best thing about actraiser to 9 year old atheist me was that, at the end of the game, its’ clear that the world is better off without any gods. it’s pretty explicit about that in fact.
it’s also super colonialist though so whatever
2 Likes
Yeah, I think the endstate they predict is dogmatic religions exterminating each other, with normal humans as collateral damage.
I think if I was working with this material I’d start from a Commanded By God frame and then slowly weave in the secular concerns that shape God, a perspective where your sphere shifts over time
I don’t really remember a lot of displacing of indigenous peoples in Actraiser. Was it in 2? I never played that one
you don’t explicitly displace people but you certainly kill a bunch of gods and mythical creatures native to those regions which is very clearly in line with “christians show up to spread their religion among a native population, side mission: exterminate all those who won’t convert”
it also places gods other than this christian god as “demons”
it’s all very
weird
1 Like
.
that’s not colonialism though, that’s just… religion being religion
2 Likes
It bears mentioning that first people you meet in each area are technically indigenous to the region; however, the game makes no effort to aesthetically differentiate the peoples you raise up — thus creating/furthering the impression that you are imposing a racially-pure mono-culture onto a formerly diverse world. In part I can accept this on the grounds of technical limitations (the game being on an 8-megabit cart, and the 256-tile limit for the mode 7 overworld). However, doing something like giving the peoples appriopriately distinct flesh tones would have certainly been in the developers’ power even with those limitations.
Another thing: every area in the game has (basically) a fixed population, with the sum of humans and demons. Every demon you kill on the overworld and every demon lair your people seal increases the your population cap, because theirs souls are now available for reincarnation on your side (the game may not spell this out very clearly, but that’s how it works both narratively and mechanically). Honestly, the implications of this system feel very weird to me, and I feel very underequipped to wrestle with them.
1 Like
It’s a problem endemic to strategy games, and particularly the god game subgenre. The player is tasked with growth, with smoothing out, with ordering and sorting and crushing.
Most games handle this through abstractions; it’s set in space, or these are extremely systemic red guys vs blue guys (Populous). What strikes me about ActRaiser is that they drop a lot of these abstractions and directly place the player as an avatar of Christianity. And I think that honesty illuminates what goes on in these games and opens the player’s eyes.
I find one of games’ best aesthetic modes is ‘functional perspective’ – by placing a player in a given role, and aligning their goals within the role, players start thinking in the commmon human mode; they start trying to solve problems and excel. They sidestep moral questions under a task framework. And that absence of moral thought is so illustrative of so many things.
You can see this played as a grand reveal, like Brenda Romero’s train game we discussed earlier. Some games layer it through the whole experience, like Papers Please; the player is made uneasy from the get go but the scenario is made richer and deepened. When the bomb goes off, everything is recast to complicate things. Some games are sparse and presented without much comment, like ActRaiser. I think it’s fitting for smaller games to be their own object, although I think the intro framing is a fairly heavy clue that you’re about to engage in some heinous acts.
4 Likes
I mean, it’s not literally colonialism in the same way that it’s not literally religion. No religious texts I know of talk about a cherubesque angel killing flying bats while a statuesque god murders a minotaur and a giant ice-bird all while trying to achieve a high score.
But in the same way that it intones religious aspects, it can also intone real-life colonialism, especially when you factor in the city-building aspects of it.
Like, there’s a very clear narrative among real-life colonialists of bringing religion and technology to native populations to “improve” their lives. In the same way, in Actraiser, you literally bring religion by killing their gods, and technology like better housing, different food, etc.
When the consequence of real colonialism is massacres and erasure, it’s not a long leap of logic to feel slightly queasy about the colonialist aspects of Actraiser
Anyway the point is this:
Colonialism is absolutely everywhere, and just because it’s not about literally displacing people of color doesn’t mean we can’t see aspects of colonialism in it.
3 Likes
yeah it’s sort of a weird ugly mess, i really like it but it’s hard to defend on anything but nostalgia and “there’s nothing else like it!!”
If you mean the monsters, yeah. If you mean the people that worship you, then not really. The first two humans in each region are created by your divine will, Adam & Eve-style (but with more lightning bolts) right after you finish that region’s act 1, and go on to spawn everyone else. I guess if you take the converted soul thing into account they’re indigenous in that way.
1 Like
i forgot about that
that definitely changes things
actraiser and actraiser 2 are audiovisual masterpieces
if there was a hall of fame for video game sound effects the actraiser sword slash should be amongst the first inductees
5 Likes
such a thick and powerful vibe coursing throughout
2 Likes
it looks like shit and more of a rip off than an homage to ActRaiser.
i like yuzo koshiro about as much as i like hitoshi sakimoto, which isn’t much, so his inclusion isn’t a plus for me.
i just started actraiser again and you make people in each area they’re all dead before
2 Likes
Actraiser got my Super Nintendo taken away because as a wee boy I was getting killed by a boss and my older sister was telling me to hit the weak point and I turned around and said “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I’M TRYING TO DO” and mom heard me say it
26 Likes
I picked up Actraiser Renaissance and let me tell you folks, it looks like a Saturn game they fell through a Japanese Pentimum 2. The prerendered sprites are startlingly hideous and it took me 5 minutes to realize. Oh the person who design this grew up playing prerendered games on emulators with nothing to blur the image as intended. It’s quite the look.
It also has too much fucking talking. It is still mostly just Actraiser so think my one evening with it was enough.
7 Likes