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Untold History of Japanese Game Developers #1
The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 1
This book reveals more secrets about the history of Japanese games than ever before, with 36 interviewees and exclusive archive photos. Konami's secret games console, the origin of Game Arts and Quintet, unusual events at Telenet, stories on Falcom, politics behind Enix's game programming contests, a tour of the Love-de-Lic and WARP offices (with layout sketches). Every interviewee is asked about unreleased titles. Foreword by GAMESIDE magazine's editor-in-chief, Yusaku Yamamoto. INTERVIEWEES INCLUDE: Hitoshi YONEDA / Tatsuo NOMURA / Katsutoshi EGUCHI / Toru HIDAKA / Roy OZAKI / Kouichi YOTSUI / Masaaki KUKINO / Yoshitaka Murayama / Harry Inaba / Ryukushi07 / Kotaro UCHIKOSHI / ZUN / Yoshiro KIMURA / Kouji YOKOTA / Jun Nagashima / Yuzo KOSHIRO / Masamoto MORITA / Akira TAKIGUCHI / Masakuni MITSUHASHI / Kohei IKEDA / Hiroshi SUZUKI / Tomonori SUGIYAMA / Yutaka ISOKAWA / Yasuhito SAITO / Takaki KOBAYASHI / Keite ABE / Keiji INAFUNE / Makoto GOTO
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First published August 4, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 26, 2015
The Untold History... is a fat 500 page volume that suffers from terrible presentation, boasting a sparse low-res cover that looks like it was put together in a paint program. One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but one will find the book's contents are also rather ramshackle: The book consists almost exclusively of interviews presented with minimal context. This was not a problem for somebody like me, who was already acquainted with most of the people and works referenced within the book, but I can see how it would easily become an arcane tome to anybody unfamiliar with the obscure topic. In this regard, The Untold History... fails at its attempt to raise wider awareness of its topic due to its insider nature.
The interviews themselves are organized without rhyme or reason. An interview with visual novel developer Ryukushi07 is prefaced with a multi-page introduction to "The Visual Novel Chapter". Following the interview with Ryukushi07 is an interview with fellow visual novel developer Kotaro Uchikoshi, but the theme is quickly broken by presenting an interview with shooter developer ZUN without any introduction at all. In fact, the "Visual Novel Chapter Introduction" is the only such introduction found in the book--a book that does not have chapters, no less--making it feel completely out of place and revealing its nature as a holdover from a time when the book was planned to be structured differently.
It also becomes apparent that the author doesn't have much rapport with his subjects. This is particularly obvious in the interview with Yuzo Koshiro, which devotes a great deal of its page count to Koshiro dodging the interviewer's questions. The Roy Ozaki interview is probably the most entertaining, due to Ozaki's penchant for telling tall tales and constant teasing of the interviewer, but it's hardly revealing in terms of the subject matter.
The interviews also don't seem to follow any structure either: an interview with Roy Ozaki stretches on for over 30 rambling pages, while an interview with Haruhiko Inaba is presented on a single page. The pages are liberally peppered with screenshots, but they are very small, black-and-white and not captioned, making them quite difficult to parse. It was almost never immediately clear how the screenshot related to the page it was on, as the page may cover two or three different games at once. As a result, I was only able to identify the screenshots of games I had already played, which not only felt redundant but also reinforced the "insider" nature of the book that I mentioned earlier.
There are a surprising number of redacted quotes to be found within many of the interviews. However, they're not simply redacted, but presented in a rather odd fashion. I quote some of the more noticeable ones:
Why would the author include these extensive details about redacted text? Why would he write anything other than simply the word "redacted"? Why would he even write "redacted" when he could have easily done a little bit of editing? Personally, I believe it's once again the insider nature of the book rearing its head, but in a particularly ugly fashion: Sczepanaik is exercising to us readers that he is privy to juicy information that very few people in the world know about; he is quite possibly the only English-speaking person who does know, and it's going to stay that way.
Worst of all, many interviews that were promised to be in this book are absent, and in their place a photograph of the interviewee with the headline "Appearing in a Later Volume". To give an idea of how often this happens, fifty subjects that were promised to be featured in the book are said to be appearing in a later volume. Naturally, backers are not entitled to a copy of this later volume. As of the time of writing, comments made by the author suggest that there will not be a second volume. Considering the poor quality of the first volume, this may actually be a blessing.
There are some valuable nuggets contained in these interviews that can't be found printed in English anywhere else, such as how Ys 3 was not originally planned to be a Ys game, and extensive details about the development and subsequent troubled translation of Suikoden 2, but I would be hard-pressed to recommend this to anybody; certainly not beginners due to its opaque nature, and not experts either due to the book's inconsistent and slipshod presentation.
The interviews themselves are organized without rhyme or reason. An interview with visual novel developer Ryukushi07 is prefaced with a multi-page introduction to "The Visual Novel Chapter". Following the interview with Ryukushi07 is an interview with fellow visual novel developer Kotaro Uchikoshi, but the theme is quickly broken by presenting an interview with shooter developer ZUN without any introduction at all. In fact, the "Visual Novel Chapter Introduction" is the only such introduction found in the book--a book that does not have chapters, no less--making it feel completely out of place and revealing its nature as a holdover from a time when the book was planned to be structured differently.
It also becomes apparent that the author doesn't have much rapport with his subjects. This is particularly obvious in the interview with Yuzo Koshiro, which devotes a great deal of its page count to Koshiro dodging the interviewer's questions. The Roy Ozaki interview is probably the most entertaining, due to Ozaki's penchant for telling tall tales and constant teasing of the interviewer, but it's hardly revealing in terms of the subject matter.
The interviews also don't seem to follow any structure either: an interview with Roy Ozaki stretches on for over 30 rambling pages, while an interview with Haruhiko Inaba is presented on a single page. The pages are liberally peppered with screenshots, but they are very small, black-and-white and not captioned, making them quite difficult to parse. It was almost never immediately clear how the screenshot related to the page it was on, as the page may cover two or three different games at once. As a result, I was only able to identify the screenshots of games I had already played, which not only felt redundant but also reinforced the "insider" nature of the book that I mentioned earlier.
There are a surprising number of redacted quotes to be found within many of the interviews. However, they're not simply redacted, but presented in a rather odd fashion. I quote some of the more noticeable ones:
118 words redacted - story regarding a character model in Enemy Zero being based on someone in the games industry.
Katsutoshi Eguchi: (speaks in hushed voice) 42 words redacted, off the record, side story not directly related to [the subject].
Roy Ozaki: One of the reasons, because you're wondering, Hudson is not Hudson anymore.
262 words redacted on request - when Mr Ozaki noticed that the recording device was capturing the following dialogue, he exclaimed, "Wait, this thing is on?!" Mr Ozaki was concerned the material might physically endanger me.
Roy Ozaki: Anyway, business is heavy stuff!
Why would the author include these extensive details about redacted text? Why would he write anything other than simply the word "redacted"? Why would he even write "redacted" when he could have easily done a little bit of editing? Personally, I believe it's once again the insider nature of the book rearing its head, but in a particularly ugly fashion: Sczepanaik is exercising to us readers that he is privy to juicy information that very few people in the world know about; he is quite possibly the only English-speaking person who does know, and it's going to stay that way.
Worst of all, many interviews that were promised to be in this book are absent, and in their place a photograph of the interviewee with the headline "Appearing in a Later Volume". To give an idea of how often this happens, fifty subjects that were promised to be featured in the book are said to be appearing in a later volume. Naturally, backers are not entitled to a copy of this later volume. As of the time of writing, comments made by the author suggest that there will not be a second volume. Considering the poor quality of the first volume, this may actually be a blessing.
There are some valuable nuggets contained in these interviews that can't be found printed in English anywhere else, such as how Ys 3 was not originally planned to be a Ys game, and extensive details about the development and subsequent troubled translation of Suikoden 2, but I would be hard-pressed to recommend this to anybody; certainly not beginners due to its opaque nature, and not experts either due to the book's inconsistent and slipshod presentation.
April 11, 2015
Literally not one developer I backed this for is in the book. Arai, Nishizawa, Oka, I guess the idea is I should be a sheep and pay 50 bucks for the next book. And the next book after that. The author can claim that he only promised to interview them, not promised to put the interviews in the kickstarter volume, but I think we know that's a fallacious argument.
Truly, there's a lot of good interviews with historic developers here. It's just a shame the writer clearly doesn't respect them enough to put together properly. Considering the amount of money he asked for to write the book I was expecting, oh, call me crazy, writing. Expect for one random introduction and a rambling foreword the book dumps interviews on the page without context. There isn't even a timeline to give sense of history. The layout looks like it was done in the third world and the index is a unusable mess.
On star added for the nice cover of my edition.
This is a great deal at the Kindle price of 6 bucks but not at any other price. Ironically, the Kindle edition is the best one anyway because of the search function. Like I said, the index is unusable.
Truly, there's a lot of good interviews with historic developers here. It's just a shame the writer clearly doesn't respect them enough to put together properly. Considering the amount of money he asked for to write the book I was expecting, oh, call me crazy, writing. Expect for one random introduction and a rambling foreword the book dumps interviews on the page without context. There isn't even a timeline to give sense of history. The layout looks like it was done in the third world and the index is a unusable mess.
On star added for the nice cover of my edition.
This is a great deal at the Kindle price of 6 bucks but not at any other price. Ironically, the Kindle edition is the best one anyway because of the search function. Like I said, the index is unusable.
January 11, 2022
40 entrevistas, a maioria com desenvolvedores, programadores, diretores e músicos japoneses dos anos 80. Pra quem gosta de estudar "arqueologia dos videogames", é um prato cheio!
July 26, 2015
A rare and in-depth look into the early Japanese video game industry, straight from the developers themselves. This book is the end result of a Kickstarter pioneered by the author, John Szczepaniak. As a donator to the Kickstarter, I had high hopes for this project to uncover a side of the video game world that has little documentation, and the book did not disappoint.
That said, it is not free from criticism. The book certainly shows signs of being from an amateur author and publisher, being riddled with grammatical and format errors. Mr.Szczepaniak also cut out many of the promised interviews to be published in a second book. While this is forgivable, as the book still ended up being over five hundred pages, it's still disappointing we will have to wait longer, and eventually pay more, for the next volume.
In the end, however, I wanted to read about Japanese game developers who made contributions to the video game industry. I desired to know them as individuals, as well as learn about their experiences and memories, both wonderful and frustrating. I especially craved to read about those who don't get the attention and credit they deserve, no matter how niche and unappreciated their creations are. In this regard, I feel the book does an excellent job.
Whenever it may be, I look forward to Volume Two.
That said, it is not free from criticism. The book certainly shows signs of being from an amateur author and publisher, being riddled with grammatical and format errors. Mr.Szczepaniak also cut out many of the promised interviews to be published in a second book. While this is forgivable, as the book still ended up being over five hundred pages, it's still disappointing we will have to wait longer, and eventually pay more, for the next volume.
In the end, however, I wanted to read about Japanese game developers who made contributions to the video game industry. I desired to know them as individuals, as well as learn about their experiences and memories, both wonderful and frustrating. I especially craved to read about those who don't get the attention and credit they deserve, no matter how niche and unappreciated their creations are. In this regard, I feel the book does an excellent job.
Whenever it may be, I look forward to Volume Two.
November 24, 2014
Most of the stuff discussed here isn't well known outside of Japan, so don't expect info on your favorite NES/SNES game. The interviews are not well run and the editing is not great, but you do at least get the feeling that everything discussed has been transcribed and presented here. That's the issue with this book: you have to weed through a lot of meandering discussions to find something interesting. For example, the drawings of the office layouts are pointless, but hey, they're there in case you were curious.
I am a big fan of Japanese shooting games (think Galaga, not Halo) so I was hoping for interviews with folks from companies like Cave / Compile / Raizing / 8ing / Technosoft, but alas there isn't any mention of those companies except as a teaser for what's coming in volume two. Bummer.
I am a big fan of Japanese shooting games (think Galaga, not Halo) so I was hoping for interviews with folks from companies like Cave / Compile / Raizing / 8ing / Technosoft, but alas there isn't any mention of those companies except as a teaser for what's coming in volume two. Bummer.
September 25, 2020
This book offers a plethora of interesting information about Japanese game development in the 80s and 90s in the form of interviews. If you notice yourself losing interest, just skip around to the next one, they're all wildly different. I especially liked the one about the Game Arts. These people had no money, so they not only rented an apartment to work in, but they also had to work in trains since this was the cheapest way to sit somewhere and do work. Anything that wasn't code-related, they just bought a roundtrip ticket and worked while being on the train. Now that's dedication!
December 7, 2016
At times interesting, but often longwinded, irrelevant and samey. Imagine finding a book about Japanese game development that was too niche for me.
July 20, 2025
Interviews are such a pain to read and include so many unnecessary, almost annoying things, that I was really struggling to continue reading. For example, statements like the interviewed person "walks to kitchen sink, opens cupboard underneath" - are you serious? Is this is an interview with developer or about how small furniture is in Japan that you need to hide PC under kitchen sink? Asking because I paid money for the interviews with the developer and was hoping to read nice book about development, not things around it. Instead I got a mess: and not only visual side but, what is much more worse, content mess.
Book is full of weird statements & forced questions, each interview feels like if two people were locked in the room and were asked to talk about something which they don't really care about now but they have to still do it. Question such as "So what are these units here?" followed by the developer explaining how EPROM works, made me cry. Are you a kid trying to write something or adult writing serious book? Why the hell didn't the author take a small effort to be professional and really prepare instead of shooting questions based on what he is currently thinking about, furniture next to the developer, or what lies on the table in the room? There's no concept, everything is written so randomly and in an annoying style! Almost like the author wants to patronize his readers by pretending not to know anything about game dev and asking for any stupid thing he thinks of. Writing is at a middle school entry-level; it hurts your eyes and brain the more you try to read, and you want to be over with it ASAP and do something else.
Avoid, not worth of your time even if given for free. Yes, not guilty pleasure bad, just plain bad. I think there are better books from other authors, or read some nice short & focused interviews on internet.
(This reviews is for the first 3 volumes.)
Book is full of weird statements & forced questions, each interview feels like if two people were locked in the room and were asked to talk about something which they don't really care about now but they have to still do it. Question such as "So what are these units here?" followed by the developer explaining how EPROM works, made me cry. Are you a kid trying to write something or adult writing serious book? Why the hell didn't the author take a small effort to be professional and really prepare instead of shooting questions based on what he is currently thinking about, furniture next to the developer, or what lies on the table in the room? There's no concept, everything is written so randomly and in an annoying style! Almost like the author wants to patronize his readers by pretending not to know anything about game dev and asking for any stupid thing he thinks of. Writing is at a middle school entry-level; it hurts your eyes and brain the more you try to read, and you want to be over with it ASAP and do something else.
Avoid, not worth of your time even if given for free. Yes, not guilty pleasure bad, just plain bad. I think there are better books from other authors, or read some nice short & focused interviews on internet.
(This reviews is for the first 3 volumes.)
May 30, 2023
This series of interviews contains some great moments, and some good revelations about Japanese game developers, primarily from the early years of the video game industry. Unfortunately, it takes too much work to chug through these interviews to get to the interesting bits.
The book is set up strangely, in that Szczepaniak takes great pains to explain when he has edited interviews, even to the extent of incorporating other interviews from other sources into this book. Then, however, there is so very little editing within the content of individual interviews that it becomes painful. Much of the content is extraneous, perhaps reminding the author of the actual event, but readers probably have little interest in the workmanlike descriptions of food being served and similar details. The questions and answers also often contain no insights, answered with a "I don't remember," or some other response that needed to just be cut. There is also an obsession with getting the interviewees to sketch out office layouts, which provides no interesting insights once a foggy recollection of desk locations has been put to paper.
I get the impression that this was created with an eye towards being a complete record so that the most detail-oriented researcher in the future could pick apart one-word non-answers if they so choose. This is potentially a fine way to put together this book, but it makes for a lot of drudgery when trying to read from cover to cover.
If this is a topic of interest to you, I suggest just hopping to the developers you are interested in and not undertake a complete read through like I did.
The book is set up strangely, in that Szczepaniak takes great pains to explain when he has edited interviews, even to the extent of incorporating other interviews from other sources into this book. Then, however, there is so very little editing within the content of individual interviews that it becomes painful. Much of the content is extraneous, perhaps reminding the author of the actual event, but readers probably have little interest in the workmanlike descriptions of food being served and similar details. The questions and answers also often contain no insights, answered with a "I don't remember," or some other response that needed to just be cut. There is also an obsession with getting the interviewees to sketch out office layouts, which provides no interesting insights once a foggy recollection of desk locations has been put to paper.
I get the impression that this was created with an eye towards being a complete record so that the most detail-oriented researcher in the future could pick apart one-word non-answers if they so choose. This is potentially a fine way to put together this book, but it makes for a lot of drudgery when trying to read from cover to cover.
If this is a topic of interest to you, I suggest just hopping to the developers you are interested in and not undertake a complete read through like I did.
November 19, 2017
Very specialised and exhausting in it's subject matters and history explored but important for sure. It is an absolute tome to get through with no space left without words or (sadly) black and white images. Their has been a lot of controversy over time that has overshadowed Szczepaniak's undertaking which is real shame, but at the end of the day the books speak for themselves. Exhausting and brilliantly cult.
January 26, 2023
It was a great read to learn more about the history of current japanese game industry.
November 25, 2024
DNF deleted this and its sequel off my account. Both had been free
July 13, 2015
While this compilation of interviews will be best enjoyed by aficionados of Japanese games from the 1980s and 1990s, it contains an overview of visual novels that I haven't found anywhere else, and captures the voices of two prominent VN makers: Ryukishi07 (Higurashi, Umineko, Rose Guns Days) and Kotaro Uchikoshi (Never 7: The End of Infinity, Ever 17: The Out of Infinity, Remember 11: The Age of Infinity, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, etc.). I'm looking for more like these.
March 27, 2016
Tricky. Some of the information here is incredible, like the pre-console history of computing in Japan which is something I never really knew about. However, because if that it is a bit niche and sometime where there needs to be a bit more context there isn't any. Still, it's a fascinating read despite the author's ongoing obsession in getting people to sketch layouts of old offices.
April 12, 2016
Son entrevistas traducidas (con errores) del japonés al inglés, la edición no me ha gustado mucho.
El contenido ... habla mucho sobre ordenadores japoneses de los que no son muy fan (PC-88, etc...) pero si que cuenta alguna cosa curiosa.
Me leeré la segunda parte que también la tengo en algún futuro....
El contenido ... habla mucho sobre ordenadores japoneses de los que no son muy fan (PC-88, etc...) pero si que cuenta alguna cosa curiosa.
Me leeré la segunda parte que también la tengo en algún futuro....
January 10, 2016
Lots of interesting stories and behind the scenes information on some things few people outside of Japan know about. But what is with the author's fascination with getting people to draw the floorplans of the offices in which they worked?
August 25, 2015
I really loved this book. So many fascinating people with amazing, inspiring stories. I am glad they are preserved somewhere as without this book they would have probably gone untold.
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May 23, 2016Paused at 37%.
Interesting information, but not edited or pared down in any way. Leads to a very long dump of information without much context.
Interesting information, but not edited or pared down in any way. Leads to a very long dump of information without much context.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews