f13.net

Bear with me; this information is complete because I'm having a really hard time finding info in English, but I'm going on what I'm seeing here in Japan and from talking to people.

First, some background: In Japan, arcade games are not simply "play and forget" affairs; many arcade machines are networked, for everything from rankings to replays of famous matches to customizing your own personal character - a lot of the machines will give you an ID card that you can swipe every time you play.  When a new version of the game comes out (A re-tuning of Virtua Fighter for better balance, Initial D Release 2 adding more cars and tracks, etc.) your old cards can be upgraded so that you don't lose your data.  The result is that time investment in Japanese arcades is often akin to the "MMO grind", although they actually spend it doing something fun.

What this means is that Japanese arcades are an ideal place to put micropayments into practice; pop a $1 coin into the slot to buy a shnazzy outfit for your Virtua Fighter 5 character, for instance.  It's not quite ubiquitous yet here, but it's pretty damn common.

Enter Sega with Quest of D.  It's Phantasy Star Online meets Diablo meets Black And White's magic casting system meets Magic: The Gathering.  I'm having trouble getting started (I haven't figured out where you purchase a character ID card yet), but watching people play it, it looks pretty damn cool; it's an MMO in the same sense that Guild Wars or PSO is a MMO, so I figured I'd give you a writeup here.

The gameplay is very similar to Diablo in a lot of ways; you hack and slash, you have a race and class that determine your abilities, you level up and get phat loot.  However, every arcade machine running the game is networked over the 'net, and in a fashion akin to PSO you're in a MMO 'world', from which you go out adventuring into your own little areas.  So far, so good, but nothing incredibly remarkable.

The magic casting system is interesting because the game is actually played with a touch screen in addition to the standard arcade joystick setup.  You cast spells by moving your finger across the screen in certain ways, very much akin to Black And White.

For epic battles, however, the game shifts from typical Diablo hack and slash to what can only be described as Magic: The Gathering.  You buy packs of trading cards, which highly resemble M:tG cards, in booster packs of 15 or so.  You then feed the cards into the machine while you're playing to upload them to your account, and use them in battle.

There's no monthly fee - but each play costs 100 yen (1 dollar), which is not expensive by Japanese standards, and you also have to buy the booster packs.

They release a new version of the game every year-ish; version 1 in 2004, version 2 in 2005, version 3 coming soon.  They're about like MMORPG expansions, and always backward compatible.

While it may sound weird to sit in an arcade playing a MMO, in practice it works about like a LAN party.

I'm looking all over for a gameplay movie somewhere on the net to show you guys, but so far finding nothing.  More later.

Edit: I found some video. (http://ia300203.us.archive.org/2/items/quest-of-d/kikizo.com_questofd.wmv)  Enjoy.

It sounds like ass.  Very unusual ass.

I stopped reading there.

It's actually a very non-retarded post; It's safe to read.

Just as a side note, I love this kind of idea.  They've done it in a number of games on the DS, and the Wii looks ready to move in the same direction.  It just feels so much more involved than selecting "FIR2" or whatever from a menu.


I'm not sure I like this, though.  It sounds like everything that sucked about PSO 3, except for the part where here you have to pay more.  Having never seen this game before, though (and the gameplay footage looks extremely generic), I'm not sure how it plays out.  So you have to put cards and stuff (purchased separately) into the machine to cast your spells, right?  It sounds like a fairly awkward mechanic; does it add something to the game, or is it just one of those "Hey, kids, you know what's fun?  Giving us your money!" kinds of "features"?

Without knowing more, the best I can say is "probably a bit of both".  Arcade players in Japan spend what we would generalyl consider insane amounts of money.  MtG itself has plenty of those: Card rarity, when divorced from the original concept of ante, for instance.

The more I see this played, the more it reminds me of a way fucking cooler version of DDO.  Tons of traps - Indiana Jones style Rolling Balls o' Death, swinging axes, spike traps, that sort of thing.  Combat is a lot like DDO - though when you swing at someone, you actually hit (There doesn't appear to be any dice-roll whiffing), and most attacks have knockback so it feels pretty "arcade-y".  Graphics are about like DDO at near-max settings, though always at 60FPS.　The magic casting does work really well, though - you also use the touchscreen to loot, which saves you a giant pain in the ass.

The cards appear to be less like M:TG and more like a micropayment way of purchasing spells, abilities, equipment, etc.


You want something M:TG like?  This blew my fucking mind - the arcade I'm writing this from has a massively multiplayer version of Romance of The Three Kingdoms, where you buy collectible cards that represent various army types, generals, etc.   You then put the army cards down on a 3 feet by 3 feet play surface, arranging them how you like to select battle formations - there's RFID or barcodes or something in the cards, so the game knows exactly where they are and how they're oriented.  You then move the cards around on the play surface in the course of battle to direct your armies, for flanking and strategy and whatnot.  Individual battles affect the course of the larger war across the entire map of feudal China, participated in by thousands of people at all different arcades, with a giant screen up in front showing the war's overall progress, shifting battle-fronts, etcetera.

America needs to get some cool shit sometime soon.


On the flipside; Progress Quest is literally played by thousands, for real money, here.  One of the most popular slot machine setups has a giant video screen in the middle, where you see your hero going around and adventuring, at about PS2-level graphics.  You fight monsters, collect loot that changes your appearance, have boss battles, meet NPCs, etc. - all essentially outside your control, but what happens onscreen is based on the luck of the slots - when you get a jackpot, your character might slay a dragon and get his phat loot, for instance.  You have a personal ID card for the game that saves your appearance, inventory, quest progress, etc. so that a cursory glance across the arcade shows everybody's character each off on some different adventure.  It's every bit as interactive as progress quest, and you lose money just like normal slots, but it appears highly addictive to the type of people you wouldn't normally see chain-smoking their lives away in Vegas.  Perhaps this is what we're being conditioned for?

Meh, I posted about all these games 6 months ago. You forgot to mention the card-based soccer game and the card-based beetle-combat game.

Linkpls.  Saw the soccer game, didn't impress me, didn't see the beetle game, saw the gigantic world battle Gundam card game (along the lines of the 3 kingdoms one) but it didn't really impress.

I posted about the beetle game which is available in America as well at Sega Gameworks.