Japanese devs speak out on behalf of Western Gaming

In part one of a week-long series devoted to Western gaming, Weekly Famitsu speaks with Yakuza producer Toshihiro Nagoshi, and we have the translation.

By Eugene Huang

Nestled within the covers of the March 16th issue of Weekly Famitsu is a feature article explaining the current rage that is "Western" gaming. Whether by poor marketing, poor localization, or perhaps just personal bias, the majority of Japanese gamers still maintain the opinion that games developed in America or Europe have nothing to offer them. In an attempt to dispel the myths, Famitsu arranged for several interviews with top Japanese development talent to get their take on games made outside of Japan, but due to space restrictions, many of the developers' comments had to be cut.

However, the magazine has preserved these candid interviews, and will be reprinting them in a five part series to be presented all week long on Famitsu.com. Monday's interview was with Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi, who, in addition to working on the Daytona USA series, was also the producer behind Yakuza. Below are his thoughts, translated by GamePro:

My first memory of Western gaming was Marble Madness. When it came out in Tokyo, I remember seeing it in the arcades of Kabuki-cho [a particularly seedy area of Tokyo -ed.]. At the time, there were these particularly skilled players that played it endlessly, and I remember that I wanted to get my hands on the trackball and try it for myself, but didn't have the courage to do so. It was the first Western game I went crazy about, and eventually, I'd grab the trackball and play until I bled.

It was interesting to see how different people played in different ways. The way their fingers moved with the ball, the way they walked around with bandages on their fingers. Sometimes, you might even see some splotches of blood on the arcade machines. [Of course, it was Kabuki-cho, so there may have been some other reasons for all the blood and band-aids... -ed.]

Back then, I would have to say that the general image of Western games back then was "precision". But even though they were stereotyped as bland in some of the years leading up to Marble Madness, when it came to novelty and breaking down old ideas to propose new things, Western games arguably had some of the more dynamic games of the period.

We as Japanese developers had a lot to study from Western development houses. Things like "variation" were important to them, and the way they approached frame rates was a totally different idea from ours. But even more appropriately, I strongly felt that Western developers back then displayed a kind of boundless energy when it came to making games.

Anyway, at the same time that we began developing our own genres of games, we thought to ourselves, "Why are these Americans so obsessed with gaming?" We simply dismissed it as them just being American. But when I saw firsthand the kind of game that was possible due to an emphasis on frame rates, it dawned on me that our value systems at the time were totally different. For them, it wasn't just the nature of the game as it was a culture of focusing on the overall feeling of a game.

For example, Marble Madness isn't exactly physically accurate, but they produced it so that it's close enough to the real thing. Which resulted in people playing until their fingers bled. Players might have thought, "What the hell is this?" when it came to the game's music, but it was just weird enough to be able to stick inside your head forever. The arcade cabinet had a presence, a coordinated presentation that I think we can still learn from. If nothing else, it was an arcade game that didn't use a joystick, and that alone screamed out, "America." I'd never seen a game like that, and it was incredible.

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