I first heard about Batman: Arkham Asylum last year from noted 1UP American comic-book fans Philip Kollar and Ryan Scott, so forgive me if I took their initial enthusiasm with a grain of salt. But after pretty much every single gaming-journalism friend and acquaintance started raving about the game last week, I knew that Philip and Ryan hadn’t been spewing rose-colored fanboy drivel.
Despite my well-chronicled Japanophile roots, I’m not too proud to cross over to the “dark side” and — gasp! — buy a game starring an American comic-book hero. And even though I’m only a few hours in, it’s clear the game’s not quite as “Western” as you’d think, anyway: London-based Rocksteady’s definitely been influenced by Japanese action titles like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid.
Here’s the thing, though: The younger, even more Japanophilic version of myself would’ve dismissed this game on (misguided) principle. And I’d imagine that today’s versions of my 14-year-old self are continuing that selfish tradition.
As a young teenager, though, I felt like I was constantly raging against the machine of American pop culture. After all, American culture was responsible for creating the toxic high school environment I had to endure every day (it wasn’t, of course, but this is how the teen mind works!). But Japanese culture was my salvation. Their nerd culture was admired. Game developers, not burly athletes, were hailed as gods — EGM even told me so!
Never mind that in reality, otaku in Japan are probably bullied even worse than in America — tell that to a 14-year-old teenager who’d never been to Japan and viewed it as this weird panacea to all of life’s problems! And that’s why I would’ve dismissed Batman: Arkham Asylum out of hand back in the day: American superheroes were the epitome of the machine I was raging against.
While I’ll probably always stay a bit partial to Japanese-developed games, I feel like I’m a bit more open-minded than most these days. I play Western first-person shooters. I play Western sports games. I want to play good games, period — regardless of their genre or country of origin.
I get the sense that others aren’t so open-minded, though. After all, which games were derided most in the latter-day EGM? (Hint: It wasn’t first-person shooters!) And Bitmob honcho Dan “Shoe” Hsu has stated on multiple occasions that he won’t touch Japanese role-playing games anymore because of the overlong dialogue and cookie-cutter character designs (this from a dude who’ll tolerate hours upon hours of Japanese-designed talking heads in Advance Wars, though!).
Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that the genre has its share of clichéd clunkers. But I’ve often felt that if some of those anti-JRPGers would put aside their prejudice and try out some of the better games in the genre — Persona and Tales of Vesperia, to name just two — they might just be surprised at how much they enjoy them. Hey, I learned to stop the hate — maybe the other side can, too.