검의 전설

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성검의 전설 (Legend of the Holy Sword) was the title Nam Inhwan chose for his game when he created it, while in highschool. Aproman opted to change the title slightly to 검의 전설 (Sin'geom-ui Jeonseol/Legend of the Sword) and Dream Traveler Part 1 became the in-game title. Nam Inhwan was inspired by Richard Garriot and the Ultima series but 검의 전설 only superficially resembles Ultima games.

Gamers in Korea were used to playing imported games in Japanese and English. At first, these were pirated games. But when South Korean law was changed to recognize copyright*, a few companies did minimal localizing to some of their imported games. The package, title screen, a few words in the game. But not RPGs. That was just too many words; investment would not justify the price. They were thrilled to see an RPG displaying Han'geul script. But there was another surprise for them. The Apple II clones, and occasionally an actual Apple II, used Japanese or Latin script for output and input on a Latin or Japanese keyboard. This was pretty much required to run imported games correctly. When companies localized games with Korean script, players still had to type in their initials or names in Kanji or Latin and the typed name was shown on screen. Word input was not Han'geul. Nam Inhwan implemented full Han'geul input. Players could name their characters using their native script. characters dialogs were Han'geul, and the players typed all commands in Han'geul including in combat (Ultima style menus and graphical input for combat were not used, this seems very intentional). This homebrew game would become a source of national pride. Much like Nolan Bushnell, Nam Inhwan would be ascribed all the credit for founding the Korean electronic gaming industry (even though there were previous forgotten efforts) Yet, somehow the game was not considered a success (it took some time for the legend to grow and the gaming industry was about to experience a legal onslaught by foreign intellectual property holders) and it would be eight years before Nam Inhwan would finish a sequel that he'd begun before 성검의 전설 was published. Around 1993, the Korean gaming industry 'went legit', or at least started to, in the eyes of the lawyers.

*The law changed for the benefit of Korean innovators, and only possible applied to imported works. The law was very unspecific on that point. Also, it was only for copyright of source code, not compiled works ?unless registered?, trademarks, patents, trade dress, nor trade secret.

zerothis # 2021-09-06 02:10:21