Aug 8, 2008
Cao Cao, bin Laden and the Beijing Olympics
BY DERRICK SOBODASH
hat’s what I’m calling my new arrangement of “Beijing Welcomes You,” that damn Olympic theme song everyone on the Chinese Internet is remixing. It will be a sitar and erhu duet with tons of nasty double-sharp notes.
Well, not quite. A kickass idea, but I can’t play anything with strings — even a piano.
So what do Cao Cao, bin Laden and the Beijing Olympics have in common? They all appear in Shenzhen Nanjing Technology’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms: The Legend of Cao Cao. You may remember Shenzhen Nanjing Technology as the company that made Final Fantasy VII for the Famicom, another disaster through which I suffered for your entertainment.
Thankfully, this game was much less shitty.
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Role reversal
Have you ever found yourself playing Destiny of an Emperor and wondering what it would be like to control Cao Cao and beat the crap out of Liu Bei and his buddies? Neither had I until I stumbled on this cart.
The kids from the Kongming and Lord Yuanshu forums will love this one, and I can see why. The idea is interesting, and it’s one that Nanjing was actually able to pull of. Kind of.
Normally, the Destiny series simply rehashes the Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei story starting from their oath. That isn’t a bad thing. The story has been a Chinese staple since it was first recorded. It has carried Koei through eleven games and two side stories. Hell, the Destiny games were so popular that the Taiwan developer SKOB programmed an unofficial third entry on Megadrive.
Of course, playing as Liu Bei all the time can get old. You always know how the story ends. You always know what events will happen. You always see the same idiots talking and patting each other’s ass.
A new viewpoint is a great way to revive a time-tested model.
Yes, I am aware Koei made a Strategy RPG under the Legend of Cao Cao label. No, this game has nothing to do with it.
As the story goes …
The game begins in Luoyang, where Dong Zhuo has taken the last Han emperor hostage. After doing some work for the tyrant and gaining his trust, Cao Cao comes to hate the guy.
Answering the people’s groans, Cao Cao decides to lop off Dong Zhuo’s head. During an audience, he sends out Lü Bu, Dong’s foster son, to fetch him a better horse. However, when Cao Cao draws his sword to kill the tyrant, Dong Zhuo spots him in the mirror and confronts him. Just then, Lü Bu returns and Cao Cao is forced to flee to the northeast.
Cao Cao and Chen Gong find shelter in the home of his father’s sworn brother. However, when they overhear the servants talking about a murder plot, they burst out and kill them all, including the wife and child of his host. The target of the “plot” was a pig for that evening’s dinner. As they flee, the run into their host on his was back from some errands. Cao Cao tells him they are afraid they have been followed and need to escape. Nodding in agreement, the man walks off and Cao Cao stabs him through the back before he can discover the other murders.
From there, the story somewhat follows what is laid out in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. For a time, Liu Bei and company will be on your side as playable characters, though it is a waste to use them since they eventually rebel.
The Tasting Plum Wine scene was perhaps one of the best in the game. Since the story is told from Cao Cao’s perspective, it lacks the rumble and menace it has in Liu’s Bei’s eyes. Cao Cao concludes that he and Liu Bei are the only heroes of the age. YouTube currently has a clip of that scene as done in the TV serial, for anyone looking for a comparison.
Most of the rest of the game is spent chasing after the rebelling Liu Bei, who accuses Cao Cao of trying to usurp the Han. Cao Cao counters saying he has done a lot to help the emperor.
Liu Bei is defeated at Cao Cao’s chained-together boats, which in this game are long enough to cross the river from end to end. After the battle, he presses south to claim Guan Yu’s territory. When Guan Yu is defeated, the player can decide what to do with him. I’m not sure if this choice changes the outcome of the game.
After smashing the last of Shu, it is time to go see Sun Quan in Wu. The southeast dock that was previously useless suddenly sticks you in a boat and shoots you off to Wu, and area with only two cities. Sun Quan and his family are beaten quickly — so quickly I almost omitted him from this review.
Cao Cao heads back to his capital to find out Sima Yi has betrayed him and taken Diao Chan, Dong Zhuo’s former concubine. But revenge has to wait until he takes out the Jin in the north to bring it under his control. The Jin are a huge chunk of the map with no towns in sight.
After reclaiming the last parts of China, you have to head south and wander around till you find the Immortal of the South Ocean, who gives you stones with the powers of Qinglong, Zhuque, Baihu and Xuanwu — these would be Seiryuu, Suzaku, Byakkoo and Genbu to Japanophiles — with which you will seal Sima Yi’s evil power.
Needless to say, the game takes immense liberties with the story and character relationships in Romance of the Three Kingdoms — then again, so did the game it copies.
You may be able to end the game without invading Jin, since when you try to enter the city after defeating Sun Quan, Cao Cao says he can’t fight him without the power of the orbs.
Why create when you can copy?
Destiny of an Emperor only slightly deviated from the common RPG format of its era. The way the players could manage generals, and the way HP and strength were connected to the size of each general’s army, was basically where the innovation ended.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. That was certainly Nanjing’s theory. Find a popular Famicom RPG, gut its graphics, reprogram its battle engine, plug it into your existing generic RPG map engine and profit.
The battle engine is a wonderful feat. They perfectly cloned the feel of the original Destiny, only in a much more attractive format. Players can use five generals, and all the tricks and strategies are in place, as well as the “All-Out” mode where both armies step forward and slam on each other till the player presses Cancel.
One neat addition is that when generals shout out stock lines to accompany the actions. It is reminiscent of the major battles in Konami’s Suikoden, and is a cute addition to the game. Every general has a couple lines.
Generals can equip four items. The available equipment depends on each general. You can only equip generals currently placed in your formation. The formation screen allows you to place four generals in front of, behind and on each wing of Cao Cao, and to assign one strategist to the group.
The game does not have any concept of levels. Instead, experience points allow generals greater capability in commanding an army. Cao Cao will always have the most experience, since he is the only permanent general. As his experience grows, new armies are unlocked. A general can equip an army to gain its troops and power, which determine his HP, and therefore attack power, in battle. Armies also carry a bonus in strength, intelligence and speed. It is a clever twist on the RPG, and forces the player to weigh fringe benefits of less powerful armies.
The main game, however, is much less stellar. The map engine used is jacked from Nanjing’s Tales of Phantasia “remake.” The sprites used are the same ugly 16×24 men, and multiple times I considered hacking the game to patch in the 16×16 characters used in the earlier Capcom games.
The cities never have banners to tell you which they are, nor do they have a generic townsperson to say, “Welcome to Luoyang!” This makes it extremely difficult to figure out where to go. If someone says go to Kaifeng, you are shit out of luck. The in-game map, which only shows where Cao Cao when inside a city, sort of looks like China. That’s not terribly helpful unless you are familiar with the ancient names of every single city.
Many of the map graphics also appear to have been lifted from Enix’s Dragon Warrior series, most notably the graphic for impassable mountains. The city and village graphics were lifted from Capcom’s Destiny of an Emperor II, as were the character portraits and battle sprites.
Trigger tiles do not work by stepping on them. You have to walk onto them from a specific direction. It is confusing the first few times you step on a staircase and it does nothing. You have to walk onto it with the direction the staircase goes. This is also a problem when entering cities, especially a few which place this trigger tile in an awkward spot. More than a few times I found myself stepping up, down and all over in search of the magic way in.
Lastly, the music is pretty bad. The cave music will make players want to exit as soon as possible, as it sounds like an 8-bit remix of “Flight of the Bumblebee.” The rest of the game tunes are not exactly bad, but are certainly uninspired. Since it only has seven tracks, it might be a great project for someone to “hack in” the music driver and tunes from one of the original Capcom titles, assuming no special chips are used.
The game comes on the 2MB NANJING board, which is used in most of the company’s RPGs. It is one giant PRG ROM with no CHR ROMs. The CHR is replaced by an additional VRAM chip, which is supplemented by dipping into the SRAM for scratch space. The basically breaks save states in every single emulator — a feature common to most Nanjing games.
Dialogue makes it worth playing
And what does this have to do with bin Laden and the Beijing Olympics?
Dialogue.
This game includes enough pop culture references to make Victor Ireland orgasm.
Consider the following:
小学生：本人正在训练腿步肌肉，准备到2008年北京奥运会上拿个1000米冠军，为国争光！
Young Student: I’m working hard on my leg muscles. I’m getting ready to be the 1,000m champion at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to win glory for the country!
老人：我那个不孝的儿子，他嫌国内太乱，执意要去美国，也不知道9.11拉登炸到他没有，唉，真让人担心。。。
Old Man: That unfilial child of mine … He said our country is too chaotic and insisted on going to the US. I don’t even know if bin Laden blew him up on 9/11. Oh, he really makes me worry …
曹操：“拉灯”。。。？我只听说过“吹灯”，怎么现在改啦？！
Cao Cao: “Pulling a light” …? I’ve only heard of “blowing a light.” Why are you pulling them?!
In Chinese, “Ladin” and “pull light,” or la deng, have the same pronunciation. The joke plays on the homonym shared by the international NGO leader and old light bulbs, as well as the lack of each in the Three Kingdoms era. Thanks to Jacky for reminding me what kind of light one can “pull.”
The rest of the dialogue is equally humorous, such as this unprompted conversation with a random NPC lady in Luoyang. Was Cao Cao touching her? Who knows, but it sounds a little lewd.
女青年：你只是得到我的肉体，并不能得到我的灵魂。我已经有爱人。你让我走吧!
Young Lady: You may take my body, but you’ll never take my soul! I already have a lover! Let me go!
The serious scenes are serious, but throughout the rest of the game the writers went wild.
For reasons unknown, certain characters stumble into using broken English, even Cao Cao. Was Nanjing planning an English version of the cart at some point and got the scripts mixed up? Who knows! Most of the time, the use of English seems totally out of place. It occurs most frequently in a small village in the Jin kingdom.
This game was a blast to play and is the best Nanjing cart I have seen. I am looking forward to playing its sequel, Legend of the Valiant General, which puts the player in the role of Lü Bu.
Except for the map thing, it sound pretty playable as long as you know Chinese.
Cool find.
Does anyone know where to download the rom of this game ?