The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 3 - Book Review

Japan has an incredibly rich video game history, yet it has rarely been documented in depth—neither in the West nor in its home country. While myriad books discuss the industry’s legacy, they often adopt a Western viewpoint, focusing on the impact of gaming in the Americas and Europe (such as David Sheff’s Game Over, Blake Harris’s Console Wars or Chris Kohler’s Power Up).

With so many legendary Japanese developers entering their later years, it is a case of "now or never" to record these stories for posterity. Retro video game journalist and historian S.M.G. Szczepaniak - who has written for publications including Retro Gamer and Gamasutra - launched a Kickstarter for this ambitious endeavor in 2015. His goal was to pull back the curtain on the often-secretive Japanese development scene.

After completing Volumes 1 and 2, Szczepaniak returns for Volume 3. In a raw foreword, he details the immense personal and financial toll the project has taken. The books had not been profitable, and he describes a harrowing ordeal involving doxxing, sabotage, and blackmail from online trolls. It sounded like a genuine nightmare; one cannot help but feel sympathy for him, even if his occasionally prickly attitude had reportedly strained some professional relationships. Regardless, by capturing this firsthand documentation, Szczepaniak has ensured the history of the Japanese industry is preserved. This work grants him a legacy that will outlast his current hardships.

Beyond the author’s personal travails, the book is packed with knowledge bombs spread across 35 interviews. Szczepaniak’s deep reserve of knowledge makes him an expert interviewer, capable of opening up a traditionally closed industry. This volume was particularly illuminating for me, as it features interviews regarding Technosoft, Squaresoft, Enix and other legendary names that defined my youth.

Highlights and Key Takeaways:

  • Henk Rogers (of Tetris fame) is a skilled gemstone cutter who once almost drowned while surfing in Hawaii. He now runs a green energy business with plans for terraforming the moon.

  • Yuichi Toyama pushed for cutscenes in M.U.S.H.A. because he was a massive Gundam fan and loved the drama of those manga-style shows.

  • Developers from Technosoft and Compile hint at significant behind-the-scenes animosity between management and staff, explaining the frequent staff shuffling between companies during that era.

  • The Naikon Zoku were a subculture of computer-less hobbyists who coded games on display computers in department stores, saving them onto punch paper. Because computers cost roughly £1,500 in 1984, this was a thriving fandom; some middle-schoolers from this scene were actually offered professional jobs at Compile.

  • Technosoft was financially stable, but the mainstream success of Thunder Force II, III, and IV brought intense pressure and fan expectation for every subsequent sequel.

  • The first level of Thunder Force V was originally designed for the Mega Drive, but production moved to the Saturn and PlayStation to better utilize 3D polygons.

  • Kotori Yoshimura, a coding genius behind Thunder Force, transitioned after surgery and continues to have a successful, well-regarded career in the industry.

  • Former Technosoft employee Naosuke Arai describes head of development Tomio Ozono as a shy, misunderstood man whose social struggles were often mistaken for arrogance.

  • The SNES shooter BioMetal was one of the first games to feature licensed music—specifically from the techno band 2 Unlimited.

  • Manabu Yamana (coder for Dragon Quest) believes Metroid was inspired by the Apple II game Aztec, noting similarities in the gameplay and the design of Ridley.

  • Takashi Tokita (Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger) recalled that during a sound-mix bug in FFIV, the team wasn't allowed to go home—or shower—for days until it was resolved.

  • Live A Live and Chrono Trigger were produced concurrently.

  • Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy) decided to adapt Parasite Eve after reading the novel. Square opened an American studio to handle the CG, moving the game's setting to New York to help the US team ground it in reality.

  • Tokita believes the fields of manga, anime, and video games are unique in Japan because they were "industries formed by young people getting together and creating whatever they wanted."

  • Aziz Hinoshita (formerly of Square) notes that in the late 2000s, the Japanese industry was obsessed with selling to the West, which led to the infamous US Ico box art and the poorly received Ninja Gaiden 3.

  • Yosuke Hayashi (Team Ninja) used a great analogy: "It seems like we made a Japanese hamburger for the West. As a Japanese developer, we need to make good Japanese food... we’re going to offer you damn good sushi."

  • Kouichi Yotsui (Strider) predicted the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter disaster, noting the "gulf between one’s fame and one’s actual ability."

  • Toshinari Oka (Metal Gear 2) recalled Konami company outings to play laser tag (Quazar). Everyone used nicknames; Hideo Kojima, naturally, called himself "Snake."

  • Youji Ishii (Sega) revealed that for OutRun research, he and Yu Suzuki drove a BMW 3 Series (not a red Ferrari) from Frankfurt to Rome over three weeks. He still has the VHS tapes to prove it.

  • Yutaka Sugano (Shinobi, Sonic Adventure) is actually a trained mining engineer.

  • Naoto Ohshima (Sonic) claims an acapella tape of Michael Jackson humming tunes for Sonic 3 exists somewhere in the Sega archives.

  • Kotaro Hayashida (Alex Kidd) revealed the character was created after they lost the Dragon Ball license; they originally intended for the protagonist to be Goku.

  • Mark Cerny helped develop the Master System’s 3D glasses at the Sega Technical Institute.

  • Yasuhide Kobayashi (Ico, Shadow of the Colossus) predicted in 2013 that game-only hardware would eventually phase out as users lost interest in dedicated machines.

  • Konami is notorious for its "aggressive patents," including one for the camera logic that makes walls invisible in 3D games. This patent is often cited as the reason many Japanese games had disorienting camera angles during the 2000s.

  • Street Fighter II cabinets cost £820 to make, and Capcom sold 144,000 units. In 1992, the Champion Edition made $257 million for Capcom, but generated a staggering $1.63 billion in arcade coin revenue.

  • An anonymous Microsoft Japan source claimed the company hired middle managers from Konami who "moaned about their old jobs" rather than being creative, leading to mass layoffs.

  • Hironobu Sakaguchi reportedly spent over $10,000 in one night at a hostess club, prompting Microsoft to institute a $200-per-person entertainment limit worldwide.

  • Yu Suzuki had a windowless "throne room" in the Sega building where Enya music played on a loop. He once pitched an idea to Microsoft execs for a version of Swan Lake featuring heavy metal music.

The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 2

I was a big fan of volume 1 of The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers and praised its remarkable insight into Japanese game development. For any gaming fan volume 1 was an essential look into the often secretive world of 80s and 90s gaming and a lot of what I've said about Volume 1 holds true for this volume too.

The cover art by Satoshi Nakai is pretty cool. ©CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The cover art by Satoshi Nakai is pretty cool. ©CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Volume 2 kicks off in spectacular style with a frank and deep discussion on the yakuza and their involvement in the entertainment industry. This is the first in-depth and honest discussion in mainstream media by my reckoning, nothing like this has been investigated before and the extent to which the yakuza influenced and helped grease the wheels of the video games industry is astonishing to read. The names of theindividuals and the companies involved have been redacted but this is still remarkable testimony of how the yakuza protected many arcades and ensured that the game boards weren't stolen to be cloned. The interviewee presents it as a necessary evil for many companies but also discusses how his daughter was kidnapped by the yakuza and only freed when he dropped an arcade machine from a well-known company outside their headquarters, it was a threat of sorts but it worked and his daughter was released. Accounts like this are remarkable and I for one am glad that they are being collected as they would be lost forever. 

The rest of the 29 interviews are interesting and cover many different aspects of the industry but of particular delight were: 

  • the interview with Hudson's #7 employee Takashi Takebe, who discusses the origins of this well respected but poorly documented company, famous for Bomberman and Pang amongst many other properties. It was interesting to hear how it changed from supplying computing hardware into a software house when it saw an emerging market. It was one of the first Japanese companies to see potential in the burgeoning micro computing market in 80s Europe and so many of its titles were converted to these machines. 

  • There are a few interviews with people who worked for Zainsoft, a company that produced interesting if buggy messes of games. Some if the interviewees' were very candid and spoke about these 'black corporations', companies that treated their workers extremely poorly and were often violent towards them. There are recounts of people being locked in their offices and being forced to work for 20 hours a day, being unable to go home for months on end and even having computer monitors thrown at them. This all seems far-fetched but with so many people from the same company saying the same thing consistently it does sound like this occurred and was actually quite common, it must have been to be given a label of 'black companies'. The most violent and shocking account is by Kensuke Takahashi who worked for the company for 4 years, it is a look at the darker side of game development. Another revelation is that Sega was involved in these practices too and this was one of the reasons that it went into deep decline as many people shunned their products in disgust.

  • The origins and the closure of one of my favourite game companies Westone is covered with a couple of interviews including an in-depth interviews with Ryuichi Nishizawa, Kouchi Yotsui and Maki Ohzora. Nishizawa was one of the creators of Wonder Boy and the Monster World series, including one of my favourites, Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap. The discussion about who benefits most from home conversions is really thought provoking as even though arcade game producer Westone made two long running series it was the conversion licensees who benefited most. Nishizawa comes across as a kind and creative figure and this interview is a real highlight. 

  • Ohzora was the character artist for Westone and hearing her discuss her inspiration for the world's she created is really insightful and well worth the read. 

  • Shinichi Sakamoto was a composer for Westone and worked on Wonder Boy in Monster Land and Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap. It is an extremely short interview but as the composer of one of my favourite video games, very insightful.  

  • Professor Yoshihiro Kishinito, formerly of Namco, shares a credit list of early Namco games, something that is invaluable for gaming historians as many creators were only able to sign in pen names in games.  

  • The interview with Human alumnus is interest as the company produced some interesting titles in its time but according to the interviewees it was the vision of the individual creators rather than company ethos or vision that developed this mentality. Producer Taichi Ishizuka discusses Mizzurna Falls, a pre-Shenmue open world game with a Twin Peaks style mystery. I came across this game a couple of years ago and much like Deadly Premonition it is a diamond in the rough kind of game. The discussion behind its creation is great and considering the tiny team and budget it had, all the more extraordinary. Szczepaniak recommends viewing a Let's Play by Resident Evie and having seen this play through a few weeks ago I can recommend that this is the best way to experience the game as it seems janky and awkward to play, but has an intriguing enough premise to watch the 9 or so hours of video.

The book ends with Szczepaniak dismissing the Japanese game development Downfall Myth, the idea that Japan is becoming bankrupt of gaming ideas with many of the games companies going onto the more lucrative mobile gaming sector, but he provides a list of over 100 Japanese games from the last generation (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS, PC) that defy the myth that Japanese game development is declining. It's a powerful rebuff to the Microsoft perpetuated Downfall Myth which aimed to promote western games, a sector where the Xbox is doing significantly better than in the east.

As a book archiving years of Japanese game development history this is a marvellous work. As with the first it is a tough read from cover to cover, as naturally there are some interviewees and topics that are more interesting than others for me and whoever reads this but it is great stuff nonetheless.  This book is an unprecedented account of Japanese game development from the people who were there and that is why volume 1 and 2 have been such an important piece of work that will hopefully improve our understanding of this period of time. I find these books are essential and hope that volume 1 and 2 are successful enough to support volume 3. 

The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers - Book Review

Japan has a rich history when it comes to video games but this has been rarely discussed or documented, at least in the West in english. There are a myriad of excellent books that discuss the history and legacy of video games but often they are from a western viewpoint and discuss the impact of gaming in the west like Game Over by David Sheff, Console Wars by Blake Harris or Power Up by Chris Kohler.  With so many Japanese developers there must be some amazing tales to tell but with the passing of some gaming legends like Fukio Mitsuji, creator of Bubble Bobble and Masaya Nakamura, founder of Namco, it is a case of now or never to get these stories told and written down for posterity.

Step in retro video game journalist S.M.G Szczepaniak, who has written for many gaming publications including Retro Gamer and Gamasutra, which is where I knew of his previous work. He started a Kickstarter in 2015 to create a book with the aim to get some of the stories and history behind the often secretive Japanese game development scene and shed light on this era of gaming. What follows is a 500 page plus book of interviews with honest and candid answers from the people who were there at the time video game history was being made. Without the PR people acting as gatekeepers of information what comes through is intriguing reading, and whilst there are some NDA (Non-Discolosure Agrements) in place for some of the interviewees, there is a rich vein of information here which is expertly mined by Szczepaniak.

The interviews are informal and you can see that for many of the interviewees Szczepaniak is well-versed in their history and impact on the gaming culture and so what emerges is a sense of kinship and understanding as some of the game developers have their moment in the sun and thus share information freely. Reading the book you start to get a real understanding of the Japanese culture at the time and of the huge economic bubble. Whilst I did not recognise all those that were interviewed the sheer number of interviews and the breadth of topics covered ensured that I was engaged throughout. Whilst not all interviews or topics interested me I did read it all from cover to cover over the course of a couple of weeks. I am not sure I would read the whole book again but I know I will dip in from time-to-time to re-read certain interviews I like or to research certain creators like Yuzo Koshiro.

Overall the book is an essential for gamers, covering a part of video game history that many of us do not know enough about. Anyone with an interest in retro games and Japanese culture should pick this book up and there is plenty contained within to engage.