This Week in Retro: Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate [2010] (Patreon)

December 9, 2010: Shiren Wanders for One Last Time—Forever

by Diamond Feit

Is there any genre better than the role-playing game? Obviously not, as the test of time has proven; these days, every video game is at least a little bit RPG-influenced. It's also worth remembering that the genre grew up more or less alongside the medium of video games, as the earliest RPGs (i.e. pen-and-paper) came together around the same time that Ralph Baer designed his "brown box" prototypes.

As video games exploded in popularity in the 1980s, RPGs were there from the start. Earlier this year we commemorated the 40th anniversary of Rogue, itself an adaptation of the pen-and-paper RPGs that the creators had enjoyed in the 1970s. By the time the ’80s ended, the RPG had grown so popular as a video game genre that entire subgenres had emerged, including one that dominated an entire nation. The Japanese take on the role-playing genre had adopted concepts from early computer titles like Wizardry, then simplified that formula to better fit the home console, conquering Japan's collective imagination (and the market) in the process.

However, video game RPGs suffer from a problem that traditional RPGs do not: Being computer programs, video games lack the open-ended nature that human beings wielding dice possess. Computer and console RPGs can deliver grand stories and memorable characters, but those stories and characters will not vary over time. I can play Dungeons & Dragons whenever I want, for as long as I want, and it will always be a unique experience I can never truly "finish." But Final Fantasy VII, Ultima IV, and Undertale are written in metaphorical stone; they will unfold the same way for players in the distant future just as they did for me, always.

The creators of the aforementioned Rogue enjoyed RPGs and wanted to play them again and again, so they tried to solve this problem by randomizing everything in their game’s dungeon, ensuring that no two playthroughs would be the same. This made Rogue special—so special, in fact, that we still invoke its name to this day when we talk about video games with similarly unfixed elements.

Just like Wizardry, Rogue made its way to Japan, and specifically into the hands of Koichi Nakamura, one of the key figures behind the original Dragon Quest. In a 2012 interview with none other than Jeremy Parish, Nakamura said "In the beginning, I played it for a whole week and didn't see what was supposed to be so much fun about it. But after that, I started to understand the game." Just as his team had done before with Dragon Quest, Nakamura (founder of ChunSoft, now Spike ChunSoft) took a complex computer RPG and simplified it so that a broader, more casual Japanese audience could better understand it.

The result was Fushigina Danjon, later localized as Mystery Dungeon, ChunSoft's first "original" RPG—although in truth, the first entry in the series was itself a spinoff of Dragon Quest IV. When the time came to make a sequel, ChunSoft wanted to create an original hero who wasn't tied to another franchise, and thus "Shiren the Wanderer" was born in 1995. As ChunSoft's Seiichiro Nagahata told Sega in 2008, "other titles have their own set world that we cannot change. So we could say that Shiren is a title where we can fully express what Mystery Dungeon is capable of."

As with Rogue, Shiren the Wanderer games are designed to be played over and over again; the running tagline for each game in the series is "an RPG you can play 1000 times." Regardless of which story or exact setting Shiren faces, each quest will send him into a new dungeon, with a new layout, that he must safely navigate. Unlike the blank-slate disposable characters of Rogue, however, Shiren never dies; instead, defeat means he collapses and wakes up again outside the dungeon, minus his possessions and with his experience reduced to Level 1.

After its debut on the Super Famicom in 1995, the Shiren the Wanderer series split between home consoles and portables, where the replayability and randomness proved to be a perfect fit for gaming on the go. While these handheld adventures were initially a sidebar to the main series, once the original game was ported to the Nintendo DS in 2006, the franchise’s new direction became clear. Shiren the Wanderer 3 debuted on Nintendo Wii, but it was quickly ported to the PSP. A few years later, Shiren the Wanderer 4 would appear as the series’ first portable-only numbered entry, appearing on the DS and PSP.

That brings us to Shiren the Wanderer 5, released on December 9, 2010 in Japan for the Nintendo DS, and my entry point to the series. I had heard the name "Shiren" brought up in online articles for years, but since most entries had never been localized into English, I had never played any of the games before. In 2010, however, I was already living in Japan and exploring the then-booming world of video game bars, and on the 20th anniversary of the Super Famicom I found myself in a tiny corner of Osaka playing the original Shiren the Wanderer for the first time. When a brand-new edition launched weeks later, I was fully on board.

Shiren the Wanderer 5 proved to be perfect commuter fuel; with over an hour's travel between my home and my job, I welcomed a chance to feel like I was exploring someplace new each trip even as I journeyed to the exact same real-world destination. The series has a reputation for being difficult, which is not undeserved—I certainly failed to finish the dungeons more often than I succeeded—but that reputation is perhaps exaggerated, given that the games are designed to be replayed.

You can play Shiren the Wanderer 5 1000 times, because without the randomness, the game would be over in a couple hours at most. The excitement of finding a new weapon, the jolt of turning a corner and discovering a "monster house" full of beasts, the tension of managing Shiren's hunger alongside his HP: All of these elements are integral to the experience. By contrast, the game is a lot more generous than other RPGs, because Shiren's health automatically regenerates with each turn, and that turn system is universal; monsters do not move unless you do. A patient Shiren the Wanderer player has all the time in the world to calculate each step, each attack, and each item used.

There are also persistent elements in Shiren the Wanderer that make it far less punishing than Rogue, offering players a way to make progress even if they come up short. Money can be deposited in a bank, which will be saved for future playthroughs. Equipment can be permanently enhanced, and players can "tag" key items so that they can be retrieved if lost. There are also special items that allow Shiren to escape a dungeon with his inventory intact; the dungeon layout and his experience levels will still be reset, but Shiren will enjoy an advantage when he next enters due to his preserved gear.

Shiren the Wanderer 5’s story revolves around a magical structure called the Tower of Fortune. Before he can unseal its entrance, Shiren must first clear three separate towers representing the Past, Present, and Future to acquire a die from each. Even though each playthrough is randomized, Shiren does not have to collect all three dice in one journey; these key items remain unlocked, even if Shiren is defeated. However, each journey to the Tower of Fortune does require passing through one of the other towers, leading to a recurring choice: Should Shiren take the easiest route to increase his chances of success, or take the harder path to build up more strength?

December 2010 was late in the lifecycle of the Nintendo DS, which means that (despite my evangelizing on Twitter) Shiren the Wanderer 5 did not sell as well as the previous title, which had been released earlier that same year. With no English-language version to look forward to and no announcement of a new entry, the series fell into a hiatus and dropped off my personal radar.

It seemed Shiren had taken his final steps… but then a miracle occurred. Shiren the Wanderer 5+ was released on the PlayStation Vita in 2015, with an English language edition released a year later by Aksys Games. Unfortunately, 2016 was far too late for new Vita releases outside Japan to thrive, and the series seemed again headed for history… until a second miracle occurred and a port for PC and Switch was announced this year.

As of this writing, Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate (as it is called outside Japan) has just been released worldwide, nicely coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the original DS release and the 25th anniversary of the character's Super Famicom debut. Perhaps it was inevitable that a hero famous for overcoming permadeath was able to survive three lackluster releases only to re-emerge on the global market. We may also have the popularity of the “Soulslike” genre and its emphasis on trial-by-death to explain how a JRPG roguelike with few international fans found a new audience in 2020.

Whatever his secret, I'm so happy to have Shiren back from the dead. The series has a gorgeous pixel art aesthetic, with heroes and monsters alike presented as cute, colorful sprites on an easy-to-parse grid. The music is spirited and fun, neither too tense nor too chill, with a lot of Japanese flavor that other RPG series steeped in Western fantasy tropes lack. Simply put, Shiren the Wanderer may be a roguelike, but it's a JRPG roguelike as distinct from its inspiration as Final Fantasy is from Ultima. It is certainly not a game for everyone, but it is the perfect game for a non-zero number of lapsed RPG fans such as myself who couldn't possibly spend 80 hours finishing an epic quest... but could easily spend 100 hours fumbling with Shiren in 35-minute chunks.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan and is an active Twitter user.