Takahashi Meijin interview translated by blackoak

[Frenetic]

Just wanted to give a big thanks to blackoak for translating this. I'm updating the thread with the new subject. Be sure to watch Takahashi Meijin compete in the videos below. Enjoy the caravan and enjoy the nostalgia!

Takahashi Meijin Interview - Shooting Gameside #1
Interview by Yamamoto Yuusaku
Translated by blackoak


—In 1983, the Famicom was born. It changed the way games were played; instead of playing outdoors like before, everyone was now playing inside their homes. They called it the "Famicom Boom," and you did promotional work as "Famicom Meijin" at this time. From your perspective as an adult, how did this transition in the way children played games feel to you?

[[tr. note: There were a number of video game celebrities in Japan in the 80s, usually associated with a particular company, who were called Meijin (literally "Master" or "Expert"). Although Takahashi Meijin himself had some skills, most of the Meijins were not actually good at games, and their role was more of a PR agent or hype guy for the company in question.]]

Takahashi: Yeah, transition is the right word... it was very clear to me then that console video games would become children's new main leisure activity. They had grown up watching TV, and now there was this thing that let you control what was on the screen, so I think it was only natural. And it wasn't just a matter of control like flipping pages in a picture book; actual games were now possible. So I knew children would soon be completely obsessed with them.

However, the social mood surrounding games at that time wasn't very favorable. The school PTAs were telling kids "You can't go to the game center", and there was a real threat that console games might end up with the same stigma, so I was thinking we had to do something to prevent that. I had been saying for a long time that console games would become culturally significant, and people around me would reply that such a thing was impossible. But I kept insisting it would happen.

Anyway, as Hudson's PR I sent out the message to the public loud and clear that video games were a healthy way for kids to play, and luckily everyone ended up agreeing, it seems. If we hadn't done that kind of promotion, it may be that the stigma of "game centers==delinquency" would have attached to video games as well. I'm just really glad we were able to avoid that.

—Did the Meijin slogan "Games: 1 hour per day!" come from those PR efforts?

Takahashi: Yeah, that was a small part of it.

—What other efforts did you take?

Takahashi: "Play together with your kids!" was a big one. Typically, conversations between parents and children can be quite difficult, right? Especially with Fathers, you know? Maybe its a little easier for children to talk with their Mothers. So we thought that, be it Super Mario, or STGs, or what-have-you, that parents and children could communicate more easily through games... "There's a secret here... here's how you get these coins"... things like that. There just aren't that many play activities children and parents can enjoy together. Even with sports, there's such a huge physical difference between adults and children. But with video games, 80% of the time its the children who are better than the adults! Parents might watch admiringly at first, but then they'll feel like trying it out themselves, and then you've got something where both kids and parents are competing together or against each other. That kind of joint play is very rare I think.

I mean, for example, you have begoma games like BeyBlade, which is popular right now. But spinning that top takes skill, and its probably more likely that an adult will have some technique and be better at it. Its the same with marbles, menko, or takeuma... you've got that age and experience gap. But with video games, that isn't the case.

—Right, it levels the playing field and allows children and parents to step into the same ring.

Takahashi: At our Bomberman competitions, we'd have Adult vs. Child matches, and sons would always pick their own fathers as their first opponent. Even when we'd jokingly scold them on the mic, they'd still always pick their fathers. I wondered why they did that, when they could just fight together on the same side.

—It was probably less about winning and losing, and more about just giving their old man a hard time. (laughs)

Takahashi: I think it was great that we gave children and parents something they could talk about together through games, without the age gap being an issue. I was saying that back in the day too. But probably one of our biggest motivations with our PR campaigns was to make sure that games weren't children's only experiences in life. So the "1 hour per day" thing wasn't some fixed number we came up with... it didn't especially matter if it was 2, or 3 hours per day a child played. The point was we didn't think it was good if a child were asked "what did you do this afternoon?" and all he could say was "video games." So that per day time limit we gave was really about getting them to do other things.

We weren't saying "you have to clear the game in under an hour!", but there were people who misunderstood it that way, unfortunately. "I can't clear this RPG in an hour!", they'd complain. Or they'd ask me "Can YOU clear Adventure Island in an hour, Meijin?" And of course I can't. (laughs)

—Hudson's National STG Caravan competitions were held up as a unique social phenomenon, even appearing in newspapers and the evening news. Seeing elementary school children enamored with STGs must have been a sight to behold; you rarely see anything like that today. What aspects of STG do you think were so appealing to children then?

Takahashi: I think being able to compete with your friends was the biggest part of it. And that was why we did the National Caravan events, to see who was number one. Simply tapping faster or being able to dodge better might get you a higher score. You could also say these are games that don't require lot of thinking while playing. The truth is, with STG, overthinking things is bad. Just shoot, dodge, and watch your score go up. The better you got, the higher your score, and you might glance over at the person sitting next to you and think "I can beat this guy!" In everyday life we'd probably call that aspect of STG the desire to "gamble" or "risk," and I think this spirit comes out most readily in the STG genre. It happens right before your eyes with your score, and its immediately gratifying.

For the Caravan competitions, qualifying matches would take two minutes, and final rounds would take five. But only 10 out of 250 people would be selected for the final rounds, so it all came down to who had practiced and who had not. And there were typical features of competitions, like "if this guy fails to qualify, I might have a shot!" It was all very simple and easy to understand. You scored and got ahead just by killing things. I think that simplicity, where you didn't have to think about scoring systems that were too complicated, was a very good thing.

—That reminds me of old games like menko and begoma, that sense of immediacy where you knew right away if it was a win or a loss.

Takahashi: Right, right. Since these are games for kids, you don't want the rules to be too detailed and complex. And yet if you don't have clearly defined rules, it won't work either. "If you get hit by a bullet you die, and go back several screens." The Famicom games had standardized those rules, so no one complained or argued about them. When we first started the Caravans, games didn't have any timers or caravan modes built into them. You kept scoring until a judge with a stopwatch actually said "times up." That simplicity was great for kids, you know.

—Do you think the joy of STG lies in its simplicity, then?

Takahashi: I think so--that simplicity and exhiliration you feel. Also, the feeling you get when you watch another skilled player and go "I think I could do that!" It might in fact be very difficult, but maybe you can get close. You then see how difficult it is to get there, and I think that aspect of STG teaches you the value of practice, and how things aren't always as easy as they look. I think that's very much a part of the appeal of STGs.

What I mean by simplicity and exhiliration, is like... the rules are simple: when your ship gets hit you die, so shooting down enemies is the only way to avoid that. And when you shoot down a wave of 8 enemies in a row, "pew pew pew pew!" and get a bonus, there's an immediate thrill to it. That's what I think is good about STGs. And if I say this I'll probably get a lot of criticism for it, but... regarding the STGs today which are more like "dodging games," I wish they'd designate them as another genre or something. Make a distinction between "shooting games" and "dodging games."

—By dodging games, you must mean those STGs with lots of bullets all over the screen?

Takahashi: Yeah, it seems strange to just call them all shooting games. They probably want to say that, "oh, its easy to dodge since the hitbox is so small", but I think that to the average person it looks impossible. And that has led to a great decline in the number of STG players, I think.

—There certainly are people who take one look at a screen filled with bullets and will just walk away.

Takahashi: Yeah, so for me, STGs are games where a reasonable number of enemies appear, fire a reasonable number of bullets, and you feel a kind of refreshing exhiliration as you shoot them down: "Ahh, that felt good." That's a STG to me.

To make Lazaro appear in Star Soldier you had to be able to tap 16 times in one second. So we had scoring tricks too, but they weren't essential to the game... it was just "if you want to score high, you'll need to do this." You shouldn't have to pay attention to scoring to enjoy a game. Just surviving and progressing through the stage, enjoying that feeling of "ah, I'm doing good, I'm shooting them all down." STG doesn't have to mean aiming for a high score. Sometimes its fun to clear a game by not scoring at all, you know? There's all different kinds of ways to play these games, and there's a kind of fulfillment to each. So in that sense, if one gets a feeling of satisfaction from dodging games like "I sure dodged that well!", then I think that's great too.

—Star Soldier was a game where you had to create auto-fire by yourself, and that physicality made it kind of like a sports game. And later, even when autofire was added, Hudson's STGs balanced that by requiring you to aim precisely at enemies.

Takahashi: Yeah, in our later games.

—Right. That Hudson style of STG... you don't see it much anymore, do you?

Takahashi: Yeah, they stopped selling well. Part of it is the games we made just kept getting harder and harder--too hard. For us, running Caravans each year, we had to keep raising new and more difficult hurdles to satisfy players who had competed in previous events and gotten better. Eventually this caused the players with the lowest skill (you could say they formed the base of a pyramid) to see these games and think, "There's no way I can compete." So I think it ended up being a problem when we started making games that catered to that tiny tier at the very top of the pyramid.

I think if we had done a better job tuning the difficulty of our STGs so that anyone could enjoy them and achieve high scores with some effort, then the Caravan events might have continued for several more years.

—To your fans, your games never lost their appeal, though.

Takahashi: That was because the basics were still all there. STGs are the simplest kind of game to make, so its not as if they'll ever completely vanish, but unfortunately its no longer a genre that the masses care much about. The impression most people have is that this is a genre of games only people with skill can play.

—Lately new STGs have tried various ways to be more accessible for beginners, and you've got STG mini-games mixed into party games... so it does seem there are still developers around who love STGs.

Takahashi: Right. You know, I'd love to see that volcano of enthusiasm for STG erupt once more.

—STG Love Explosion! (laughs)

Takahashi: You guys at Gameside do interviews every issue... if you put them collected them you'd have a book's worth by now. So if there's anything extra you want to ask me about... (laughs)

—Yeah, this is our 4th feature on Caravan Shooting. Actually we wanted to ask about Bomberman and more, but this magazine specializes in STGs, so...

Takahashi: Feel free. Bomberman came out in 85, and this year marks our 25th anniversary. Why don't you make a magazine focusing on party games? It could focus on party and co-op/vs games together. I think there's a lot of hardcore fans who are crazy about Bomberman's vs modes.

—Yeah. Come to think of it, Hudson really does focus on games you can enjoy together with family and friends. And it was the Caravan Shooting events which brought that friendly competition out on a national level. Thank you for everything today!


In the spirit of STGWeekly's episode on Eschatos I'm posting some links to some Hudson Caravan/Takahashi Meijin vidz. Take a moment close your eyes and imagine what it would have been like to a kid and participate in one of these great events. Even though these are all in Japanese, just like shmups the enthusiasm and joy crosses all language and cultural boundaries!

Caravan footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Qz3XXBRss

Hudson Caravan 10th Anniversary footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAFFCsVIcJc

The Takahashi Meijin show!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s99XmE-6DY

The Game King vs. Takahashi Meijin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGjcf0SjahA

[blackoak]

Nice, I've seen footage from these on gamecenter cx, I think? If there's interest, I have a Takahashi Meijin interview from Shooting Gameside where he talks about the caravan event phenomenon.

[Ghegs]

If there's interest, I have a Takahashi Meijin interview from Shooting Gameside where he talks about the caravan event phenomenon.

Oh, there's interest.

[Hagane]

Anything you do is of interest, blackoak.

[k39bk]

How to post interest in this forum?

[Animaitor]

Pretty please

[KAI]

PAINT IT YELLOW

1+ vote for that interview. Too bad he doesn't talk about his singer career on it.

[Skykid]

Fff... Japan was so damn cool in '88!

[MommysBestGames]

Those crowds are huge! Seemed like they were getting older with the years too (as opposed to attracting the same age gamers), which is interesting.

[Frenetic]

hey blackoak,

Oh yes please, there is great interest (from me, hehehe).

-F

Nice, I've seen footage from these on gamecenter cx, I think? If there's interest, I have a Takahashi Meijin interview from Shooting Gameside where he talks about the caravan event phenomenon.

[Ed Oscuro]

Take a moment close your eyes and imagine what it would have been like to a kid and participate in one of these great events.

I closed my eyes but now I can't see the video

(Yes, I'm playing shmups via pixel to speech.)

Those crowds are huge! Seemed like they were getting older with the years too (as opposed to attracting the same age gamers), which is interesting.

I have thought that this has been a pattern throughout many other genres. It maybe indicates that familiarity with a genre drives many to participate with it for a long while, unless they lose interest, while these genres haven't been very successful in gaining new followers. But perhaps the more obvious explanation is at the other end of a person's introduction to the games - Famicom games were more marketed towards youth and I think it may have been like the onset of manga after the second world war; older people simply didn't participate in great numbers. The flip side of nostalgia - familiarity or a concern with traditional things.

[KAI]

Talking about Hudson Caravans, does anyone here has any info about Compile Caravan Stage Music Summer Carnival 1992?
I've heard the winners of those events were awarded with that CD.

[MintyTheCat]

Absolutely fantastic. Brings a Tear to the Eye

I wish we had such Events these Days. Shmups are such pure, direct and simple Fun without the need to take a PHd in order to understand any given Game

[Frenetic]

bump with blackoak's fabulous translation!

[Ed Oscuro]

The truth is, with STG, overthinking things is bad. Just shoot, dodge, and watch your score go up.

[glyphs]

The photos on that caravan facebook are so fun to go through. Thanks for this and the translation.

[EmperorIng]

I like the cut of this guy's jib. He 'gets' it.

[Kaiser]

I like how nobody in here noticed that he said that bullet hells alienated the genre. Perhaps elitists want to refuse that the genre has shrinked because of them.

[Ed Oscuro]

The truth is, with STG, overthinking things is bad. Just shoot, dodge, and watch your score go up.

I like how nobody in here noticed that he said that bullet hells alienated the genre.

Please tell me all about it!

[Aquas]

The truth is, with STG, overthinking things is bad. Just shoot, dodge, and watch your score go up.

I like how nobody in here noticed that he said that bullet hells alienated the genre.

Please tell me all about it!

Dragon Spirit is the best game ever made.

[Paradigm]

I like how nobody in here noticed that he said that bullet hells alienated the genre. Perhaps elitists want to refuse that the genre has shrinked because of them.

Oh please. The players spoke with their money. They clearly wanted something fresh and Cave and co moved with the times.

Bullet hells didn't alienate this genre, in fact they've been almost single-handedly keeping it alive for the past decade.

Man cannot live on Raiden IV alone.

[Mortificator]

For the Caravan competitions, qualifying matches would take two minutes, and final rounds would take five.

Most places I've read about Caraven made it sound like there were separate tournaments for the two and five minute modes. The way Takahashi explains it makes more sense.

Yeah, they stopped selling well. Part of it is the games we made just kept getting harder and harder--too hard. For us, running Caravans each year, we had to keep raising new and more difficult hurdles to satisfy players who had competed in previous events and gotten better. Eventually this caused the players with the lowest skill (you could say they formed the base of a pyramid) to see these games and think, "There's no way I can compete." So I think it ended up being a problem when we started making games that catered to that tiny tier at the very top of the pyramid.

I think if we had done a better job tuning the difficulty of our STGs so that anyone could enjoy them and achieve high scores with some effort, then the Caravan events might have continued for several more years.

I don't see the difficulty slide he's talking about, though. It isn't hard to survive to the end of any of the PCE games' Caravan modes. Planing and executing a route to beat everyone else's scores is tough, but the core difficulty of the game doesn't affect that. And if he's talking about the arcade modes, the second PCE title was toughest and the last was easiest; Super Star Solder doesn't have bombs and ends with a brutal boss rush, while in Soldier Blade, every power-up gives you bomb stock and there's no penalty for using them. On top of that, the PCE games as a whole were easier than the Famicom ones.

[Despatche]

Man cannot live on Raiden IV alone.

man doesn't want raiden iv in the first place

even though he should

because it's fucking awesome

[Edmond Dantes]

I like how nobody in here noticed that he said that bullet hells alienated the genre. Perhaps elitists want to refuse that the genre has shrinked because of them.

Oh please. The players spoke with their money. They clearly wanted something fresh and Cave and co moved with the times.

Bullet hells didn't alienate this genre, in fact they've been almost single-handedly keeping it alive for the past decade.

Man cannot live on Raiden IV alone.

I think you've just proved Kaiser's and Meijin's point. Hardcore fans kept the genre afloat, but only as a niche. It's exactly the same way superhero comics used to be read by everyone but then became strictly for collectors and geeks.

When a genre reaches a point where the only people who care are the hardcore, things have gotten bad.

[Paradigm]

I think you've just proved Kaiser's and Meijin's point.

You thought wrong.

It simply wasn't the golden age anymore, arcades had begun a steady decline and shmups were a casualty of this. Bullet hell had nothing to do with the genre's decrease in popularity nor did it alienate anything.

It's only down to the likes of Cave that shmups have been able to maintain any kind of presence whatsoever in arcades in recent years. This genre would have likely died a death by now were it not for bullet hell.

[Skykid]

I see no error in Paradigm's statements.

Toaplan and Raizing were the last hurrah for mainstream shmups, and they formed the basis for Ikeda's bullet hell evolution before dying.

The long term existence of Cave is almost an anomaly. There's no way they alienated the genre: what the heck was left to alienate? They are the genre.

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know about that. There's still people around who will download a Galaga clone to their mobile phones.

[Skykid]

I don't know about that. There's still people around who will download a Galaga clone to their mobile phones.

I'm not sure 50 pence retro game ports sold on nostalgia can be considered part of a current commercial genre.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm sure if you sell hundreds of thousands of them that calculation might change. There's probably a comparable income from certain phone games as there was in arcade games, except now the game companies have cut out the operators to get the credits directly. (And this is before they get evil thoughts, like Square's "All the Bravest" creditfeed festival.) As well or badly as Cave games sell they're just in a different market segment, and while they make more per unit, they probably move a fraction of the units and they also probably have much higher development costs.

[Skykid]

I'm sure if you sell hundreds of thousands of them that calculation might change. There's probably a comparable income from certain phone games as there was in arcade games, except now the game companies have cut out the operators to get the credits directly. (And this is before they get evil thoughts, like Square's "All the Bravest" creditfeed festival.) As well or badly as Cave games sell they're just in a different market segment, and while they make more per unit, they probably move a fraction of the units and they also probably have much higher development costs.

I think we're running on entirely separate trains of thought here. I'm talking about how a genre exists in a present, progressive commercial form, rather than how once saleable proponents from the genre's past have been quickly slapped on mobile phones to make a quick buck.

I wasn't really questioning whether lazily sticking retro games into the iphone catalogue makes money (one assumes they do), but how Cave dominate the current shmup market because there aren't really many other devs jostling for space. Basically, I don't see how they can be accused of alienating a market where there's barely any fresh competition.