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Ihatovo Praise

I’m writing this on a very snowy day, reminiscent of one of the areas in the game I’m about to discuss. I wrote a little blurb elsewhere on here awhile ago (I can’t remember if it was in a post on RPGs, or retro videogames, &c.), but thought this deserved its own entry. Rarely is this far from my mind. I’m talking about a videogame called Ihatovo Monogatari, or Stories of Ihatovo. It came out in 1993 on the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo elsewhere), but never received a release outside of Japan. In 2017/18, I discovered video game fan translations, and started looking for any and all I could find, especially on the NES and SNES. And believe me, I found quite a few over the years. There are some real gems which never made it to the US, and while that’s really sad, I’m happy translators graciously made them playable for English-speaking audiences. I had played the fabled Radical Dreamers fan translation in ~2005, and loved it, but that was really a one-off; I only sought it out because of the Chrono Cross connection, and didn’t look into any other games until, as I mentioned, many years later.

I’m a really big fan of RPGs, especially Final Fantasy and others, so I thought hey, why not look for other games that maybe didn’t make it here? (Fortuitously, the “town” theme for Ihatovo Monogatari just came on shuffle! I love the soundtrack too – more on that later). I found a number of them, but one of my favorites, hands down, has been Ihatovo Monogatari. I had no context for it going into it, but found the fan translation on Romhacking.net, which was a legendary site for well, ROM (game data dumped from cartridges) hacks and fan translations. It officially ceased operations a couple of years ago, but I am still seeing a trickle of new content on there, and another successor, Romhack.ing, popped up and took up the torch. I’ve found some cool stuff on the latter as well.

The description for the translation is simple enough: “In this adventure game for the Super Famicom, the protagonist (controlled by the player) walks around and talks to the people and animals that he meets while collecting items and journals in an attempt to meet the elusive Kenji Miyazawa. The game centers around several short stories written by Kenji Miyazawa himself. Each chapter of the game focuses on one story.”

That sounds like a very calm, relaxing, and lovely little game. So I was absolutely in. I fired up the game, and you start it, having disembarked from a train, standing outside the train station with luggage in hand. The surrounding town invites you to explore it, and interact with the people within, getting to know them and their stories. You’ve just stepped into Ihatovo City, the “hub,” of sorts, for the game. As the description mentions, you will experience numerous chapters of the story which correspond to stories written by Kenji Miyazawa; in-game they are collected as pages, and your goal is to meet Miyazawa himself.

A little about Kenji Miyazawa first. He was born in 1896 in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, and had a short but seemingly very meaningful life. He was a poet, writer, environmentalist, geologist, and, I would say, philosopher. His work focuses on nature and our relationship to it, and the tales read almost as fables, often with morals, but they do not come off as stern or moralizing, at least to me. Iwate is a relatively remote area of Japan, and so his works focus mostly on rural village life and deep character studies. You can learn much more here about Miyazawa and his life; the Kenji-World site is extremely detailed and I would like to spend more time perusing it myself. It is a fabulous tribute to a fascinating man.

One really interesting thing about Miyazawa is that he was also an Esperanto enthusiast. Esperanto is a constructed language which is a sort of mishmash of German, Latin, Greek, and other languages. I’ve spent a bit of time studying it, mostly on Duolingo, and find it really fascinating. I’d like to spend more time with it, but haven’t (so much to study, so little time!). The name “Ihatovo” is Miyazawa’s rendering of “Iwate” into Esperanto.

“Night on the Galactic Railroad” is probably Miyazawa’s most well-known story (really, a novella). It involves a young man’s trip on the eponymous Railroad, and all the wondrous sights he sees while on the trip, but there is definitely an undercurrent of melancholy within. It was actually adapted into an anime in 1985; check it out here; I also think it’s on YouTube somewhere, where I initially watched it. It’s lovely and reminds me of a Miyazaki anime. You’ll see Esperanto popping up in the movie itself, too, which is fun and true to his life! If you want to read Miyazawa’s stories in English, I would really recommend Once and Forever: the Tales of Kenji Miyazawa, translated by John Bester. It’s an excellent collection and I am very glad I bought it. There may be others, but it’s the one I know of. I can’t remember if it includes “Galactic Railroad” or not; I think I have a different volume which highlights that one.

With all that said, a little-known developer, Hect(or), decided to make a SNES game based on Miyazawa’s stories in 1993. They had previously developed the platformer Moon Crystal on NES, which also has a fan translation if you’re interested. I tried a bit of it, but it wasn’t entirely my thing. In any case, the game, as I mentioned, was never released outside of Japan. In some ways, I get it. It’s a game about a niche author whom few outside of Japan would even know, and it’s not a particularly exciting game. I don’t see that screaming “let’s take a chance on this!” to American game companies. I’m surprised it was even released in Japan, but Miyazawa seems to be very celebrated there, so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Let’s talk about the gameplay itself and how it feels to play this game. It’s very slow-paced. You really have to take your time with this game. And that’s completely OK. Slow down, meet it where it’s at, and immerse yourself in it. If you do that, it will be a lovely experience. The game plays like a RPG, but there are no battles or enemies. Your goal is to collect the pages of the stories, yes, but arguably a more important goal is to explore the place you’ve ended up, and get to know its inhabitants. Talking to NPCs sometimes feels like a chore in RPGs; often they say boring, unimportant things, and you have to find just the right person to help advance the story. In Ihatovo, you have to find the right person(s), yes, but this is a game where it’s all about the journey rather than the destination. Keep talking to people around town, and you’ll get a glimpse into their lives: their hopes, fears, worries, and what makes them happy in life. Conversations with NPCs are actually surprisingly deep. After reading a selection of Miyazawa’s stories, it is clear that he deeply loved people and wanted to show not only the worst, but also the best, in them. You can learn something from everyone you meet in Ihatovo. And often they will ask you to help them with their problems.

In a typical RPG, this would be a fetch quest at best. Hey there, get me that item, then I’ll let you move on to the next phase of your journey, and you’ll never see me again. This is not the case in Ihatovo. You’ll often talk to people numerous times over the course of the game, and again, I feel like you get to know them over time. The NPCs never feel disposable. There are always stakes to these interactions. Your character is a silent protagonist, which can be frustrating at times, but that’s OK. I think in this case, it allows you to write your own story, feel how you want to feel about interacting with all these townspeople. You do have to get items here and there, sure, but it never feels like the main goal of the game. I loved immersing myself in the atmosphere in the town, and fully being present there. I love a game where you get to know people and can help them. Not to say that there’s no conflict in the game, but overall it feels like a “slice of life,” what would be called isekai in Japanese, and I really love that.

I would argue that games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley could be spiritual successors to this game. I don’t know if there is any direct connection, but I like to think there might be. In those games, you also get to know a town and its residents, and build relationships over time. I think we need more of this in gaming. I don’t think all stories have to be about conflict. Sometimes it’s just nice to spend time in someone else’s life and enjoy it.

Tsukasa Tawada’s soundtrack for the game is also really lovely. You can find gamerips of the SNES soundtrack itself floating around the internet, but the official soundtrack was reissued in 2002 which contains the SNES audio as a bonus. I looked just now and there seem to be multiple versions; a CD with looped SNES tracks came out in 2023, but according to VGMdb’s tracklisting, it has fewer tracks than the gamerip I have. In any case, I highly recommend seeking out the music, as it’s lovely!

I really recommend not only playing the game, but also seeking out Miyazawa’s literary works. Not a lot of the latter have been translated into English, though, and I wish I had any skills to speak of in Japanese, since it would be wonderful to read them in the original. I think you’ll find the game is really special, and well worth playing.

Here are a couple more links about how cool this game is:

Thanks for reading, friends! I’m happy to be able to share with you how much I love this particular game. <3