[RHDNBot]

Update By: filler

For those who may have missed it, Supper and and Filler have released an English language translation patch for City Adventure Touch: Mystery of Triangle. City Adventure Touch is an odd action adventure game by Compile, that somewhat perplexingly uses a license for the characters from the high school baseball manga “Touch”, by Mitsuru Adachi. The goal of the game is to save 10 puppies scattered throughout a town filled with aggressive creatures and objects. You do this by collecting various items, and fighting against enemies and bosses.

The game is somewhat unique in that it more closely resembles Western adventure games, or action RPGs, than it does traditional Japanese adventure games. While it's somewhat frenetic and obtuse, Supper notes that it has some "ahead-of-its-time ideas", and that it would have fared better with less sprawling areas, less obscure puzzles, and without the needless "Touch" license.

This project was completed in association with Psylax's efforts in "Translations of early Famicom games". The patch translates in-game text to English, and adds a splash screen.

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link

[Lucumo]

Considering Touch was and is extremely popular in Japan, it would have probably fared worse without the "needless" Touch license.

[Supper]

Considering Touch was and is extremely popular in Japan, it would have probably fared worse without the "needless" Touch license.

I wasn't talking about sales numbers, I was talking about how the game is notorious for having a blatantly slapped-on license with no relation to the gameplay. It's not a very good game to start with, but having the characters from a popular baseball/drama manga suddenly transported into a parallel world filled with comical monsters in order to rescue puppies -- seriously, that's the backstory! -- probably hurt the game's reputation more than if it had been a "generic" game without the Touch branding (you'll find it on a lot of "Famicom kusoge" lists, with the bizarre use of the license often a prominent point of detraction).

[taikyoku]

The opinions of anonymous nerds on the internet mean even less in Japan than they do in another countries. The vast majority of what number this game actually did sell came from the license, rest assured.

[Psyklax]

Guys, you seem to be misunderstanding the point about it being a pointless licence. Yes, we KNOW that games have sold more when they have a licence attached, that's why they do it. The point is that if the licence wasn't attached, it probably wouldn't be thought of retrospectively as so bad. Sure, the licence sold the game, but you can surely still see what these guys are talking about.

Anyway, my favourite example of a game using a licence badly is Cobra on the ZX Spectrum, because the guy who programmed it (and yes, there was usually one programmer in those days) didn't like the movie, so he made it a ridiculous Stallone parody - not that you could tell from the box art. And it's actually a pretty good game!

https://youtu.be/e57bGfHEHy4

[Lucumo]

I wasn't talking about sales numbers, I was talking about how the game is notorious for having a blatantly slapped-on license with no relation to the gameplay. It's not a very good game to start with, but having the characters from a popular baseball/drama manga suddenly transported into a parallel world filled with comical monsters in order to rescue puppies -- seriously, that's the backstory! -- probably hurt the game's reputation more than if it had been a "generic" game without the Touch branding (you'll find it on a lot of "Famicom kusoge" lists, with the bizarre use of the license often a prominent point of detraction).

That's a misunderstanding then. The "would have fared better" gave, from my point of view, a clear impression that it's sales what you were referring to (it's also past tense).
I do know about the game and I do know about the bad reputation it has, especially among fans of the franchise who got utterly disappointed.

[Supper]

That's a misunderstanding then. The "would have fared better" gave, from my point of view, a clear impression that it's sales what you were referring to (it's also past tense).
I do know about the game and I do know about the bad reputation it has, especially among fans of the franchise who got utterly disappointed.

I can see how you might get confused from just reading the news entry. My original comments in the readme were a bit more explicit:

This game has a pretty notorious reputation in Japan, but after playing it a couple of times I can't help but feel a little sympathetic toward Compile. It's not a good game, sure, but I can see how someone could sit down in 1987, draw up the design for this, and think, "Yeah, that'll be interesting." It has some ahead-of-its-time ideas regarding co-op game-play, "open world" design, and even (for better or worse) escort missions. If the areas were a bit less sprawling and the puzzles less obscure and nonsensical -- and the game didn't pretend to have something to do with Touch -- I think it would have fared a lot better.

But yeah, it's a given that if you want your game to turn a profit regardless of quality, stick the name of a popular franchise in front of it. I think this game was intended to be more than just a quick cash-in, though, because some legitimate if misdirected effort was clearly put into the game design -- it has a lot of novel concepts, as opposed to being just another generic licensed platformer, and the staff were apparently proud enough of their work to use their pseudonyms as shop names (see the "Jewler Niitani" in the screenshot, for instance).

My guess is that somebody at Compile came up with this idea for a game, thinking it would be good, and the least financially-risky option for development was to stick the Touch characters into it to make sure it'd sell.

(Incidentally, I'm mystified by the game's title. What "triangle"? What "mystery"? I've played several times and still have no idea.)

[filler]

FYI: I'd originally included the whole quote from the readme, but the policy against first person writing for news posts forced me to paraphrase.

[Supper]

FYI: I'd originally included the whole quote from the readme, but the policy against first person writing for news posts forced me to paraphrase.

I'm not blaming you, obviously, I wouldn't have done it any differently. It's just the kind of thing that happens sometimes. Thanks for writing up a news post in the first place, because I probably wouldn't even have bothered for a game like this.

[fireball]

Well, I have to confess the popularity of "Touch" is lost on me as well. One of the most booooring generic sports anime I ever watched, maybe the manga is better, I dunno. Obviously I'm not compatible with japanese mainstream on that matter. 

[Lucumo]

I'm not blaming you, obviously, I wouldn't have done it any differently. It's just the kind of thing that happens sometimes. Thanks for writing up a news post in the first place, because I probably wouldn't even have bothered for a game like this.

Pretty much, it's one of the downsides of written conversations, especially on the internet. But yeah, thanks for writing news posts in general. Those are always good for some additional tidbits and are also more human than the general overviews regarding new hacks/translations/etc.

Well, I have to confess the popularity of "Touch" is lost on me as well. One of the most booooring generic sports anime I ever watched, maybe the manga is better, I dunno. Obviously I'm not compatible with japanese mainstream on that matter. 

I mean, I'm the first person to go away when it comes to "romance" and, even worse, love polygons but Touch is certainly very enjoyable (and it's definitely not generic), in pretty much every way. Heck, the anime even has excellent music throughout the series which is a rarity for sure. One also can't say that it was "Japanese mainstream" since it is generally said that Neon Genesis Evangelion was the last anime everyone watched...and Touch was most certainly one everyone watched since anime hadn't really branched out at this point. It also rivaled the popularity of Dragon Ball, despite not "revolutionizing" the drawing style of manga which says a lot. But unlike Dragon Ball, when the story ended, it was over. There were some movies down the line...but they are bad, urgh.