Today’s Wonderful Wednesdays is going to be a last-minute substitute topic about a gaming related topic that’s only marginally related to GOG.com. You see, I got Democracy 3 last weekend as a result of a sale that they had and I wanted to put up my first impressions today but I had to push it back a week.
Welcome to Wonderful Wednesdays! Today’s topic is going to be a slight diversion from the GOG.com topic, even though the topic has covered and will cover games that are available for sale on GOG.com. However, I wanted to open with a quote, which is where I got that “the agony of defeat” that you see in the title up there:
"Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport!
The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat!
The human drama of athletic competition.
This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!"
Yes folks, for those Americans of a certain age, I just quoted the entirety of the original ABC Wide World of Sports monologue, which is apropos for today’s topic.
The topic is a Japanese television show I have been quite taken with recently called Game Center CX. The show stars Shinya Arino, a middle-aged Japanese comedian with the comedy team Yoiko (a two-man comedic team much like some of our best comedic teams in the US like Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy). He plays the Kacho, or Chief (Executive), of a fictitious Japanese company called Game Center CX (obviously, the title of the show). His job? To play old video games to completion in order to see their endings, or to fulfill some crazy challenge like a 24-hour live broadcast of playing nothing but Lemmings for the Super Nintendo.
In the earlier seasons of the show, his title was actually affected whenever he did really poorly (and Arino is quite terrible at playing most video games), but thankfully in more recent seasons this has been done away with.
But why am I talking about Game Center CX (known as Retro Game Master in all regions beside Japan)? Because this show is wonderful, but also because a few of the games that have been played on the show are on GOG.com, of course! Chief among them being Another World, known as Out of This World in America and Outer World in Japan.
I am also discussing the show because for English speakers such as myself, this show is normally quite inaccessible because it is in Japanese, and official versions of the show in English (such as the Retro Game Master: The Game Center CX Collection DVD set from Discotek Media) do indeed need to be supported.
And we Americans have, as a general rule, been extremely lousy at supporting official Game Center CX merchandise. First there was Retro Game Challenge from XSeed Games, which was the first of the official Game Center CX games. It was a GameStop exclusive if I recall right, and any retailer exclusive that doesn’t sell out is deemed to be a “failure” and therefore if that was the case (and XSeed really didn’t market this game well, if at all), we basically got screwed out of future Game Center CX games being in English for this one reason alone. And to make matters worse, when Game Center CX became Retro Game Master on Kotaku a couple of years ago, the show was really not marketed well at all. Not to mention there was also a horrendous Iron Chef-esque dub that basically didn’t fit the style and tone of Game Center CX whatsoever (whereas the subdued dry wit of the narrator in the Japanese version is actually more agreeable to me).
So essentially, if Game Center CX is not marketed properly and is given frankly really terrible treatment in the US and other global markets, it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to get Game Center CX to be a viable commodity anywhere outside of Japan. I’m really grateful to Fuji Television for creating a video featuring the Kacho in an official English sub on their own page because this shows that subs are probably a good way to go unless they figure out how to get a subdued, dry sort of wit to do a proper, official English dub, which I think isn’t going to happen and we Americans will just have to suck it up and deal with fansubs of the show that help make this fabulous, wonderful show accessible to those of us who do not speak any Japanese but would still like to watch a middle-aged Japanese man play video games reasonably poorly (some games he is remarkably good at, including puzzle games).
And in closing, I have a message for the Kacho. I guess one of his staffers who can read English can give this to him in a format that he can understand, but because he doesn’t speak or read English very well if at all (same with me and Japanese), I’m just going to put this in in my own native language and hope that Kacho Arino gets the basic gist of what I am about to say.
Arino Kacho,
Hello there! I learned about your wonderful show, Game Center CX, just this last December, after your NES Remix episode. I had in fact been quite excited to play NES Remix after last December’s Nintendo Direct, and it is just as fun (and occasionally frustrating) as your Game Center CX episode made it seem.
After finding that episode to be indeed quite fun, even without knowing all that much Japanese, I decided to look into other episodes of the show, and I came upon your show through fan-made subtitles for Game Center CX. I have come to very much appreciate the subdued, dry wit of the narrator, so much so that when I discovered the English dub, I was immediately put off of the dub. But then again I am not a fan of even dubbed anime, so if Game Center CX is to thrive here in the US, I can propose a solution: If you can get an English narrator that can match the subdued tone and the dry wit of the original commentary, while still having you and your assistants’ dialogue subtitled, then I think it would be wonderful to be able to view this series, in English, whether on a television network, a streaming service, iTunes, or on a DVD set.
Regarding the arcade trips (or tamage), I think that while the Japanese have gotten sort of jaded about the arcade scene in Japan, I am absolutely fascinated by those game centers in Japan, and alot of people who have seen your show in the West feel the same way. I sincerely hope that those arcade trip segments can in fact be included somehow in future releases of Game Center CX over here as sort of a tourism feature for prospective travelers to your country, but I understand why that would be if you don’t.
I’ll try to keep this brief, so in closing I really cannot wait to see you tackle more difficult video games. I am cheering you on from America!
Sincerely,
BJ Wanlund
The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat!
The human drama of athletic competition.
This is ABC's Wide World of Sports!
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