RPG Maker: A 2Ker Asks "Why Bother?"

by Josh Frappier

Original Editorial: The Greatness of RPG Maker

Mr. Ferry tells us to ignore the countless limitations of RPG Maker (or, more appropriately, the limitations placed upon the program due to the nature of the Sony PlayStation) and to give it a chance, in spite of the existence of RPG Maker 2000 and RPG Maker 2003. Unless you have some strange moral hang-up about respecting companies who didn’t even respect us enough to localize their best products (Enterbrain), there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to use the PlayStation version of RPG Maker if you are reading this editorial on your own computer.

While Mr. Ferry is quite right in arguing that any sort of story imaginable can be made into a game using RPG Maker, the creativity possible with it, due again to the inherent limitations of the Sony PlayStation, is limited to this one dimension because of the inability to customize the graphics and music of a game and because of the storage limitations of memory cards relative to computer hard drives. The idea of spending $10 for a 1 megabit (128 kilobyte) memory card (unless you’re really to take a risk with unofficial models) for each and every game created is quite ludicrous when every personal computer comes equipped with a hard drive thousands of times bigger.

At least as important, however, is the customisability and upgradability of RPG Maker 2000 and RPG Maker 2003 which stems from the PC’s access to the Internet along with the infinite rewriteability of hard drives. These factors allow users to create and download custom graphics and music, and add them to their game. While this may not seem overly important to some people and may even lead to my being condemned as a "graphics whore", setting – particularly music (Everything from Bach to Brittney to Rammstein to Uematsu is possible) – plays an extremely important role in the creation of a memorable game, as anybody who has played and loved Forgotten Majesty or Three the Hard Way can attest to. Additionally, should the game have any bugs or other inadvertent limitations, Enterbrain can easily create, as they have done on numerous occasions, a patch to fix the problems and enhance the product. And as someone who has used a PC for the majority of my life, having to write tons of dialogue without the use of a computer is a virtually insurmountable task.

Finally, I am disappointed that Enterbrain has done virtually nothing to reach out the North American and European markets with RPG Maker 95/2000/2003, and while I am not proud of doing so, I have no qualms with acquiring a better product for free (regardless of piracy issues) as opposed to paying for an inferior product. I am, like many others, however, more than willing to pay for a localised release of RPG Maker 2003 provided that I can be assured of getting the same level of support given to the Japanese market. But until Enterbrain gets their heads out of the sand and takes their A-game with them to North America, I see no reason to do anything more than shrug shoulders when they complain of illegal localizations of products that they had no plans to localize nevertheless.