Unsure if this has been suggested before: watching a 1981 performance by Masayoshi Takanaka earlier, I was captivated by how the colours and placement of the volume/tone knobs on his custom Yamaha SG are mirrored by the Super Famicom logo and control pad design. Takanaka used this guitar on tour that year, when he released ‘The Rainbow Goblins’, a jazz-fusion, pop-rock album inspired…
A vicennium of dim disquiet The long, rich history of Japanese horror encompasses a prolific era of fascinating creations emerging at the turn of the millennium, spanning from global best-selling novels to blockbuster movies. The video game medium, too, partook in this fertile creative phenomenon with developers and publishers seizing the potential of rapidly evolving technologies to introduce…
reve-des-eaux : For years, I’ve been obsessed with the pervading presence of mirrors and reflections in video games, namely this sequence from Gadget: Past as Future. This pursuit culminated in a research project compiling those I consider to be the most relevant examples from both a technical and aesthetic point of view. If you’re similarly inclined, the link below may interest you.…
For the better part of the year, I have corresponded with SoftEdge founder and director Koichi Mori. As if that rare privilege wasn’t enough, I was rewarded this week with one from a handful of existing copies of his self-published CD-ROM, TRIPITAKA 玄奘三蔵求法の旅. If the name fails to register, I recommend that you read this my previous post . I also had the honour of interacting with the…
Fresh off the flatbed high-resolution scans of the character artwork for the 1999 Dreamcast RPG EGG - Elemental Gimmick Gear, possibly authored by Hisashi Kubo.
Arranging these items, it occurred to me that Shadow of the Colossus was the videogame that I anticipated the most. I yearned for it so ardently, and it was nevertheless able to surpass all my long-held expectations. Such an experience arrives once, perchance twice in a lifetime.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the US release of Yutaka Saito’s Seaman, I have scanned and archived this rather rare specimen published in Japan by Vivarium in the year 2000. This is, however, no ordinary guidebook. Authored by Yutaka Saito himself, this book is the centrepiece of the game’s broader viral marketing campaign in Japan, based on the uncanny premise that the virtual…
Here’s my gift to true MetalGearSolid fans: a full scan of “Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes Survival Guide In The Darkness of Shadow Moses”, published in Japan in 2004. It is one of the most unique videogame guidebooks ever created. See more of this post to find out why. Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes - Survival Guide : Tosho Printing Co., Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and…
In 2004, Kazutoshi Iida (Aquanaut’s Holiday, Tail of the Sun) sat down with his friend Hideo Kojima to discuss the original Metal Gear Solid, apropos of the Japanese The Twin Snakes guidebook, which Iida himself was editor-in-chief of. Today, I present to you a translation of this fascinating conversation. Below is the link to the PDF containing the edited and translated scans from the…
easternmind : TRIPITAKA - the lost spiritual sequel to Cosmology of Kyoto was found This post is a compilation of a series of tweets I have composed over a period of weeks during this summer. For years, it was uncertain whether TRIPITAKA 玄奘三蔵求法の旅, by Soft Edge, had in fact ever been published. I remind the more absent-minded readers that this is the studio responsible for the mythical CD-ROM…
I have long wanted to translate this 1997 interview with Keita Amemiya concerning the production of Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari. I did my best to maintain the format in which it is presented in Enix’s Picture Imagination Book . You can browse the translated pages here . I also seized the opportunity to extract and compile Gaupu’s dream sequences, consisting of unique stop-motion…
Very interesting question. I don't believe that there are many anthologies of games within a game whose order and purpose is deliberate or meaningful, as opposed to, say, commercial. As is commonly known, the standard for game design dictates that its gameplay is anchored to one cohesive genre from start, with a few notable exceptions over the years. As far as I can remember, the only games that…
Japanese game cover design is widely admired by players around the world, a true craft which that was perfected over the years. In an effort to make their productions stand out, many studios explored a more tactile range of materials from modelling clay to plastic, wood, paper and metal. The resulting effect elicits a sense of fascination and instant nostalgia, particularly at a time when physical…
Japanese game cover design is widely admired by players around the world, a true craft which that was perfected over the years. In an effort to make their productions stand out, many studios explored a more tactile range of materials from modelling clay to plastic, wood, paper and metal. The resulting effect elicits a sense of fascination and instant nostalgia, particularly at a time when physical…
Japanese game cover design is widely admired by players around the world, a true craft which that was perfected over the years. In an effort to make their productions stand out, many studios explored a more tactile range of materials from modelling clay to plastic, wood, paper and metal. The resulting effect elicits a sense of fascination and instant nostalgia, particularly at a time when physical…
Japanese game cover design is widely admired by players around the world, a true craft which that was perfected over the years. In an effort to make their productions stand out, many studios explored a more tactile range of materials from modelling clay to plastic, wood, paper and metal. The resulting effect elicits a sense of fascination and instant nostalgia, particularly at a time when physical…
Japan’s Crafty Videogame Cover Design Part I: 1983 - 1989 Japanese game cover design is widely admired by players around the world, a true craft which that was perfected over the years. In an effort to make their productions stand out, many studios explored a more tactile range of materials from modelling clay to plastic, wood, paper and metal. The resulting effect elicits a sense of…
I just posted a very long thread on the subject of Japanese videogame cover design and its use of a variety of sculpture materials to stand out and achieve a lasting impression on the player. Should you feel that X is not worthy of your visit, no reason to worry, I mirrored it on my BlueSky as well. I hope you will be pleasantly surprised.
Magazine advertisements for N.U.D.E@ Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment by Red Entertainment, 2003. It’s a shame that these playful scenes never made it to the game package design itself. They would have made a fabulous transition from DVD box cover to manual cover.