Trigger Happy
character can be an idol as much as a pop star or an actor in the West. One of the major criteria, therefore, for a game’s success in Japan is that it contains good characters.
Here, by the way, is another important difference between videogames and films. The star of a movie is chosen from a pre-existing pool of actors; you can dress them up in black Prada, shave their hair or teach them kung-fu (ideally all three), but at bottom you know what you’re getting. The star of a videogame, though, at least of that type of videogame that incorporates characters at all, is invented: built completely from the ground up. A false idol indeed. Yet in another way a hyperreal one: for whereas a novelist, who also invents characters, will normally only need (or desire) to provide a few salient features of a person’s appearance and let the reader’s imagination do the rest, a videogame character must be determinedly individuated, given a complete, solid visual form.
Virtual megalocephaly
Of course this is also what happens in comic strips. In Japan, videogames have very strong aesthetic and commercial links with manga (comic books) and
244
