I'm Sorry
released on Feb 01, 1985
This action game stars a caricature of former Prime Minister of Japan, Kakuei Tanaka. The title is actually a play on the Japanese word for Prime Minister, "Sori". The game satirizes Tanaka's greed by making the goal of the game acquiring gold bars. This arcade game made it into some of the United States arcades. The goal is for the greedy protagonist to collect all the gold bars while jumping over or defeating various enemies and obstacles in each maze-like level. Some of these enemies are: Giant Baba (a Japanese wrestler), a moonwalking Michael Jackson, Madonna, Japanese comedian Tamori, Carl Lewis, moving statues (activated when passed by). Some obstacles include: Gates, "fire" hydrants, safes (making it difficult to gain access to the gold), a rolling barrel, conveyor belts, and a swimming pool with platforms ranging in size and strength. When you collect all the gold in a given level, you must cash it into a building (labeled "out" when the level begins and "in" once you retrieve all the gold) to beat the level. The player can only hold ten bars of gold at once. In later levels there are more than 10 bars of gold, so the player must make multiple deposits.
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What you might miss in between the overseas political satire, bizarre celebrity cameos and the uncertainty of if this game was ever published outside of japan or the internet is just lying to you is that I'm Sorry is actually a pretty fun game!
Short and very simple, but I wouldn't have minded dropping a couple hundred yen playing this while I waited for someone to stop hogging the tower of druaga machine
Short and very simple, but I wouldn't have minded dropping a couple hundred yen playing this while I waited for someone to stop hogging the tower of druaga machine
Political cartooning as a profession in America has never been more important than when it was in the late 1800s. In a time of high corruption and low literacy, funny pictures of famous people were easily the best way to convey to the masses that some guy was fucking over their lives. None were better or more essential at this than Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for the then-popular Harper’s Weekly. While Nast is also famous for various other works, such as creating our modern idea of Santa Claus and being really racist towards the Irish, he is perhaps best defined by his opposition to New York political baron Wiliam “Boss” Tweed. Head of the omnipresent organization known as Tammany Hall, Tweed used his vast wealth and connections to take over the entire NY State electorate, placing him and his cronies in complete power. Using his razor sharp wit and impressive artistry, Nast tore this crook a new asshole with his cartoons, showing the world through his pretty pictures that Tweed was a greedy, corrupt shyster. While hardly the only force in his downfall, it’s evident these depictions were a major force in the sudden collapse of Tammany Hall and the associated figures surrounding it. Political cartoons would likely never have such power again. Or they wouldn’t, until…
Kakuei Tanaka was, at one point, a very beloved politician. Entering office with the highest approval rating of any new PM in history, he accomplished much during his comparatively short time as country leader, chiefly among them a sweeping infrastructure revamp in poorer cities and eased relations between the nation and China [1]. However, due to a quick one-two punch of a declining economy following the 1973 Oil Crisis and a scandal where he was found to have a history of somewhat shady land claims, he retired in the waning days of 1974. These two transgressions would very soon be overtaken in popular consciousness by the discovery he had secretly taken bribes nearing $2,000,000 USD from Lockheed in exchange for purchase of 21 aircrafts. This revelation shocked the public, transforming Tanaka’s image to that of a greedy, corrupt shyster [2]. Rushing through some fairly dense political kerfuffles, Tanaka was arrested in ‘76 and formally found guilty in ‘83. And presumably, in or around 1985, some guy working for Coreland Technology (To later be known as Banpresto) was really fucking mad about it.
Explicitly political video games are nothing special nowadays[3]. From your Cannon Fodders to your Call of Dutys, your Postals to your Papers Pleases, the ever present specter of “real world commentary” has loomed large over our shared passtime for decades, and it all started here, with 1985’s I’m Sorry, a game where a former prime minister beats the shit out of the population while robbing them blind. All of this context was imperative to fully understand the layers here. Imagine playing this without me informing you that the name of the game is actually a double entendre, a play on how the Prime Minister is oft referred to in Japanese as the Naikaku sōri daijin. Where would you be then?
Anyway, with that all out of the way, we can now appreciate the game for what it is: A fun arcade maze game! It’s hardly reinventing the wheel out here, being a simple affair where you steal gold and punch people, but it’s all very snappy and well presented. Your punch feels nice and strong, killing whoever stands in your way, be it nameless goons, Japanese celebrities zero American people would recognize, or international pop sensations Michael Jackson and Madonna. No obfuscation, it’s literally just MJ and Madonna, apparently enemies of the Japanese Liberal Democratic party. Alternately, you can bound over most everything with the spryness of a spring hare, old man’s got hops! Game gets harder as it goes on, obviously, hiding your precious gold in boxes you need to smash, and placing more and more that weigh your pockets down, forcing you to take more and more trips to your stash spot to offload ‘em. Fun loop, if a bit hard to get good at. Looks and sounds real nice too, hell of a lot more appealing than something like Flicky which ran on basically the same hardware. In brief, it's a fun, charming arcade experience wrapped in an incredibly strange political context. Context no American would be likely to get, despite the game getting an apparently English localization[4]. Goofy!
Kakuei Tanaka would live another 8 years before eventually biting the dust in 1993. To my knowledge, he never played this game, but I wonder if he ever knew of it. The cabinet apparently did decently well for a time in Japan, so it seems likely to me a child of an aide of his or someone similar had to have told him about it. I bet he felt the same way Boss Tweed felt when he first saw Nast’s caricatures of him, that knowledge that your time in the spotlight as a major political player was all but over. Those programmers down at Coreland sure killed his prospects, huh? [5] Just goes to show you the power of political art in this day and age.
__________
[1] Chiefly from a limited American view, I have no idea if this was what was on the Japanese public’s mind while he was in office.
[2] A half truth. Tanaka was still quite popular in the electorate, with his supporters viewing this scandal as a false flag from the US to weaken Japanese spirit. This continuing power struggle would be a major factor in the general election of 1976, known as the Lockheed Election. There’s a lot more surrounding context to those but I’m not going into them here for brevity (Read: I don’t want to do more research for this).
[3] As if to say all art isn’t inherently political????
[4] Using apparent here as despite there being a known English ROM of the game, there appears to be zero evidence anyone has ever seen an English cabinet, or even board of the game outside of people claiming they own one.
[5] Tanaka would continue to serve as a member of the National Diet for 5 more years following the release of I’m Sorry.
Kakuei Tanaka was, at one point, a very beloved politician. Entering office with the highest approval rating of any new PM in history, he accomplished much during his comparatively short time as country leader, chiefly among them a sweeping infrastructure revamp in poorer cities and eased relations between the nation and China [1]. However, due to a quick one-two punch of a declining economy following the 1973 Oil Crisis and a scandal where he was found to have a history of somewhat shady land claims, he retired in the waning days of 1974. These two transgressions would very soon be overtaken in popular consciousness by the discovery he had secretly taken bribes nearing $2,000,000 USD from Lockheed in exchange for purchase of 21 aircrafts. This revelation shocked the public, transforming Tanaka’s image to that of a greedy, corrupt shyster [2]. Rushing through some fairly dense political kerfuffles, Tanaka was arrested in ‘76 and formally found guilty in ‘83. And presumably, in or around 1985, some guy working for Coreland Technology (To later be known as Banpresto) was really fucking mad about it.
Explicitly political video games are nothing special nowadays[3]. From your Cannon Fodders to your Call of Dutys, your Postals to your Papers Pleases, the ever present specter of “real world commentary” has loomed large over our shared passtime for decades, and it all started here, with 1985’s I’m Sorry, a game where a former prime minister beats the shit out of the population while robbing them blind. All of this context was imperative to fully understand the layers here. Imagine playing this without me informing you that the name of the game is actually a double entendre, a play on how the Prime Minister is oft referred to in Japanese as the Naikaku sōri daijin. Where would you be then?
Anyway, with that all out of the way, we can now appreciate the game for what it is: A fun arcade maze game! It’s hardly reinventing the wheel out here, being a simple affair where you steal gold and punch people, but it’s all very snappy and well presented. Your punch feels nice and strong, killing whoever stands in your way, be it nameless goons, Japanese celebrities zero American people would recognize, or international pop sensations Michael Jackson and Madonna. No obfuscation, it’s literally just MJ and Madonna, apparently enemies of the Japanese Liberal Democratic party. Alternately, you can bound over most everything with the spryness of a spring hare, old man’s got hops! Game gets harder as it goes on, obviously, hiding your precious gold in boxes you need to smash, and placing more and more that weigh your pockets down, forcing you to take more and more trips to your stash spot to offload ‘em. Fun loop, if a bit hard to get good at. Looks and sounds real nice too, hell of a lot more appealing than something like Flicky which ran on basically the same hardware. In brief, it's a fun, charming arcade experience wrapped in an incredibly strange political context. Context no American would be likely to get, despite the game getting an apparently English localization[4]. Goofy!
Kakuei Tanaka would live another 8 years before eventually biting the dust in 1993. To my knowledge, he never played this game, but I wonder if he ever knew of it. The cabinet apparently did decently well for a time in Japan, so it seems likely to me a child of an aide of his or someone similar had to have told him about it. I bet he felt the same way Boss Tweed felt when he first saw Nast’s caricatures of him, that knowledge that your time in the spotlight as a major political player was all but over. Those programmers down at Coreland sure killed his prospects, huh? [5] Just goes to show you the power of political art in this day and age.
__________
[1] Chiefly from a limited American view, I have no idea if this was what was on the Japanese public’s mind while he was in office.
[2] A half truth. Tanaka was still quite popular in the electorate, with his supporters viewing this scandal as a false flag from the US to weaken Japanese spirit. This continuing power struggle would be a major factor in the general election of 1976, known as the Lockheed Election. There’s a lot more surrounding context to those but I’m not going into them here for brevity (Read: I don’t want to do more research for this).
[3] As if to say all art isn’t inherently political????
[4] Using apparent here as despite there being a known English ROM of the game, there appears to be zero evidence anyone has ever seen an English cabinet, or even board of the game outside of people claiming they own one.
[5] Tanaka would continue to serve as a member of the National Diet for 5 more years following the release of I’m Sorry.