Rising Star Blog

Remember all that stuff in Metal Gear Solid 4 about fried eggs? At the start of every mission briefing, Sunny would be there trying to cook eggs, while Solid and the rest of them would be waffling on about DNA, or battlefield control systems, or nanomachines or whatever. And she'd keep ruining them, breaking the yolks and so on, until Naomi tells her that the trick to making great fried eggs, sunny-side up (ie. without flipping them) is to leave the lid on.

I remember when I played it for the first time that was probably the thing about the game that puzzled me the most. What exactly did she mean, leave the lid on? Nobody fries eggs with the lid on. Do they? But she's right. Try it for yourself if you don't believe me! She's absolutely right. And actually, that's how everyone cooks eggs in Japan. When I first saw my wife cook eggs with the lid on, I had one of those Eureka moments. I mean, I still have no clue why Sunny is always cooking eggs, or what laboured metaphor Hideo Kojima was trying to construct, but at least I now know what Naomi means by leaving the lid on to cook perfect eggs.

So I wonder how many other Japanese games contain nuances or significant moments that western gamers don't pick up on because of the cultural differences. In Japan, for example, they personify harsh winters as ‘General Winter' (Fuyu Shogun). I wonder if that's got anything to do with Olaf's Blizzard ability in Advance Wars?

The first time I played Bayonetta, my wife pointed out that the lead character was ‘tsundere'. ‘What does that mean?' I asked. ‘Oh, it was just really fashionable a few years ago. It's a woman who's really prim and harsh,' she explained. And so clicking on the Wikipedia entry for tsundere, I also found out about ‘yandere', a term for a really gentle character who hides a psychotic side.

So how many of these sorts of cultural references do we western gamers miss? And does it matter? It's not like understanding Naomi's cooking instructions grants a fuller understanding of Hideo Kojima's vision? Does it?

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