Capcom’s Daizou Nonaka returns to talk about different ways of exploring the NJPW World archives.
Hi everyone! Daizou Nonaka from Capcom here. It’s been a while since my last column, and since then the current global Coronavirus situation has meant that NJPW have held off on their live events.
Not having any new NJPW events is terrible!
But!
BUT!
We have NJPW World!
I watch World all the time, but now, with time between live events, I have the chance to catch up on my ‘wrestling backlog’. Crisis begats opportunity as they say, and here’s an opportunity for me to write about NJPW World from a videogaming standpoint. What do games have to do with NJPW World, you say? It’s all a matter of our word of the day:
Perspective
So, as you probably know, you can watch thousands of matches in the NJPW World archives. There’s definitely a lot of appeal in reliving the excitement and emotion of moments from the past; it’s a lot easier than digging out a dusty VHS or DVD for one thing! But as fun as it may be to search for a specific old match to rewatch, or watch for the first time, there’s a different way to enjoy the archives.
It’s all a matter of changing your perspective. Look at things from another angle, and your understanding and enjoyment can change too. You can certainly say that pro-wrestling is the show that never ends, but if we connect these dots in time with lines, and then connect those lines? We’ve got a whole new picture to enjoy.
Perspective on gaming history
You can use different perspectives to enjoy any number of mediums with a strong sense of history. Since I work in videogames, I enjoy looking at gaming history in the same way. Since I’ve worked with the Mega Man franchise for a long time, let me use that as an illustration to make my point.
You can play Mega Man 1, 2 & 3 in order and get an idea of how the series evolved over that first trilogy. That’s a linear way of looking at things, with time as a horizontal line. How about we take a top down view of things instead? Look at it this way. The first Mega Man came out in 1987 on the NES. That’s four years after the NES was first released in Japan as the Famicom. You were seeing a lot of arcade conversions like ‘Track & Field’ or ‘Punch Out’ and original games like ‘Metroid’ or Legend of Zelda’. It’s a really interesting year, where I think you see a transition in the home video game space; moving away from arcade ports to games that were built for the console. 1987 saw a huge number of really popular franchises born, Mega Man among them.
View Mega Man 1 with that perspective and you can see just how important a piece of work it was to the videogame space at the time, and enjoy it with an entirely different point of view.
Let’s look at wrestling in the same way.
NJPW World perspective!
OK, so let’s see how we can explore NJPW World’s archives with a couple of different perspectives.
1. Pick a key word.
I want to use the Hiromu Takahashi and Tetsuya Naito match that was supposed to happen at Anniversary Event as a jumping off point. That match was made at New Beginning in Osaka, which was in Osaka Jo Hall on Feberuary 9. I think I’ll go to the tags section, and find Osaka Jo Hall in ‘venues’
2. Pick a match
Let’s pick a match that looks interesting. I want to see a title defense from Naito. match where he lost a title. How about this one? June 11, 2017, Naito vs Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. Hm. Turns out he lost the title in this one!
3. Pick another match from the same card
Well, now that I’m looking at Dominion 2017, here’s a Hiromu match, against KUSHIDA for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. Hey, Hiromu lost this one! So on the same day in the same building, Hiromu and Naito both lost their championships!
4. Jump back to the present with fresh eyes
Let’s go back to the present day. Having seen what i just saw, I want to check out Hiromu and Naito interaction again, after Naito’s main event with KENTA. The post match comments video has subtitles, too!
5. Place and time meet.
And now we see Hiromu, and Naito, both having overcome so much to defend their titles successfully, having both failed to do so three years earlier. There’s so much history between these two, and in just a few clicks, we’ve uncovered another connection between them, one to the city of Osaka, and to the venue of Osaka Jo Hall specifically. Knowing that adds another dimension to this interaction, and will add another dimension to their eventual match if it does happen.
We can find a lot of different elements all interwoven, if we take the time to look at the archives with a new perspective. I hope you all find your own ways to dig through past matches on World, and find your own ways through these multi-dimensional stories!
Daizo Nonaka is a veteran videogame producer and wrestling fan. He’s been part of the game industry for over 36 years, and has worked extensively at Capcom producing the Mega Man series among others.
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