05-001 My journey into the world of epic fantasy

05-001
My journey into the world of epic fantasy

I was born in Hongkong in the mid-70s. I have never come across any works of epic fantasy until my teenage, or not any I have remembered. English books were available at that time, both in school and in the libraries. But my English was not really good, and I am never a bookworm. There were a few epic fantasy movies or TV dramas showing on TV though, mostly on the English channels. But again, because of language barrier, my TV speaks Cantonese for most of the time.

How about the TV dramas on the Cantonese channels? Yes, we have TV dramas. TV dramas from Hong Kong are, or were, the leader in the Asian TV market. Many Asian movie stars started their career from TV dramas here. But the settings of our TV dramas will never be in the medieval European world. Gandalf with black hair, holding a pair of chopsticks and speaking Cantonese? No way.

Hillsfar
Image Source: Wikipedia

My first glimpse into epic fantasy is from a video game called Hillsfar. All boys love video games. I got my first game console in 1983 or 1984. It was a VTech CreatiVision, a local copycat of the Atari 2600. Only less than 20 game titles were ever published on that console. But those were already enough to get my small little brain entertained. It was also a personal computer, well, sort of, as it ran BASIC. So, I always told my friends that I had a computer at home!

When I entered my secondary school, the CreatiVision has reached the end of its life. My dad bought me a proper computer then. It was an 8088 PC, second hand, with 2 floppy drives, keyboard, a joystick and a CGA screen. Yes, it is coloured! I kept using this computer until my O-level exam.

Opening screen of Hillsfar
It is a real charm to play this game on a colour monitor.

The guy who sold me his old PC was a colleague of my dad. He was switching to 80286 and hoping to get rid of the old one. While he was setting up the PC in my home, I asked him, secretly, fearing of being heard by my dad, “Can I play Mario using this?” He said there is no Mario but something similar. He gave me Karnov, a platformer game in Mario style. Then he told me, “This is an expensive IBM PC. You are now a PC owner. And we PC owners don’t play Mario. Mario is a cheap game! I will bring you something that you can never found on Nintendo. A game genre that you have never imagined. A game that you can play for months or even year.” In the next week, he gave me Hillsfar.

Riding a horse, travel between villages

Elf, dwarf, wizard, dragon, dungeon, magic, shield, sword, all these difficult words that I have never learned, I started playing the game with my dictionary aside. Hillsfar is sort-of an open world role-playing action adventure game. You can create your own character with different race, sex, and ability. You can be a dwarf or an elf. The most important thing is, you are not playing Mario or Sonic in the game. You are playing yourself! And the city is so big with lots of places to explore. Outside the city gate is a stable where I can grab my horse and travel around to different villages and campsites. I was totally astonished by this game!

Overview of Hillsfar, with lots of areas to explore

To be fair, Hillsfar isn’t really that good. It was just because Hillsfar is my first adventure game so the impact on me was so strong. The game, together with Karnov, are now available to download for free, if you don’t care about copyright. But to be honest, I don’t think you will play this old game so I put a video below showing the game play.

 

I went to England in 1992 and picked up a book called There and Back Again from Waterstones. Yes, The Hobbit! My Chinese friend told me, “This is the western style of our wuxia.” He is also an epic fantasy fan. “I don’t like wuxia, although I am a Chinese.” I am a Chinese. I also don’t like wuxia. Then it comes Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Then it comes Voldemort and Narnia. And I am now watching The Rings of Power with my kids.

So, this is my journey into the world of epic fantasy. How is epic fantasy in my eyes? I found something strange. In wuxia, dragons represent emperors. They are elegant creatures, clam, thin, and always shinning in golden rays. In epic fantasy, dragons represent evils. They are fat, dumb and ruthless. In wuxia, all evils come from the west, such as the Bull Demon King in Journey to the West. In epic fantasy, all evils come from the east, such as, Sauron and Mordor are all from the eastern side of the Middle Earth.

Doesn’t this look like today’s CNN news?

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