I think this cover captures vividly the fall of Japanese gaming. I've played Rockman EXE. It's garbage. I played the original Mega Man Battle Network on GBA back in 2001-2002 I think it was. I couldn't stomach it for more than an hour. It's a 2/5 if I am feeling kind. EGM gave it 6/10, which is basically my 2/5. And the latest Famitsu has nothing better to push on their readers on their cover than a collection of garbage games from a quarter of a century ago.
Now you might say it's a weekly magazine, so they still have three covers for the month, but even then, there are certainly four better games to highlight on your cover in April 2023 than fucking Rockman EXE! And the fact they're making such a fuss about the "anniversary" or whatever shows they have shit for taste!
There's no coming back from this, it's terminal. Whites are lapping the Japs now even in belt-scrollers (with Streets of Rage 4), metroidvanias (the Hollow Knight games), and perhaps to an extent even shooters soon (with the upcoming CYGNI [ > ]). What genres do the Japs have left to dominate? The rolling-on-the-floor (ROFL) genre?
They will be beaten in that too, soon. Mark my words on this. Tons of studios are trying to beat them at it, and one of them will do it. And they will do it by making a true open-world ROFL game, not the barren wastelands that count for open worlds in Japan. And then there's no coming back from that defeat, since Asians can't make open worlds (they've been failing for a quarter of a century now to make one, to the point where we had to make even a samurai open-world game for them).
