Hot on the heels of
No More Heroes III, released a week ago today to favourable critique (I love it!), here's my arguably retro selection of
Suda51 games. Having just taken the photos this will be my longest post to date, so apologies in advance!
Kill The PastThe Silver Case 2425 (Switch) & Flower, Sun, and Rain (DS)What's a two month old Switch game doing in the Retro Weekender, I hear you ask? And what's it got to do with an oddly named DS game? Well, I did say "arguably retro", but hear me out!
The Silver Case is an adventure visual novel. The first game from Suda51's studio
Grasshopper Manufacture, it released on October 7th 1999 for the Sony PlayStation. Ostensibly a crime drama set in an alternate universe dystopian Japan, The Silver Case is centred around an escaped serial killer called Kamui Uehara, and explores the intersection of criminality and power in a society that is both intimately connected through technology and the media and secretly influenced by factions vying for control within the state. It's complex, surreal, obtuse and contradictory - all of which adds up to it being a Japan only release, which it looked to remain indefinitely for many years.
In 2001, two years after the well-received at home The Silver Case, Grasshopper released their second game,
Flower, Sun, and Rain for the PlayStation 2. Another adventure game, FSR was a move away from the visual novel like design of The Silver Case with full 3D environments and a main character controlled from a third person perspective. This too was a Japan only title, but skip ahead to 2008, following the breakout western releases of
Killer7 and
No More Heroes, and a Nintendo DS port was greenlit for western release (the European release came in 2008 - the game wouldn't reach the US until 2009, and with a different English translation). Having been introduced to Suda51 through No More Heroes on the Wii I picked it up and was immediately lost in the mind-bending mystery of Lospass island.
At this point I should mention that
Flower, Sun, and Rain is a sequel to
The Silver Case. The marketing, of course, bears no mention of it. The game itself pretends otherwise also, only a few similar character names appearing to be references for anyone in the know (which was presumably almost none of the people who played it) and some clues as to the shared setting in the in-game guidebook. Towards the tail end of the game however the plot continues to escalate, my younger self becoming completely confused at the appearance of characters from The Silver Case and revelations that are only revelatory with a knowledge of the wider universe. I got stuck on a puzzle and left the game unfinished, although still remembered favourably for its unique style and feeling and myself still unaware that it was actually a sequel. This crossing over of characters and ideas between games would become a common element in Suda51 games and was actually already present in The Silver Case, where the prologue apparently features characters from
Moonlight Syndrome, the previous game he directed before founding Grasshopper.
Back to Japan, and before the western release of Flower, Sun, and Rain, where in 2005 a mobile game called
The 25th Ward: The Silver Case was announced. Explicitly this time pitched as a direct sequel to The Silver Case (but with plenty of references to Flower, Sun, and Rain within it, so it's really the third game in a trilogy), The 25th Ward was released episodically and updated over several years, the details of which are lost on me even after reading its Wikipedia entry. Eventually the game became unavailable entirely, and appeared lost to time as well as to a lack of translation.
Then in 2016,
The Silver Case Remastered HD was released worldwide for PC. A year later it saw a port to the PS4 and its first western physical release. Achieving moderate success, this was followed up in 2018 with a remake of The 25th Ward for both PC and PS4, which finally brings us through to 2021 and the release of
The Silver Case 2425, packaging both remakes together on the Switch.
That's when the game came onto my radar (I was vaguely aware of The Silver Case as a Suda51 game but not much more), and why in the last month I have played through
The Silver Case, replayed
Flower, Sun, and Rain, and am currently playing through
The 25th Ward. Which was all in the end a very good idea, as Kamui Uehara from The Silver Case makes an appearance in
No More Heroes III! (He actually had a significant role in the series already in
Travis Strikes Again, but more on that later.)
So anyway, here are some more pictures of
The Silver Case 2425 Deluxe Edition:
Side note: I really don't like these slip-covers that don't wrap all the way around the box - they are a nightmare to keep together and in good condition!
-
No More HeroesNo More Heroes (Switch), No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle (Switch), Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes (Switch), No More Heroes III (Switch)"Arguably retro" indeed!
No More Heroes and
No More Heroes 2 were originally Wii games (I have no such excuse with
Travis Strikes Again or
No More Heroes III), but the whole series is available on Switch - and thanks to Limited Run releases of the first two games, all pictured here as a physical collection!
Probably now one of my favourite series, despite playing (and loving) No More Heroes when it first released I didn't play No More Heroes 2 for whatever reason until it got ported to Switch. Unfortunately that has left a Wii box sized hole in my collection, but one I intend to fill soon enough!
I'm sure I already exhausted your appetite for reading my ramblings in trying to explain the deal with The Silver Case, so why not just bask in these photos of the Limited Run special editions of No More Heroes 1 & 2 instead - by request of Jawa!
Both are similarly great editions, and I love the way the boxes combine. The "Behind the Scenes" books are quite cheaply bound, but more interesting than just plain art books as they also each contain an essay on their respective game and an interview each with Suda51. The soundtracks are real collector's highlights - both substantial 3 disc releases with some very stylish artwork:
I also absolutely love the artwork on the back of the steelbook for NMH1 - unfortunately a photo cannot due it justice for the way it catches the light!
I
also promised Jawa a picture of No More Heroes III's reversible cover (styling itself as a game called "Goddamn Superhero" for the fictional Death Drive console), so please enjoy that along with the tote bag and pin badge that came free with the game. I realise this isn't retro at all!
-
Actual Retro ContentYou've persevered through and humoured my decidedly modern showcase (or perhaps just skipped to the big words that say "Actual Retro Content"), so it's time to be rewarded with some unarguably old vidoegames!
Killer7 (PS2) & No More Heroes (Wii)Killer7 was Suda51's breakout game in the west, and to my shame I have yet to actually play it! Being on something of a Suda binge it's right up in priority now for me to get to next, but I would actually quite like to track down the Gamecube version - not only does it apparently perform better, but I don't actually have a PS2 to play right now. Sad times!
While Killer7 got people's attention, it was
No More Heroes that would make itself Suda's most popular series. Here is the Wii original - it's a PAL copy, which is notable for some significant censorship compared to its US counterpart, removing the blood effects when slicing up enemies. The Switch port suffered no such sensibilities!
Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day (PS3) & Shadows of the Damned (PS3)Short Peace is an interesting curio. A "multimedia project" meant to represent Japan throughout history, it consists of four short anime films by various Japanese directors and the side-scrolling game
Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day with a story written by Suda51. All-in it's pretty interesting and certainly unusual, but it's more notable as a multimedia experiment than any individual part of it being especially great.
Shadows of the Damned is also a collaboration between some famous names, notably Suda51, Shinji Mikamki (Director,
Resident Evil 4) and Akira Yamaoka (Sound Director,
Silent Hill). Even being told that will not prepare you for how much this game just feels like "Suda51 does Resident Evil 4". If that sounds up your street, then it probably will be!
Interestingly enough, Shadows of the Damned got a surprise pseudo-sequel as one of the fictional Death Drive games in Travis Strikes Again. I was grinning for pretty much that whole section!
Lollipop Chainsaw (PS3) & Killer Is Dead (PS3)Another game I haven't actually played is
Lollipop Chainsaw. I'm pretty sure I picked it up very cheap during the GAME fire-sale circa 2012 along with a bunch of other titles and just never got round to trying it out. No such luck with
Killer Is Dead which I bought full price - it's a decidedly disappointing not-so-good version of No More Heroes, essentially, with some very awkward sexual harassment by way of its "gigolo mode" (apparently included on the insistence of the publisher). That said it still has some interesting components and has another main character who makes an appearance in Travis Strikes Again!