Is Konami milking Suikoden?

[Arcana]

Technology does advance rather quickly, and although I haven't played Suikoden IV, the development of a steam engine didn't happen in the real world until 1698. That's about 300 years ago. Soon afterward started up the study of thermodynamics which eventually spawned modern physics.

I don't think people give a lot of credit to technological advancement. 60 years ago, everyone was building computers out of house-sized rooms and plastic was nowhere to be seen. The concept of projecting motion pictures in full colour was imagineable, but not commonplace. Space was still characterized as a place where people could dance around in wearing top hats.

Now we have computing power many times what they had in a house in EVERY household... networked... and hooked up to the Internet. Everyone has a TV. Everything's made of plastic and steel. We can fly from one end of the world to the other in 20 hours, and communicate with each other over telephone, Internet, or E-mail instantly,to almost anywhere in the world. We can walk outside in a place with no wires and even do all of the above things. We use nuclear power, we drive more efficient cars, we burn corn for fuel.

This is 60 years.

Keep in mind, even 100 years ago, people thought that Ether was still a fundamental part of the world and the atomic theory was not well-founded. Only 100 years ago, people weren't really sure what atoms were.



Back on topic. Is Konami milking Suikoden? Sure it is - if it wasn't, you wouldn't see the card games, posters, books, and other supplementary material. Suikoden is the WORST when it comes to presenting information outside of the games - something that Final Fantasy hasn't even done. It publishes magazines about the game, for crying out loud... and so all of us English speaking fans have to reply on those Japanese people to translate the information for us, else we'll be out of the know, write a fanfic, and then incorrectly name Millie's father's brother.

Four main games, two side-stories, and a video game card game, in addition to a Tactics game? Note that, in the same period, Final Fantasy released two games for the PSX, one PS2 game, and one direct sequel, in addition to whatever director's cuts versions there were (I know there was an FFX International and I think there was a FF7 International). Then there's FF Online, but that's totally different.

If you think about it that way, Suikoden is moving on par with Final Fantasy in terms of the rate of development and release. Howeve, Square Enix is also pretty big on Final Fantasy development. It's also just a name because the games don't have anything to do with each other, unlike Suikoden.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.