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therealbeachfox · 2 years

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The Complete Canonical Timeline of “Legends of the Starlight Hero”: Part 2

[[Character Breaking Information to Prevent Confusion: This whole thing is meta fan-fiction for @unpretty’s Astielle series, which is written as if it’s fan-fiction of a non-existent long-running video game series. This is my vision of what said game series might look at based on everything she’s written so far. Legend of Starlight Hero XII: The Gods of Astielle is the name of the ‘current game’ Astielle is supposedly fanfiction of. This is “written” shortly before its release. The first part of this exercise in metafictional self-indulgence can be found HERE. ]

Legend of the Starlight Hero (1985) [Nintendo/Atari 2600/Other] [Itokto]

[[A giant poster of the cover of Legend of the Starlight Hero I is hung up at a ComicCon. Someone dressed up like a giant Clippy-style sewing needle decked out in the Original Starlight Hero garb and wielding (an upsettingly well done considering the rest of the costume) Starlight Sword poses dramatically in front of it.]]

Legend of the Starlight Hero. The first. The original. The baffling origin of decades of magic and wonder and side-quests.

The plot is as simple as we're ever going to get. There's this big monster, you see. King of All Monsters, no less. He lives in this giant fortress-city called Monster Citadel on top of this giant mountain named Monster Mountain. From here, he sends out his Monster Armies to ravage and pillage the country-side. Only the holy weapons of the Celestial Sisters can defeat him, but he has those locked up deep in his Crypt of the Monsters.

But that's fine! You've got a sword, a devil-may-care attitude, and a nameless girl who can cast Shield over and over again. It's time to fight your way up all seven interlocking zones/levels of Monster Mountain while slaying Armies of Monster until you reach the Monster Citadel and unlock the Crypt of the Monsters and finally defeat The Monster King - King of All Monsters' once and for all!

Monster!

[[A mildly pixilated jpg of the back of the Legend of the Starlight Hero case. Each instance of the word Monster has been magnified and pixilated an increasing amount until the bottom of the box is just a series of overlapping jagged MONSTERs]]

And now that you know the plot, you don't ever need to play the game.

I'm serious. Don't play this game. Ever.

To explain why you shouldn't play the original Legend of the Starlight Hero, though, we need to talk about all the things that make it so janky. And in order to do that, we're going to need to get into its development. And to do that, we need to talk about one Ito Makoto. And to do that, we need autobiographical information about Mr. Ito, which we don't, because he was a man who never understood why people would be wanting to know about him when they could instead be knowing about all these neat games he was making.

But this is a rabbit-hole that needs going down; join me under the page-break for the whole convoluted tale. Or just ignore it and wait until I post the next part of the timeline which has 99% less biographical information on old Japanese men and 1000% more Jonys!

[[16-bit image of The Old Man of the Mountain from LotSH IV with a fox head 'shopped in]]

"Come, child. Witness what I have to show to you."

We start in 1982, Japan, at Itokto - a corporation of modest means which has found itself uniquely positioned to take advantage of the Video Arcade boom thanks to its holdings in electronics, data-storage, vending machines, and real-estate (among others). The founders, never ones to hesitate before jumping onto a new trend for however long it made money, had already put out a series of low-effort and simple arcade machines that were mostly in the time-honored genre "Like this thing you already know, but slightly different". The founders weren't stupid, however, and had their teams working on a second generation of arcade games with more polish and more budget that could stand on their own and be the sorts of things other companies would make cheep knockoffs of instead.

Into this environment arrives Ito Makoto, nephew of one of the founders, 42 years old, and recently unemployed from a career that no one seems to agree on the specifics of except for the fact it most definitely had nothing to do with computers, electronics, or games.

Despite this, Ito Makoto's uncle dropped him down into the middle of the second generation development and basically told the division heads to find something for him to do that would keep him out of the way, Because Nepotism. The division heads shrugged, gave Ito a little office off in the corner, handed him a game spec document, and told him to see what he could do with it. It would be 18 months before anyone checked in to see how he was getting along.

Due to the previously mentioned habit of Ito Makoto to never talk about himself if ever given the chance, there's very little primary sourcing on what exactly happened during these 18 months of solo-work. But based on what others said once they got involved afterwards, along with some basic extrapolation, inference, and a few shavings of Occam's Razor, it seems likely it went something like this.

Ito Makoto had never worked with computers (or electronics, possibly even machining) before in his life, but the same day he was handed his spec sheets, one of his few recorded interactions occurred with a co-worker. Said co-worker's recollection was: "Some new guy I didn't recognize came up to me and asked what script our games were written in. I told him Assembler, and he thanked me and wandered off. People across the office kept having their documentation vanish and then reappear a day or two later for months after, but at the time I didn't put two and two together."

(That doesn't read like a proper translation, but I don't read Japanese myself and Google Translate's attempt is even more garbage, so let's trust 'Xtreme Gamerz' magazine's version of events because it's all we got.)

After spending a month or two teaching himself Assembly language from the ground up via temporarily "borrowed" manuals, Ito got to work on the actual game. I've seen the scans of the original "Heaven's Heroes vs Monster Mountain" concept pages. (And their translations.) It looks like nothing so much as a Gauntlet knockoff; but seeing how Gauntlet was still two or three years away from even existing at this point, it probably would've made quite the splash if it was ever released. And I can only assume that at one point in time, Ito Makoto had a fully functional implementation of the spec programmed. But there are two things Ito Makoto would become known for. Being incapable of sticking to spec, and having an endless font of new ideas he’d keep adding to a project until someone else physically restrained him.

And so we come to 18 months later. The division heads were doing a roundup of all the game projects they had going on and someone remembered that they'd handed one of the specs off to the boss' nephew and they should check in on that one too just to keep all the ledgers looking balanced and aesthetic. I doubt any of them were prepared for what they would walk into.

Imagine a broom closet. A large one, but a broom closet. Big enough for a nice solid metal 80s work-desk, a nice clunky lead weight of a computer, some boxes, a bit of workspace. Now fill it with paper. Lots of sketches and drawings. Some of circuits, some of level maps and pixel-box layouts. Lots of colored pencil sketches of amazingy homoerotic monsters. Lots and lots of code and programming diagrams. All pasted over every available inch of wallspace. And in the middle of it all, a 43 year old man scribbling furiously in a notebook as he attempted to invent the video game inventory system from scratch for the second time.

It's almost a shame Legend of the Starlight Hero didn't finish development as an arcade-game. I mean, I understand why it didn't - it would've been an engineering disaster followed by a financial disaster - but it would've been glorious. Two joysticks, one to control The Hero, one to control The Heir. Each with three triggers. The one on top for the thumb would either attack or shield depending on if it was the Hero or the Heir it controlled. The second trigger (index finger) would flip through the inventory of powers and power-ups for each character. The third trigger (middle finger) would fire the currently selected power or power-up. You'd have to keep the Heir in position so that their shields and buffs would have line-of-sight to the Hero. You'd have to keep the Hero moving to prevent any monsters from being able to attack the Heir. There were endless levels. Ruined shrines, enchanted pools, a lava dragon nursery with erupting environmental hazards, there was a river where both Hero and Heir would have duel-control over a massive river serpent and have to keep him from crashing as you outraced murderous Abysscales. There was what I can only describe as a quick-time-event/rhythm game section when you break into the Crypt of the Monsters where you have to copy the posses of Goddess Statues. And a massive multi-stage boss battle against The Monster King at the end where he shape-shifted into each monster ever encountered before finally taking on his King Form (Impyr) for the final battle.

But it's 1984, and the list of technological reasons why this wouldn't work itself would create a text-file too large to fit on the storage arcade machines had available. Despite this though, there was no arguing that the mess of concepts and designs had promise. And Ito Makoto's uncle was just finishing a deal with a fellow Japanese game company about possibly porting some of their arcade games over to this new console that was about to release...

So it was Ito Makoto was assigned a full team to rework Heaven's Heroes vs Monster Mountain into Legend of the Starlight Hero. From what I've read, it seems 90% of their job was about keeping Makoto from sneaking back into the office at night to program in more features while the other 10% was spent cutting down what he'd already put in. Most of the existing ideas and concepts were cut, but that didn't stop Makoto from making use of them in the future. You probably recognize the River Serpent Chase from LotSH V, the "Lava Dragon" Nursery (now featuring three times as many Brutelings in bad dragon costumes) from LotSH IV, and the Goddess Statue pose matching as the foundation of the entire Starlight Beats series. Let it never be said Ito Makoto ever gave up a good idea without a fight. And come 1985, Legend of the Starlight Hero was released in Japan on the Famicom, and in North America on the "Whoever wanted to pay for the port rights, America's in a video game crash, it doesn't matter" systems.

Then, about eight months later, The Famicom is released in NA as the Nintendo Entertainment System, followed shortly by the first Black Drakonis game, and you can read on how the rest of that went all went a few entries back up. History!

Now, I've often (maybe five times) been asked, "Old Fox of the Mountain, in your sageous wisdom, where is the best place to play this, the origin of Astielle, so we may experience the magic from the beginning?" and I always answer, "Youtube. There's like five Lets Plays that actually manage to get all the way through and two of them even manage to beat The Monster King, King of All Monsters without cheats or quicksaves."

I mean, if you really want to, just hit up any ROM site, but you will throw your controller at something and I will not be held responsible. With only one D-Pad to work with, the Heir was given a cutting-edge-for-1985 AI to follow you around and not get hit by monsters and said AI does not work and your Heir will die. Repeatedly. And the attempt to work the inventory system "intuitively" with the pause menu will leave you trying to smite Taurils with your Star-Digger more often than not. And Karzarul's attack patterns are flatout bullshit. Don't subject yourself to that. It doesn't make you any less of a fan or 'gamer' to just skip out. Watch a Let's Play, laugh at their misery, and move on with your life. Or don't. I'm just an old fox on a mountain, what do I know?

We're already spent more time on Starlight Hero the First than on the rest of the games so far, but there're a few more side notes I feel it's important to cover.

First Side Note: Karzarul?

You might notice that there's no mention of Karzarul in the game. Or the phrase "Moonlight Monster". Or three goddesses. Or the reincarnation cycle. Or really anything. It's either a case of 90% of Mr. Ito's plot getting cut to cram it all into 384kb, or a case of massive retconning/expansion once everyone involved realized how many more of these games they'd be making. I personally assume both, but leaning heavily on the latter side, but I'll wait for Legend of the Starlight Hero IV: Heroes Reborn to get into the details.

Second Side Note: Needle?

Through this entire piece so far, I've been referring to the playable character of Legend of the Starlight Hero as simply “The Starlight Hero”. But everywhere else you look, he's called Needle. Further up in my Chronology list. In all the official documentation. In Karzarul's absolutely hilarious rant in Queen of All Monsters. Hell, Jonys has his "Starlight Sword in the Shape of a Needle That Wields Its Own Much Smaller Starlight Sword" trophy attack in Smash Brothers. So what gives?

Well, as I alluded to before, this was not a game designed with Story, Lore, or Sequels in mind. You had a Hero, you had an Heir, and there was no need to assign things like names or motivations or history to anyone involved. But the moment Heroes Reborn came out in '89, people needed a way to differentiate between this new Starlight Hero who had a name, and the original Starlight Hero who did not. I mean, you could always use Original Starlight Hero, but that's going to get old fast. And it did. Fortunately for everyone, the Atari 2600 port existed.

(One more historical digression. Porting games to different systems remains a pain in the ass, but back in the bad ol' days it used to be even worse. It was not unusual for the people in charge of porting a game to a new console to just reprogram it from the ground up in the native language rather than translate all the code manually. And it was not uncommon for teams who resorted to this approach to not be as good at programming as whoever made the original game. Exhibit A: The Atari 2600 port of LotSH.)

[[Gif of a five second loop of gameplay. A blocky, vaguely recognizable SLH slides along the ground without moving its legs, slashing its sword in front without moving its arms. The figure is only slightly wider at the shoulders than at the feet, and has a single eye in the middle of their head that is the same color as the background, giving the distinct impression of a hole in the middle of its head showing the ground behind/below.]]

With the speed of a Usenet connection, the Original Starlight Hero was slapped with the name Needle. Various in-universe justifications for the name were made by the fans to shore up support, and despite a belated attempt by the short-lived cartoon series to give him a proper moniker, it stuck. It probably helped that by the time the next main-line Astielle game came out, the franchise was under the control of Fantastico who had a much more casual approach to the property and made the Needle name official. It's commonly assumed, but unverified, that this was mainly at the insistence of Ito Makoto who found the whole thing fucking hilarious.

Third Side Note: Hey, Speaking of.... Ito Makoto?

Like I said before, Ito Makoto didn't speak much, if at all, about his personal life. He did have a wife who he was with from the age of 20 to his death; their relationship was apparently very close and loving. She moved with him to America during the Fantastico years, and has lived with his family back in Japan ever since his death. They never had any children. Ito Makoto also had a close male friend from his university years whom his wife called "Cousin" who lived with them, also moved to America with Makoto, and still lives in the same house there all three of them had before he died.

This does not necessarily mean anything.

Ito Makoto also drew all of the concept art for the first Starlight Hero game (and most of the art for the next four as well), and the art was... Well. Look, it's not uncommon to have Certain Sorts of Gamers come around complaining about how gay Starlight Hero has gotten. "Why are all the monsters so hot?" they ask, "Why does Karzarul move his hips like that?" they ask, "They weren't all sexualized and weird when I was a kid!" they say. Sometimes they even say that while taking control of the franchise for eight years. These Certain Sorts of Gamers have apparently never read the manual for Legend of the Starlight Hero I. All illustrations by Ito Makoto himself, and, well...

You've got the Taurils.

You've got the Abysscales.

[[A Bullizard lunges at the camera with a crystal spear. Both his tongue and pectorals are much longer/larger than they're usually depicted these days. Everything below the waist is shadowed, but suggestive.]]

You've got the Bullizards.

And of course you've got Impyres/King of All Monsters.

So the next time you get a Fake Gamer Boy bitching about how much attention has been spent on programming Karzarul's hip physics, just spam him some of these until he shuts up and goes away.

All of this also doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Speculation has it's place, but it's also important to remember that it was Makoto’s choice to be private. If there are any details about his private life that might deserve to be public knowledge, he has a surviving wife and a surviving 'long term live-in best friend' who are fully capable of making those details public if they ever decide it's appropriate. And neither of them have yet to do so. And Certain People need to stop being dicks about that.

And with that, we've reached the end of my write-up for this one single solitary game. Jesus.

Stars above! Let us continue this conversation another day, child.

Next time: More fun with Needle! And Jonys! And also more Joyns! Aaaand Joyns a few more times!

What can I say? They made a lot of Jonys games. And more of them are canon than some people might think.

Until then!

#Astielle #Unpretty #Metafiction #A month late because I had to rewrite this literally six times in a desperate attempt to make it shorter #Then I gave up #And you get all this #God I hope I gave him a legit Japanese name #Don't want a Sleve McDichael situation here

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