Tengai Makyō: The Apocalypse IV Translation & Analysis (Live)

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Many years ago I played a Japanese RPG for the Sega Saturn commonly known as Tengai Makyō: The Apocalypse IV. The reason for my interest:

  • It’s from a long-running Japanese series famous for its comedic parodies of real-world stereotypes
  • The game is set in over-the-top parody version of America, as seen from the Japanese viewpoint

Tengai Makyō IV was released in Japan in 1997 with a physical map. And this map alone was enough to convince me to play the game in 2017:

You actually visit all of these locations during the story of Tengai Makyou: The Apocalypse IV

The following video series is mostly just me live-translating the game in real-time. Be aware that there is a lot of grinding in this game, and the battles are incredibly tedious. But if you can overlook these annoyances, you’ll discover a funny and creative game with lots of heart and hope. I’d even call it a cousin of EarthBound in that sense.

Basically, Tengai Makyō IV lies at an interesting crossroads between Japan, America, Native Americans, Mexico, culture, comedy, video games, movies, and probably even more. It’s also brimming with the unique and exciting energy of the 1990s disc-based console era.

This playthrough surprised us several times when it turned meta – the Sega Saturn physically cuts me and then the console begins to slowly break in weird ways over time. By the end, I’m fighting against the last boss and the literal Sega Saturn hardware at the same time. It was frustrating but wild!