#10. Good Ol' Digimon: Fangame Idea

Digimon. Oh, dear, Digimon. My childhood was half-Pokemon and half-Digimon, if anyone asks me. I made an entire note of original Digimon stuff back in my elementary days. My favorite was Digimon Tamers, more down-to-earth, more "realistic," and definitely most heart-breaking and mind-blowing. (I swear I had nightmare after I watched the first ADR introduction. Sheesh.) Gallantmon/Dukemon fusion was major kick in the arse, hell yeah. By the time I advanced to junior high there was this thing called Digimon Frontier. I watched it, mostly out of nostalgia, and still regrets about it. Damn you, Bandai, with all those awesome designs and interesting settings and you guys come out with this?

Enough of my past story, let's get into this. No offence, but Digimon is kinda dying franchise. It started with spin-off of Tamagotchi, which is already dead for like more than five years. Trading card games died out long ago, and it was so disasterous that Bandai had to reboot the entire system. The videogame was a boom back in Wonder Swan generation, but how's it now? Pokemon is celebrating (with mixed results, but still) its sixth generation, while Digimon is having its version of Ragnarok. As a Digimon fan with good memories, it's kinda sad to let one of my favorite series just die here. So hey, making implausible videogame daydreams is all I do, so here we go:

What is the major characteristic of Digimon? In my opinion there's three of them which is a) Digimon stars one human and one Digimon as a pair, not just human and his/her mon, but more of partners. This already makes a nice coming of age story, which already happened impressive in the Digimon Adventure and rather depressingly in Digimon Tamers. b) Digimon has a fluid approach in 'evolution' system, so Digimon can digivolve into several other Digimons. In videogames, this makes a good features, in a sense more akin to demons in Shin Megami Tensei. c) The very idea of befriending and challenging monsters from digital world, up to and including local computer system and internet. In the year of 2013 and counting, the imagination is just endless, and so is capability. So... How should we put this in videogame?

- Sorry guys, another JRPG. I can't help, it's just my mind that bends practically everything into turn-based role playing games.

- One protagonist, one Digimon. Players should be able to choose the protagonist's gender and partner Digimon.

- Digimon is basically monsters from digital world, right? Its body is composed of data, right? I benchmarked some ideas from Digital Devil Saga, and put it this way. Protagonist wanders around dungeon. Cue random encounter. When partner Digimon defeats random encounter, it acquires some data at the end of the battle. This data can be used for digivolution, item exchange, and some other features.

- Speaking of digivolution, it should be various and powerful. Digimons can digivolve into any other digimons, given the environment and battle records, so this should be integrated in the system. I am thinking of somewhat a fusion of Pokedex from Pokemon and Demonic Compendium from Shin Megami Tensei.

- But hey, what about the tamer? What would the powerless human will do in the bench while his/her loyal monster is having a fierce fight? Tamers and Savers gave us answer: support your partner real-time, or collect enough Digisouls to beat the shit out of your enemies. Unlike traditional turn-based support, which usually involves consuming one entire turn, it can be loosened up a bit, since the main fighter and the supporter is seperated in this system. Perhaps the tamer can do some X-COM-style 'suppression fire' against the enemies, which the Digimon can take advantage from. I didn't watch Savers, so I'm not really sure with beat-em-up, nor do I think it's a good idea.

- I was rather disappointed that Digimon somewhat lacks the internet motif. In fact, one of the thing I really liked in Our War Game! is the network as a background. Now that we live in the world half-fused with the internet, the game could include more of it. Wikipedia server would be a gigantic library, perhaps maintenanced by Wisemons, Google would be a vast sea of data, image boards would be the dark area, and so forth... The possibility is just endless.

Well, that's it for now. It's a bit messy, but it's still a step forward. End transmission.