rips – RPG Maker Historia

Created by: JKB Productions
Released: June 2001
Engine: RM2000

Okay so we’ve all been enamored with the battle royale Tetris that came out of nowhere on the Switch recently. But hold up, alright, stay with me here, what about, Tetris, but made in RPG Maker? You might be asking: “Why would someone make that…” and I would counter with “Why the hell would someone not?” If you ventured into any game engine or a site with games on it, there would invariably be some kind of Pong or Tetris clone posted somewhere. It’s a neat way to get accustomed to programming or working with whatever new tool you come across. Obviously RPG Maker 2000 has its strengths and weaknesses, with quite a few limitations going for it. It’s not that strange to put a newly found engine to the test.

Thing is though, I didn’t expect the presentation to be so extreme. The title screen opens up to a sped up sparkman stage.midi with a mish-mash of backgrounds from different sources, one in particular being a CGI South Park background. When you hit New Game, the Konami logo jingle plays while displaying the JKB Porductions logo instead. This made me burst into laughter. The sincerity of an RM author rolling out the red carpet for their little mini game project really gets to me. Each background you choose in the game offers its own music, my favorite in particular is the cgi purple mountain-scape background that plays a Black Sabbath midi.

So how does the actual Tetris hold up? Unsurprisingly the game uses individual events to display the tetris blocks and moves them downwards. Event movement is VERY finicky to put it mildly. Since it’s tile based, events are technically on the tile they’re moving to. This can create problems in terms of detecting when a piece needs to stop and feels very delayed and bleh to snap together. Not only that, but you have to wait for the entire piece to reveal itself before you can move it. Suffice to say you won’t be T-spinning your way into high-score chain land. All in all though, it is still playable and very much Tetris. There’s a glitch that sometimes happens where the individual event blocks slide off, which gets me thinking on how this was evented and put together.

The real question though, is it THE Tetris? Very likely not. The aesthetics are somewhat charming though, and it feels in the vein of CD-i Tetris and how it’s more interesting to look into the background/music choices than the actual programming. This is the only Tetris that I know of that has the South Park “Uncle Fucka” song.

Estimated length: ???

Download Here
Author’s Website (Archive) (Portuguese)

Youtube Playthrough

Created by: ArCsLnGa StUdIoS
Date Released: January 2003
Engine: RM2000

The late 90s obsession with Japanese culture and anime could be felt throughout many geocities/angelfire fan pages. Often you’d find gifs of SNK Fighters and anime chibi characters without a clue of where the webmaster got them from, other than they probably got it from a similar site themselves. Shattered Samurai is an amalgamation of that all in an RPGMaker game. I recall this topping a lot of download lists on various sites probably because of the title or its liberal use of Rurouni Kenshin images. Regardless, it’s a pretty subpar action game with a story that focuses heavily on the death of the main characters parents (and by heavily I mean literally every NPC references it).

The biggest memory that stuck out to me back when playing it in 2003 was the CMS (Custom Menu System). It was very flashy and elaborate and cumbersome. But the strangest thing is that almost every menu option had a sound effect of (presumably) the author reading them out loud. We can only assume the Kenshin background image are supposed to be the two main characters. The lens flare over anime aesthetic also contributed a lot to a perceived “cool factor” at the time. The ABS combat was sluggish. You could hit enemies if they’re 1 or 2 tiles away making for predictable encounters, but some fights did try to mix it up.

What makes this game a notable time capsule is its ambiguous Japanese setting. The home town is filled with cherry blossom trees, NPCs with conical hats, advice giving ninjas, and kanji scrolls on every wall. Yet main characters will have super western names like Jennifer or Charles, and very modern background elements. Probably the most RM culture part of this game is the house full of characters from other games and media. The writing is sometimes conceited though, often injecting samurai tropes whenever possible and proverbs that come off as wise for the sake of it. There’s a lot of staged conflicts without any particular purpose other than that’s what happens in an anime with lots of swords. It’s a huge misunderstanding of eastern ideals, but the game itself is like lens in which you can see into an anime fan’s mind circa 2002.

Shattered Samurai has been the community proclaimed “asian game”. It seems like the community (mostly gamingw) is seeing it as a bad thing. Guess were all the great RPG ever made come from? Japan maybe? Anyways as an Asian person, I personally loved the storyline about two rival clans. It seems to fit the anime type storyline from many great shows. Although the battle system has its ups and down, I think anyone would be crazy to say that it wasn’t unique and enjoyable. With excellent graphics and a high potential storyline, I just can’t wait for version 2 to come out.
Aznluv’s Review

This game was eventually completed at the tail end of 2002, although there is an earlier demo version and a sequel. Also I’m pretty sure I wrote a review on Dark Dominion claiming it ripped off Rurouni Kenshin and someone commented and defended the game. That’s about all I remember.

Estimated length: 3 Hours

Download (Complete Version)
Download (2002 Demo)

Main website (archive)
GamingW Page (archive)
Dark Dominion Page (archive)
Golden Dragon page and Review + Download Mirror

Youtube Intro Playthrough (No Commentary)
Let’s Play Series by ShadowHawk2012