Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 160: Memoirs of a Game Counselor

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Jeremy chats with 17-Bit Studios boss Jake Kazdal about the road he traveled from working an NES-era Nintendo game counselor to collaborating on SEGA classics like Rez to running his own game development studio in Japan.

This week in Retronauts, Memoirs of a Game Counselor. the means to play every classic game back in the day. The show involves a lot of research as a result. Of course, when we were kids, we didn't have Gamefly, the best way to buy and rent all your favorite games. With a monthly subscription to Gamefly.com, you can pick your favorite games from more than 9,000 titles and have them mailed directly to your door to try before you buy. You don't have to waste your money, buying the latest new games until you know if they're worth it. For one monthly fee, Gamefly gives you access to a limited video game rentals of all the most popular titles, from mainstream favorites like Madden and Call

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This premium trial allows you to check out two games and or movies at a time. A special Retronauts offer. The usual first free month offer is only one game at a time. You can only get this offer by visiting gamefly.com slash retronauts. Sign up today and start playing all your favorite games absolutely free for 30 days. Everyone, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. This is another live on-site in Japan episode. I am Jeremy Parrish and I am in sunny, humid Kyoto, Japan once again, adjacent to Bit Summit.

And this time I am at the offices of 17-bit to talk to the man, the legend. Jake Kasdahl. Hi, how are you doing, everybody? Yeah. Jake, it's great to have you on this show. I can't believe we haven't actually had you on Retronauts until now. But yeah, we've known each other for ages. And I've gradually discovered that you have all kinds of fascinating anecdotes about having worked in the video games industry for a long, long time. When did you start working in the games industry? 1989. Do you mind saying how old you were at that point? You must win a teenager. I had just turned 16. I just, um, I was going to get my driver's license, actually. It was like the same time. And I found out that my best friend growing up, sister got a new job at Nintendo.

And I was like, what? He was like, yeah, Nintendo's like right down the street. I grew up in Woodenville, Washington, which is right next to Redmond, Washington. And I was like, Nintendo, like the Nintendo is right down the street. And she got a job there. He's like, yeah. So we went and looked into it. And it turns out there was these things called game counselors, which were people that played all the games.

And they were the guys that you talked to on the hotline. I knew who they were. I didn't realize it was in my own backyard. And so you had to be 16. to get a job there. So as soon as I turned 16, I was like, are you kidding me? This is happening. I went down there and at the job. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, that would have been right around the time Nintendo Power was first sort of, I guess, about to go monthly. Because it launched in summer 88, and it was bi-monthly at that point. And then after about a year or so it went just full monthly. And that was when they really started to go crazy on the counselor corner. Yeah. Howard Phillips's desk was just right past the game counselor section there. So I used to see him and be like, oh, all-star struck. Yeah, there was a lot of memories from that time. A lot of stuff going on.

It was just deep in the, you know, the NES days kind of leading up into the launch of the Super Famicom in Japan, which Nintendo vehemently denied was ever going to launch in the West, which is a really interesting time. I mean, as a kid, I wasn't even aware of, I'm just a few years younger than you. I wasn't really aware of the Super Famicom until Nintendo Power started showing it off. But I don't think there was ever any doubt that it was going to come to the U.S. I think the market was so strong, the Famicom or the NES market in the United States and North America in general was just so strong. I think they knew it was an inevitable inevitability too, but they were like, listen, let's just, we're not going to address this just yet. Like, let's just keep it down and, you know, tell everybody that we're not planning to bring it out here. And we all knew, of course, they're going to do it sometime.

You know, the Sega Genesis was starting to pick up steam and stuff like that. But yeah, everybody's just like, all right, whatever, the boss is kind of looking at us, trying to keep a straight face. We're like, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's something we've talked about a lot, you know, trying to decrypt some of the localization choices and Nintendo made back in the day, especially with like Super Mario Bros. 2 and why we didn't get the Japanese one. And it just seems to be like the weird disconnect between launch windows in each respect to territory and, you know, the fact that the NES market was really picking up right around the time the Famicom market in Japan was starting to trail off. So, yeah, like they had to take different tactics to each market. to, you know, to maximize thing. And it's, it's never, it's never good to, you know, tell people, oh, yeah, you could, you should buy the system, but also there's a better one that's going to be on the way pretty soon.

That's, that's been, I think every publisher or every first party is marketing lying for a long time, but especially demonstrably Nintendo, you know, with like, play it loud. And then, you know, right when the N64 came out, suddenly the message is, change the system. Yeah. So, so I guess that was, you know, kind of baked in. into the marketing way back in the day. So, yeah, it's interesting that you just basically applied for a job at Nintendo and got it.

I mean, were there a lot of applicants? Was there like a screening process? There was a, so at the time you wouldn't get hired on directly at Nintendo. You would be hired on as a temporary employee through, it was called Volt back then. I think it might be still around. But it was basically a temporary staffing service that would supply employees to people in need. Yeah, I know people who have gotten jobs at Nintendo in recent years who started out as temps, and it was just basically kind of like a migration process.

Yeah, so that, you know, I went in and there was a very simple test. It was a couple of questions about, you know, Legend of Zelda, like the meat puzzle with the fairy. And there was some Super Mario brother questions and just some really basic kind of like, do you actually have any clue what's going on about video games? I did. And that was that. you know, there was about, in the end, there was about five or six of us from my high school that were all working there at the same time. I mean, a lot of the kids there were all local

kids. They were from either Baffle or for Engelmore, Woodenville, you know, kind of Redmond that area. It was just all people after work. I mean, a lot of the part-time employees were still college or high school students. And then a lot of the full-timers were people that had sort of, you know, either come up through that system or were kind of more adult-y types. Right. There was a fair amount of adults that were just doing it too. I mean, it was a great job. It paid decent. The hours were okay and, you know, it was super fun.

We had all the games we could play. You know, they super inspired us to, you know, and they kind of encouraged us to check out games from the massive library and just play stuff for free. That must have been rough. Yeah, it was terrible. Just having this massive catalog, you know, and me as a 16-year-old, all of a sudden having all the free games I can play, it was pretty great, you know, and we would play games while we were working and stuff.

And so, you know, I learned a really kind of multi, what's the word I'm looking for, multitask in talking to people playing games. games, looking stuff off, you know, the computer stuff. Like, we still, we were, I was at the generation where we were kind of just ending up with the big blue books full of the colored copy maps. Right, yeah, I heard about the binders and stuff like that. So we still had those on standby, and we did utilize them, but, you know, more and more stuff was going into the Elmo system, which was a database, basically, where you could type

in keywords. And then there were people around the office that were the experts at, you know, certain games. This guy, Dennis was the head of, like, you know, Magic of Shahrazad and Ultima, stuff like that. You know, so there's like these experts, you would go. kind of get in line and wait for them to give you the quick, you know, lowdown on that. So it was really a whole game of like asking them enough questions to get enough relevant data so you could go run over to somebody else, even if you never play the game and try to get as much

kind of simple stuff. And then you'd come back and you would, you know, they train us really well to sort of dull out the data like purposefully, like instead of just giving away the answer, trying to kind of like lead them into figuring out themselves, giving them little, you know, snippets and stuff like that. And so after you've been doing it long enough, even on games you never played before, you knew how to ask leading questions and how to sort of drop in the hints to get people to kind of figure it out themselves. And they'd be like, oh, I got it. And they'd hang up. Thank you so much.

And they'd hang up. You're like, okay, cool. So it was, it was a great time. It was a great rewarding job. And it was my first time really like, obviously being on the inside of the game industry and seeing a lot of the stuff. And, you know, I really sort of submit. I mean, I always love video games. I always love video games. But that really cemented my love of like, just like, you know, why would I want to work in any other field besides games? This is amazing. How many game counselors were there at the time that you were hired at Nintendo? There was a few. I mean, we were, we talking like dozens?

More than that. It was a pretty big call center. And then you would have like, I don't think high schoolers were allowed to work more than 20 hours a week. So I worked like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three to eight. And then Sunday morning like eight to one or something like that. So it was like a 20 hour shift or 20 hours a week. But there was, you know, probably at least, I mean, even on Sunday morning, was the quietest and it was terrible once I got later in high school and I was

starting to party having that 8 o'clock in the morning shift was no fun but even on the quietest mornings there was probably at least 40 or 50 people in there but then like on weeknights and stuff like that it would be you know probably over 100 people oh wow I didn't realize it was so big yeah so that was that was a 900 number right like you or did it start out as 800 boy when did it switch it started off with a 900 number and people got really upset and then I think they changed it to free for local callers, and then it started, it was just like a regular long distance call for everybody else at that point. I don't remember exactly when those things changed, but I was local, so it worked out for us. But yeah, I remember getting a lot of concerned parents being like,

okay, Tommy, you had five minutes to talk to this man, you know, like, you better figure it out. Like, we're hanging it up then. Like, you know, I was like, don't worry, ma'am, I got this, you know, I'll speed it up a bit for you. So that's awesome. I only ever called the counselor or hotline or whatever once and that was with chrono trigger i was trying to figure out like this clue like i thought i was supposed to do something at the end of the game like trying to wrap up all the side quests and it turns out that it was just a weird choice of localization and there was nothing else to do so i like spent four dollars to basically be told yeah there's you're you're done you've done everything so so then i had to wait you know i was trying to save the princess chala but

can't do that in that game. I had to wait for Chrono Cross to come out. And that's like the whole plot there. So four years later, I finally, finally got my, my $4 worth. I remember calling once when I was, I think I just finished Legend of Zelda, the first Legend of Zelda. And I was so excited. I just called to tell him. And he's like, oh, congratulations, man. You know, like, you're number seven. You're the seventh person to finish the game. Like, he's totally pulling my leg. But I was like, oh, my God. Went to school, told everybody. Like, I was so excited. You know, it was a big deal. So it was a great crew. Like, I'm still friends with a bunch of those guys and everybody's kind of a lot of people who stayed in the industry and obviously

moved up into different you know facets of the industry and then they closed the game counselor center down that building is actually gone now they was sort of bulldozed to make way for their fancy new headquarters now which is really nice um but I still like to go back there and just kind of reminisce and every once in a while bump into somebody I recognize it was a cool time yeah I hear people stay at nintendo a long time yeah I think it's a good company to work for um yeah it's one of the one of the few companies who were like people stay there for decades you A lot of people have just been there forever. It's just a comfortable place to work.

You know, it's got a good atmosphere. There's a happiness to it. I think the new headquarters is much more sort of jovial and decorated than it was back in the day. It was pretty low-key sort of just office park stuff back then. But now it's a really beautiful campus. Yeah, yeah. I've been there like once to the new place and then they stopped doing PR junkets at their

offices and we just, they opened a PR office in San Francisco where all the media is, which makes more sense. like instead of flying up, you know, journalists every few months to see a game, they would just have them drive down to their offices. But I do kind of miss the, you know, the days of going up to Nintendo and getting to see Seattle. And I think the last junket I went on was for the baseball game for GameCube. They never released. Oh, wow.

And so I say junket, but, I mean, it wasn't like, you know, they weren't putting money in my pocket or anything. But they gave us a tour of the Seattle ballpark, the Mariners ballpark. took us back into the dugouts and, you know, behind the scenes where the teams go and down onto the field. And that was pretty cool. I dug that. It was interesting. We got to go sit up in the box seats and play demos of the game and talk to the crazy

new president, Reggie. So that was, yeah, good times. But, yeah, it's interesting to hear about this from the inside perspective. How closely did you guys work in the call center with Nintendo Power, like their counselor corner section? I always wondered about the process. There was, I mean, the guys that worked on that, I think, you know, a couple of them came from the call center. I forget his last name, Redhead guy named Tony.

There was a couple of other guys that were kind of like call center part time, but they were also contributing to the magazine. I don't think it was like, it wasn't like a regular thing. Like I was in it twice as a, I guess once as a game counselor. Did you get your little photo in there? Yeah. Back when I had a mull. I got to go check that out. I think it was the one with the TMNT on the cover.

I'm sure I've poured over that issue. They misspelled my name, which broke my heart because I waited for years for that. Unbelievable. And they kind of quit doing like the bio. Like I waited for years to get in. And like they used to have a little bio like your favorite games and all these little, you know, snippets and stuff like that. And basically they just switched it to, I think it was just like a tip. And I don't think I even wrote the tip.

I think someone else is writing in for me. And I was just like, oh. And then they misspelled my name. I was like, ah. But I was in. So that was cool. And then years later when I worked at my first like real long term. production, you know, on Twisted Edge snowboarding for N64, I got in and again, and they

had a picture of me and all my toys and all that kind of stuff. So that was cool coming back home. What issue was that one? That one was Donkey Kong. No, what was there? Dunkey, Dittie Kong Racing was on the cover. Twisted Edge Snowboarding was an N64 game that we did at the time. And I was like the only kind of hardcore snowboard on the team. I came up the name Twisted Edge, me and my buddy, Darren, who also worked there as a part-time tester for a while. Yeah, they did a big kind of interview on Boss Game Studios and all this kind of stuff. I had a big spread on my wall of toys, which ended up getting me the job at Sega years later because I had all these cool Sega toys and stuff like that. So I'm sure we'll get to that.

Interesting. Yeah. So how long were you a game counselor? About two and a half years, I think, from the fall of 89 until the fall, maybe it was two years, fall of 91, I think. So you dropped out because you just couldn't handle a newfangled 16-bit hardware. I think I actually quit before the Super Nintendo launched, but I was around for the Super Famicom launch. And in fact, I got a Christmas bonus that year,

and I bought a Super Famicom. I imported one from, I think, Game Fan, or was it Lixen? Was Lickson still around back then? NCS, I think, was around. And it was Encinics. Yeah, I don't remember. It was one of those guys. And I spent my entire bonus on a, from Nintendo to Nintendo,

So I got a Super Famicom with Gradius and Super Mario World and, um, that's awesome. Pilot Wings, that's zero. I think ActRaser may have been right after that. Yeah, that was December and the system launched in November. So you did it right at launch, you would have missed out on Act Razor. I remember getting the, uh, I had, like, it was like in high school. I had finals and stuff. And I went snowboarding one night because it was close to the mountains up there.

And I got back at like midnight. I knew I had to be wake up at like six for a full day of, I've taken finals at high school. And my mom's like, she was still awake. she's like this big package came from me. I'm like, no, not tonight. No, God. Of course, I'm not going to sleep. So I stayed up. Stayed up and played Super Mario World on my, you know, all in Japanese. I didn't read a lick of Japanese back then. So I just kind of, that actually, I think, added to the experience because it was like even more mysterious and more. Like, I don't know what the hell is going on in any capacity here. I'm just going to figure it out by

kind of hammering through it. And, uh, yeah, I remember that first time that bullet bill came by and just took up the whole screen and blew my mind. You know, when you look back at it, it's only like a quarter of the screen high, but it's, seemed, it seemed like the full screen at the time. You were just like, what the hell? I mean, that was, you know, 10 times bigger than any Sprite that I'd ever seen before. Yeah. Yeah, that's a cool experience.

So after you left Nintendo's call center, where did you go from there? So I took some, you know, I took some time off. I convinced my parents that I needed to study and focus on my studies. I was just tired of doing the Sunday morning, five o'clock thing, I think. I mean, the money was great. I had a good time. But during that time, there was another. guy, Llewellyn, who was a super agent, which means he was doubly trained on all the

game counselor stuff and all the IT sort of customer support stuff. And he had this, it was right when Dragon Quest was coming out, Dragon Warrior. So 89. Yeah. He had a, like this Dragon Warrior, maybe something else. Yeah, didn't he have like a section in Nintendo Power? I feel like the name Lou Ellen, like is ringing a quarter. Yeah, he was a big deal those days.

I forget what year was exactly, but he, so Dragon Warrior was published by Nintendo First Party. The first one was published in-house by Nintendo First Party. They translated everything. It was a big deal. I remember the excitement leading up to it. They were like, we're going to introduce this role-playing genre to the West. It's going to be a big deal. We're going to do this thing.

And he had this poster somehow that I had never seen before. I'm like, nobody else had it. And I was like, where did you get that? He's like, and you know, NX's headquarters is right down the street. I was like, no. So that kind of planted a seed. And then I, you know, in high school, I was. playing these other games and I sort of must have been right or you know right when

the Super Famcom kind of towards that launch period when I I must have quit Nintendo around that time and I was playing a bunch of Act Razor and I got stuck in ActRager and there was no internet back then and there was no one to call so I looked up the annexes addresses and I went down to their little they're in this little business park and I went down and they had a game counselor and he's like well I'm not supposed to really you know talk about that game yet because it's not released here yet but I have played through it and I do know what you're talking about. So I'll just kind of give you this tin. He walked me through it. I forget what it was one of the puzzles. If you didn't read Japanese, it wasn't. Yeah, you have to like use music and stuff to cure

anger. It was one of those kind of more obscure things. And I was like, I never would have been able to do it without him. Rob Gerald, he's still in the games industry. He's a producer at Microsoft. So I just kind of, I was like, oh, man, this is even closer to this horse. Like, you know, they had this Japanese boss and like, it was a cool little office. They had all this cool art. And I was so into Actraiser. I started bugging him for a job. And, like, it was years. Like, he, I would keep just checking in every couple months. I was like, hey, hey.

They only had the one game counselor. And they're like, nope, we still don't need any other employees. And then finally he got sort of promoted to kind of more of a producer role with, they were doing external development, but it was in the Seattle area on King Arthur, the King Arthur game. Okay. And so he got sort of transferred out of their little tiny call center, which was a single little tiny, you know, office.

And so he called me up. And I think I had just graduated from high school at the time. him. And he offered me the job funding. He's like, you know, you've been coming in for years. I'm going to, I'm going to give it to you first. I was like, sweet. So I took it. And so I worked at NX for, it was only about a year or so I think that I was there. But I mean, I got to meet Miyazaki son of the quintet crew and stuff like that. And I was just like, wow, man. They came to the U.S. occasionally. Yeah. Well, they were doing, I guess they were working up towards Zach Razor 2. And so we got to meet them and talk to them. All right. That was, yeah, that was collaborative with like a U.S. Yeah. So they, the U.S. office actually made the decision to, sort of remove the role playing stuff from it, which I thought was just a boner move. I was like, no, man, you're, you're killing me. So the second game I never got nearly as into as the first one. I mean, it was beautiful. Yeah, it's one of the best-looking platformers on any of super Nias.

And it's also one of the hardest. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I played it years later even with like a cheat code enabled. Like, you still just die all the time. Like, it's almost impossible to just like be good at that game. Like, it was a tricky game. I don't know if they's, you know, rushed it or whatever, but it didn't feel the same as the first one. I mean, definitely, like you said, fidelity, the graphic fidelity was phenomenal.

But as a game, it just didn't quite bring it. But anyways, Act Razor brought me to Enix, and that led me to sort of realizing Rob was producing this King Arthur game with Manly and Associates who were based in Issaquah at the time. They were a small sort of studio. I've seen their name on a few like NES and maybe Game Boy games. Yeah, so he knew that I like to draw. I would spend a lot of time in their drawing and kind of, it was like when Edge was just coming out then. I was like reading Edge and just spending a lot. It was way quieter at NX.

There was one game counselor for a reason. Like, it was way quiet than the other thing. Most questions were about the, you know, the Dragon Warrior games. Right. At the time. I assume you had to have, like, have, like, super deep knowledge of the Dragon Warrior games because people would ask you questions and they'd be. He did. But, again, Rob had been doing it for years.

And he sat, you know, five feet from me. So, like, I would play through them all. I played through all the games. But he just, like, he had him down. It was way faster to be, like, hey, you know, what's this thing? This guy's looking for this castle. And I don't remember that part. So he kind of walked me through all that stuff.

But then he started showing me the art from the mailing associate stuff. And I was like, wow, like, people actually make these games. Like, there are humans out there that do this stuff. And that's not just like a deep in Japan thing. I didn't realize that there was like literally local developers doing, you know, cool game stuff like that. And so that sort of inspired me to, I mean, I hated walking away from that job because I loved Annex and I loved everything about the brand. But I ended up going to art school and realizing that I wanted to be a, you know, production artist. I didn't want to just sort of be on the outside looking in.

And so I went off and went to art college and then ended up getting a job at Lobotomy Studios right after I graduated, like literally Monday after I graduated on a Friday. And Lobotomy was run by a bunch of ex-game counselors that had been sort of some of my leads when I was at Nintendo back in the day. They had rolled off and started their own production studio. And so they gave me my first job right out of college. I was only there for about a month. That was an intern. They did we were kind of between projects, didn't have any funding. And then Rob from Enix was working at Boss.

And he said, hey, come over here. We're expanding. They've got great salaries, and it's a big kind of corporate thing. It's exactly what you need to be doing right now with your life. So he helped me introduce to the art director and brought me in for an interview and stuff like that. So I got that job. And that was where I really drove into production and it's an animator and modeler and stuff like that. And learned a lot of the basic tricks of the trade and really became a game creator at that point.

I would like to talk a little more about your time at NX because I really love the games they make too. And like their Super NES output was really quirky and distinct. And there were, you know, there were a few little gaps in their library that always kind of seemed like a big loss, like Dragon Quest 5. Do you know whatever happened with that? I think it was just the translation cost. Sorry, we're at the bang in here, folks. They're tearing down the scaffolding on an old house that's being restored right next to our office. Well, that's what happens when we're on site.

It's out of our control. The Famicom could only handle like certain resolution. So they used a lot of the simpler characters and stuff, which took up more space than just... Like in text, do you mean? Yeah. But with the Super Famicom stuff, it was, you know, they could pack in a lot more kanji. And when you unpacked that, it turned into, you know, words that were much longer. And it just led to a lot more complex localization services.

And the whole process just became a lot more sort of involved and expensive. And I think that's why some of the key. big Japanese titles just didn't make it over there. I don't know who, you know, exactly what the decision was, but like there was some sort of tradeoff between time and money. And they were just like, well, you know, and Dragon Warrior never took off in the West, like, you know, anywhere near the way that it did in the East. So I know, I know Nintendo really, you know, put a lot of hopes into it.

And they, they pimped it really hard in Nintendo power. And, you know, I was a good little boy. And I got a copy for Christmas that year. And, uh, I know I'm kind of in a small minority, uh, relatively speaking, because, uh, they ended up. Actually, I've assumed that the Nintendo Power giveaway where you subscribed and you got a copy of Dragon Warrior, that was like leftover copies of the game that they didn't sell. Do you know if that's true or if it's more a matter of just like the moment you said that they rang a bell, but I don't recall the details. I mean, I remember hearing conversations like that, but I don't, it's been so long.

I don't remember. But yeah, whatever the case, I mean, they were like literally giving away Dragon Warriors so people would get into the series. but it just never, yeah, it's never been as big in the U.S. as in Japan. I hope 11 does well in America because it's a really good game. Yeah, they're all great games. It looks great. You know, it's, I think, honestly, I think the decision to redo all the art for the packaging was a mistake. Like, they had such strong branding in the East, you know, Curitoryama's artwork was always just so stunning.

Those covers were always amazing. These still some of my favorite cover art. And they just kind of got random people to do these kind of like really sort of generic sort of, you know, fantasy sort of covers. for the games. And I feel like, I mean, this was not just annex by any means. And all companies at the time were like, well, this stuff is too Japanese and too wacky. Let's get some, you know, fantasy artist here in the West to redo this whole thing and rebrand everything. And I just think it was just pure foolishness. I think, you know, there was so much work and how much love and TLC put into the original packaging that just dumping all that for the sake of trying

to do something that would hit closer to home, I think just it was just stupid. Yeah, I mean, the in-game characters that Toriyama designs are so full of personality. You know, everything from the little basic smiling slime to the big dragons that are kind of like looking at you from, you know, with their heads tilted to skew. And they have this kind of sly expression like I'm about to eat a really delicious meal. Like it's, it's great. There's so much personality in that series. And yeah, I agree. Like the U.S. packaging. It was, it was pretty nice. Like the first box was not so great, but the sequels had some really nice paintings. But they didn't really. They don't capture the essence. The spirit of the actual product And I just, it always just drove me nuts And I'm like, why? Why? Why? Why? Yeah, I mean, you know, you have some really infamous examples of just like,

what are you doing like the Sweikiden U.S. packaging where it's like a bad romance cover or Clash a Demonhead for NES where you have like a game that is maybe the most anime game on NES and it has just like ripping biceps and shiny chrome and helpless damsels and scanty skirts. I'm, guys, no. I mean, it was a different time. And I think now if anybody could go back, they probably would have changed their minds

and, you know, stuck closer to the source material. But, you know, that was just kind of the standard issue for whatever reason back in the day. And so, but yeah, so we did a lot of weird stuff there too, you know, that I forget some of the names. I mean, I remember playing them all, but a lot of quirky stuff. A lot of them wasn't even Enix stuff, I don't think.

Yeah, a lot of it was Quintet. Quintet had like six games that came to Super Famiccom. So that was like almost like, I think like half of Inex's U.S. output, there was also EVO, seventh saga, I think. Palladence Quest, that was one of them? I think, was that, was that by Enix? Well, they published it the States. I don't think they had, yeah. Well, Enix never, this took me a long time.

I realized this they didn't actually do much in-house stuff. Everything was, you know, given to somebody. But the quintet was like as good as an internal studio. And it bummed me out that they never played, they never brought in any of the other stuff like Taranigma. even Europeans got it in the release of that like why it didn't come to the west yeah into the far west I suppose

doesn't make any sense to me but that was a bummer because that one of my favorite series of all time in fact my first game credits ever is in Seoul illusion of guy illusion of guy that's the one yeah that was what prompted this this podcast in the first place because I saw that that photo of like the ending

and I was like oh my god I didn't realize that you had worked on the game like were you did you do any localization for it or was it just like a game I was just sort of play testing it. We were going to release it internally through NX. And then I guess this was obviously post the Dragon Warrior One kind of collab with NOA. And so there was a point where they're like actually we're going to let them do this. And it's going to be a much bigger thing. It's good for us. You know, they can put a lot more effort

in marketing and stuff. Yeah, yeah, they did. I really sell the brand. And so it was just weird. I remember that. Yeah, it came in that big box with a t-shirt in it and everything. Yeah. So I was just sort of play testing and looking for buy. and, you know, kind of giving it a final pass, and then I was a game counselor on it, but I got my name in the credits, and that was a big moment for me, obviously. I was, you know, just such a huge fan of that stuff. I mean, Soulblazer still, like, it's so dated, but when I first played it, that game just took me away.

Like, I just, I still love Soulblazer. I'm a huge fan of that game. And Act Razor, too. I recently, you know, did this huge video retrospect about it. And going back and playing through it in its entirety, I was just like, it's so good. That's probably one of the only games I go back every couple years and just play it again, just because it's so good. I mean, the action is pretty standard issue.

shoot. It's not like amazing, but it was solid and it looked great. It's more than the sum of its parts. Yeah, exactly. The magic of that. The essence, like the whole, the whole package is just such a great thing. The music, I mean, Uzo Koshiro's soundtrack to that, it's still just one of the best soundtracks of all time, I think. And just, you know, the world and the

font. I mean, everything about it. I just, I love it so much. Like, it really has formed kind of a big chunk of who I am, the kind of games I like and the kind of stuff I like to play. That game is definitely one of the top three sort of influences, I think, on my just on my general psyche. That's awesome.

Whatever happened with Quintet, they just kind of banished. They did, I think they did a Saturn game. Yeah, they did, and I think a Dreamcast game. They did a, like, a launch place to our, game called Godzilla Generations. Godzilla Generation. Yeah, that was, I'm pretty sure that was there. I remember that, yeah, and I was all excited about it because it was Quintet, but I just

wasn't that into Godzilla. I liked their original IP. Yeah, I think they just sort of faded away. They had some PlayStation game that I never played. I don't think it ever launched it in English. The racing game, like the racing RPG, or was that Saturn? I don't know. That sounds well like the Saturn one, maybe.

Wait, it's been a while. Yeah. But, yeah, they never got back to the, Grand Stream Saga. That was it. Right, that's right. But that wasn't really quintet that was shade, which apparently was like made of ex-Quintet members or something. Yeah.

Funny story. That was ex-Falcom. So it's just like, you know, leave one burning bridge behind or whatever, the next. Funny actress your story, just randomly. So I worked at Lobotomy for that internship right after I graduated from art school and came friends with a bunch of those guys who are still like, you know, some of my dearest friends in the world right now. In fact, Paul Schreiber was with 17 bet for years.

He just recently sort of retired. He's off on his own little Hermit Quest. But Kevin Chung was a good buddy of mine from those years. And he had this pen pal in Japan. His dad had met this guy's dad at some conference or something like that. And so they were going back and forth with like letters, like old school pen pals. And they had been for years. And so when I was at Lobotomy, I think he sent over like Japanese version of Virtual Fighter 2 and the action sticks.

I think it was like the arcade sticks for Tekken or something like that. And I was like, what? Where did you get this stuff? He's like, oh, my friend. Like, I've never actually met him, but he's in Japan. And we've been pen pals for years. And he sends me cool stuff. I send him cool stuff.

Long story short, I ended up, you know, getting the job at Sega. And then this Kevin is like, I'm going to come to Japan. I want to come hang out. I'm going to spend a week with you. I'm going to spend a week with this guy, Yamachan. He called me Henato at the time, which is his first name. But everybody calls me Yamachan. And so he came out.

We were hanging out, and he totally fell in love with Togi. He was just like, you know, totally fan-boid out, just like everybody is when they first come there. And he ended up, A, introduced me to Yama Chun, who became my best friend for life. We've been best friends for coming on 20 years now and who lived around the street. But he also met, I don't know how this happened, but he met Yuzokashiro. And he ended up getting a job at Ancient. Wow. So I was like, oh, my God, I'm a huge fan of Kosherosan.

Like, how can I, you know, I would love to meet him something. He's like, yeah, no problem. Let's just go to dinner or something like that. He invited me to dinner one time, and we went out, and I was, a bunch of people I didn't know, and, you know, I was talking to Kishiroshan, and there's this lady sitting in front of me, and, you know, we're just kind of chatting. Like, my Japanese was pretty spot at the time at the time. And I think she spoke to English. I don't remember the conversation. It was a long time ago. But long story short, we were chatting. And I was just like, you know, kind of sound like, what do you do? And I was just like, what do you do? And I was just like, what do you do? And I was just like, what do you do? And, So I worked with him and stuff. I was like, oh, really? She's like, yeah, I did all the art for this game called ActRiser. And I was like, blah.

Like, what? She's like, yeah, yeah. I didn't realize that was her. Yeah, I had a girl. Maybe she's got a different name. I think she was married. But it was, it was, you know, sister. And she had done the environments.

And I think she did a lot of the characters and stuff like that. And so I just, I mean, the rest of the dinner was shot. I was just like, tell me more. And they're like, diving in, you know, like, oh, my God. Like, I was so, it was probably pretty awkward for her. Like, I couldn't help myself, but, completely just fanpoint. What are the odds you're going to sit down at a dinner with, you know, the artist to basically one of your favorite games of all time. And so that blew my mind. So Kevin was at Ancient for a couple of years doing a much of different stuff. And so I still have a dream of doing kind of a classic inspired 16-bit era experience updated for the modern world. And I would love to work with Kosherosan. So I've actually told him, I was like, someday, someday we're going to work together. And I would love to get you to do the soundtrack. I mean, the act razor genre is sadly underwere. represented. I know, right? I was like,

can we get the right? Action simulation RPGs in the market. And I don't know if it would have any spot in today's market, but I feel like with the cool indie stuff and the boom and stuff going on. I think so. I think that style of game would do a lot better now than it did at the time. I mean, I think Accraiser did okay for itself, but I feel people are a lot more open to genre-bending concepts and games that step outside the lanes.

I mean, genre means almost nothing these days. It was it was much more rigid back in the 80s and 90s. But now it's like, you know, you have stuff like, I don't know, like Stardue Valley or something, which is a lot of things all at once or undertale. Is it a shooter? Is it an RPG? Is it a visual novel? What is it?

It's a lot of things. Yeah. So I agree. Indie space is like very, very right for that. So that's my dream. That's my dream. But yeah, it is going to happen at some point. Like, I definitely want to make that game.

So that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Maybe for the next title after this one where we're just starting up now. So I'm not really familiar with lobotomy. I've heard of them, but I don't know what kind of games they tend to work on. What did you do there? I was an artist. They're best known for, they did an original shooter. Am I wrong?

It was based on the id engine. It could be. It could not be. I forget. It may be based on the Doom engine. It was called Power Slave. Oh, okay. Oh, that's why I know them.

Yeah. Yeah. And so that was a really cool title. It was really well done. I mean, it was a bunch of young guys that had done like game stuff before. But, you know, they'd worked in games, you know, kind of on the other side of stuff. That ended up doing really well. But they also are really well known for their lead engineer was phenomenal.

Ezra. He was just an animal. And they did the quake port to Saturn. Okay. Which just didn't make any sense. Yeah. I've heard that's an amazing port. Like, technically, like it shouldn't be able to do what it does.

It just doesn't make sense. Yeah. It just looks so good. And then they did, I think, as a part of Power Slave, like a little Omake thing, was Death Tank, which was kind of really popular. It was like a 16-person old-school arcade inspired. Like, you were little tanks shooting at each other, kind of missile command meets Moon Rover sort of thing. We used to spend a lot of time banging on that. So it was Paul Lang and Brian McNeely, who's at Nintendo now still.

Kevin Chung is back at Nintendo 2. Those guys are all in the NST software development. section. Paul, I think is it, he was at Microsoft for a long time in charge of the flight sim stuff. I don't know what he's doing now. I think he switched roles recently. But they were like just hardcore dudes.

It was like the quintessential indie game studio, but this is before indie games were a thing, which is a small game studio in this cheap, beat up old leaky warehouse with rats and stuff. And it was just a bunch of dudes in their 20s, just like not sleeping enough, you know, eating pizza and drinking soda, like literally the

quintessential like nerdy game dev heaven. We had these two really cool artists, John and Troy, they both cut big rockers, long hair and, like, drawing muscular dudes

and all this stuff. And it was just, I was like, this is awesome. Game development is so cool. Like, why would you ever go get a real job? This is so much fun.

But, you know, they were struggling. Like, that was my first peak behind the scenes of like, wow, you have to sign deals and you have to pay everybody

and running a game studio is hard. And like, I didn't have to worry about that stuff. I was young and I was just doing my art stuff. But, you know, even then like the desperation of them trying to get the next gig signed so I could get a full contract and stuff like it was too much pressure so when I did leave went over to boss games they had giant corporate backing these big deals with with BMG and you know they were like fully fully funded boss games was based on boss film which was Richard Edlund who was a BFX master from Star Wars and Larry's Lost Ark and all this kind of stuff and so they had spun up this game division so that was my first like big corporate job but like it was definitely that was fun to learn a lot of great lessons made a lot of great friends but the the spirit of the lobotomy guy is just this house run by passion.

Like everyone just complete game fanatics. Like it was just such a great, you know, diving into that world after some of this kind of more corporate stuff. After Nintendo and Natics, this was like just purely passion driven. Right. Not a lot of logic, but it was, you know, there was a real energy there that I, you know, that's why I like having a small studio. I like that level of just like, wow, we're all here because we want to be, we believe

in what we're doing. And it's a very different thing than just kind of having a 95 job. minus the not sleeping enough in the rats, right? We're over that now. We're old enough now. More than half of us are our parents. And so we keep pretty good hours here. That's another story.

That's the way to do it. But yeah, it's interesting. You're talking about kind of the realization of the business realities behind game development and publishing. It kind of seems like you made the jump from the publishing side to the development side right around a really huge transition in the medium,

maybe the biggest transition. I guess the leap to HD consoles was also right up there. But, you know, you went from Genesis and Super NES and 2D games to 3D games on Saturn and PlayStation. And a lot of companies didn't make the jump. They didn't survive the shakeout. So it feels like just the nature of what the business was changed a lot then. So you kind of got a faceful of it right at the start. It was an exciting time. The first, you know, big project that I did at Boss was Spider, which was a 2.5D. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 2.5D platformer.

At the time, we thought we were the first. We were like, wow, this is going to be great. It's like a 2D platform, but it's a 3D world. And you can kind of move around the camera, moves around, track some stuff like that. That's where I first did, like, scripting and level design and stuff like that. We were so excited. We're like, we're going to be the first.

It's going to be amazing. Did Crystal Dynamics beat you? Pandan and Omium came out. And we were like, I mean, I guess it was a no-brainer. Someone was going to do it. And they nailed it. And it was a great game. And then Clonoa came out not long after that,

which was also fucking fabulous. Love that game. But yeah, that was cool. And then, finally enough, tying the past and the future together, we started playing Coolborers when it came out, I forget it was Saturn or PlayStation. It might have been the PlayStation version. And we were kind of looking for the next thing to do after Spider. And so Rob from Enix and I were like super excited about Coolborers.

We played a bunch of it. We were like trying to pitch a snowboarding game. And so they finally bit off on it. And we decided to do it. And so also, ironically, a bunch of the guys from the King Arthur team and Malian Associates were at Boss Game Studios. And I was like, oh my God, like, you know, this is all come full circle. This is so crazy.

So, I mean, because that kind of, you know, kicked off this whole thing. And so we worked together post-Spider on twisted-ed snowboarding thinking we were going to be their first big snowboarding game. We were so excited and we were doing all this stuff. And it was, you know, a great team. We were having a lot of fun. And we're like, wow, we're going to be the first 1064 snowboarding game. This is going to be amazing.

And Nintendo's like, cool. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, you guys, you know, right up in there. Let's do it. Boom. Out of nowhere. 1080 comes out. out, you know, it's an amazing game by Nintendo.

I'm like, oh, they didn't mention that. And I forget if they beat us to market. Nintendo likes to play things close to their vest. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But the reason that's so funny is because we had this intense rivalry now or then. And then, you know, years, years, years later. And I'm good buddies with Charles Goddard, who was a lead programmer on that. We have this friendly rivalry where I like to make fun of him.

When we go up snowboarding, we go, you know, he drives me up in his range over. And we take pictures and stuff. And it's always twisted edge team versus. the 1080 team. So it's just years later in hindsight. It's just so funny that, you know, that affected me so much at the time. And, you know, I met him years and years later.

But, yeah, he runs another studio here at VT and Kyoto was worth the Nintendo for years. So he's a legend in his own right. You know, him and Dylan Cuthbert were both on Star Fox. And Dylan went on after that and went back to the Sony America and stuff like that. But Giles stayed at Nintendo for years. He did the Mario face, the squishy face for N604 Mario. You know, he helped with the physics on wave race and stuff like that.

So, Wave Race is actually also one of my favorite games of all time. I like 1080, but not as much as I like Wave Race. Yeah, there is something about Wave Race. It's weird. I don't even really like sports games or extreme sports games, but the feel of that game, like even, even the follow-up, like Blue Storm did not, didn't catch. I don't know what it was about that first game. I was so sad about that, too, but it wasn't the same. It's weird.

Like, it's so low resolution now and so kind of abstract, but the water feels so convincing. It's really crazy. It felt so real. I mean, that was the most, I think, addicted maybe that I've ever been to a game. I had a big TV right next to my bed while I was working. I think it was when I was working at boss. And until I fell asleep at night. And the first thing in the morning, I would just reach over, click it on and jump into play some races.

My girlfriend almost left me. She's like, you have a problem. Like, this is just too much. I'm like, this game is so good. It's so much fun. Like, I just can't stop playing it. And it's never the same. That's the thing with the waves and the physics.

It's like you have strategies and kind of how to deal with this stuff. But every time you jump in there, it's this fresh experience. And you have to just sort of make way, you know, do the best you can with what you get. And, yeah, that game, man, it hit close to the pulse. Like, there's almost nothing like it. I still love that game so much. Digster has a playlist for every moment, mood, and minute of your life. Dickster is soundtracking your world one playlist at a time.

Check out digster.com to see for yourself. are thousands of great playlists for you to enjoy. That includes, yes, the crusty's 70s British Prague Rock I love, as well as Bob's more upbeat favorites. We've both teamed up with Dickster to create our own playlists, each with a mix of our own respective favorites. Go to digster.fm. slash Bob and digster.fm. slash Jeremy to see our playlists, which you can follow, share, and listen to. They're updated regularly. This week, my playlist has a few new entries that include Canadian Power Trio Rushes, The Trees, one of Rock's most misunderstood, too. As kids, we all thought that was about Canadians throwing shade at the U.S.

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It's a weekly look at all things paranormal with world-renowned researchers and experiencers. They challenge everything we think we know about ghosts, ghouls, angels, demons, aliens, monsters, and more. So check out Beyond the Darkness weekly on Podcast One, podcast1.com, and Apple Podcasts. Also remember to rate and review. So, uh, after So, uh, after twisted ed. So, uh, after twisted ed, what was the next

on the docket for you? Were you still with boss? At what point did you jump over to Sega? I was still at boss. We started working on World Rally Championship, which was an N64 racing game. Funnily enough, I think I was doing the Kyoto track. Now that I think about it,

I did a big Buddha statue. And I was working on that. And I ended up doing this big Buddha statue. And I had room left in my level for Twisted Edge before it had shipped and I remember I took that Buddha and I put it like in this back bowl you could find and you could look up on the hill

and there's this huge Buddha statue and I thought it was an amazing Easter egg and they ended up taking it out probably for texture space reasons or whatever. Years later Midway published some other world rally or world racing game on arcade and it was like you're driving

through the Japan track whenever like that big Buddha statue I'm like that's my Buddhist statue I know that's my Buddha statue because Midway had published that game and I still don't understand how it's even possible But I know it was mine. Like, I mean, you know, you've been out the whole thing. And, like, I knew that was my thing.

So I'm still curious how has that ever happened. Was that like cruising world? Maybe. Yeah, it was one of the midway sort of like those sprite-based. Right. Yeah, yeah. Things. But maybe it was the Polygon one more.

It's, again, it's been a while. Long story short, while at Sega, I was reading Edge Magazine as I always did. I'm a huge fan of Edge. I was reading up on Tessimiziguchi. He had just come out in this. thing. There was a big article on him and his love of club music and Sega Rally. I loved Sega Rally. Segrelly is also one of those games that just like, you know, changed my sort of direction in life forever. Like, I played that game so much. It was in the arcade across the street

from my animation college. So we would, you know, go over and just get drunk on Friday nights and play a hell out of that game. And then I had it on Saturn and then me and my roommate would just have these intense competitions like, you know, down to the fraction of a second. He'd leave it on when he beat my time and I'd be so pissed off. Anyways, so I read all about music music and I knew all about him and I was a huge Psycho Rally fan and I had been to Japan. I went to Japan. This is kind of off the beaten track, but I went to Japan between Nintendo and Annex. And I went just randomly. It was in college. I did a quarter, a semester over in this little community college. They had a

branch office from Seattle over in the hills outside of Kobe. And so I spoke a little tiny bit of Japanese and I'd been surrounded by the culture enough and it was kind of right during the Street Fighter 2, like, explosions. I had all these Street Fighter toys and virtual fighter stuff was just starting to come online. I had all these Japanese toys that I would pick up from my trip there. And I had them all at my desk at Nintendo Power thing I was talking about. And just randomly, on a given day, we had a new release of Aalius Power Animator, pre-Maya, a new version of Aalus Power Animator, whatever.

And so one of their engineers from Alius came to the studio to tour around, talked the artist through the new features and kind of get him up to speed. And he had like a half hour with each artist to kind of like walk through some of the new features and stuff like that. He's just down at my desk is this American guy and he's like, why, you got to watch a cool Japanese toys? Like you've been to Japan. I was like, yeah, I love Japan. I want to go work at Sega Japan someday. Like I'd never even like really processed that.

Like I was just such a Sega fan of the stuff they were doing. I don't know. Like literally I just burst it out. It was like so weird. I just like, I want to work a Sega someday in Japan. He's like, oh, I used to work there. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, yeah, I used to work with this guy, Tessi Musiguchi.

I worked on Sega Rale and stuff. And I'm like, what? Really? He's like, yeah, I'm long and medium left. That's me. I was like, holy shit. Are you kidding me? Oh my God.

Like, oh my God. It was like, all of a sudden, like, you know, the alien stuff is out the window. I'm like asking all these questions, just totally pestering about, you know, what it's like to work at Sega Japan. So he was there for years, working with directly with Musigichstein. He was an engineer. And this was like a couple weeks before E3. And so I had no business going to E3 on the company dime that year. But I was like, I was like, all right, I'm going to go down.

You know, like, I'm super excited about this. He's like, he's coming. If you want, I can try to hook you up. You can just meet him wherever. I was like, yeah, he speaks English. And I was like, oh, my God, like, what are the odds? This is crazy. So, of course, I take a week of work off and I go down there.

And he emailed me. He's like, hey, I heard from my friend Kenneth that you'd like to meet. And he was like, that's cool. It was E3, 1998 in Atlanta. He's like, let's, you know, let's meet outside the second booth, like, whatever time. And I couldn't believe it. So I kind of whipped together a demo reel, got a bunch of my paintings and my animations and like all this stuff.

And my friend that I worked with, Kip, great guy. He helped me kind of, he was a video editor. He kind of put this whole thing together and put music to it. Like it was his bang up demo reel. And so I brought that with me to E3 and I met music huge son and we totally hit it off. I showed him my reel. He watched a couple times back to back and was like, this is cool. And I was like, listen, man, like I know this is forward, but like, please give me a job.

Like, I want to move to Japan. I want to come join you. Second Japan is the coolest place on the planet. Like, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. And so he's like, he's like, all right, calm now. You know, let's relax a little bit. He's like, why don't we go get drinks again later this week and we'll talk some more? So we went out and went for dinner and drinks and we're just chatting and chatting.

And I was a huge fan of, I had done the animation school. I was, you know, kind of starting to really get into that sort of mid-90s anime and really kind of diving into that stuff. And I loved Macross Plus. And Macross Plus was like my favorite anime. And there's a one scene, the concert scene where the Sharon Apple concert scene is like leagues above the rest of this stuff. It's like this super psychedelic, beautiful, all kind of driven by the beats and the music. It's like this club music with this psychedelic over-the-top experience. And I knew that it had been animated by, like that scene alone had been directed by my favorite animation director, this guy, Koji Morimoto, who was the animation director on Akira and he's done much of other crazy, weird kind of underground stuff.

And I was like obsessed with this video clip. Like the way that the music all came together and it was like this psychedelic, sexy, languid, like experience like all blending into itself. And I just couldn't get over it. And so, you know, after a couple drinks, especially, I started getting all excited and I'm chatting with him. And he's like, if you could make any game, what would you want to do? And I was like, oh, and I started explaining the scene to him. And I was like, I'm sure you never heard of this guy. He's this weird animator and he did this thing.

And it's like the music. I'm like going nuts about it. And he just starts chuckling. And I was like, I was like, I'm sure you've never heard of him. And he's like, actually, I own an. animation studio down the street from Sega and I'm a part owner of this animation studio in the street and Mori Monosan worked for us. He's actually designing a new film right now and I was like, what? He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm a big fan of that concert scene too. And I was like,

well, that's like, I want to make a game about that. I want to make a game like that. He's like, I do too. He's like, okay, maybe you should come out and see me in Japan. So I'm freaking out at this point. I had just taken a week off to go to E3. I was like 23 years old. You know, like I basically eaten up my entire vacation time. I go back to work and I walked in my boss's office. It's like, I'm so sorry. There's an emergency. I need to take another week off. He's like, well, what? I'm like, yeah, total emergency. Sorry. Got to go. So I couldn't control myself. So I went to Tokyo, hung out with musicujan. One of these crazy adventures, he took us up into the mountains. I was with Dominic, my good buddy, one of my best friends from Lobotomy.

And we went up there and, you know, and he hung out and showed us the world and took us this crazy trance party and saw the psychedelic music and stuff that he was inspired by. It was my first experienced the sort of psychedelic trans culture in this kind of like hippie trans culture in Japan. Needless to say, that weekend completely, you know, blew my mind. And he took us in and he was just building what would become a United Game Artist. It was called CS4 at the time. So it was the fourth group of the consumer software division, which is separate than the AM division.

Right. Anyways, they were just kind of building this team up. And like, he had just a handful of people in there. And he's like, hey, you know, I remember. you said you were a big Morimoto fan. Have you seen this stuff? He brought a couple of other videotapes and just put me in this room with a bunch of his other commercials and other weird stuff that he had done that I'd never heard of before seen. And the stuff was all just, you know, mind sickeningly. Like my world just kind of exploded into this new dimensions. Like, you know,

entering the Matrix. So like, there's no going back at this point. So I begged and pleaded some more. We hang out some more. And then, you know, I went back to Seattle. And a couple weeks later, he's like, all right, you know, let's do this thing. I was like, this is happening. Oh, my God. And all my friends are like, dude, you're going to go work in a Japanese corporation. Like, you speak like 10 words of Japanese. It's like, yeah, so what? Like he speaks, he said, it'll be fine. Like, this is going to be great.

Oh my God. Like, do you guys? I'm going to go work for the guy that makes say or Riley. Like, are you kidding me? And everyone's just like, you're nuts. Like, what are you talking about? You're going to go work at a Japanese company. Like, you can't read, you can't write.

You can't do anything. I was like, I don't care. It'll be fine. And then I got there and it was amazing. And it was, you know, this total meltdown from a fanboy standpoint to be like, you know, standing with these legends and, you know, joining Sega Japan's new division. And we were right in the heart of Shibuya, which was, you know, most of the CS and the AM stuff was all down in Hennata, which is just like industrial towns, super boring.

It's only a handful of restaurants. It's just not a cool place to work. No offense, Sega friends, but it is not an exciting neighborhood to be placed. It is a very industrial sort of area. We were in the heart of the city, you know, kind of right around the youth culture. And where was I going with this? I get all wrapped up. Shibuya.

anyways like yeah like he brings me in and I was like when am I going to start he's like yeah start as soon as you can so they found an apartment for me and set me all up with the stuff and I came in and you know it was like 30 people maybe I was joining the right before I joined the space channel 5 team there was another project on the side that we were doing I was on that team but I met the whole team and like everybody comes up to me and they're just like like shaking my hand talking to me in Japanese and it took me a couple minutes I was like wow I did fuck up man this is stupid like what was I thinking I got so carried away by the idea of this whole thing. I didn't consider, you know, what it would mean to actually be working

at a Japanese corporation where I don't speak or read or anything. And it was tough. It was really hard. I mean, people were so sweet and they were super, you know, patient with me. And I was trying to figure out. I had never used soft amage. We moved on to soft damage. I was an alias user. And so, there was so much learning going on. And I wasn't, you know, getting enough rest. We were working long hours. And I was just completely overwhelmed. But people were really gentle and sweet. And I'm still good friends with a bunch of those guys. And within a year or so, I learned to speak decent Japanese just because I was so immersed in it.

Yeah, you didn't really have a choice. Didn't have a choice. Like, I was, we'd have these big meetings. We'd have these big design meetings and talking about stuff. And I told me as a good son after a while, I was like, I don't, you know, I don't have any point going to these meetings. I don't understand what they're talking about. I don't know what's going on. He's just like, just come.

Just be a part of it. And so I would sit there and I would, you know, you would hear the same words over and over again. So I would write down the words that I just kept. I was able to kind of start pulling out of this, you know, this jumble of words. And then after the meetings, I mean, like, what's this? What's this? What's this? What's this? You know, my friends, I would be like, what is this word mean? What is this word mean?

So it was a really good way to kind of build up your phonetic system from the ground up. Like, the stuff that gets said the most is the stuff that you start using the most. And, you know, kind of really built a really natural sort of foundation to base my skills on. So my spoken Japanese has gotten pretty good. I still don't read very well, but I just never had time to do that. I'm reading a lot of manga lately. So I'm finally kind of up at my skills, which is funny because I have a lot of friends that come over here from the states that, like, study Japanese in college. And they, you know, they read thousands of kanji and they're like all this stuff.

But then they can't really, like, hold a conversation. Yeah, I can read it a lot better than I can understand it or speak it. Yeah, which is funny because I literally still, I just, you know, even like my kids read Doraymo and then I'm like reading that. I'm like, I can read this. This is great. I'm flying through that. But I'm reading Dragon Ball now and I have to like have my Google translate and, you know, kind of like, but it's a great way to learn. I'm learning new stuff and new vocabulary that way too.

But anyways, yeah, I got the job at Sega and that was, you know, I was there for four and a half years and probably some of the best years in my life. I mean, I was young. I was hungry. I was super excited to be there. We were working on some of the coolest stuff in the world, you know, from Space Channel 5. Then moving on to Res was, you know, that was kind of the reason I went there. And it was kind of like in a real slow burn kind of pre-production thing where they were trying to figure out just what they were doing. It was just a handful of guys. And so while they were kind of just prototyping the very early, the broad strokes, I was on Space Channel. five team doing character design animation mostly animation and modeling stuff like that then i finally got into the res team it was just like wow this is this is something res was pretty much what landed you did the job even though it didn't exist at that point yeah that's it's crazy that you just you know like this chain of events happened and you just happen to be on the

same wavelength uh about what you wanted to create as music oji like yeah i mean just it's it's a it's yeah it was again i mean i really the fact that i called out this animator and was so moved by this this like three minute piece of animation that you know I really literally was like I want to build something like this and that is a hell of a scene though oh god it still is still just gives me chills every time yeah I keep you know every once in a while I'll do a search I'm like has that come out on Bluray yet no I want to see that you know I want to watch it again but I want to want to watch it in high res not on I had the latest I had the VHS tapes so I mean that that was a you know a massive period obviously of inspiration and

influence in my life, working on that. And to make matters even worse, before I got the job at Sega, I had applied to Team Andromeda. I loved Panzer-Dragoon. I was such a Panzer-Dragoon fan. And I had a Japanese friend of mine that I had gone to school with in Kobe here who moved to Seattle that joined the same community college. And I was like, please help me fill out this Japanese resume. I'm going to apply. I want to work at Team Andromeda. And so I sent off the resume, everything formal by the book, you know, the picture and the resume and all this stuff. And I Never come back. So years later, fast forward to working at Sega,

and it turned out a big chunk of the Space Channel 5 team and the Res team was ex-Pansu-Dragoon people. After the team of drama, it sort of split up, and a bunch of those teams went to Mizugustan's new group. In fact, most of the Sega employees that had come over were from that group. There was that group, and then the AM transition. So the guys that had done the Sega rally Saturn Port, some of those guys came over, too. And so I didn't realize it at first. But after a while, like, somebody had something lying around.

I was like, what's that? Like, I realized all of a sudden that these were the Panzer Dragoon people. Like, it was the Panzer Dragoon Saga team that was making up Space Channel 5 and the Res team. At which point I flipped out again was like, oh, my God, you know, this is crazy. And so Yoko Tz, who became the art director on Res, he had literally done all of Saga's cover art and all the stuff. In fact, yesterday I bought the limited edition record from Soundwave, brainwave. And got Kobayash San to sign it and like, I've known her for years. And just was like, oh, this is like, stuff.

seriously, one of the best albums ever and seeing all Yo Kodasana's paintings, they did a really beautiful job with that. I did big, you know, the whole book in fact I had it, like I ran upstairs in the morning, I put it up on my wall of fame up there. But just, you know, working with those people and that, that whole time was just crazy. I knew how lucky I was, too. Like, I really did. I knew that this was a, I wanted a million chance and, you know, to have these opportunities

and work with these people and learn this stuff. And they're still my dear, dear friends just yesterday. I was hanging out with a Holtan and Matsuzakistan, or the two, two of the other lead artists that were kind of my semps that sat right next to me. Just stunning design chops, unbelievable design skills and drawing skills and everything. And I'd come from an animation background. So I could, like, draw.

And I liked drawing characters, but I didn't, I wasn't a designer. I wasn't like, I didn't have a process to, like, you know, define the equation and kind of like try to come up with a solution to solve a specific problem. I didn't think that way at all. And these guys kind of started to beat that stuff into me. And I was just like, wow, they're so good. Like, I'll never be as good as these guys. They're just, like, animals off the best.

board. I mean, Yokoata San, the lead artist, was just like machine, you know, just like skills beyond like anything I'd seen in any of the American studios that I didn't experience at all. And so years later, you know, kind of about once UGA kind of started to fall apart, we got sort of absorbed by Sonic team. And Miziguchi-San was going to quit. And I was the first one to kind of leave the ship. What it was was starting to disintegrate. Some of the key guys peeled off and stuff started to kind of go away. And so that's when I left and decided to go back to design school. And so that's when I went to Art Center in Pasadena after about four and a half years at Sega.

And it was heartbreaking to leave. But I was tired. Tokyo had, you know, I parted hard. It took its toll on me. And I knew that, you know, working at a big Japanese corporation like that, like the ceiling was going to be up there at some point. Like, I was going to have to do something else to be able to kind of, I didn't really want to move into management. But at a big company like that is a very defined track. Yeah.

You know, and I was like, to get into management and stuff, I'd have to really be able to read and write an email and do all the stuff. And so it was heartbreaking, but I decided to go back and go to school and always knowing that I would come back to Japan someday. Like, I was so hooked on it that, you know, it was always kind of in my back pocket. It was like this plan, like to find a way back here at some point. So what was your way back? Well, I wanted to come back right after art school. Right after Art Center, I was like, okay, I'm going to find a way. You know, I was talking to me as a good son.

He'd started up. Q. Q Entertainment and so I was you know talking to him and talking to people Sega at the time I was I got the job

at EA in Los Angeles so I was working with Steven Spielberg and that crew on the Alamano project which never shipped and I was a concept artist and

we EA was publishing oh got him space in the name it was a horror game done by Grasshopper uh boy

about 2005 totally blinking out But, yeah. Like, I know the game. I'm totally spacing it. Regardless, I was like, wow, maybe I could get a job with this EA Los Angeles paycheck, but I could go back to Tokyo. Like, how could I work that? So I kind of, I met through Utsumi-san, who had been the head of sort of Sega production, who was music U-San's boss when I was at Sega.

He was friends with these guys. And so he introduced me to Suda-san. And so I interviewed there and kind of talked to those guys about trying to get a job there. and didn't really work out and then kind of really wanted to find a way to keep my salary from the West Coast in Japan,

which was challenging. I had talked to Dylan about maybe coming over at Q Games here in Kyoto because Dylan was an old friend of mine. I'd met him through the Tokyo circuit, the TGS circuit while I was at Sega there. He was at Sony in Japan at the time in Tokyo. So I kind of wondered for a while.

I was like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And then we got pregnant, our first son, and we were leaving on the beach in Santa Monica. And with two, you know, single, a married couple with no children, dinks. Dinks, yeah. That was a sustainable lifestyle. But when she was going to go offline to have a child, we decided that was probably not going to be sustainable anymore. So came to Seattle and joined my old friend Mark Long at Zombie, where I went on to art director as on Blacklight Tango Down was a game.

we were working on at the time. But I really, I'd been doing kind of hardcore sci-fi concept art for a couple of years at that point. I was kind of like, not over it, but I was like wanting to spread my wings in a different direction. And I really wanted to do something kind of cute and minimal, get back to my animation style roots. And now with a design background that I picked up at Art Center and EA, kind of wanted to do something cute and simple. And so I talked to my friend Barut Fifer, who had been an AI programmer on the Alaminoa project. It was kind of starting to fall apart at the time. He had left.

and we kind of made this dumb decision to make a little indie studio and do this kind of little strategy game on the side while I kept my day job and it kind of went really well and he was a really good programmer and we just sort of became its own thing at some point I was like this could be a thing and so I quit zombie and we started up

what we became haunted temple studios and started up with Skulls the Shogun and sort of I was working from home. He was working from home. I was like, this is great. I can, I can just kind of slide back into Japan. My wife is Japanese. I could just like go back to Japan and I could just keep doing this little indie lifestyle from there. But as the project went on, we weren't ready to go yet. More staff started coming on. Pretty soon I had some staff in Seattle. And it just kind of got roots and it got a lot harder to sort of be mobile.

So we sort of wrapped up skulls and then moved on to Galaxy. And I was getting to ANSI. I was like, I got to get back to Japan. I got to figure this. But now we have like a whole studio here. What did I do? So whenever we hired somebody else, I was like, listen, we're moving to Japan. You're in or you're out. Like, tell me now. Like, I don't want you to be surprised later, you know, in a year from now.

And I say, hey, we're going to uproot this entire thing. And we're going to move to Japan. Everyone's like, what? I'm like, it's going to be fun. Come on. It'll be great. And so it took a lot longer to sort of make the migration over here than I thought it would. But we finally did.

And not as many guys as I'd hope would come over, came over. So we still have the Seattle guys So this new studio we have here Like you know, showing you this morning Is it kind of an old architecture studio It's a house basically Right And so we have a full guest room and stuff

So the Seattle guys come out We have like one of them In rotation at any given time Which works, it's nice And we do have a West Coast presence Which is nice In the summertime I generally go back And work out of the Seattle office

When it's really hot here And my kids are on break And I stay with my folks And I have friends that come stay at my house here So it works out But that's yeah I mean just all this stuff afterwards was kind of just tumbled into place through these random series of events and

I knew I wanted to go back to Japan. I knew that was going to happen and I actually really wanted to go back to Tokyo. I had so many friends there and had such a great time with the second people and all that crew was still up there doing fun stuff. A lot of men's fun office are at their own studios and everybody's doing cool stuff. So I really wanted to go back. My wife is from Tokyo. She was like, no way. We're going to have kids that don't want to live in the big city. She wanted to move out to the countryside, like out in the middle of nowhere somewhere. I'm like, I'm kind of a city boy. Like I love nature, but I need culture. And so we kind of just couldn't figure out what to do for a long time.

We just kind of stayed put in Seattle. And then we, on a whim, you know, I'd been talking to Dylan for years and he's like, Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto, Kiotto, trust me. Kioto, Kiotto, Kiotto. And so we came to check out Kioto and we spent two weeks here in, it must have been 2010 maybe, 2009, 2010, no, wait, 2011, 2011 or 2012. My second son was a little baby. And we came here and we both just totally fell in love with it because,

It's like, it's the ultimate mix. It's like nature and traditional culture and like this low-paced, you know, lifestyle. And, you know, it's affordable and it's cheap. And it's all the things. Like a lot of the benefits of living in the countryside. But at the same time, it's a world-class city with amazing dining, amazing music and culture. Ketka is really fascinating because it is this kind of like blend of country and city. Like I interviewed Miziguchi at his hotel, the four-season.

seasons as where he was staying. And, you know, I think four seasons, I think, like, pony stories tall and, like, concrete and steel. But no, it's like four stories high. And it's all wood on the outside. And it's kind of secluded and back and away from the street. Like, I actually had trouble finding it because Google Maps, like, sent me up the wrong side street. And I ended up, like, walking through the front gates of a girls high school as students were coming in. And I was like, yeah, I just stopped. And I was like, um, hey, faculty folks. I'm in the wrong place, turned around and left when they all laughed. But, like, you know, that's just kind of Kyoto.

Like, every side street you go up, it's residences, but then also they're in, you know, like just tucked away with everything. There's always like a noodle shop or like a little Izakaya or, you know, like a place that sells giant stuffed animals down the block from here. It's like, it's, it's, yeah, just like everything all mashed in. And it doesn't feel manic in the same way that Tokyo's mash of stuff feels. It took me a while. I think it was about a month into being here. I was riding my bike down to the computer store. It's not far south of here. And it dawned on me. Like, wow, no one's in a hurry here. No one is in a hurry here. Like, you know, used to Tokyo and Shibuya, like, there's just this, like, you notice yourself walking faster. Like, everything's just intense and you're going to the next meeting and people are running around. Like, it's this manic and frantic intensity, which is a dopamine. I mean, it's completely, like, addictive and amazing. But come in here. I was just like literally like the red lights are forever and everyone's just kind of like you look around like no one's in a hurry like no one cares they like stop with the red light and read their phone and hang out and I was just like this is a I can tell like immediately it's like I knew I may not be suited to Tokyo for like the long term like even with the family and stuff like that intensity all the time it's like again it's it's one of the most addictive drugs in the universe but it is draining and so coming here I was like wow I can live here forever I think and I can go to Tokyo whenever I want I can go to Osaka and one train.

stop. I'm down to a meta on one single line. I was like, how do you beat this place? I mean, I don't like the summer heat, that's for sure. Yeah. But just in terms of a lifestyle city. And it's funny because, and I talk to people all the time. People come to Kyoto and they love it. They fall in love with it. They're like, oh, Kyoto is so beautiful. And they go to the temples and they do the kind of sites and stuff. And they're like, oh, Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto. And the reality is, when you live here, that stuff is, it's on the back platter. And you can go, you know, run off to some beautiful temple whenever you want to. But really as a lifestyle city, it's almost unbeatable. Like, I ride my bike to work. Everything's super chill. You have your little mom and pop owned shops and restaurants. And I have

like my daily bread shop. I have my bike shop. I ride by my, you know, my realtor who helped us with this place. And like it's like, you're saying good morning to everybody. And there's like this sense of society and just kind of like calmness and like place in the city. Like I've never felt this sense of like, I am a piece of this society. And like I interact with all these people on regular basis. And I guess part of it's the bike lifestyle. But also, like everybody that I know in the city kind of lives in the same kind of west or the east side of the city over here to the river and the main thoroughfare is the path going up and down the river so daily you bump into friends you just see friends all the time and so like cue games is right down the street and vitae is just kind of right past them um the skeleton crew guys are here and like you know Nintendo friends like a lot of friends are working Nintendo and so you just tend to bump into people while you're out and about and you know it really struck me like as an American even in Shibuya like you know you bump into people but it's not it's not quite the same in Tokyo. But, you know, in the states, you get in your car, you drive to work and, you know, I mean, San Francisco, I think, is different. And a lot more people take the mass transit stuff.

But like, I'm from Seattle. We don't have mass transit there. We have, you know, kind of a half-ass bus system. And so you just are living in these bubbles. You don't really co-opt with other people, like nearly at the same frequency. Like, you might have your barista at Starbucks that you see every morning. But that's about, you know, the kind of the extent of it. At least that was my experience. And so coming here, you're just like, wow, like, this is, this is like life on a different scale. It's just so much history and culture here. It's not a big city, but you could never do it all. You could never do it all. Every, like you said, every street. I'm like, I never been on the street before. Like, it's only two streets down and a couple streets over. And there's like 10 new

restaurants that look amazing and like some weird little boutique and some cool little shop. And you're like, wow, like it just, it never ends. And there's no, I think there is zoning here, but it's not the same way that we zone where it's like kind of strict. And so it's like a little tiny burrito shop tucked behind, you know, this haircut place, which is right next to a bunch of homes. And There's no real order, no discernible order. I don't know how these things kind of are just arrayed around the city. But it's, again, it's its own thing and it's completely addictive and I never get tired of it. Just walking around in Kyoto, you can't help but just kind of have a smile on your face.

You're like, wow, it's just so lovely here. It's just so quiet and kind of happy. And when you live here, everybody you know loves Japan. They come to Japan and they go to Tokyo and they come to Kyoto. So like, I mean, almost every week we've got friends in town. And I'm like, cool, I don't have to do anything, to go to dinner, to go to lunch, whatever. This weekend is a great example. That's probably a little too much.

I have too many friends in town this week, and I'm not going to be able to see them all. But BitSummit has become this piece of the culture here. And it's awesome to have, getting known more and more as a game developing sort of hub, but just having all these cool people kind of coming here on the regular basis and having their own favorite restaurants. Like I'm learning about Kooli restaurants from, you know, friends from Sony and stuff like that. They're spending enough time here now that they're finding stuff that I don't know. and it's all just kind of coming for a full circle. Well, this has been your Kyoto Civic Promotion Chamber of Commerce.

Thanks you for listening to this episode of Retronauts. No, it is a great city, and there is a lot of game development here. And, you know, like a lot of people with deep roots. I guess it makes sense, you know, you've got Nintendo here and you have, just over in Osaka, you have companies like S&K and Capcom. I've been around forever. And there's a lot of smaller studios in Osaka, too, but there's a lot of stuff going on

these days. Yeah, but I mean, you know, a lot of studios kind of form from people that trick a lot of those companies and put up new roots. And yeah, it's great. I mean, I feel like there is a real vital game development scene here. It's cool that you've managed to kind of

carve a niche for yourself and you're making games that, you know, like I look at Skulls of the Shogun and Galaxy and those really, combine a lot of Western and Japanese influences in a pretty unique way. You know, Galaxy is like so macros, but at the same time, it's also kind of like a rogue-like shooter. So it's, yeah, it's like putting together a whole lot of things. And I can definitely see that you grew up liking a lot of the same things that I did. And so I, you know,

a game like that, I'm like, yeah, it's a really awesome. But it really kind of stands out. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, that, that era, that 16, in 8 and 16-bit era of the Japanese stuff, that's the mold that I'm, you know, cut from in terms of the gameplay. You know, and then older as you become a developer, like, you know, I had a really good experience working, you know, both a bunch in Japan and kind of really understanding the Japanese approach

to design and sort of, you know, game making, which is quite different than the West, but also spending, you know, enough time in the West to kind of see all their methodologies and processes and stuff. And they very much have different strengths and weaknesses, you know. They're very different sort of schools of thought, I think. And so it was a real joy for me to pull stuff from both sides of that and, you know, put together my inspirations of, you know, like the kind of more Western style gameplay on a modern front kind of merged with this classic old school genres and stuff like that. So I think that, I mean, that's kind of what 17 bit, you know, stands for.

It's like the 16 bit era plus a bit more, you know, plus a bit of like, of the new kind of merge on top of these classic concepts. And I think it's a formula that's worked well for us. And I really love being able to, you know, stretch our wings in ways that. that haven't been done before, like trying to take new chances and new risks and just kind of re-addressing ways that, you know, technology has improved and some things I feel like can be progressed and people, you know, tend to get into a rut.

It's like, well, this is the way things are done. Like, this is how this has always been handled. Like, I'm stupid enough to be like, well, what if we totally threw that all out and cooked up something different, which costs time and money and everything. But, you know, at the end of the day, you get these cool different types of experiences,

which is what I think, I feel like if, and I don't mean to sound like snobby or anything here, but I feel like if you're doing everything the way that it's always been done, you're doing it wrong. I feel like there's been enough of the same thing, and it's time to sort of embrace these new technologies and take stuff, you know, a bit into the next dimension. So our next title is very completely off the rails of everything we've ever done before, and it's its own entity, and it's very, I think it's going to be very progressive. And you said you'll be showing that off for the first time next year. 2019?

Probably, yeah. Probably no sooner than that. It's pretty early. We've assembled a pretty amazing crew of insane veterans here that are all in Kyoto for the right reasons and building something very special. So I'm very excited about kind of sharing that with the world and stuff and kind of introducing the team, but the time is still early. All right. Well, we will wrap here because I know you've probably got a busy day ahead of you catching up after Bitsummon and so forth. But I do want to ask, you know, is one final question.

You have, I think, a pretty unique perspective on the Japanese gamers industry, having been an insider and an outsider, you know, someone who's spent time with some of the big studios here and has started your own business here and knows a lot of people here, but also who, you know, spent a lot of time working in the U.S. So, you know, kind of from that perspective, what do you think is your prognosis for the health of the Japanese games industry, like for its future? You know, a few years ago, you asked some of that question, and they were like, it's not looking good, but. You know, I feel like if you just look at Tokyo Game Show, you're going to be like, yeah, maybe there's some problems that's not going so great. But then you look at Bits Summit and I don't know, like maybe I'm leading the question here or the answer. But I feel like you're seeing a whole new avenue of creativity in Japan that wasn't here, you know, five years ago. And to me, it's encouraging. I'm just curious if you think that's, you know, naive.

I think it's an interesting time. I think there was definitely a darker area before this where people were like Japanese stuff was kind of, I think technologically a little bit behind and, you know, most decisions were being made by the big corporate companies, you know, big games needing to play it safe for financial reasons and stuff like that. Japanese do love their sequels and their big series and stuff like that. So, you know, that's always going to be a big thing. I do think that some of that demand is diminished in the West. I don't think, you know, Final Fantasy, things like that have as much weight as they once did. Those names don't mean what they once did. My biggest concern with the Japanese market is this sort of the Galapagos mentality of like, you know, they really cater to their own market.

You know, the Japanese love Japanese game. I always have. Probably always will. I mean, I think there's more Western games now than there ever has been before. And that's definitely trending in the right direction. There is more outside influences coming in a bit. some. It's a cool part of that. But I feel like, especially with the mobile market, like, it's so hyper-focused on the Japanese market that that has become a huge moneymaker here.

Like, it is a huge. Mobile games are huge in Japan. And a lot of that stuff is just not really culturally, like, appropriate. Not that it's inappropriate, but it's just not really, like, targeted towards Western audiences. And a lot of this stuff kind of comes and goes, and there's no archiving of these free-to-play titles. these mobile titles and stuff like that, you can't just, like, build a ROM and, like, put it on the internet for people to download and play 10 years from now. So, like, I feel like a lot of the,

a lot of the culture and the history of, of the games of this era is going to be sort of only viewable through, you know, YouTube and stuff like that. So that stuff actually really freaks me out. It really kind of worries me. That being said, I do think the console market is sort of, you know, enjoying a bit of a rebirth. I think there's a lot of, uh, the big,

I mean, there was kind of a generation where, like, all the big hot shot, game honchos sort of disappeared and quit and like you know people leaving Konami or sake or whatever you know like we all know the names and everybody's been through this a million times but some of these guys are starting to kind of come back up and having their own studios and doing stuff and kind of getting outside of the molds and doing some experiencing you know some new ideas and I think it's definitely training well I think they're you know the Japanese definitely have their own spin on game design um but I think a lot of that stuff is kind of reintroducing

itself to the West. And I mean, by the West, I mean, the rest of the world, really. But there's, you know, it's on a rebound, I feel like, is the short story. I love seeing the Japanese indie stuff, you know, kind of coming up finally. Like, they were definitely quite behind for a long time. And, you know, you go to Bit Summit. And it's still, vast majority of them are foreigners that they come from other places, you know. But there are. But there are more and more Japanese indie stuff at this summit. A lot more Japanese indie stuff. I think the switch has been a, it's been a blessing. I think that you're seeing a lot of stuff coming to Switch and you're seeing a lot of smaller Japanese teams going, hey, let's take some chances. Let's do something a little funky and original. At a smaller scale, the digital thing takes a lot of risk out of it. It takes a lot of the cost out of, you know, needing the publisher and the whole kind of traditional system. I mean, Japan is still very retail based, you know, like everything is driven around the retail presence and stuff like that. So it's hard to do that with the digital stuff. You know, they do. You see the download codes and the mini-marts and stuff like that. but I do think that the Japanese stuff is kind of rebounding injured it's going on a better trajectory than I probably would have thought a couple years ago and so that makes me very happy I mean this is my home now and you know a lot of these people have become my favorite people and creators and stuff like that and so seeing people kind of getting off the rails and doing some unique fun interesting stuff and having the financial wherewithal to do so is really encouraging so yeah it's a good time it's it's fun to be back and I love I love seeing where things are going. And, you know, I have enough friends in high places now that I get to see cool stuff before it's coming out. And, you know, it's definitely all trending in the right direction, which is something I wasn't sure was going to happen a couple years ago. So I guess, you know, the short version is I'm happy that things are going well. Cool.

All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find you on the internet and maybe buy your products if they're so inclined? Please do. At 17 underscore bit on Twitter. is the studio. I'm at J-K-C-K-O-O-Z-A. 17B.com's our web page. It hasn't been updated a whole lot lately. We do have some big announcements coming soon. We have some big releases coming out very soon. Expect to

CS-83. There's some cool stuff coming. Those are the short persons. Yeah. I'm on Instagram, J-Kuza as well. I take a lot of pictures of games and retro games and stuff. I spend a lot of time in the old game shops. So I have a big collection of stuff that gets me excited in here because there's a never-ending batch of cool old box art and stuff like that that I've never seen before. So yeah, my Instagram account is probably the place to go for for that kind of stuff. Right. And you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite and Retronauts as Retronauts and at Retronauts.com, which is where I write all the time. Retronauts is also on iTunes and it's on Podcast 1. So listen to us, download us, et cetera. We're supported through Patreon,

patreon.com slash Retronauts. You get early access, high bit rate, no ads. It's cool. It's great, three bucks a month. It's a deal. Wow. Anyway, so I'm going to head back to America soon because I'm really loopy from Jetlag, as you can tell. But thank you, Jake. It was great talking to you, and really fascinating to hear all these anecdotes about your kind of entree into the games industry through, you know, like the game counselor stuff is stuff that I viewed as an outsider and was like, wow, these people must know a lot about video games. So it was really a cool, cool discussion. So thanks again. My pleasure.

Very much. Thank you very much. With the capital one quicksilver card, you earn unlimited 1.5% cashback on every purchase everywhere. It's easy. That's just the way I like it. I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, that's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh. The quick silver card from Capital One, what's in your wallet? That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like you, USANA. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute.

President Trump was asked at the White House if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess, from what I understand, that will be totally up. to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins, says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican Senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among

the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choice is will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout,

have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.