The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Dark Heroes

So I saw Batman Begins last night. Pretty cool movie I thought. It seemed really well balanced between all-out action and story/character development. The only problem was that Christian Bale, although his Bruce Wayne was adequate, is kinda stupid as Batman. For some reason or other, he figured that, when he has his suit on, he has to talk like something has been shoved up his batcave.

Ahahaha. Yes.

I only made mention of this fact because I wanted to make that stupid joke. Blogs RULE!

No, actually, I DO have a random rant today, to bore you to death with.
For some reason this little factoid hit me last night when I was trying to go to sleep, but my body was so hepped up on Sugar and Cafeine that my brain started to create all kinds of conspiracy theories instead of just switching itself off and leave me at peace. I now know why Alcohol is so popular.

But my point is this: Have you ever noticed that in Japanese Video Games, there are almost NO black people AT ALL!? Seriously. Before you go, whatever, Ingen, get a life, not a blog; I encourage you to think just one moment about this.
Off the top off your head, name me ONE MAIN character in a Japanese Video Game, who's black. A playable one.

Now most of you probably said 'Barret' from FF7, or maybe DeeJay from Street Fighter, but I have a strong suspicion that his real skin color is Red, and he has horns and a tail. Know of anyone else? Nope, neither do I.

Now, a Black SUBCharacter? No? Okay, there's Raijin in FF8, but that's about it.

Now, a game that has insignificant Black NPC's? Anyone? Exactly.
THEY'RE ALL WHITE.

Even in FF8 for instance, which has one Black Dude, has NO other Black people in the entire Gaming world. Wait, maybe there was one other Student at Balamb Garden, but that's IT. On an ENTIRE planet!? Only Two Black people!? How did they get there?

Seriously, can you think of a single NON-WESTERN game that has a lot of black people?
Off the top of my head only Terranigma comes to mind, and that's probably only because it's actually about THIS planet and it takes place in cities and regions that actually exist.

And then there's Rick in Dino Crisis, and this one Cop in Resident Evil 2, so Capcom makes sure they've got all the minorities present at least. The Cop turns into a zombie though and you have to blow his head off. Kinda strange, since the game takes place in an entire citie, infested with Zombies, and this cop dude is the ONLY black guy you'll meet. Including all the Zombies.

So what is it? Are Japanese not aware of Black People form a huge part of the planet's populace, or do they figure Black People are not important or interesting enough? I mean, I don't wanna sound all politically correct or anything, it's just something I noticed.

And what do we get in the West? LOTS of Black People in our games, and they're ALL about Gang Wars and Violence and Street Crime. Beeyotch!
I'd say that the Black Rights Movement still has a long way to go.

Hell, even when you get to some exotic place, in the middle of the desert in a Japanese RPG, most people'll still be white, despite all logic and reason.

Fighting games? One out of 33 fighters in SFZero 3 is black. Wouldn't count Dhalsim as a black guy, he's frickin' yellow, despite the fact that he's Indian! One out of 56 in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and that's Storm, so she HAD to be black. SNK games don't even have ONE in their entire universe, I think. We do have Zack in the DoA games though. And he wears an Alien suit.

Now, I know that in Japan, there indeed hardly ARE any Black People, so maybe it just never occurred to them. But even when making games in a Western mold it still doesn't seem to present itself as an option, let alone a likely necessity.
Are they afraid the other NPC's will get mugged when the player's not looking?

It's weird I tellz ya!

And YES, this is pure filler until I finish Final Fantasy 9, which is EVER so close.
No Black People in there either though.

posted by Ingen! @ 11:46 AM