What do you think?
Rate this book
Japansoft: An Oral History
An innovative and beautifully designed history of the nascent Japanese videogame industry, as told by those who were there, Japansoft: An Oral History offers intimate insight into the games, companies and human experiences which forged a whole new culture. Comprising interviews with lesser documented developers at companies including Sega, Enix, Capcom, Hudson Soft and Nihon Falcom, Japansoft: An Oral History offers fresh and diverse perspectives on many of the defining games of their time.
A re-edited digest of game journalist John Szczepaniak’s three volume series, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, this edition adds brand new, specially-conducted interviews with figures including Dylan Cuthbert (Star Fox), Manami Matsumae (Mega Man, Dynasty Wars) and Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl).
This publication is a pseudo-sequel to the critically acclaimed Britsoft: An Oral History, seeing editor Alex Wiltshire (Edge, Minecraft Blockopedia) and leading design agency Julia return with a multilayered and eclectic publication that offers a unique reading experience through interlinked interviews that can be read in any order.
Enhancing a book already rich with insightful interviews are anecdotal illustrations by iconic Japanese illustrator Yu Nagaba, never-before-seen period photographs, rare press adverts and an illustrated guide to the key computers and consoles that defined the early Japanese game industry.
A re-edited digest of game journalist John Szczepaniak’s three volume series, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, this edition adds brand new, specially-conducted interviews with figures including Dylan Cuthbert (Star Fox), Manami Matsumae (Mega Man, Dynasty Wars) and Keiji Yamagishi (Ninja Gaiden, Tecmo Bowl).
This publication is a pseudo-sequel to the critically acclaimed Britsoft: An Oral History, seeing editor Alex Wiltshire (Edge, Minecraft Blockopedia) and leading design agency Julia return with a multilayered and eclectic publication that offers a unique reading experience through interlinked interviews that can be read in any order.
Enhancing a book already rich with insightful interviews are anecdotal illustrations by iconic Japanese illustrator Yu Nagaba, never-before-seen period photographs, rare press adverts and an illustrated guide to the key computers and consoles that defined the early Japanese game industry.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2020
9 people are currently reading
204 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 12, 2020
This is a hard book to review. It's a re-edited version of the interviews found in John Szczepaniak's three "Untold History of Japanese Game Developers" books, plus a few additional interviews.
While Szczepaniak's books were a valuable resource for researchers, containing very long interviews with Japanese developers, as books they were borderline unreadable. Unprofessional, poorly edited and poorly presented, they were basically a printed Word file with every single thing said during the interviews, including small-talk and awkward jokes.
Japansoft solves this by editing the three books down to a single, great-looking book, with the most interesting things that were said. Basically, it turned 50 hours of raw interviews into a 2 hour documentary.
That's great, but there's still a few problems: documentaries usually contextualize viewers, but here you won't get detailed introductions, or even game screenshots. If you don't already know about Japanese game studios like T&E Soft and games like The Black Onyx, you might need to pause to Google them. Also, the interviews are heavily edited and mixed together, so a researcher might still prefer the original books.
Not fit for casual reading, nor fit for research, it's an enthusiast's book. That's not a bad thing, just be aware of what you are getting into.
My only harsh criticism is regarding the photos & images. There are dozens of pages showing old pictures, game ads and posters, but they receive absolutely no context, translation or explanation. What's the point of showing photos of people but not telling who they are or where they worked at? Or showing a Japanese comic with no translation, explanations or date?
That aside, it's a great book for enthusiasts looking for some tales about the early days of Japanese game development.
While Szczepaniak's books were a valuable resource for researchers, containing very long interviews with Japanese developers, as books they were borderline unreadable. Unprofessional, poorly edited and poorly presented, they were basically a printed Word file with every single thing said during the interviews, including small-talk and awkward jokes.
Japansoft solves this by editing the three books down to a single, great-looking book, with the most interesting things that were said. Basically, it turned 50 hours of raw interviews into a 2 hour documentary.
That's great, but there's still a few problems: documentaries usually contextualize viewers, but here you won't get detailed introductions, or even game screenshots. If you don't already know about Japanese game studios like T&E Soft and games like The Black Onyx, you might need to pause to Google them. Also, the interviews are heavily edited and mixed together, so a researcher might still prefer the original books.
Not fit for casual reading, nor fit for research, it's an enthusiast's book. That's not a bad thing, just be aware of what you are getting into.
My only harsh criticism is regarding the photos & images. There are dozens of pages showing old pictures, game ads and posters, but they receive absolutely no context, translation or explanation. What's the point of showing photos of people but not telling who they are or where they worked at? Or showing a Japanese comic with no translation, explanations or date?
That aside, it's a great book for enthusiasts looking for some tales about the early days of Japanese game development.
June 7, 2023
Книга представляет собой сборник на основе трехтомника с интервью с японскими разработчиками. Эта отредактированная версия, видимо, задумывалась с целью сократить и лучше структурировать записанные мысли отцов японского геймдева. Результат — неоднозначный.
С одной стороны, это без сомнения интересный отпечаток эпохи конца 80-х и возможность заглянуть в прошлое геймдева. С другой — книге очень не хватает дополнительных деталей и пояснений. Я бы воспринимал ее как книгу-компаньон, читая которую, вам придется самостоятельно копаться в сети и искать геймплей упомянутых игр на YouTube. Это интересный опыт, но просто “перед сном” такую вещь не почитаешь.
В книге используется любопытная навигация, которая позволяет при желании уйти от стандартного постраничного маршрута и вместо этого проследить мысли конкретного разработчика, открывая указанные страницы. Здесь приятная верстка, отлично подобраны цвета и шрифт. Однако при этом в книге есть более 30 разворотов с фотографиями участников и рекламными постерами — без каких-либо комментариев или подписей. Понять кто все эти люди и что за игры изображены — практически невозможно.
Посылаю отдельный привет издательству “Белое яблоко”! Почему решили выпустить книгу на русском, предварительно не показав перевод редакторам — загадка. Текст местами совсем сырой и кишит странными оборотами, непонятными отсылками и ляпами. Японские понятия то переводятся, то сопровождаются сноской, то просто вставляются без пояснений. Читать эту белиберду сложно, местами — будто сочинение пятиклассника.
Иными словами, книга неплохая, но чтение это нелегкое. А решившие прочесть на русском еще и автоматом активируют режим сложности Nightmare.
С одной стороны, это без сомнения интересный отпечаток эпохи конца 80-х и возможность заглянуть в прошлое геймдева. С другой — книге очень не хватает дополнительных деталей и пояснений. Я бы воспринимал ее как книгу-компаньон, читая которую, вам придется самостоятельно копаться в сети и искать геймплей упомянутых игр на YouTube. Это интересный опыт, но просто “перед сном” такую вещь не почитаешь.
В книге используется любопытная навигация, которая позволяет при желании уйти от стандартного постраничного маршрута и вместо этого проследить мысли конкретного разработчика, открывая указанные страницы. Здесь приятная верстка, отлично подобраны цвета и шрифт. Однако при этом в книге есть более 30 разворотов с фотографиями участников и рекламными постерами — без каких-либо комментариев или подписей. Понять кто все эти люди и что за игры изображены — практически невозможно.
Посылаю отдельный привет издательству “Белое яблоко”! Почему решили выпустить книгу на русском, предварительно не показав перевод редакторам — загадка. Текст местами совсем сырой и кишит странными оборотами, непонятными отсылками и ляпами. Японские понятия то переводятся, то сопровождаются сноской, то просто вставляются без пояснений. Читать эту белиберду сложно, местами — будто сочинение пятиклассника.
Иными словами, книга неплохая, но чтение это нелегкое. А решившие прочесть на русском еще и автоматом активируют режим сложности Nightmare.
October 8, 2023
A frustrating "product", a bad book.
Felipe goes into detail of how the book came to be - I won't repeat that.
My impressions:
- the paper is unnecessarily thick and makes it needlessly difficult to turn pages. It also makes the book feel longer than it is and overall feels like a wanky attempt at a "premium product"
- the whole thing feels pretentious, because it's so overengineered from the paper to the fonts used (many of them quite light, making it harder to heard. Yay!) and the way it's edited. (MANY footnotes with difficult to differentiate symbols, text boxes that are meant to interrupt the main flow of the interview, but it's not super clear where exactly...)
- a symptom of the previous problem - the book is for basically nobody. As you're reading, you're only given names of people and they start to meld together - because you're not given any photos of them, they're just all one voice in your head. Same thing happens to the games they're talking about, because all you get is description in the text - there are NO SCREENSHOTS of ANY OF THE GAMES!!! You get zero context for anything.
You do however get a block of pretentiously edited photographs of...people? places? You have no idea, they're just all lumped together in the middle to look pretty on that thickass paper, but offering no actual context to the text.
- there are still quite a few typos and broken sentences. Premium product my ass!
This is a "premium product" meant to look good on a shelf, not a book for reading.
Save your money.
Felipe goes into detail of how the book came to be - I won't repeat that.
My impressions:
- the paper is unnecessarily thick and makes it needlessly difficult to turn pages. It also makes the book feel longer than it is and overall feels like a wanky attempt at a "premium product"
- the whole thing feels pretentious, because it's so overengineered from the paper to the fonts used (many of them quite light, making it harder to heard. Yay!) and the way it's edited. (MANY footnotes with difficult to differentiate symbols, text boxes that are meant to interrupt the main flow of the interview, but it's not super clear where exactly...)
- a symptom of the previous problem - the book is for basically nobody. As you're reading, you're only given names of people and they start to meld together - because you're not given any photos of them, they're just all one voice in your head. Same thing happens to the games they're talking about, because all you get is description in the text - there are NO SCREENSHOTS of ANY OF THE GAMES!!! You get zero context for anything.
You do however get a block of pretentiously edited photographs of...people? places? You have no idea, they're just all lumped together in the middle to look pretty on that thickass paper, but offering no actual context to the text.
- there are still quite a few typos and broken sentences. Premium product my ass!
This is a "premium product" meant to look good on a shelf, not a book for reading.
Save your money.
August 24, 2023
Interesting collection of interviews about the early days of the Japanese games industry. Almost zero editorializing is given, just the cleaned up interview sections divided up by company and loosely organized based on the topics covered. Primarily interesting for game developers, this book was great for revealing how early developers in the space worked without any spin trying to tell a cohesive or impressive story. One I can definitely recommend for all the interesting anecdotes!
August 17, 2025
Japan was the powerhouse for game development in the 80s and 90s and hearing some of these stories will almost make you feel nostalgic for a time and place you (probably) didn’t experience. I enjoyed the wide variety of devs interviewed, from well known stars to the fairly obscure. There were stories I wish could be been expanded on, such as the chapter on Human Entertainment and their creative accounting practices.
March 3, 2021
Absolute must read for anyone interested in either Japan, Japanese history or games as a whole. A frequently amusing, and always interesting, account of how a handful of forward-thinking individuals from humble origins created the foundations for Japan's powerhouse position in games on a global scale.
Read
November 4, 2021A niche collection of segments of interviews with mostly obscure Japanese game devs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Interesting enough for me to finish, but certainly not for everyone. I enjoyed hearing about the old computer hardware, various limitations, and the tension between arcade, PC, and console games. A well-designed and well-made book for sure.
November 1, 2020
Some killer info in here I hadn't known before, but it's pretty dry. A good look into early game dev in Japan.
March 4, 2022
Great interviews and a nice little collector's item all in one.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews