Lost in Translation: SNES Edition Part 2
Its been a while since the previous edition of this retrospective, hasn’t it? Life has a way to run roughshod over our plans. Work, hobbies, illness, all were contributors to the delays. Also, it turns out that JRPGs are waaaaay looong! I finally got through one game and I decided to make a smaller scope article to keep the writing more frequent. Maybe this will help get the articles flowing again. In any case, on with the show!
LIVE A LIVE
We are still in the 1994-1996 era of Squaresoft’s catalog, covering some of the more memorable games that didn’t make it overseas to western players. The only knowledge of these games (before the internet) came from small teasers in western gaming magazines. Once I discovered the wonders of emulation, I made it my task in life to scour the internet and find all of the import Squaresoft titles to see what us western fans were being deprived of. The game I’m covering today is “Live A Live”, a wacky, comedic, experimental JRPG created by Takashi Tokita, one of Squaresoft’s premier game designers (Hanjuku Hero, Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger).
My first knowledge of "Live A Live" came from this small blurb on a random issue of GamePro
The first time I played it back in the late 90s, the graphics were a bit of a turn off when compared to Final Fantasy VI and the presentation seemed a bit minimalistic but the game won me over the more I played it. It turns out that charm, creativity, pop-culture references and some interesting twists on turn based combat can go a long way in creating a positive impression. What stood out to me about the game was the variety. 8 different scenarios with a variety of stories, characters, mechanics and visuals. Its the video game equivalent of a collection of short tales. The other thing that impressed me was the usage of sprite animation to convey dialogue and humor. There are sections of the game that are purely textless and the story is communicated through the characters actions and sounds. And the humor, even though a lot of it is crass and childish, is communicated with charm through over the top gestures from the chibi characters. This is certainly a very unique, idiosyncratic title in Squaresoft’s catalog, one I’m eager to dig into more.
The ability to select different protagonists made Live A Live stand out when compared to the average JRPG during that type period.
Development History
Takashi Tokita had been working as a part time designer, pixel artist and debugger since the early days of Square back in 1985. His big opportunity came in 1991 when he became lead designer of Final Fantasy IV. He wrote the script for the game and initially included thousands of lines of text, but quickly ran into cartridge memory limitations. He had to pair down the text to ¼ of the original size and that forced him to use alternate means to communicate dialogue and emotion. FFIV was the first game in the series to use animation for the chibi characters and Tokita took advantage of that in the cutscenes. He mentions using the "utsumuki pose" (where the character's head looks downwards) as a way to communicate sadness or reflection in a particular cutscene. Tokita mentions that the cut-down script and non-verbal presentation actually helped players become more emotionally invested in the game. This skill of non verbal communication is something that would carry over to future titles he worked on.
After Final Fantasy IV, Tokita was given an opportunity to direct his own games. For his directorial debut, he wanted to try something different than what was becoming the norm in the JRPG industry. Instead of one single 40+ hr storyline created by one writer, he wanted to try a game concept that allowed multiple collaborators to create short stories with a variety of themes, visual styles and encompassing different time eras. After some experimentation, they settled on the 8 scenario concept as it allowed for best compromise between variety and scenario length. This multiscenario concept would become known as Live A Live.
Takashi Tokita (center) and Yoko Shimomura (right) celebrating the 20th anniversary of Live A Live with a "Cube" cake.
Combat and Gameplay
Tokita was also trying to innovate on JRPG combat with Live a Live. He mentions in interviews not wanting to be bound by conventions from JRPG battles and wanting a real time element that was also distinct from Final Fantasy’s Active Time Battle system. They also wanted to add the element of free movement to combat. That required creating a new combat system from the ground up. After a few revisions, they settled on a combat system they nicknamed “real-time shogi” (shogi being the Japanese equivalent of Chess). Commands have different charge time costs, some strong attacks may take multiple turns to complete, while others complete instantaneously. Movement can be done freely in real time on a grid-like battlefield, but time passes while the character moves, which allows enemies to gain extra actions. The idea is that the player moves around their character in real time while positioning for their command. Issuing a command ends the character’s turn. The system becomes second nature once the player wraps their head around it.
Oboro activating the Flame Arts attack. Each attack has a area of effect and charge time.
Story and Characters
Live A Live is a collection of stories encompassing different world settings and time periods. There are 7 initial scenarios and an a final scenario is unlocked after that. The chapters are the following:
Prehistoric chapter: Pogo, the Caveman, finds Beru, the beautiful cavewoman from the opposing caveman tribe, hiding in their tribal hall. Hijinks ensue. The cavemen have not developed speech yet, so they all communicate through grunts, sounds and gestures. The fun part of this chapter is seeing all of the goofy animations and gestures coming from Pogo and his ape sidekick Gori. They have some of the weirdest attacks, like burps, farts and screams. Oh and there are a lot of suggestive interactions between Pogo and his cavewoman girlfriend. I'll leave that up to the imagination. There's also a item crafting minigame in this chapter where Pogo can turn random items like sticks and rocks into powerful weapons.
The cavemen chapter is completely dialogueless. Characters comunicate with each other through gestures and symbols.
Imperial China chapter: A martial arts master is trying to pass down his techniques to the next generation. He recruits three students: Li, the bandit girl, Yuan, the boy and Sammo, the fat kid; and must pick one of them to be his successor. In a rather clever training sequence, the martial arts master is able to hand down his moves by using them against their pupils in combat. Be sure to use your best moves on the pupil you wish to use going forward, as that is the only way for them to learn them. Once the training sequence is over, the master and pupil go on to fight the evil clan hiding in the forest.
A chinese martial arts master takes on three disciples and trains them to beat up on Chun Li clones.
Twilight of Edo Chapter: Oboromaru, the Shinobi, is sent on a mission to assassinate a Daimyo intent on conquering Japan. The player has the option to use stealth to infiltrate the castle or fight his way through with maximum casualties. There is also a password system that is revealed to the player early on. Paying attention to the password changes is important if one is going for the pacifist run. There are a lot of secrets in the castle and I'm pretty sure I didn't find them all. There are secret characters that can join from the castle's jail and secret treasures hidden behind traps. All in all, this is the most complex chapter in the game.
Oboromaru is sent on a dangerous mission and can use his ninja skills to avoid enemies and sneak through the roofboards.
The Wild West Chapter: The fugitive known as the Sundown Kid faces off with Mad Dog, the bounty hunter in a small town in the wild west. They put a hold to their duel after the Crazy Bunch gang threatens to invade the town. They team up with the villagers to install traps and fend off the gang. They have about 8 hours to go around the town collecting items to use for traps. After collecting the items, they can recruit the villagers to install the traps. Each villager has a skillset relating to different types of traps. Some are obvious, (the little kid is an expert at the slingshot trap), others are less obvious. After the traps go off, the Sundown Kid and Mad Dog fight the surviving attackers of the Crazy Bunch gang.
The Sundown Kid and Mad Dog put their duel on ice to leave explosive presents for the gang invading the village.
Present Day “The Strongest” Chapter: Masaru Takahara wants to become the strongest person in the world and joins a fighting tournament to prove himself. There's nothing too fancy to this chapter. The player has the option to fight the 6 bosses in whatever order they'd prefer and there's a final battle afterwards.
Masaru faces a gauntlet of warriors which includes a Hulk Hogan lookalike. Let's hope Masaru said his prayers and took his vitamins.
The Near Future Chapter: Akira Tadokoro, a teenager with psychic abilities, goes after a biker gang named the Crusaders. The Crusaders are responsible for killing his father and occasionally terrorize the orphanage he lives in. There's a lot of goofyness in this chapter involving toilet humor, Akira stealing people's undergarments, and reading random NPC's thoughts with Akira's psychic powers. There's also an NPC that crafts gear for Akira as well. At a later point in the chapter, Akira gets to pilot the Buriki Daioh (Steel Titan) mech, to take on the big bad. This chapter lets the player live out their Giant Robot Anime fantasies.
Akira uses his psychic powers to read minds and to help fight the Crusaders. Eventually, he gets to ride the steel robot named Buriki Daioh.
The Distant Future Chapter: The Cogito Ergo Sum ship is transporting a monster to the planet Earth. Maintenance Robot “Cube” investigates various incidents happening on the ship, some involving the crew and some involving the ships’ mother computer. This chapter is dialogue heavy with some scenes that are inspired by space horror films such as Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are some unexpected twists by the end of the chapter. Cube can also take a coffee break whenever and play the in universe video game "Captain Square", which is a funny little Easter egg.
Cube must uncover the mystery on the ship while also not forgetting to take breaks to play the "Captain Square" video game in the cafeteria.
The Middle Ages Chapter: Oersted, the Knight and Straybow, the Mage, compete for the hand of Princess Alicia in a tournament. Oersted wins her hand, but she is soon kidnapped by the Demon Lord of Dark. Oersted and Straybow team up to hunt down the Lord of Dark and save the princess. This chapter plays out the closest to a traditional JRPG game. Tokita mentions that the chapter was inspired by Dragon Quest II and Final Fantasy IV, and the dynamic between Oerstead and Straybow was inspired by Kain and Cecil. Oersted and Straybow are joined by the Hero of olden times, Hash and the priest Uranus to bring down the Lord of Dark, but the evil Lord lays a trick on them. I won't go into too much detail but everything gets thrown into disarray after the halfway point twist.
Oersted starts out by getting engaged to a princess and ends up falling into the machinations of a demon lord.
After completing the 8 scenarios, there is a final scenario that brings together all of the disparate stories. The player must pick a "leader" character for the final scenario and that character determines the ending that the player will get. The player can also recruit the other characters in this final chapter if he can find them, as they are all hidden throughout the map. Each character also has a dungeon with their ultimate gear, protected by powerful boss enemies.
One cool tidbit regarding the design of this game is that they brought in famous manga artists to create the character designs for each chapter. One of the artists, Gosho Aoyama, is the creator of the “Case Closed/Detective Conan” manga series. I’ve heard the series is extremely popular in Japan. He designed the characters for the Edo Period chapter. The other name I recognized is Ryoji Minagawa, creator of Spriggan and Project ARMS. (Spriggan has an excellent anime adaptation, which I highly recommend) He worked on the present day “The Strongest” chapter.
Sound and Music
This game was also the Squaresoft debut of acclaimed video game composer, Yoko Shimomura. She was quite the get for the company, having received acclaim from her work on the soundtrack for Street Fighter II for CAPCOM. Squaresoft lucked out because it turns out Shimomura is a fan of JRPGs, and Squaresoft was making the types of games she wanted to work on. Her full range of skills is put to use in Live A Live as she creates tracks for many different eras of history and different styles the game evokes, like heroic shonen anime themes, horror, western movie themes, medieval, fighting tunes, etc…
Release and Legacy
Live a Live released in Japan in late 1994, after Final Fantasy VI. It was planned to release earlier but it suffered some delays and that sealed its commercial fate. It had zero chance of comparing favorably to the massive hit that was FFVI. It went on to sell 270,000 copies total and it was considered a financial failure. And the lack of success in Japan meant that there were never plans for a western release for the SNES. As is usual, it was up to the fan translation groups to pick up the slack. Thanks to the efforts of Aeon Genesis (shout out to Tomato, Gideon Zhi and others) westerners were able to experience this unique title.
Even though Live A Live was considered a financial flop, its influence and legacy was felt in future generations of Square Enix. The popular JRPG series “Octopath Traveler” owes its “pick a scenario” concept to games like Live A Live and Romancing SaGa. And funnily enough, the success of Octopath Traveler led to the revival of Live A Live. Tokita finally had the chance to push for a Live A Live remake for the Switch at a reasonable budget by reusing Octopath’s HD-2D sprite engine. The project was released in 2022 and it featured a HD-2D graphical update, some updated tracks, voice acting and some other minor tweaks. I haven’t played it myself but it seems like a solid way to experience this title.
Octopath Traveler continues the legacy of the multi scenario game started by games like Live A Live
Final Thoughts:
Live A Live is a fun JRPG with some interesting, clever ideas. However, I cannot deem it as an essential, can’t miss title. I enjoyed some other Japan only Squaresoft titles (like Front Mission:Gun Hazard and Secret of Mana 2) a lot more. This one does enough for me to recommend to the diehard turn based enjoyers or those who like quirky JRPGs, but it isn’t something that goes beyond that level. Therefore, it gets....
Strategist's Rating:
Thanks for reading. Let me know what you think of the article. Until next time!
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