With Crayon Shin-chan, Japans Summer Vacation series is now available in English

The release of the enchanting adventure game Shin Chan: Me and the professor on summer vacation on Nintendo Switch This week may not seem a momentous event, but the annals of low-budget-led titles rarely do. But like the recent western debuts of live one life, Kowloon High School Chronicleor moon, ShinchanThe new release of the video game is a key part of the history.

Shin Chan: The game My Summer Vacation is the first full-length game to arrive outside Japan, n.w. (Boku no Natsuyasumi). This cult-based series about a nine-year-old in the Japanese countryside, killing friends and catching bugs has never been released in English. However, since the fourth installment, which was released in 2009 by PSP, Shinchan does not go by the “My Summer Vacation”, but shares the same developer, director, set, storyline, gameplay loop, fishing mini-game, hand-drawn backgrounds, and wonky time-progression mechanics of this series. This summer vacation is five o’clock in everything but the name and a shin-chan veneer.

Summer Vacation games aren’t just a few other games made in Japan obscurity; they were some of the most touching examples of Japanese game development from the early 1990s. Global, shen mue, all-natural, forest crossingand harvest moon are one of the most widely used examples of this trend in console gaming – but in Japan the Summer Vacation series has standing over it. With Shin-chans spiritual sequel, I managed to get a better picture of this creative moment.

Credit: Millennium Kitchen/Sony Computer Entertainment.

The chef for the Millennium Kitchen, Kaz Ayabe, had his childhood romp in the countryside, the one that encouraged Yasuhiro Wada to go to creation harvest moon, and notably Satoshi Tajiri to create Pokemon. The plot of every summer vacation is the same: a child named Boku (me in Japanese) visits his family in the backyards, showcasing long days of swimming, hiking and chatting with locals in beautiful, dusty buildings and rolling fields.

Ayabe should go to extreme lengths in the countryside, and capture the geography of the rural area. When I start playing, I start with a map, explains Ayabe in an interview with Scroll. The towns of Summer Vacation are constructed of non-scrolling screens, the same as the ones of LucasArts, in which the syrians are built together, so that they form a sprawling path. As Time moves in the game, Boku moves from one screen to the next, and since time is limited, this gives a risk-reward dynamic for each player.

Boku has 31 days to live his life to the fullest, before going back home. This means he should collect all the bugs, fish, trading cards, and many the other things that kids love, before the time is up. The match has no effect on the player. Boku could theoretically spend the whole month in the house if he wanted to. This is the kind of thing that gets you involved with the game. As it gets older, you are not allowed to skip the morning exercise, you should go to breakfast and dinner at all times. As much as you’ve got to stay up early, your uncle will arrive to get you there! It is basically a mission, with a unique Japanese childhood in the 70s. When you frolic freely with a loving family, cool friends and pristine nature, you’re in the love of a loving family and the midst of a mellow life of that coolness.

Image: Millennium Kitchen/Neos

Ayabe has known his love for an influential filmmaker in the past, and there’s something Ozu-like that permeates the whole series. For one, Bokus friends are closely watched and not quite utterly hick, especially when they are more adults. Boku visits his aunt’s house, outside Tokyo, in the mountains. The tone of the game is warm, but the dark – your younger cousin Shirabe is cold to you, the occupying your aunt’s dead sons room, and there are rumors that a wolf spirit fucked in the woods. In the touching ending which marks the beginning of my friend’s departure, the day after the end of our visit, Tomshirabe left for home, but following a long search of my neighbor, you found yourself in a field full of sunflowers.

Ozu was celebrated for his pillow shots Periods when his camera stopped the action and settled into a landscape just to admire it. My Summer Vacation is full of different settings, such as the sunflower field, which does not have a game related purpose but allows the player to slow down and enjoy the view. Although Boku himself and all other characters are 3D models, the rest of the game consists of pre-rendered, hand-painted 2D backgrounds full of atmosphere, perfect for themselves to admire.

During the first foray into the original Playstation, the series moved to different scenic locations with each game: the tropical peninsula of Izu during Summer vacation and the vast Hokkaido plains 3and the islands of Setonai sea 4 yo’an, but the area 4 is not as good as a tropical village. Gameplay would not have the same effect, giving or taking a few minigames. However each release would expand the scope with more characters, more locations or more collectibles. The series sold more than a million copies in Japan.

The Monsters Attack! An anime from Tokyo: Millennium Kitchen/Level 5 – A Japanese Story of the past.

This four-game series has been discontinued since the release of this game. Although Ayabe got some recognition with his Nintendo 3DS game Attack of the Friday Monsters! The Japan Storythe combined the gameplay elements from summer vacation series with an immersive tokusatsu-inspired storyline. A short three-hour game wasn’t enough to get the series back to the top of the series.

Shin Chan: My professor has come to the realization that they can re-start the situation. The game sees Shinnosuke Shin Nohara star of the Colored pencil Shin-chan Manga and Animals, stays away from his mothers girlfriends in a rural area of Kyushu island and spends his days on chasing butterflies, growing vegetables and fishing. The charm of Summer Vacation Series is limited to wandering, the impressive backgrounds are preserved in this original sequel.

Other aspects have changed, to attract a wider audience. There’s now a central plot that involves a mad scientist and time travel hijinks, but you may not take those chances. And without that little sense of magic, the time travel hijinks summon dinosaurs to wander around the village and follow their attacks Attack of the Friday MonstersThe design philosophy of giant monsters is really cool.

However, naturalism isn’t restricted, though Shinchan is in a very accurate position about its cartoon and manga sources. Unlike the sane Boku, Shinnosuke is a smartass and the game has all the usual gags of Shin, spawning a witty dialogue or flirting awkwardly with older women. Shin has a special button to turn the camera around.

Image: Millenium Kitchen/Neos

Manifesting its signature care for aesthetics, Millennium Kitchen traded for the classic sculptural style of its earlier work for a flat, cult-like aesthetics look of the Shinchan Anime. It’s remarkable: developers even made sure Shins signature cheek curve always points to the left, whether from the front or the back, with the same exact pattern he came from the source material. But, at its heart, it is still a familiar game, that involves pretending to be an unsupervised kid.

Since Sony released the series in Japan, has little interest in further promotion of ownership and no active fan translations exist this time, Shin Chan: Besides the fact that if there is a new generation of players who study English, it’s more important than me to see my Summer Vacation Experience.

Shin Chan: In summer, I and the professor are in their school holidays. They’re available now on Nintendo Switch and soon will be available with PlayStation 4 and Windows.