This Week In Retro: Moon (1997)

October 16, 1997: Love's Labour's Won (eventually)

by Diamond Feit

I love video games, but even I can recognize that video games have a violence problem. The medium is capable of telling absolutely any kind of story the developers can conceive, and yet the vast majority of games revolve around repeated acts of attacking others. I say this not because I have an aversion to brutality; we are smack in the middle of Spooky Season as I write this and I'm positively drenching myself in horror films and games, all of which feature astonishingly graphic content. Yet movies and television shows also manage to abstain from violence and focus on different kinds of conflict, while nearly every video game requires its protagonist to kill over and over again.

Ironically, so-called "role-playing games" are amongst the worst offenders, if only because the name implies that the players will inhabit a unique character of their own design, but decades of RPGs have delivered mass murderer after mass murderer as the sole character option. Even in Japan, where the genre tends to keep things cute and light-hearted with shockingly young protagonists, players have no choice but to spend their time slaughtering the local wildlife as a stepping stone towards slaying larger monsters or even human beings.

Exceptions to every rule exist, however, and this week marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most notable non-violent games ever made: Moon. Firstly, it debuted in Japan where it remained unlocalized and trapped on the original PlayStation for decades, bolstering its cult status as most fans abroad could only speculate as to how it played. Secondly, despite its relative obscurity, Moon helped inspire one of the most popular and well-received indie video games of all time—which in turn inspired Moon's creators to revisit their work two decades later.

The first thing a player does in Moon is boot up the video game Moon. No, I'm not being sarcastic: The introduction shows a young child sit down in front of a television where he starts to play Moon, wherein the kingdom of Love-De-Gard faces the threat of a powerful Dragon. The real-life player, via the in-game player, takes control of a Hero charged with destroying the Dragon and maintaining peace across the land. By progressing through sequential in-game save files, all of them time-stamped to reflect the passage of many hours, the (real) player gets to experience the Hero's lengthy quest in abbreviated form, jumping from the awkward initial encounters with weakling enemies to the final battle against the Dragon.

Yet as the player faces the final boss, their (in-game) mother chides them for staying up too late, demanding they go to bed. The on-screen youth acquiesces, turning the TV off, only for it to turn itself on again and suck the child into the world of Moon. Henceforth, the (real) player controls the child, not the Hero, as they explore the kingdom of Love-De-Gard independently of the main quest. Instead of embarking on a great adventure, the kid assumes the role of grandchild to a lonely old woman who clothes and feeds him.

Removed from the player's control, the Hero continues on their quest to defeat the Dragon, but Moon now casts them in a very different light. While the initial minutes depicted the Hero as an object of awe and admiration, they now come across as cruel and aloof. The Hero slays every creature they meet and ransacks every home they visit—standard RPG fare for anyone familiar with the genre—yet without the satisfaction of assuming that role firsthand, the player gets a glimpse of what it must feel like to witness such a person freely claim or kill everything in their path.

Meanwhile, the child receives a quest of their own when they first go to sleep in their new home. In their dreams they meet a Queen who informs them they are in Moon World, and that the most precious thing in this world is Love. After they wake, they are free to roam the land but a strict in-game timer restricts their activities, forcing them to return home to bed after only a few minutes.

Moon operates on a weekly schedule all its own; the sun rises each morning and sets each night, cycling through seven different days. By speaking to and befriending the people of Love-De-Gard, or by retrieving the souls of the Hero's victims which wander the kingdom, the player gains Love and can level up, extending their "life" and enabling them to spend more time out and about per day.

Having players inhabit an RPG as a regular person instead of as the protagonist would have been revolutionary for 1997, but Moon takes things further than that. Just as the Hero's quest revolves around destruction and taking anything not nailed down, the child's quest focuses on healing and helping others. The Hero's strength increases by snuffing out life, while the child's energy grows as they restore life. Moon challenges players to behave in direct opposition to the hero, not as a villain but as an ordinary kid. Even though the game remains very much about playing a role, this reversal of expectations gives Moon its nickname as an "anti-RPG."

With no combat, Moon's strengths lie in its characters and atmosphere. Not only does the game's script give everyone the player meets their own personality, but the continuously ticking timer adds to the illusion that they all have real lives. The people of Love-De-Gard run errands. They have hobbies. Shops open and close. Some folks are early-risers, some sleep late. Some spend their nights at the bar. With so many elements all running on different schedules, a player might easily spend an entire in-game day waiting for one specific moment to speak to a reclusive villager or catch a wayward spirit. This makes Moon one of the first, if not the first, video games where hanging out is an essential mechanic. The game's soundtrack reflects this, as the player can collect Moon Discs with different tunes on each one and play them back at any time via the menu.

With its emphasis on Love and a protagonist who abstains from violence, today Moon sounds a lot like Undertale, the 2015 indie hit that charmed audiences around the world. The similarities between the two titles are not coincidental; Undertale creator Toby Fox specifically cited Moon as an inspiration for his RPG-esque project, even though he admits he never played the game himself because of the language barrier.

Moon's lack of a localization made it unapproachable for anyone without a working knowledge of Japanese, since the entire appeal of the game relies on players understanding and enjoying the many conversations and interpersonal situations that can unfold in Love-De-Gard. Publisher ASCII Corporation had announced an English-language version of Moon during the summer of 1997, but later that same year the company canceled said release without explanation. Even though Moon developed a strong reputation for its unique approach to the genre and its clever dialogue, it never found an audience internationally beyond the occasional mention in listicles of "weird Japanese PS1 exclusives."

Everything changed in 2019 when Onion Games, a small studio featuring staff members from the original Moon development team, revealed that they would bring their lost classic to the Nintendo Switch and finally translate it into English. Yoshiro Kimura, director of Onion Games, told Vice that meeting with Toby Fox motivated him to pursue re-releasing and localizing Moon for a wider audience.

After spending two decades as a footnote in video game history, today Moon is available on multiple platforms, bringing Kimura long-overdue kudos for his past work as well as much-needed attention for his ongoing projects at Onion Games. I remember meeting him in 2013 at the very first BitSummit and having to look him up after the event, for while his enthusiasm for making and playing games left a strong impression on me from our interview, I wasn't familiar with his resume.

Nearly a decade later, I think the secret is out, and Moon's belated global release played a huge part in his late-career renaissance. With multiple earnest games now on the market which emphatically promote and profess a sincere belief in Love, Kimura has more than earned his dues and, in my humble opinion as someone who meets a lot of indie developers, all this admiration couldn't fall upon a nicer, more genuine person.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.