Dragoon En Regalia
Member
SUPER UPDATE: Harold has reopened his A-Train 9 fansite, blog and forums! Meanwhile, A-Train 9 1.0 has arrived on Steam through the efforts of Degica (and 3.0 is yet to come); Natsume is set to publish A-Train 3DS in the US and Europe this fall and winter.
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Why? Because no one here has ever put that much time into the company and made a thread about it—that's why.
Artdink's beginnings are rather hazy, though the general estimate is that their first game, Take The A-Train, was released for Japanese PCs back in 1986 (and that's what they've put on their corporate site, anyhow; they have cited 1985 as the first release year in some of their product information, which makes this a sketchy estimate). Tatsuo Nagahama and his friends got together to make a bunch of high-concept, complex, and utterly Japanese simulation games, and thus was born Take The A-Train. In their early period, the team's products ranged from their usual train business simulation series (known informally as A-Train) to historical adventure series like The Atlas, or WWII military war-games—they even made games where you program a legion of robots to build big things! And it was in this period, from the company's inception to around the launch of the PlayStation, that its success was most solidified and prominent amongst the other big Japanese soft-houses of the era. A-Train, of course, happened to be the developer's backbone, self-published and self-gratifying with a prodigious amount of fanzine coverage and worthy accolades and big awards from the Japanese gaming press—it made them most of their money, for that matter. Even though A-Train has continually grown ever since, though, Artdink's taste for unique concepts and great execution rarely wavered, and this was their era of glory.
When the PlayStation finally launched, so did Artdink with the latest and greatest version of the A-Train games yet seen by the public (we got the same version in 1996 from Maxis, who also published A-Train III overseas much earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train). And from then on, they established themselves as a major patron of the PSX platform in Japan, releasing games like Carnage Heart and ToPoLo early on, as well classics like No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! in their later PSX years. Franchises like Lunatic Dawn, a series of JRPGS that was previously rather unknown, got a lease on its life when they moved to the new platform, while old standbys like A-Train took a brusque leave and lacked the same amount of relevance as did the series' predecessors. And new developers received their chance to try and produce neat games for the company, like the eccentric Kazutoshi Ida and his games at Artdink (Tail of the Sun and Aquanaut's Holiday, in particular). Still, for all of the company's past successes and new contraptions, it remained small and dedicated to coming up with great games based on some more inaccessible bases for video games at the time—they had never made much revenue to begin with, and the times were changing, consolidating into more vulgarized affairs wherein more conventional concepts appealed to the Japanese public. While Artdink was lucky that A-Train was still accepted amongst the Japanese train-loving populace, many of the house's other games fell into obscurity and an overall lack of attention as the move from the great old Japanese PCs to Windows PCs trudged forward, and as the move from the PlayStation to newer platforms continued.
Indeed, Artdink's intake of fresh talent and output of fresh games slowed down considerably after this era, with many of their releases becoming more staggered following the turn of the millennium. Today, Artdink has consolidated its line-up into three major groups: the Gundam Battle series of games and spin-offs (collaborating with Bandai, where some former Artdink members work now, interestingly enough), a renewed series of PSP-based Carnage Heart games, and the most recent A-Train releases (plus DLC and patches). While this is largely due to Artdink's eternal obscurity and low profile in the global gaming community, compounded by a less-forgiving financial climate and competition from companies like Maxis and Front Software, it doesn't have too many detriments. The A-Train continues to become more user-friendly than it used to be (the only issue I have with the games), and both their Carnage Heart and Gundam Battle games are robust and generally worth the mecha gaming fan's precious time. Where will Artdink go to in the future? I don't know—I just post here. But, as far as I'm concerned, the studio has always been a mainstay of the old guard of Japanese gaming, alongside other groups of relative status like Hudson, Love-de-Lic, Sogna, Excel, and so forth. And I hope that anyone reading this thread can come to appreciate what they've brought to video gaming. Now, it's time for some videos.
A-Train
Lazy Game Reviews did a video on A-Train, one that does a decent job of explaining the gist of the Western release fairly well.
And, for that matter, here's a great video showcasing how amazing the A-Train experience is today, all in one blow (You'll want to watch this in high-res, btw, because it's just gorgeous).
A-Train is different from other mass transit business simulations on a number of levels. It's based on the Japanese rail business model, which happens to be fairly rigid in how it operates. For example: want to set up rail switches and signaling, so you can run multiple trains at the same time with ease? Tough luck! Instead, the player gets to manually schedule departure and arrival times for each individual train on any single line, which is part of the endearing
charm of running a Japanese rail business. Add on to the usual railroad building and organization with a bunch of other activities like real-estate management, creating a busing service, preparing supplies for the growing human settlements that eventually sprawl across your growing dominion, and even being able to play the stock market! Each game is quite open-ended, and the only consistent objective between scenarios and maps is to attain a certain quantity of money—but, with so many different maps and different ways to play the game, A-Train offers a lot as a franchise.
Localized Titles
A-Train III — localized by Maxis, their first title not internally-developed. It was released as A-Train for DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh. Clicky for the Home of the Underdogs page!
A-Train IV — localized by Maxis for the PSX in 1996. It was originally released as a special Global Evolution version of the game in 1995 in Japan, and the Japanese version features the same number of languages as the Western port.
A-Train 8 — localized for Europe around 2010, I believe. Here's the page.
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Carnage Heart
Carnage Heart, thankfully, has more videos on YouTube and any media revolving around it is largely more accessible.
Here's some narrated videos detailing how to play Carnage Heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sFcjUoFnow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riE0S00Lhyc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wws1a4ev50
Great videos, aren't they? They came on a second disk in the original European release of Carnage Heart for the PS. Now here's a later game in the franchise, still on the PSX.
Much like A-Train, Carnage Heart is very complex via its programming-centric focus and the way you battle and produce Over Kill Engines (OKEs), but it's this very depth and reliance on the player's programming and construction skills that allow for such interesting play, both in single-player and multi-player modes. And, as is the case with A-Train, the original game was already so well-developed and fleshed-out that all the sequels essentially focused on new content, game modes, and refinements to a winning formula. If you've ever wanted to try out a more strategic kind of mecha-based game, then seeking out the original Carnage Heart and braving the unlocalized sequels on the PSX and PSP is never a bad idea.
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In closing: I'm quite passionate about this company, as they've had an illustrious history and deserve more attention, I'd say. If you want to investigate more of the A-Train lineage or other game series that I had trouble finding information for (and info that was easy enough to place here and process for this thread's purpose, tbh), then you'd be glad to know that Artdink has a homepage of its own:
http://www.artdink.co.jp/ (Non-Japanese readers can deal with Google Translate—I deal with it all the time when I go here!)
Unlike a lot of other obscure Japanese developers, Artdink has always done a good job of recognizing their past works and providing great online services, particularly with websites for individual games (and one of those websites was even a big developer's blog, back in the late '90s! Exciting stuff that Artdink was pioneering). Whether anyone feels like responding, I'm glad to post this information and examples of A-Train and CH games. Hope you enjoyed this little romp.
|||
Why? Because no one here has ever put that much time into the company and made a thread about it—that's why.
Artdink's beginnings are rather hazy, though the general estimate is that their first game, Take The A-Train, was released for Japanese PCs back in 1986 (and that's what they've put on their corporate site, anyhow; they have cited 1985 as the first release year in some of their product information, which makes this a sketchy estimate). Tatsuo Nagahama and his friends got together to make a bunch of high-concept, complex, and utterly Japanese simulation games, and thus was born Take The A-Train. In their early period, the team's products ranged from their usual train business simulation series (known informally as A-Train) to historical adventure series like The Atlas, or WWII military war-games—they even made games where you program a legion of robots to build big things! And it was in this period, from the company's inception to around the launch of the PlayStation, that its success was most solidified and prominent amongst the other big Japanese soft-houses of the era. A-Train, of course, happened to be the developer's backbone, self-published and self-gratifying with a prodigious amount of fanzine coverage and worthy accolades and big awards from the Japanese gaming press—it made them most of their money, for that matter. Even though A-Train has continually grown ever since, though, Artdink's taste for unique concepts and great execution rarely wavered, and this was their era of glory.
When the PlayStation finally launched, so did Artdink with the latest and greatest version of the A-Train games yet seen by the public (we got the same version in 1996 from Maxis, who also published A-Train III overseas much earlier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train). And from then on, they established themselves as a major patron of the PSX platform in Japan, releasing games like Carnage Heart and ToPoLo early on, as well classics like No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! in their later PSX years. Franchises like Lunatic Dawn, a series of JRPGS that was previously rather unknown, got a lease on its life when they moved to the new platform, while old standbys like A-Train took a brusque leave and lacked the same amount of relevance as did the series' predecessors. And new developers received their chance to try and produce neat games for the company, like the eccentric Kazutoshi Ida and his games at Artdink (Tail of the Sun and Aquanaut's Holiday, in particular). Still, for all of the company's past successes and new contraptions, it remained small and dedicated to coming up with great games based on some more inaccessible bases for video games at the time—they had never made much revenue to begin with, and the times were changing, consolidating into more vulgarized affairs wherein more conventional concepts appealed to the Japanese public. While Artdink was lucky that A-Train was still accepted amongst the Japanese train-loving populace, many of the house's other games fell into obscurity and an overall lack of attention as the move from the great old Japanese PCs to Windows PCs trudged forward, and as the move from the PlayStation to newer platforms continued.
Indeed, Artdink's intake of fresh talent and output of fresh games slowed down considerably after this era, with many of their releases becoming more staggered following the turn of the millennium. Today, Artdink has consolidated its line-up into three major groups: the Gundam Battle series of games and spin-offs (collaborating with Bandai, where some former Artdink members work now, interestingly enough), a renewed series of PSP-based Carnage Heart games, and the most recent A-Train releases (plus DLC and patches). While this is largely due to Artdink's eternal obscurity and low profile in the global gaming community, compounded by a less-forgiving financial climate and competition from companies like Maxis and Front Software, it doesn't have too many detriments. The A-Train continues to become more user-friendly than it used to be (the only issue I have with the games), and both their Carnage Heart and Gundam Battle games are robust and generally worth the mecha gaming fan's precious time. Where will Artdink go to in the future? I don't know—I just post here. But, as far as I'm concerned, the studio has always been a mainstay of the old guard of Japanese gaming, alongside other groups of relative status like Hudson, Love-de-Lic, Sogna, Excel, and so forth. And I hope that anyone reading this thread can come to appreciate what they've brought to video gaming. Now, it's time for some videos.
A-Train
Lazy Game Reviews did a video on A-Train, one that does a decent job of explaining the gist of the Western release fairly well.
And, for that matter, here's a great video showcasing how amazing the A-Train experience is today, all in one blow (You'll want to watch this in high-res, btw, because it's just gorgeous).
A-Train is different from other mass transit business simulations on a number of levels. It's based on the Japanese rail business model, which happens to be fairly rigid in how it operates. For example: want to set up rail switches and signaling, so you can run multiple trains at the same time with ease? Tough luck! Instead, the player gets to manually schedule departure and arrival times for each individual train on any single line, which is part of the endearing
tedium
Localized Titles
A-Train III — localized by Maxis, their first title not internally-developed. It was released as A-Train for DOS, Amiga, and Macintosh. Clicky for the Home of the Underdogs page!
A-Train IV — localized by Maxis for the PSX in 1996. It was originally released as a special Global Evolution version of the game in 1995 in Japan, and the Japanese version features the same number of languages as the Western port.
A-Train 8 — localized for Europe around 2010, I believe. Here's the page.
|||
Carnage Heart
Carnage Heart, thankfully, has more videos on YouTube and any media revolving around it is largely more accessible.
Here's some narrated videos detailing how to play Carnage Heart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sFcjUoFnow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riE0S00Lhyc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wws1a4ev50
Great videos, aren't they? They came on a second disk in the original European release of Carnage Heart for the PS. Now here's a later game in the franchise, still on the PSX.
Much like A-Train, Carnage Heart is very complex via its programming-centric focus and the way you battle and produce Over Kill Engines (OKEs), but it's this very depth and reliance on the player's programming and construction skills that allow for such interesting play, both in single-player and multi-player modes. And, as is the case with A-Train, the original game was already so well-developed and fleshed-out that all the sequels essentially focused on new content, game modes, and refinements to a winning formula. If you've ever wanted to try out a more strategic kind of mecha-based game, then seeking out the original Carnage Heart and braving the unlocalized sequels on the PSX and PSP is never a bad idea.
|||
In closing: I'm quite passionate about this company, as they've had an illustrious history and deserve more attention, I'd say. If you want to investigate more of the A-Train lineage or other game series that I had trouble finding information for (and info that was easy enough to place here and process for this thread's purpose, tbh), then you'd be glad to know that Artdink has a homepage of its own:
http://www.artdink.co.jp/ (Non-Japanese readers can deal with Google Translate—I deal with it all the time when I go here!)
Unlike a lot of other obscure Japanese developers, Artdink has always done a good job of recognizing their past works and providing great online services, particularly with websites for individual games (and one of those websites was even a big developer's blog, back in the late '90s! Exciting stuff that Artdink was pioneering). Whether anyone feels like responding, I'm glad to post this information and examples of A-Train and CH games. Hope you enjoyed this little romp.
