It’s a unique Welsh experience. I was never Scottish, Irish or Latvian, but people have informed me that when you tell someone where you are from, the answer is usually not “What is this?”.
For the Welsh, that basic ice-breaking question from anyone outside the UK usually takes a deep breath, and whether you have the time or not, a brief structured lesson on The world’s most interesting geography, history and flags. Wales, to most of the world, is a silent mystery. A country with no footprints.
As a Welshman, I don’t expect representation. The first time I was 14 years old felt Wales reflected in a video game. The second time, I was 26 years old. To say that this medium is not really kind to Cymru is an overstatement. In a world before Gareth Bale, Wales didn’t even FIFA; The only reliable representation is the forced appearance in quirky rugby games, most of which skip the Nintendo system.
However, while Wales’ history in Nintendo games is sparse, it’s surprisingly profound and has had a pretty big impact on me in a world I never expected. be seen yourself.
Senghenydd . Sky Guards
In 1984, a young designer named Takashi Tezuka was tasked with devising the story and setting for a new game. An adventure epic inspired by a colleague’s childhood obsession of adventuring through the caves around Kyoto, Tezuka decides to dig into her own childhood.
On my way out of the house, however, I first noticed Wales in a Nintendo game. Summer 2010, and a bunch of puns in the localization convinced me to try Square Enix’s Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies on DS. Sitting in my aunt’s guest room, with a fancy picture of the 1997 Glamorgan Cricket team on the wall, I arrived in a town called Porth Llaffan. This week, visiting again for the first time since, the town’s population is warm, old-fashioned and speaks with an almost OTT South Wales accent. It was clearly written by an Englishman, whose backspace key is probably still warm after removing the word ‘Boyo’ at the end of each sentence, but it’s adorable. ‘Your’ is spelled ‘Youer’, the characters call the things they like ‘Tidy’, and the whole town is being terrorized by a monster called Lleviathan.
In Welsh, the double L (“Ll”) is a single letter. Pronounced “Thl”, it is written as such because English printers are not equipped to write the Welsh character ‘ỻ’, so they are approximate. Lleviathan may be a simple joke, a basic pun, but it is also very emotional. This is the first time I have seen Welsh in a match, and this is a joke that only makes sense to people who understand our language.
Kiki’s Denbigh Service
Still, just a mile or two from where I’m going to one day kill that monster, and in the same month, Tezuka is defining another adventure, another Japanese creation as his own. . Hayao Miyazaki, an animator who has just finished his first film as a director, has come to Wales for inspiration. I spent weeks hiking through the beautiful Rhonda valley, exploring it, meeting people and possibly visiting my aunt. However, it was when he arrived in the Rhymney Valley, home to previous generations of my family, that he found the inspiration he had been looking for.
Miyazaki witnessed the Miners’ Strike first hand. In perhaps the defining act of modern Welsh history, the working people of Wales and beyond stood up to the government of Margret Thatcher, and it was so deeply moved by Miyazaki. The spirit he saw in the Welsh made the stories he wanted to tell clear. Warmth, optimism, all in the face of extraordinary difficulties. This trip was the main inspiration for his next film, 1986 Castle on the cloudan idea entirely conceived while in Wales and the first to be produced by the newly formed Studio Ghibli.
Miyazaki continues to incorporate Welsh architecture into his designs and is fascinated by Cymraeg folklore. In 2004, he adapted the novel by Welsh author Diana Wynne Jones. Howl .’s Moving Castle. He’s moved the setting out of 1980s Wales and stripped Howl of Howl’s deep love for rugby, but the thematic DNA remains.
What is Nintendo Link? It is indirect, but Castle in the Sky will continue to directly inspire airship levels in Super Mario Bros. 3while Miyazaki’s later work will become the main reference point for Fire Emblem, The Last Illusion, Dragon Questand perhaps Nintendo’s most extroverted Welsh franchise, Xenoblade Chronicles.
Girl with Gelligaer
I never played the Xenoblade game when the third part ended Nintendo Direct February 2022. And then, a brief snippet of Aimee-Ffion Edwards’ vocals was enough to make me sit up. I have never seen a match with a Welsh lead before. It’s almost overwhelming, and enough to make me buy Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Although Mio may not be explicitly written as Welsh, there is a familiar tragedy in her story. A deep passion and love for the place she came from, the family she was known for and made of, but an understanding that those feelings were forged with a foot on her throat. No matter how far she goes, she always looks back where she came from.
The game continued to throw out nods. I really cheered when I got to Llyn Nyddwr. ‘Llyn Nadwyr’ in Welsh in the real world translates as ‘Spinner Lake’. The previous game featured another Welsh girl with cat ears, even granting her a whole set of taffs, but the number three makes the range the most naked Cymraeg of any Nintendo experience so far. now. Fire Emblem has used Welsh names for some time (Three Houses’ central location, Garreg Mach is Carreg Bach’s ‘homework copy’, meaning ‘Small Stone’), but this is a level other degree. Llyn Nyddwr may be small, but it’s a meaningful admission of something important that I don’t think Nintendo itself has ever noticed.
Lamplighter among the worlds
Tezuka, still searching for a story from many years ago, decided to move on to the overseas fantasy world he loved as a child. He goes back to the work of JRR Tolkien, a Welsh speaker who built the world from Celtic folklore. Many of the journeys detailed in the books Tezuka read as an adult were inspired by Tolkien’s own Miyazaki-style travels through West Wales (and Ireland, but don’t let the facts get in the way of a sentence. clear story).
Tezuka starts reading about European folklore, history, and mythology, however, by sheer coincidence, many of the stories he pulls out come from one place. The Master Sword, which will become the series’ mythical sword, may be from Welsh lore mabinogion, the origin of the legend of Excalibur. In later sequels, the protagonist will gain a trusted, beloved horse named Epona, a Welsh name taken from the Celtic goddess of fertility.
As the franchise evolved, Tezuka’s aforementioned colleague Shigeru Miyamoto cited Miyazaki as a major influence on the game’s visual style. Fittingly, Miyazaki’s own story came out in full in 2009 when Studio Ghibli oversaw the DS game’s animation sequences. Ni No Kuni The Domination of the Dark Djinnwhich will be known more globally in its advanced Wrath of the White Witch form. Welsh influences on the design have been reflected in the localization process, with the player support character Drippy a lot like Cardiff, his first word when bursting into life was “Trust!” .
These widely sourced but fortuitous references have come together. Filtered through the Japanese sensibilities and utter surprise that Miyamoto felt discovered as a child, this game became the game we now call Legend of Zelda.
There is a word in Welsh that does not exist in any other language: “Hiraeth“. Nostalgia sad, nostalgic, melancholy, it’s a word that probably reflects Welsh more than any other. Wales is a nation built on beauty and oppression, not ashamed to cry for the former but never for the latter. Hiraeth speaks of deep pride in where you’ve come from, but also an understanding that you’re leaving. From that understand the feeling of smallness bleeding from a beautiful home, extinguished for generations, to the extent that no one, in casual conversations abroad, knows it exists.
Nintendo’s world isn’t cramped with the Welsh outside. However, under the hood, something sits. Mio in Xenoblade may not be explicitly written as Welsh, but her story goes on. hiraeth. Miyazaki may be Japanese, but it was his adventure away from home that made him understand his own life, culture and values. And in one great adventure, Porth Llanaff of Dragon Quest gave me a sense of belonging thanks to its warmth and humour.
Call it influence, history, coincidence or simply cultural similarity, but while the mention of Wales can still make people ask “What is that?”, in the gaming world. playing video games, Wales will always be a country with a huge footprint.
