An interesting idea that I had been thinking about with this week’s recent talks about the adventure/puzzle genre, is how the fans of the genre can shape and change a certain game. In particular I noticed this with the game my group had covered this week: Zelda. However, instances of this can also be seen with Okami that was shown today.

As I had mentioned in our presentation, in Zelda II it had drastically changed appearance from an overhead view to a side scrolling more action based type of game. The said reason for this change? Mario’s popularity. Interestingly enough, people enjoyed the original Zelda game for what it was and they reverted back to the classic style when the Super Nintendo version came out. Once again, another example of the fans of the genre changing how the game is made. This could also be said for the change from Wind Waker to Twilight Princess. Everyone enjoyed the artistic style that Ocarina of Time had laid out that Wind Waker end up causing a huge controversy with its new art direction. However, many people started growing fond of this new art direction Wind Waker had laid out, that its art style is going to return in a new Nintendo DS game as show to the right.

Even in Okami we see the game using Japanese mythology trying to appeal to the Otaku subculture that had been referred to in class. Unfortunately for Okami, that culture in the US doesn’t have the kind of strength it does in Japan. It’s so strong in Japan I’ve read about buildings solely dedicated to Pokemon. Where fans of Pokemon can just hang out and play the game against others who share their interest (while being exposed to other Pokemon merchandise of course). It would be hard to imagine anything like that here in the US.

This is just an example though of how strong the influence of the audience can be towards a text. It can change future iterations of the text and even cause it to transcend its medium in different ways.