former Love-de -lic employees-Yoshiro Kimura, decides to establish his small Indi Indiya Games Studio.
Yoshiro Kimura – an ordinary game developer and designer. His track record of games, although small, but at one time he was listed as a producer of two parts of No More Heroes and even participated a little in the development of Rule of Rose. Specifically in the development of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, he was the main designer and screenwriter. And in fact, it is to him that we owe the existence of this game.
The studio was mainly engaged in the release of simple well -known indie games and nothing special happened.
Until Toby has happened.
It would seem, where is Undertale.
October 19, 2018 – In Japan, an interview was held between the three indie developers: Yoshiro Kimura, Toby Fox – the creator of Undertale, and even Zun’s – the creator of the Touhou Project series.
Basically, the developers shared their impressions of each other’s projects, and simply talked sweetly. Regarding Yoshiro – Toby said that Moon: Remix RPG Adventure at one time and inspired him to create his game.
This interview and inspired Mr. Yoshiro to reprint Moon: Remix RPG Adventure with a full translation into English.
October 10, 2019 in Japan and August 27, 2020 in the West, the game is exclusively for Nintendo Switch. And later on December 16, 2021 it was released for PC via Steam and PlayStation 4, and later PlayStation 5.
And it would seem. Such an unusual game finally goes into a western release, on popular platforms, but even so the game did not receive much attention … The game even in the West is little known, and I am generally silent about Russia ..
Personally, I found out about the game, I found out by chance when I saw her announcement on Nintendo Direct in 2019, when she only went out to the switch. But I played it, only when Moon went to the PC, and I found out about it too accidentally, only through Twitter. And somehow it’s even a shame that such a wonderful game was left without attention, for the very meaning of this game and its main message, as for me, are relevant now more than ever.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is a very good game with gameplay extremely innovative for its time, although it has quite significant shortcomings.
But even with such problems, I want as many people to know about this game.
I actually wrote this blog in order to try to familiarize at least a few people, with the game-which, as for me, deserves more than to be a little-known retro turkey from the 90s.
Pretty cool frame from the game. Specifically here we play a small mini game, where we should guess which bird will fly by.
