2005-04-04

Three days late, in a language most people don't speak

So, y'all, Irem enjoys a well-deserved reputation as the masters of game industry April Fool's jokes. They also archive them at their CG gallery. In years past we had:

  1. Aire-mu, the ball-shaped "Japanese traditional sweets" that contain "Force", and if you don't get it yet you clearly never ground your synapses down against R-Type.
  2. Dokidoki Suidoken, a parody of the dating-sim genre with an incredible 108 datable characters listed.
  3. The "Zettai Zetsumei Toshi" bar, an item from that post-earthquake survival game 『絶体絶命都市』. This was presumably funnier to people who had actually played the game.
  4. The R-9. More R-Type humor.
  5. Irem Burger -- meh. I guess this page is pretty funny.

So what about this year? It's not in their gallery yet, but Andrew at Yukihime is translating the interesting bits (leaving me free! FREE! to focus on 100-year-old novels), and also hosting a mirror of the original site. Man, I want that "Stick".

But this was even better: Sega's joke was the announcement of the "Game Gear 50"! That's right, fifty screens! Nintendo won't even know what hit 'em.

Popularity factor: 2

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zhwj:

I love the labels on the full Sega image - speaker, buttons, and then each screen is numbered.

What's the difference between どきどき and わくわく in the dating sim parody?

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Matt:

Heh, I know. I wonder if they wrote a macro to create those labels or just stuck the youngest new recruit in the graphic design section with the job.

どきどき is a direct onomatopoeic representation of an excited/scared/etc. heartbeat. I think it's also related to (onomatopoeic) words like どきっと and (through the general idea of pounding) どん, etc. Sometimes I hear it used in places where we English speakers would use "spark" or "chemistry" -- "He's really nice and good-looking and all but I don't feel any どきどき".

わくわく is, as far as I can tell, a more general excitement, the kind where you just can't sit still. (So, it's a lot more obvious to others than どきどき.) I'm pretty sure it's related to わく in the sense of "to boil".

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