Between their unwavering support of import PlayStation titles and love of Working Designs, it's hard to find fault with MonkeyPaw Games. This is a company that finally brought games like Kyuii, Cho Aniki and Dezaemon Plus to the states, allowing English speaking PlayStation owners to see what all the fuss was about. As far as I'm concerned, they are doing the Lord's work (and this comes from an lifelong agnostic). But recently I noticed something unsettling that makes me question everything I know about the company. I discovered something that begs the question: Is MonkeyPaw Games Stealing My Material?

As a writer I know that plagiarism is a rough charge, so believe me when I tell you that I don't normally throw around such heavy words. The solid string of must-own games more than makes up for the few occasional hiccups along the way, but I'm not sure another Arc the Lad game is going to make things right this time. Because I can definitively prove that MonkeyPaw Games has lifted material straight from this eleven year old website.

Let's turn to the evidence. One of the best things about MonkeyPaw Games is how the company offers detailed instructions for their Japanese import titles. Unfortunately, in this case against them, it is also their undoing. I point to their Money Idol Exchanger page, which features this passage:

"There are people who like to create, be it write, be it draw, be it act, or whatnot. And then there are those who like math. People can like both, but nobody can like them equally ... I am one of those people who likes writing, but hates (and by hates you should read loathes) math."

Talk about trite, horribly written garbage. The person that wrote that junk should be ashamed of themselves. Think I'm being rude? Don't worry, because I'm the one that authored that cheesy introduction. You can find that paragraph in my review of Money Puzzle Exchanger (Neo Geo). There it is, word for word.

In fact, you'll notice that my entire review (sans the final paragraph) is used on MonkeyPaw's website. Oh sure, they changed the paragraph size and used a different font, but there's no disputing that this is my writing. Who else would use something that cliche to open a review?

Ignoring the missing paragraph at the end, what is more curious is what they decided to leave in. Much to my surprise this little nugget snuck through their copy and paste job:

"Collect five $5 coins ... well, you get the point. Needless to say, there's a coin for $1, $5, $10, $50, $100, and $500 (note: those dollar amounts represent six of Defunct Games ratings, with only 1000 missing)."

To any doubters out there, this is what smug lawyers like to call the smoking gun. Not only does it actually use the name of the site, but this paragraph also references a grading system we abandoned eight years before MonkeyPaw published their first PSone Classic. It's the kind of out of context factoid that has no place on MonkeyPaw's site, which is probably why I get so much pleasure out of it.

Believe it or not, Defunct Games didn't always use letter grades. Actually, up until about a year ago we used a numerical percentage system. But before that we wanted to try something different. It was 2001 and all of the hip kids were experimenting with strange new rating systems. My creative idea? Roman numerals!




In my head it made so much sense. M would clearly be the best, as it translated to 1,000. On the other hand, I stood for 1, so it was clearly the worst game imaginable. It didn't occur to me that not that many people remember Roman numerals. Even more confusing was trying to convince people that C (100) was actually worse than D (500). That was a nightmare I quickly abandoned. And yet there it is, immortalized in one of my earliest reviews.

But let's not spend too much time trying to make sense of my bad decisions; we have a case to try here. I feel that with the evidence at hand you have no other option but to find MonkeyPaw Games guilty of stealing my review and posting it, without credit, on their hugely popular website. The least they could do is mention me by name, link the site and pay me a royalty on every sale. I'll settle for a few more import games. Sony hasn't released a PSone Classic in months and I'm dying over here without anything new to talk about on Fridays!