Nippon Safes Inc / Big Red Adventure

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/dynabite/nipponsafes.htm

Two adventure games from Italian developer Dynabite, starring three protagonists, and each focusing on caricatures of Japanese and Russian culture.

These games were actually featured in the HG101 adventure game book, but the reviews are pretty short, and were not posted on the site. These reviews are totally new and much more in-depth, including explaining some of the Italian cultural references. Still, the assessments are about the same.

[Gendo Ikari]

I think this screenshot is a reference to The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

I only passingly played Nippon Safes in the past and I should recover it. If anything, the pixel art looks fantastic and very consistent. Same cannot be said for the visuals of BRA, which I played when it was new: they may look fine in stills (beside characters being pixelated if close to the "camera" but that happens in any old adventure), but not in motion because animations are close to non-existant, so in the end while neither are great games, the older one may have aged better.

I'm pretty sure, however, that Dynabyte's last release was Tequila and Boom Boom, which came out towards the end of 1995 (if not early 1996), while BRA was released early the same year.

Also unless I confuse it with some other developer at the time, I recall Dynabyte having another project in Blood & Lace, a gothic horror adventure with a strong sexyness factor. It changed hands and went through development hell; the original project was completely scrapped and when it finally came out in 2002, it had become a third-person 3D action adventure of dismal quality (I don't think it was released outside Italy and a few other European countries). Not that the trailer of the old version I just found looked much better, mind you, it even has the tagline "a ghotic adventure", spelled exactly that way.

Overall, a nice retrospective on an Italian developer. Unfortunately even with the rise of indies, the Italian scene still struggles a lot, with Milestone as the only relatively high-profile active developer (and limited to racing/driving games, they make only those).

[Woody Alien]

Nov 15, 2015 4:00:05 GMT -5 Gendo Ikari said:

I'm pretty sure, however, that Dynabyte's last release was Tequila and Boom Boom, which came out towards the end of 1995 (if not early 1996), while BRA was released early the same year.

Also unless I confuse it with some other developer at the time, I recall Dynabyte having another project in Blood & Lace, a gothic horror adventure with a strong sexyness factor. It changed hands and went through development hell; the original project was completely scrapped and when it finally came out in 2002, it had become a third-person 3D action adventure of dismal quality (I don't think it was released outside Italy and a few other European countries). Not that the trailer of the old version I just found looked much better, mind you, it even has the tagline "a ghotic adventure", spelled exactly that way.

But I did write in the article that TaBB was their last game:

Before the release of Tequila and Boom Boom however, Dynabyte decided that it was better to return to their first, best and more well-known project.

Also I can't confirm this but I think some of Nippon's sources of inspiration for the graphics and/or humour were comics such as Alan Ford and Ranxerox.

[Gendo Ikari]

I must have read seriously bad, thanks.

[Elvin Atombender]

I remember seeing both games on magazines getting decent reviews, but other than that I've never played them. Just like Woody Alien I also noticed that the graphics are very reminiscent of Tanino Liberatore's art.



This picture is ten thousands times funnier when you remember how Berlusconi had the habit of accusing everyone who disagreed with him of being a communist while he was and still is a very vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin.

[Gendo Ikari]

Not to enter into a political OT but the irony stays only in the first part of your statement. Current Russia is very far from communist Russia, despite someone's delusions. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing parties in Italy and in other parts of Europe are the biggest supporters of Putin, also due to their fascination with "strongmen".

Of course, BRA is a product of its time, when the direction taken by post-communists Russia was still unclear, much like those media from the 1980s that envisioned the West Bloc VS East Bloc situation to go on for centuries. Snatcher was strangely profetic, as the first version of the game for Japanese computers put the Jupiter Alpha outbreak in 1991. The true fall of the USSR wasn't as catastrophic but it happened that year.

[Maciej Miszczyk]

is this silly adventure game thread now a geopolitics thread? because if it is then I'll just say that current Russian foreign policy in Eastern Europe and Middle East is in many ways an extension of the Soviet policy. Putin also defended stalinism - and there are people in Russia who miss 'good old days' of USSR. also, while certain European right wingers are pro-Russian, so are certain European left wingers: not long ago, Syriza became controversial because of their links to Putin.

[Elvin Atombender]

Yes Gendo, I recognize I was a bit hasty in my statement.

[Gendo Ikari]

Nov 19, 2015 5:32:25 GMT -5 Maciej Miszczyk said:

is this silly adventure game thread now a geopolitics thread? because if it is then I'll just say that current Russian foreign policy in Eastern Europe and Middle East is in many ways an extension of the Soviet policy. Putin also defended stalinism - and there are people in Russia who miss 'good old days' of USSR. also, while certain European right wingers are pro-Russian, so are certain European left wingers: not long ago, Syriza became controversial because of their links to Putin.

Just to end the OT, when I speak of "delusions" I point to those left-wingers, as they believe Putin is there to restore the "glory days" of the USSR, while he has really nothing to do with communism (if anything, more with the worst parts of it). Just the fact people from both extremes of the political spectrum come to support him is a sign of their confusion.

Again, it's fun to contrast with how future Russia in the mid-90s was seen, even humorously, in that game.

[Maciej Miszczyk]

I'll end my OT posts with this: as someone from a post-Soviet Bloc country, I can assure you that if you like democracy, lack of censorship and/or your civil rights being respected then you wouldn't want the "glory days" of USSR any more than you want putinism.