Jade Cocoon: The Tamamayu Legend

November 30, 1998 April 27, 2001 February 7, 2002

platform

Game mode

1 CD-ROM

English , German

Jade Cocoon: The Tamamayu Legend ( Japanese 玉繭物語 , Tamamayu Monogatari ) is a video game developed by Genki for the PlayStation in 1998 . An English version was published in the same year by Crave Entertainment for America, the European version by Ubisoft did not come onto the market until 1999. It is a role-playing game with a collectible element typical of Pokémon games. Katsuya Kondō and other artists from the anime studio Ghibli , with whom Genki had been associated for a long time before this project, were involved in the aesthetic design and animation . It has a melancholy atmosphere created by tragic scenarios, the orchestral background music, an epic story and the visual representation. With around ten hours of pure playing time, the game is relatively short.

Gameplay

The heavily forested world in which Jade Cocoon is set is mainly inhabited by unusual, beetle-like beings, as well as humans. Since these have many different forms, a no small part of which are dangerous to humans, one lives in small settlements in the middle of the forests. In this game you control Levant, an inhabitant of one of these villages, who emulates his father, who disappeared a long time ago, to become cocoon master. The cocoon masters are the protectors of the settlements from the beetle creatures, who are usually held back from the settlements by the power of a sacred tree. To this end, the beings you encounter can be captured and used for battle, mutually transforming into stronger beings (using a simple hereditary system), or converted to silk to make money. The combat system is mainly based on the four elements that are assigned to the beetle creatures, and each of which has strengths and weaknesses against each other.

Jade Cocoon appeared at the time when Pokemon was being played by many. The games are similar in that the basic task is to catch monsters , train them and send them into battle. Jade Cocoon plays in an environment graphic similar to Final Fantasy 7 , a mixture of a representation in 3D and hand-drawn images is used. Battles do not take place on a random basis. The player can observe the movements of the opponents and thus decide whether to flee or engage them in a fight. When the monster is touched, the player switches to a turn-based combat system. Here the player can either let Levant or his monsters fight.

The anime artist Katsuya Kondō supervised the creation of the over 600 precomputed high-resolution backgrounds. Kondo became famous mainly through the two anime films Kikis Small Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke , in Jade Cocoon 2 he was employed as a character designer.

successor

2001 Jade Cocoon 2 ( 玉繭物語 2, Tamamayu Monogatari 2 ) was released for the PlayStation 2 . This part also appeared in Europe a year later.

The game takes place a long time after the first one, cocoon masters no longer exist, and the main hero of the first game, Levant, is now part of the new generation of hunters, the beasthunters. You control a young man, Kahu, whose goal it is to become such a beasthunter, for which he has to take an exam in the temples of the Kemuel. On the way there he is cursed and now has to collect four magical spheres and a lute from the surrounding woods.

The game system is almost identical to its predecessor, but more emphasis than before has been placed on the rearing and combination of various captured animals. Unlike before, not only are fights to be fought against wild opponents, but you can also compete against other beasthunters in arenas who have captured their own monsters and let them fight for them.

Individual evidence

↑ Helen McCarthy: Hayao Miyazaki : Master of Japanese Animation. Stone Bridge Press 1999. ISBN 1880656418 , p. 191

Web links

Tamamayu Monogatari ( Memento from February 15, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) on the website of the Genki development studio (Japanese)
Jade Cocoon at MobyGames (English)
Tamamayu monogatari in the Internet Movie Database (English)

[1] Helen McCarthy: Hayao Miyazaki : Master of Japanese Animation. Stone Bridge Press 1999. ISBN 1880656418 , p. 191