Cognition Dissemination: Japanese* B-Tier Games are Back

I made a somewhat out-there post in 2021 that, I’d say, about two people read, the focal point of it being about a wish that Frame City Killer released. It was a game being developed by Namco (prior to the Bandai Namco merger) intended to launch on 360 before it met an unfortunate death. It represented the kind of game I missed: Japanese titles with B-level budgets palatable for the worldwide market, the number of which significantly dwindled following the introduction and especially continuation of the HD era. There were handheld alternative platforms around those times, sure, but the developers responsible for these types of games favored consoles (and PC, to a lesser extent), and knew their audience did the same.

Interestingly, perhaps fortuitously, two such games with gloriously insipid stories and writing with a certain level of edginess to them have been revealed in the last year — though one of them is admittedly not Japanese. There might even be a third one that somewhat counts.

One is Wanted: Dead, announced at the tail end of the largely-virtual Tokyo Game Show 2021 presentation, developed by Soleil. If you’re reading this and wondering who the hell “Soleil” is and are familiar with the types of games I described above (a more niche readership I couldn’t possibly be calling out more), they consist of several ex-Team Ninja developers who helped former Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive director Tomonobu Itagaki form Valhalla Game Studios. They worked on Devil’s Third while there, another example of this type of game released at the tail end of the Wii U’s lifespan. The trailer shows how this game is inheriting the styles of both Ninja Gaiden and Devil’s Third.

Wanted: Dead is an action game with melee and gun combat that takes place in a fictional futuristic Hong Kong, with the main character being a “Zombie Squad” leader known as Lt. Hannah Stone. Stone herself is surprisingly practically dressed for combat, considering the pedigree of some developers involved. The game looks better than Devil’s Third, but currently lacks the action impact the Ninja Gaiden games contained. This has hopefully been worked on since the TGS trailer. I’m wondering if the game can be polished enough in time for its release during the 2022 timeframe they provided, but it’s not like it can’t be delayed.

The game is due for release exclusively for new-generation consoles, despite it not appearing to take full advantage of their power. Soleil absorbed Valhalla Game Studios just before Christmas, which suggests that they’re taking future gaming initiatives seriously. This will ideally be one of those titles.

It’s only been a little over three months since Wanted: Dead was announced, and we already have another example with Showa American Story, a fittingly and gloriously goofy-looking project. It’s an action RPG set in an alternate-universe 1980s-suffused post-apocalyptic USA, one where Japan’s economy from the Showa Era (hence the name) never cratered and all the fears about the country overtaking America came to fruition. As an unfortunate side effect, the world is overrun with zombies and monsters. Thus, the main person tasked with fighting back is, well, a “teenage girl revived from the dead” named Shoko. I wasn’t joking about the “gloriously goofy” part.

The reveal trailer is something else, though, showing Shoko in action without giving the viewers a clear glimpse at her face. She also has incredible assets, to put it plainly, on clear and full display in video form. Another focus involves showing her fighting zombies with melee and long-range attacks, with action that brings to mind the Onechanbara games with a higher budget, with a little of Grasshoper Manufacture’s style mixed in. If that was part of the developer’s vision (which they’re unlikely to admit), they might have succeeded.

Nekcom Games (which is Chinese, by the way) didn’t announce a release date for the game, but the current state of it and the platform choices of PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam suggests it’s not too far off.

(In addition to Nekcom’s location in Wuhan, Soleil is owned by the too-omnipresent Tencent. From one point of view, both of these games are Chinese releases.)

Another example somewhat counts: Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. Examples of the B-tier Japanese (perhaps increasingly becoming “Asian”) games made palatable for a worldwide audience tend to be new IPs, like the aforementioned Frame City Killer and Sega’s Binary Domain. The Team Ninja-developed SoP is part of the biggest Japanese RPG franchise around, but it’s clearly gunning for that vibe, alongside hearkening back to the time when Japanese companies tried to make edgy games for the west during the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 era. The difference here is how evidence suggests SoP knows how stupid it is, but it nonetheless counts as an example. The game should ideally be on par with the Nioh title, even if it’s not as polished as they are.

When I made the post about missing games in this style not even a year ago, I sure didn’t expect that two — and potentially three — of them would be announced not even a year later. It doesn’t matter that one of them isn’t Japanese in nature when it’s clearly inheriting the goofy cheese vibe. I won’t go as far as to say I willed these games back into existence, but I also refuse to say I didn’t. Special powers work in mysterious ways, friends.