CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Voltz, Jordan |
|---|---|
| Title | There and Back Again: The Public Medievalism of Japanese and American Console Video Games during the 1980's |
| Summary | This paper looks at an oft-forgotten era in gaming history in order to provide the fundament for a historically rooted approach to video game medievalism. Looking at the transfers of medievalist Nintendo video games between Japan and North America in the 1980’s, this paper showcases how political and social controversy in North America resulted in the creation of an emergent global medievalism: one which utilized metanarrative elements in its narrative, drew its structure and narrative from Japan, and was deeply influenced by North American medievalist works. The first chapter analyses the creation of these games in Japan and notes their similarities and differences from Wizardry, a popular roleplaying game at the time. The second chapter analyses the state of public medievalism in the United States, the most economically influential member of the North American technoregion, in order to discuss the Satanic Panic and the controversy surrounding the representation of religion in medievalist media like Dungeons and Dragons. The final chapter provides a brief explanation of the economic relations between the United States and Japan during the latter half of the 1980’s and an explanation of the content changes which occurred during localization in the games discussed in chapter 1. These North American localizations would eventually serve as the basis for their European localizations, and alongside the developing global video game industry, formed the basis for a new form of global medievalism. |
| Supervisor | Phillip Seaton, Marsha Siefert |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/voltz_jordan.pdf |
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