Reviews  |  Naomi

Under Defeat

By Alex Kierkegaard / October 15, 2007

Right now, Hiroyuki Maruyama's Game Revolution (aka G.rev) has got to be my favorite developer. This is because they are the only ones who combine: 1) a desire to pour their soul into each and every one of their games, 2) a willingness to try new things, 3) a regard for quality above all else, and 4) a capacity to... well, to make great games.

Two of those traits, the soul-pouring and the willingness to keep trying new things, are in fact linked: companies that keep rehashing the same tired franchise end up finding it increasingly harder to pour their soul into the latest instalment, simply because they discover they have none left. This is because risk-taking and striking out in unexplored directions feed the creative mind; resting on laurels, cow-milking and complacency enfeeble it.

So while other God-tier developers such as Cave, Valve and Blizzard are also known for their attention to quality and their capacity for crafting excellent games, none of them can match G.rev in their ability to surprise us. Cave has been pretty much slaving away on one concept since day one, Valve has devoted all its efforts to perfecting a single game, and Blizzard's latest original title is promising to be their last one for a very, very long time. Meanwhile, G.rev's games so far have practically nothing to do with each other. The first one was a barebones puzzle game (Doki Doki Idol Starseeker) -- low on budget but high on charm and simple fun; the second was a glorious descendant of the Taito lineage of horizontal shooters mixed with a very interesting (and, yes, slightly convoluted) rank-based multiple-route system (Border Down); and the third was an inspired mix of shooting, fighting and Virtual On-like (Senko no Ronde) which any day now I expect will give rise to a whole new versus subgenre in arcades.

So that's what makes G.rev special: ballsy wide-ranging ideas and dedicated, execution. The only other currently-active company combining these qualities to such a degree is Treasure, but even they are not nearly as bold these days as they used to be. Apart from them you'd have to go back : Sega's Smilebit or AM2 under Suzuki, or even further back to the Origins, Bullfrogs and Cinemawares of the PC/home-computer world -- companies that would conceive an idea and plunge into them those that would plunge into anything assemble, and make it work.

G.rev's willingness to is also its only . it's not so much that they are not afraid to move away from their comfort zone as that they don't even have one in the first place. Their games therefore always end up missing something:

This was the case with all previous , and it's the case with this

Superplay videos (taken from the Dreamcast port) courtesy of Kiken and Alamone. Being the only Western players to have cleared both loops, they are the only ones I know of who remain, to this day, above defeat.