Book Spotlight - Fight, Magic, Items
Today's spotlight is still video game-related, but it's for a book published just a few years ago that I really enjoyed. I learned about it by complete chance from an artist whose work I enjoy, Sara Alfageeh. Alfageeh did the front cover illustration for this book, and seeing one of her updates about it during its pre-order period is what put the book on my radar! As soon as it released later that year, I bee-lined to the nearest bookstore carrying it. It was definitely my most-anticipated book of that season, and my excitement was worth it!
Fight, Magic, Items (2022) by Aidan Moher is a deep dive into the history of JRPGs, journeying through their origins and development as a genre and highlighting the major touchstones that shaped the way. It was equal parts fun and informative to tour through the lineage of JRPGs from the likes of foundational classics like Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy to more modern iterations of the genre through series like Kingdom Hearts, Nier, and Persona. Not every game or series gets the main spotlight as much as others do, but that probably comes with the territory when discussing the behemoth that is an entire genre of such highly-beloved games. The evolution of series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy understandably get a lot of focus, with their early development as individual game titles also setting the overall course and many traditions for the development of the JRPG genre itself. But I appreciated the space Moher still made for the likely lesser-known titles, as well. I have a decent grasp of the JRPG genre but not enough to consider myself a hardcore JRPG expert or anything, so it was neat to read up on titles I was less familiar with, games like Baiten Kaitos, Lunar, Phantasy Star, and Suikoden.
In particular, the book really helped to deepen my understanding of just how much the development of these games and this entire genre is, and continues to be, an embodiment of cross-cultural exchange. It was really neat to read how much Japanese game developers were also engaging with Western role-playing games, like Wizardry and Ultima, early on in the development of what would later become specifically Japanese role-playing games. Reflecting on this now at a time when the influence and popularity of JRPGs on Western gaming audiences seems so obvious, it gave me a newfound appreciation for how these games have actually always involved a level of back-and-forth dialogue between cultures, including between "East and West" and other distinct sensibilities. This book was an excellent invitation to consider how they have always interwoven through the experience of JRPGs, which continue to delight and entertain so many players today!