America Daitouryou Senkyo

Which translates to United State Presidential Race

The translation is "mostly" complete so I’m going to attempt it. I don’t know why I’m saying mostly complete. There’s a truth about limited memory and text.
There are probably ways around it, like combining common letter combinations like ch and th into a single character and reducing the letters you need to a lean 52 or even 26 or even 24 if you can find a way to not use Q and X.
[clicky]

Alas, Kang… I mean Bob Dole… isn’t playable and you can't run on a platform of "abortions for some, miniatuare American flags for others" which is apparently the winning formula for an election.
Also democrats are red and republicans are blue. That’s because this whole red state blue state thing started with the 2000 election, which went on for five weeks and so red and blue was ingrained into our collective consciousness. Before, they were pretty arbitrary, with blue usually being the incumbent party.

George H.W. Bush was the winner of the actual 1988 election. His running mate was Dan Quayle. If you've played Fallout 2, you might remember Daniel Bird, who talked entirely in Dan Quayle quotes.

For whatever reason, Margaret Thatcher is eligible to run for president. She is opposed to Japan. I’m not sure if the actual Margaret Thatcher was but back in the 1980s, Japanese electronics and pop culture were spreading across the world.


I always mix up Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson is a Charismatic evangelical who believes in faith healing and deflecting hurricanes with the power of prayer (and we can blame him for Hurricane Gloria), thinks that killing someone in a video game is akin to killing someone in real life, believes that termites don’t build things, attacks homosexuality and feminism (which encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians) and abortion and college students, had a child out of wedlock, called Scotland a dark land overrun by gays, possibly had business dealings with Charles Taylor and Mobutu Sese Seko and possibly embezzled charity money. Pat Buchanan is a paleoconservative isolationist holocaust-denier who attempted to stop the deportation of Karl Linnas and John Demjanjuk, and along with Donald Trump called for the lynching of the Central Park Five, who were wrongfully accused of rape. Buchanan briefly worked as communications director for Ronald Reagan. Both Pat Buchanan and Pat Boone, who is a conservative Christian who is well known for watered-down versions of rock&roll songs, wrote for World Net Daily.

Michael Dukakis was the front-runner on the Democratic side of things. He was taken down by accusations of being soft on crime, even though he had a double digit lead in the polls.
I've met him.
No, really.

Jesse Jackson is a reverend and civil rights leader. He looks kind of like Lando here.

I don’t think Suzuki is a real person. In real life, the rest of the candidates were Al Gore, Paul Simon, Dick Gephardt, and Gary Hart. Also Joe Biden. And Pat Schroeder.
No, not that Paul Simon. He won Illinois.

Everyone’s blood type is listed because in Japanese culture, blood types are a big deal.

But, hey, people probably know their blood type and that can be useful in many situations.

I don’t know my blood type. I do know my zodiac sign, mostly because I wasn’t raised by wolves. But that won't help me if I ever need a blood transfusion.

Anyway, my point is that your advisor doesn't affect the game in any way.

This entire game is a misnomer. You’re not running in a general election, you’re running in a primary.

No wonder why I can't win this. It's because my chosen candidate is campaigning in the Michigan primary somewhere in the far-flung reaches of South Dakota. I’m not sure what these people want. So I’d assume that the thing that farmers would like is opposing cuts to farming subsidiary aids, supporting agricultural product price support, and dealing with pollutants, because, I dunno, I assume these farmers grow sorghum or corn or wheat, not moo cows. Diamond and Silk did an entire song and fucking dance routine about letting the cows say moo, letting the moo cows fart, and letting the cows spread disease. Hey! You! Leave them farting cows alone! Unless I’m getting the sliders wrong.

The translation is... uh... lacking.


A guide tells me this is inaccurate. What it was in Japanese is “for” and “against” not “democrat” and “republican.” And to further complicate things, it’s not a binary choice, it’s a spectrum.
I don’t know what my voters want to hear and I don’t really know what I’m offering. Or maybe it’s because it’s Michigan and my base in Michigan isn’t farmers, it’s Detroit and college towns. And probably auto workers but I don’t know because the auto industry collapsed, putting the nail in Detroit’s coffin. There were attempts to revive it but they mostly failed. But maybe it’s like Trump. If I attack Japan enough, maybe I can get their approval.

25 is a good number. If you make too many speeches, you'll get tired, if you make it that far, that is. If you make too few, your approval rating will drop like a stone, if it hasn't already.
Let it be said that being left of center, even on things like civil rights, will not endear you to voters. Maybe try running on a platform of “as Overlord, all will kneel trembling before me and obey my brutal commands!”
In fact, Clinton, who was firmly in the center, didn’t win a majority of votes. He won because Perot was siphoning off votes. And apparently Clinton ran against Lyndon LaRouche of all people in the primaries.

The Earth platforms are as follows:
Developing resources, whaever that means. Promote or hinder.
Nuclear power generation. Promote or hinder.
Air pollution control. Strengthen or relax.
Civil rights movement. Promote or hinder.
Immigrant worker regulation. Promote or hinder.
Gun possession regulation. Promote or hinder.
AIDS patient isolation. Promote or hinder. In those days, AIDS was seen as a disease of gays and Africans and IV users and so little effort was made to combat it.
Anti-smoking measures. Promote or hinder. Recently, I had a conversation about Mrs. Doubtfire and how the climactic scene revolved around the smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants. I remember being asked which section we were to sit in as a kid but not as a teenager so maybe they were already on their way out. The ban came in MA in 2004, MD in 2008, NJ in 2006, and NY in 2003. Those are the only states I remember eating in restaurants in.

Defense platforms:
Budget cuts: support or oppose
Military strength increase: support or oppose
Strategic arms reduction treaty: support or oppose
Ban on nuclear weapons tests: support or oppose
Star Wars project: support or oppose.
No, not that Star Wars. The missile defense system. The massively impractical missile defense system. Assuming they could knock out ICBMs and deal with decoys, it was useless against cruise missiles. George Lucas wanted nothing to do with it. But again, we’re not basing our stance on Star Wars based on how fucking stupid it was, we’re basing it on what people want and I assume people thought it was a good idea because they voted Bush to be Reagan’s third term.
Anti-government support in Nicaragua.
I couldn’t tell you anything about Nicaragua in 1988 but Wikipedia can. By then, Daniel Ortega was president and the previous dictator Anastasio Somoza was living in exile in Honduras.
I brought this up before. In those days, Central America was seen as the next big flashpoint after Indochina. But really, it all goes back to the 19th century, when Before the American civil war, William Walker and his band of filibusters (read: paramilitaries) Central America in order to establish Anglophone outposts that would be friendly to slavery, and briefly took over Nicaragua (The Confederate States of America had plans to annex Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean islands and even chunks of Colombia and Venezuela. I’ll take “things that will never happen” for 1000), and then throughout the 20th century, when Nicaragua was a US client state.
Anyways, I think of the Sandanistas as a bunch of socially conservative frauds, while Somoza was pretty open about his fascism. TVTropes’ useful notes page for Nicaragua says that there are former Contras who support Ortega and former Sandanistas amongst the opposition. I can see that, because it turned out that Daniel Ortega was every bit as conservative as Somoza, just with a bit of a social welfare bent. It’s one of five countries with a total ban on abortion. He’s the Smilin’ Cynthia McKinney of Central America. In 1990, a coalition of every other party in Nicaragua defeated Ortega.
Supporting Somoza will get you points amongst the neoconservative and anti-communist crowd. Supporting Ortega will get you nowhere, like a lot of things in this game.
Anyway.
Nuclear weapon production: cease or continue.
Mutual reduction of the Soviet Union Defense Force: Support or oppose.

Economy:
Taxes for finance reform: support or oppose. Bush won by saying "no new taxes"
Cuts to farming subsidiary aids: Support or oppose.
Space shuttle projects: promote or hinder. If you ask me, space research and exploration should be unmanned because robots don't eat or go mad from isolation like we do, and they can go a lot further and in even more inhospitable places. There are seas on Titan and oceans on Europa waiting for our exploration and if we send a probe to Alpha Centauri, we might get results back in less than a century.
Spending restraint: Strengthen or relax.
Complete welfare: Strengthen or relax
Consumer protection: Support or oppose.
Agricultural product price support: Support or oppose
Computer program protection: Strengthen or relax

Social:
Christian morality: Promote or hinder.
Mandatory worship in public schools: Support or oppose
Patriotic education: Promote or hinder
Abolish obligatory bus transportation to school: Support or oppose. So when I saw this, I thought it would be about the busing programs. Basically, the school system in this country is Jim Crow's greatest triumph. Busing meant that certain kids in black-majority districts, where schools were oft underfunded, would be selected to go to school in other districts instead. White parents were pissed.
I don't know if there was a push from conservative or really any circles to cut funding to school buses and tell kids who had parents who worked or otherwise couldn't get them to school that they were shit out of luck. But, honestly, with all I've seen, I wouldn't put it above them.
Recognition of brain dead. Support or oppose.
Pornography regulation. Strengthen or oppose. The thing that united the second wave feminists and the moral majority, and the thing that inspired The Handmaid's Tale
Prohibition of abortion: Support or oppose.
Improvement of childcare environment. Promote or hinder.

This being a Japanese game, there's an entire section on US-Japan relations.
Japanese car import regulations. Strengthen or relax.
Regulation on dumping of Japanese goods. Strengthen or relax.
Imported agricultural produce freedom demands. Strengthen or relax.
Plans to include new trade laws. Support or oppose.
Withdrawing tariffs, surcharge on imports. Support or oppose.
Prohibition of whaling. Support or oppose.
Advancing Japanese capitalism. Promote or hinder.
Improving the defensive strength of Japan. Promote or Hinder. Japan isn't allowed to have an army, mostly because the last time they had one, the world is still reeling from it.

Rest of foreign policy.
Automobile import regulations. Strengthen or relax.
Apartheid sanctions: Strengthen or relax. Apartheid lasted until 1994. Ronald Reagan was ok with it. He said that the sanctions would mostly hurt the black majority. But let's be honest here. Things couldn't really get worse for them. Highest imprisonment and execution rate and being disqualified from all but the hottest and noisiest jobs. Critics of the regime were disappeared. De Klerk realized that South Africa was becoming a pariah state.
Truth is, Republicans viewed the ANC as communist.
Sanctions on Iran: Strengthen or relax. By 1988, Iraq was launching its final offensives, ending Iran's offensive capabilities and forcing a ceasefire. A few years later, Iraq invaded Kuwait and an international coalation ended the Iraqi Army.
Really, it's because they overthrew the fascist-sympathetic Shah.
COCOM regulations: Strengthen or relax. It's an agreement on what can and can not be sold to communist countres, if you want to know.
Panama Canal restoration: Support or oppose. So I don't know if restoration means handing the canal over to Panama or keeping it in US hands.
Relations with China: Promote or hinder.
Tariffs on oil imports: Support or hinder.




Some things they didn't bother to translate at all.


Spoiler alert: He didn't. I feel like usually front-runners don't. Nixon being a notable exception. AROOOOOOOO!
I think I’ll accept that beating this game or even making it as far as Super Tuesday is a hurdle I’ll never jump. I am starting to suspect that this game wants me to pick one specific policy and not deviate at all from their expectations.
In those days, the democrats had appeal among the working class. All age groups as a whole went for Bush, although there wasn’t really a spread. I knew about Reagan Youth.
Dukakis only won amongst people with an income under $12,500.
Anyways, I hope we get the all-clear signal soon but I'll see you in July at the latest.
burning question: I can understand people who downplay the virus because feedback loops and walled garden syndrome. However, how in Etro’s holy fuck are there people who are registered nurses who are this fucking ignorant? I knew she was conservative but I was honestly hoping she at least thought Trump bungled the pandemic horribly and would rather put up with four years of Biden. I don’t agree with it but I can vaguely see where her disdain for poor people and people who don’t speak English comes from. In fact, it kind of reminds me of Drow’s position that not only should English be an official language, everyone should learn English and only English. I guess I was wronger than a quick turtle. Maybe it’s because she’s that relatively small number of conservatives because she’s a misanthrope instead of being conservative because she’s in an established relationship with someone who's conservative.
burning question: I just answered my own question, didn’t I?