before i played this game i thought it was just a cheap and silly rpg maker game. ITS A LOW-BUDGET AND SILLY RPG MAKER GAME BUT GOD I WAS SO WRONG.
as a queer person who has fucked his vision of love during a horrible time of his life just to find some kind of relief or should i say {happiness} the storyline felt really touching in a way not other videogame has ever made me feel. i would never have thought this "kill bill but with a femboy" type of story would made me feel like this. and i cant really say i fully understand it. it feels too personal to do so. but everyone should experience this game in its life.
love is really a very complex thing.
as a queer person who has fucked his vision of love during a horrible time of his life just to find some kind of relief or should i say {happiness} the storyline felt really touching in a way not other videogame has ever made me feel. i would never have thought this "kill bill but with a femboy" type of story would made me feel like this. and i cant really say i fully understand it. it feels too personal to do so. but everyone should experience this game in its life.
love is really a very complex thing.
The story is not nearly as great or unique as people make it out to be. However, the visuals are BY FAR the best you can find in ANY video game, ever. It's so far ahead of anything else it isn't even funny. That's how good this game looks. It's worth playing for that alone.
Live Happily or some bullshit, who knows
Pivotal.
Funny that this has "pistol" in the title when it erupts with the force and bombast of a shotgun by your ear, explosive and unyielding, leaving you reeling as you try to reorient yourself. Constantly moving, never wasting a single breath, ensuring you can't look away. Tragedy as banality as comedy. Love is rainbow.
Heisei Pistol Show is a work that I have both no words and far too many words for. Rarely can anything — anything — strike a balance between sorrow and joy this effortlessly, bouncing the audience back and forth between having their hearts rended and making them double over with laughter. Slaughtering your way through Heart’s former assassin colleagues and then having your pistol say “I’m Pistol” in the Microsoft Sam voice every time it talks is the sort of thing that doesn’t sound like it works when it’s described to you, but flows perfectly when it’s actually experienced. I’m tempted to say that it’s all over the place tonally, but it really isn’t; nothing ever drifts too far from the through-line, with these shifts being core to the holistic affair.
Most notable about Heisei Pistol Show, however, is how it handles queer characters in a way that’s nothing short of masterful. Heart is a wonderful, awful character, both a victim of circumstance and someone who causes his own problems. Heart suffers because he is gay, but Heart also suffers and he is gay. Heart is abused by his father not because he is gay, but because he reminds his father of his mother. Heart is exiled by his family not because he is gay, but because he isn’t religious. Heart loses his friends not because he is gay, but because he refuses to accept their platonic love for him. Heart can’t find love because he is gay and thus limits himself exclusively to his clients that he serves as a rentboy, none of whom love him back. Heart can’t find love because he is gay and he’s lived his entire life in a society that hates him and his kind, and makes every attempt to hide what healthy gay relationships look like. Heart suffers because he is gay. Heart suffers and he is gay.
I’ll echo a common sentiment I see shared about this game and say that it makes so many pieces of queer media look toothless by comparison, especially in more recent years. Many of these works are made by and for queer creatives, but so many fail to strike balance. Either queer trauma is used, is weaponized, is swung like a baseball bat to cripple and wound any gays in the audience so the straights can feel like they did something by "experiencing something hard", or queer trauma is ignored wholesale in order to keep up the "comfy vibes". I played The Big Con earlier this year and dropped it because it was billed me to as a solid piece of queer media and instead existed as this soft, mealy blob-thing seemingly designed for people who say “be gay do crimes” and “FALGSC” online and then get sweaty palms when they think about shoplifting a pack of gum. Nobody in that world had ever had a single negative thought, ever, about queer people in 90’s North America. I don’t mean to turn this into a rant where I’m just shitting on a different work, but it really illustrates how many worlds of finesse apart a creator like Parun was long before it was even remotely popular to be tackling subject matter anywhere even approaching this in video games.
I wouldn't dare erase the experiences of these other creators by suggesting that these aren’t accurate to lived experiences — there are enough dipshits out there doing that already — but it always leaves me a little raw to never see me on the screen. Characters who aren't living their saccharine, gumdrop lives where everything in their world is completely fine and without conflict, but neither are they defined exclusively by external traumas and hatred, never possessing the agency to do anything besides be abused. Where are the characters who have lived complex lives? Who have suffered, but have found joy? Even if it ends in tragedy, where are those who have found catharsis in themselves and their loved ones in the quiet moments? Are they all locked away in Japanese RPG Maker games from 2008?
The messaging can be a bit clumsy in terms of what it's trying to get across, even after some scrutiny; Tokimeki's song calls out to "Indians" in feather hats who all look like T. Hawk, "Slums" made up entirely of dark-skinned characters, and Koreans, whose history of being discriminated against in Japan has been well-documented for decades. I'm still uncertain if this is simply a bit of off-color humor inserted into the bit or if it's a genuine and well-intentioned call of solidarity from one oppressed group to a few others; knowing what I know about Parun and his other work, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. I'd like that to be the case, too.
After I beat the game, I saw Parun say that he liked reading fan theories of his work, and that he hoped the players of Heisei Pistol Show would come up with some for him to check out. I’m at least a decade and a half late to the party, but allow me to try, regardless.
The game is Heart's dying dream; a fantasy land conjured up in his final moments, flashing through vignettes of his life. Heart, in reality, is the rentboy Matsumoto tells his friend about, who contracted herpes, killed his friend, and committed suicide by cop. The dying dream itself is hyperreal, in the Baudrillardian sense. It's a simulacrum of reality that Heart escapes to — or perhaps is forced to escape to, his hallucinations resulting from his herpes meningoencephalitis — wherein he relives a version of his life as a musical, as kabuki theater. His friends are there, and he metaphorically guns them down, abandoning them in reality. His unrequited lover is there, and Heart actually guns him down, just as he does in reality. At the end of the dream, Heart is shot, told he's never known love because he was so desperate for it that he would latch onto anyone and everyone, and then he's out of memories. He imagines himself at the concert from his childhood once more, now the starring princess he always dreamt he would become, and he quietly passes away with a smile on his face.
At least, that’s the way I saw it all play out. I thought it was a remarkably straight-forward story once all of the ending reveals wrapped up, but then I got to a dev room where Parum’s authorial mouthpiece character told me that he thought I was dull if I believed that I had it all figured out after a single playthrough. He then gave me a list of Mulholland Drive-tier questions that I needed to answer if I wanted to have a real shot at deciphering everything that happened. It ruled. I wonder if I’m close to what he intended.
There's a bitter irony that the one person who might know all of this for certain is the one person that we can no longer ask.
Funny that this has "pistol" in the title when it erupts with the force and bombast of a shotgun by your ear, explosive and unyielding, leaving you reeling as you try to reorient yourself. Constantly moving, never wasting a single breath, ensuring you can't look away. Tragedy as banality as comedy. Love is rainbow.
Heisei Pistol Show is a work that I have both no words and far too many words for. Rarely can anything — anything — strike a balance between sorrow and joy this effortlessly, bouncing the audience back and forth between having their hearts rended and making them double over with laughter. Slaughtering your way through Heart’s former assassin colleagues and then having your pistol say “I’m Pistol” in the Microsoft Sam voice every time it talks is the sort of thing that doesn’t sound like it works when it’s described to you, but flows perfectly when it’s actually experienced. I’m tempted to say that it’s all over the place tonally, but it really isn’t; nothing ever drifts too far from the through-line, with these shifts being core to the holistic affair.
Most notable about Heisei Pistol Show, however, is how it handles queer characters in a way that’s nothing short of masterful. Heart is a wonderful, awful character, both a victim of circumstance and someone who causes his own problems. Heart suffers because he is gay, but Heart also suffers and he is gay. Heart is abused by his father not because he is gay, but because he reminds his father of his mother. Heart is exiled by his family not because he is gay, but because he isn’t religious. Heart loses his friends not because he is gay, but because he refuses to accept their platonic love for him. Heart can’t find love because he is gay and thus limits himself exclusively to his clients that he serves as a rentboy, none of whom love him back. Heart can’t find love because he is gay and he’s lived his entire life in a society that hates him and his kind, and makes every attempt to hide what healthy gay relationships look like. Heart suffers because he is gay. Heart suffers and he is gay.
I’ll echo a common sentiment I see shared about this game and say that it makes so many pieces of queer media look toothless by comparison, especially in more recent years. Many of these works are made by and for queer creatives, but so many fail to strike balance. Either queer trauma is used, is weaponized, is swung like a baseball bat to cripple and wound any gays in the audience so the straights can feel like they did something by "experiencing something hard", or queer trauma is ignored wholesale in order to keep up the "comfy vibes". I played The Big Con earlier this year and dropped it because it was billed me to as a solid piece of queer media and instead existed as this soft, mealy blob-thing seemingly designed for people who say “be gay do crimes” and “FALGSC” online and then get sweaty palms when they think about shoplifting a pack of gum. Nobody in that world had ever had a single negative thought, ever, about queer people in 90’s North America. I don’t mean to turn this into a rant where I’m just shitting on a different work, but it really illustrates how many worlds of finesse apart a creator like Parun was long before it was even remotely popular to be tackling subject matter anywhere even approaching this in video games.
I wouldn't dare erase the experiences of these other creators by suggesting that these aren’t accurate to lived experiences — there are enough dipshits out there doing that already — but it always leaves me a little raw to never see me on the screen. Characters who aren't living their saccharine, gumdrop lives where everything in their world is completely fine and without conflict, but neither are they defined exclusively by external traumas and hatred, never possessing the agency to do anything besides be abused. Where are the characters who have lived complex lives? Who have suffered, but have found joy? Even if it ends in tragedy, where are those who have found catharsis in themselves and their loved ones in the quiet moments? Are they all locked away in Japanese RPG Maker games from 2008?
The messaging can be a bit clumsy in terms of what it's trying to get across, even after some scrutiny; Tokimeki's song calls out to "Indians" in feather hats who all look like T. Hawk, "Slums" made up entirely of dark-skinned characters, and Koreans, whose history of being discriminated against in Japan has been well-documented for decades. I'm still uncertain if this is simply a bit of off-color humor inserted into the bit or if it's a genuine and well-intentioned call of solidarity from one oppressed group to a few others; knowing what I know about Parun and his other work, I'm inclined to believe it's the latter. I'd like that to be the case, too.
After I beat the game, I saw Parun say that he liked reading fan theories of his work, and that he hoped the players of Heisei Pistol Show would come up with some for him to check out. I’m at least a decade and a half late to the party, but allow me to try, regardless.
The game is Heart's dying dream; a fantasy land conjured up in his final moments, flashing through vignettes of his life. Heart, in reality, is the rentboy Matsumoto tells his friend about, who contracted herpes, killed his friend, and committed suicide by cop. The dying dream itself is hyperreal, in the Baudrillardian sense. It's a simulacrum of reality that Heart escapes to — or perhaps is forced to escape to, his hallucinations resulting from his herpes meningoencephalitis — wherein he relives a version of his life as a musical, as kabuki theater. His friends are there, and he metaphorically guns them down, abandoning them in reality. His unrequited lover is there, and Heart actually guns him down, just as he does in reality. At the end of the dream, Heart is shot, told he's never known love because he was so desperate for it that he would latch onto anyone and everyone, and then he's out of memories. He imagines himself at the concert from his childhood once more, now the starring princess he always dreamt he would become, and he quietly passes away with a smile on his face.
At least, that’s the way I saw it all play out. I thought it was a remarkably straight-forward story once all of the ending reveals wrapped up, but then I got to a dev room where Parum’s authorial mouthpiece character told me that he thought I was dull if I believed that I had it all figured out after a single playthrough. He then gave me a list of Mulholland Drive-tier questions that I needed to answer if I wanted to have a real shot at deciphering everything that happened. It ruled. I wonder if I’m close to what he intended.
There's a bitter irony that the one person who might know all of this for certain is the one person that we can no longer ask.
Indelible. RIP Parun, a true visionary.
"If there's no bright future without him gone, then I'll descend into hell with him by my side.
That fate, too, is my happiness."
no doubt the hardest an rpg maker game has ever gone and will ever go. this deserves to be canonized in the indie game sphere as a landmark work of queer art and i will forever be mourning the loss of such an unparalleled artist. rest in power parun
That fate, too, is my happiness."
no doubt the hardest an rpg maker game has ever gone and will ever go. this deserves to be canonized in the indie game sphere as a landmark work of queer art and i will forever be mourning the loss of such an unparalleled artist. rest in power parun
Feels like if Kikiyama and SUDA51 watched Hisayasu Satô's Muscle and decide to make a RPG maker game about the importance of moving on and themed around homosexuality.
Amazing piece of art.
Amazing piece of art.
Long Version: Exists at the intersection of simultaneous insane visual, game, and narrative design. Every inch of this project feels completely effortless and authentic, in a way that I would’ve never been able to predict going in. I think it’d be a disservice to Heisei Pistol Show to compare it against other games, especially with the level of transparency there is for its message and development within its text. I don’t think you end up making something like this without having some sort of deep connection to the subject matter, and so I think it’d be disrespectful for me to approach it with a coldly analytical review. So, let me just urge anyone reading this to play the game and see it through. It’s like, around two hours. Someone even made an excellent playthrough you can follow. This is the most a video game has resonated with me in a really long time, I think it’s a special thing that I got to play this.
https://patchy-illusion-team.itch.io/heisei-pistol-show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvwlBeNzxs
Short Version: I Get It
https://patchy-illusion-team.itch.io/heisei-pistol-show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvwlBeNzxs
Short Version: I Get It
I weep to imagine another timeline where Heisei Pistol Show was part of the RPG Horror wave of the early 2010's and became universally loved and remembered as one of the greatest independent games of all time. Imagine how different culture would be if Heisei Pistol Show got the same opportunities that Yume Nikki did
I LOVE GAY PEOPLE!!!!!!!
An absolutely beautiful rpgmaker game. Probably has the best artstyle and graphical flair of any rpgmaker project I've seen. Topped with a heaping of surrealism and a beautiful message on living happily.
An absolutely beautiful rpgmaker game. Probably has the best artstyle and graphical flair of any rpgmaker project I've seen. Topped with a heaping of surrealism and a beautiful message on living happily.
We are in 2024, graphics are getting better than we could have ever imagined before, and companies are still racing against each other in hopes of reaching a technical finish line that, time and time again, has been proven to not exist.
Not only famous game directors are receiving more mainstream attention, but big-name actors are also getting interested in the industry, attracting a significant number of outsiders as a result.
From the biggest AAA studio to a single-handed indie developer, all sorts of resources are easily available to help make their projects a reality, and because of it, we are getting more and more releases per year to the point where it's impossible to keep track of them all.
But for some reason, despite all that, this ugly as a sin 2008 game made in the ancient RPGMAKER2000 engine of all things, borrowing licensed music and numerous visual assets, achieved something that's rarely seen in gaming: using the video game format to create something personal; something real.
The uniqueness of its presentation and its quirky, loud nature, completely devoid of ego, hooked me from the start, and it never let me go, not even once it started to get darker as we dived into its abyss.
The plot hit me like a truck because I could feel its sincerity, especially after that ending, which I would feel like a criminal for spoiling because it's one of the absolute bests I have ever seen in any artistic medium.
So, yeah, please give this one a try. Take your time to explore and talk to every NPC you see. Whether you end up loving it or hating it, I'm certain that the experience is not going to leave you indifferent. And goddamn, isn't that alone such a beautiful thing?.
Not only famous game directors are receiving more mainstream attention, but big-name actors are also getting interested in the industry, attracting a significant number of outsiders as a result.
From the biggest AAA studio to a single-handed indie developer, all sorts of resources are easily available to help make their projects a reality, and because of it, we are getting more and more releases per year to the point where it's impossible to keep track of them all.
But for some reason, despite all that, this ugly as a sin 2008 game made in the ancient RPGMAKER2000 engine of all things, borrowing licensed music and numerous visual assets, achieved something that's rarely seen in gaming: using the video game format to create something personal; something real.
The uniqueness of its presentation and its quirky, loud nature, completely devoid of ego, hooked me from the start, and it never let me go, not even once it started to get darker as we dived into its abyss.
The plot hit me like a truck because I could feel its sincerity, especially after that ending, which I would feel like a criminal for spoiling because it's one of the absolute bests I have ever seen in any artistic medium.
So, yeah, please give this one a try. Take your time to explore and talk to every NPC you see. Whether you end up loving it or hating it, I'm certain that the experience is not going to leave you indifferent. And goddamn, isn't that alone such a beautiful thing?.
I can't say I fully understand the game, but I can say it feels like a real outburst of emotion, and emotion is what art's all about.
Packs more emotion into its short playtime than plenty of long games do. Love is a complex thing. Rest well Parun.
Packs more emotion into its short playtime than plenty of long games do. Love is a complex thing. Rest well Parun.
Made me sob like a little girl
-the use of comedy in parun’s work I find to both be rlly fascinating and disorienting. in both this and rekinder there will be very long monologue scenes that are disgustingly raw in their emotion, some of the best written stuff I’ve ever seen tbh and it’s almost always followed up by a punchline. I’m very into finding the connective tissue between diff generations and I think for zoomers and millennials it’s these attempts at kind of manipulative shows of emotion followed up by jokes to downplay their own emotional truths. everything is ironic and everything is a joke, it’s all one big performance for the person they’re trauma dumping on, you the audience. I don’t rlly feel like content warning this so I won’t go into specifics but I’ve had friends and loved ones tell me and show me fucked up shit and then play it off like they’re not hurting. I’m not saying any of this in a critical way, I do it, you do it and so did parun in all his work.
-the first creative effort my bf ever showed me was about a gay teenager and his relationship w his single dad and how bc the teenager didn’t feel at all connected or loved by his father he would do things to make his father hit him. it’s a fictional story but it was the first impression I ever had of my father in law, in the story the man was presented as cold and aloof, quiet but aggressive at a moments notice. the fictional description of this man ended up being pretty similar to the real life guy. and he’s a guy who’s been very sweet to me and who in his later life tried being closer to his family, a family which he’s readily welcomed me into when he didn’t need to, but we all end up paying for mistakes no matter how long ago we made them. him being kind of a shitty father long ago has followed him his whole life, it was the first thing I ever knew about the guy and no matter how close I am to him or how sweet he can be my mind always goes back to the story my bf showed me like six years ago.
-lots of interesting stuff here about how children grow up to be like their fathers and I think it largely rings true. think by the ending the themes of the story are just hammered in a bit too much, some stuff is a little too repetitive and unsubtle in a way that I never felt w rekinder. also I think this is like way more pessimistic and hateful in comp to rekinder, that game seemed hopeful that future generations will correct the mistakes of the past and lead better lives, it’s a very strange final game to make. in contrast this is very bleak and negative and seem to suggest future generations will actually make the exact same mistakes and go down the exact same routes. it’s two totally different explorations of the same themes. both r rlly good :-))
-gay in way that’s incredibly hard to describe?? gay in the way an image of a kid picking flowers during the baseball game is but also gay in the same way an image of like jeffrey dahmer or john wayne gacey is. idk if that makes complete sense tbh but what I’m trying to get at is how parun is often battling himself and conversing w himself here? presenting what seems like two totally different versions of who I can only assume is his self insert. how one version feeds into the other and how the other version is always present under the pretense? rlly genuinely hard to describe I’m sorry lmaoo
-think the usage of multimedia is genuinely fucking beautiful and funny and also disorienting and scary. idk any zoom in on the convenience store is kind of all of those at once. need more stuff that’s as experimental in form and medium as this is tbh so if anyone has any goods recs across all forms of media I would love to hear. have seen most of anno’s work and most of it does what I’m describing but specifically his and her circumstances and ritual, gemusetto’s first season does it. uhh twelve oz mouse too kind of
-literally was shocked at bit at the end w the spirits. rlly well done and I think what confirmed it to me as like a masterpiece.
-the first creative effort my bf ever showed me was about a gay teenager and his relationship w his single dad and how bc the teenager didn’t feel at all connected or loved by his father he would do things to make his father hit him. it’s a fictional story but it was the first impression I ever had of my father in law, in the story the man was presented as cold and aloof, quiet but aggressive at a moments notice. the fictional description of this man ended up being pretty similar to the real life guy. and he’s a guy who’s been very sweet to me and who in his later life tried being closer to his family, a family which he’s readily welcomed me into when he didn’t need to, but we all end up paying for mistakes no matter how long ago we made them. him being kind of a shitty father long ago has followed him his whole life, it was the first thing I ever knew about the guy and no matter how close I am to him or how sweet he can be my mind always goes back to the story my bf showed me like six years ago.
-lots of interesting stuff here about how children grow up to be like their fathers and I think it largely rings true. think by the ending the themes of the story are just hammered in a bit too much, some stuff is a little too repetitive and unsubtle in a way that I never felt w rekinder. also I think this is like way more pessimistic and hateful in comp to rekinder, that game seemed hopeful that future generations will correct the mistakes of the past and lead better lives, it’s a very strange final game to make. in contrast this is very bleak and negative and seem to suggest future generations will actually make the exact same mistakes and go down the exact same routes. it’s two totally different explorations of the same themes. both r rlly good :-))
-gay in way that’s incredibly hard to describe?? gay in the way an image of a kid picking flowers during the baseball game is but also gay in the same way an image of like jeffrey dahmer or john wayne gacey is. idk if that makes complete sense tbh but what I’m trying to get at is how parun is often battling himself and conversing w himself here? presenting what seems like two totally different versions of who I can only assume is his self insert. how one version feeds into the other and how the other version is always present under the pretense? rlly genuinely hard to describe I’m sorry lmaoo
-think the usage of multimedia is genuinely fucking beautiful and funny and also disorienting and scary. idk any zoom in on the convenience store is kind of all of those at once. need more stuff that’s as experimental in form and medium as this is tbh so if anyone has any goods recs across all forms of media I would love to hear. have seen most of anno’s work and most of it does what I’m describing but specifically his and her circumstances and ritual, gemusetto’s first season does it. uhh twelve oz mouse too kind of
-literally was shocked at bit at the end w the spirits. rlly well done and I think what confirmed it to me as like a masterpiece.
Made me cry.
The best looking game of all time But Actually tho.
It's insane to think that art like this is just wallowing in utter obscurity. My heart weeps for all the games that haven't found their cult following yet.
No More Heroes but Fruity.
The best looking game of all time But Actually tho.
It's insane to think that art like this is just wallowing in utter obscurity. My heart weeps for all the games that haven't found their cult following yet.
No More Heroes but Fruity.
Was. Very confused throughout it but like In a godo way Like things Kept happening you know. Feels like each Parun game I've played; Colorful, confusing, intriguing, many thing sat ocne..Owow...
Heisei Pistol Show brought me to tears. A sincere story about the unhealthy way of using love as a mean to cope. The structure might be confusing and even feel a bit random at times, but it is truly a one of a kind experience.
Learning that the author of this game took his own life in the early 2010's was an heartbreaking revelation. His game gave me such a positive energy to carry on with my life, I can't help but feel like his story deserved to be heard by a lot more people. If you grew up as a queer person and completely fucked your idea of love and often felt like you had no worth has an human being, it might resonates with and help you too.
Learning that the author of this game took his own life in the early 2010's was an heartbreaking revelation. His game gave me such a positive energy to carry on with my life, I can't help but feel like his story deserved to be heard by a lot more people. If you grew up as a queer person and completely fucked your idea of love and often felt like you had no worth has an human being, it might resonates with and help you too.