That was not a Bandai property. I think you’ll find, if you look into it, that it was a Namco IP from the very beginning. The original film project was also planned and produced by Namco. Later, when we were working on Yoshimitsu’s design, Mr. Tsushima, who was an in-house artist at the time, and I talked about incorporating a bit of the flavor of Mirai Ninja (Cyber Ninja). Mr. Tsushima then took that idea and pushed it quite boldly, and the result was the Yoshimitsu design you see in Tekken 3. So in that sense, there are certainly some elements of Cyber Ninja in Yoshimitsu. But those elements were simply carrying forward inspiration from Cyber Ninja, a project created under Namco founder Masaya Nakamura. Bandai had nothing to do with it.

No, the camera boat was on starboard, so it had right of way. The USA boat that tacked was simply trying, from a tactical standpoint, to complete the tack in as advantageous a position as possible relative to the starboard-tack boat. And I wouldn’t exactly call the situation perfectly controlled, either. If the camera boat protested that the USA boat tacked too late and forced it to luff up slightly to avoid a collision, there’s even a chance the USA boat could be penalized after a hearing. Also, the USA crew seem a little slow shifting their weight onto the windward deck after the tack. It’s hard to judge the exact degree of overlap between the two boats from this camera angle, but the loss of speed during the maneuver is probably just less obvious because it’s a catamaran. To me, it doesn’t really look like a particularly successful tack.

In Paris with Kamiya-san. We spent 40+ mins arguing over who’d play DiCaprio for a Titanic reenactment on our Seine cruise. By the time we settled it, the tour was over. So this is the only photo we got.

You know, some people are still saying, “So, Yasuki Nakabayashi is the current director of TK,” but I think I more or less answered that in the post below a while ago. If you read it again, I’m sure you’ll understand what’s going on.

【A Quick Update】 I’ve joined VS STUDIO as the next step in my journey. Working on games again with two of my former bosses feels nostalgic in many ways, while at the same time, the excitement of creating something completely new makes every day incredibly fulfilling. I’m really looking forward to seeing what we can create together! ⸻ 【近況報告】 新たな挑戦の場として、VS STUDIOに加わりました。 かつての上司2人と再び一緒にゲーム開発に取り組む毎日は、どこか懐かしく、それと同時に新しいゲームを生み出していく刺激にも溢れていて、とても充実しています！ これからここで何を生み出していけるのか、私自身も楽しみです！

It feels like typical AI-generated work. The amount and density of information, as well as the overall quality, increase every year, but somehow it all seems to be heading in the same direction. In any case, it still hasn’t reached a level where it can express any real creative taste, so it’s rejected. The real battle will begin when an engineer indistinguishable from a human developer is typing away at a keyboard, and a Terminator shows up completely naked to kill me and my grandchildren. In Japan, we already have cat-eared robots delivering food at family restaurants—but they’re still on wheels. Evolution is way too slow. At this rate, I’ll die of old age before AI ever comes to kill me. People trying to make money from viral videos have been making a huge fuss about how amazing AI is since around 2020, but honestly, its progress feels slow enough to make me yawn. Both software-based AI and physical AI need to hurry the hell up. Just yesterday, I still had to clean my car windows myself. This isn’t the future I was told about when I was in elementary school. According to the books about the 21st century that I read as a child, we should have had robot chefs in our homes by now. Nuclear-powered jumbo jets should have been flying through the skies. Android tutors equipped with artificial intelligence should have been coming to help children with their summer vacation homework. Cars shouldn’t merely have been self-driving—they should have been flying along sky highways. Fathers should have been commuting to work from cities beneath the ocean. Humanity should already have begun colonizing Mars. Every movie should have featured incredible three-dimensional imagery without the need for 3D glasses. Game developers shouldn’t even exist anymore—you should have been able to shout, “I want to play an amazing game!” and then play GTA 6 on your wristwatch for about two dollars’ worth of electricity. And above all, it was supposed to be a peaceful world where crime was something you could experience only inside video games. And yet, what does the modern world actually look like? In Paris and Tokyo, we still live through day after day of dog owners failing to pick up their dogs’ shit while out on walks. This isn’t the future I was promised. Every day, I’m reminded that we’re still the ones who have to keep pushing things forward.

Yamanaka-san @Yamanaka_ARC, Pachi @HYPER_pachi, Congratulations on the launch of MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls! And thank you for sending me a copy of the game. #MARVELTokon#: Fighting Souls as servers go live: Aug. 6 – 8:00 AM PDT Aug. 6 – 11:00 AM EDT Aug. 6 – 4:00 PM BST Aug. 6 – 5:00 PM CEST Aug. 7 – 12:00 AM JST

For me, this is already a story from a career that spans the past 31 years. I’m probably one of the people in the game industry who has traveled to the largest number of countries and actually met local fan communities in person. So honestly, I’ve been influenced by people and cultures from all over the world. More than race itself, I think I’ve always been influenced by “regional culture” and “organizational culture.” One of the most fascinating moments involving your culture happened in 2019, when I revealed Leroy Smith. (The visual design wasn’t mine, but the original character concept was.) Right after the reveal, I received this message from the American fan community: “Can we… can we invite you to the cookout for making an awesome character like this?” Now, as someone from my generation in Japan, I was actually considered relatively good at reading and writing English. By then I’d already been to North America over 50 times, had maintained the English I learned for university entrance exams, and had been communicating with people on Twitter in English long before translation apps became useful, let alone AI translation. But honestly… when I saw that sentence, I had absolutely no idea what it meant. In fact, my very first reaction was: “Oh no… I’m finished.” Here’s why. Back then I was frequently arguing against articles spreading hate toward video games, and I kept seeing people replying with the word “cooked.” As you know, “cooked” can mean you’re done, finished, or completely destroyed. I also often saw “roasted.” Because of that, I honestly assumed “cookout” was just an even stronger version of “cooked.” So for one terrifying moment, I read it as: “Hey… we… we… can invite you to a party where we’re going to beat you up and roast you?” Even though I thought I knew America pretty well, I genuinely wondered if I’d somehow pressed some invisible cultural button that I wasn’t supposed to touch. Later, I had another misunderstanding. People kept calling me: “You are the fxxking GOAT.” And for about two or three years I honestly thought, “Damn… here’s another guy calling me ‘a fxxking goat… this animal bastard.’ Better ignore the bait.” Some people even replied with 🐐 emojis, so I genuinely believed they were insulting me by calling me an animal. Because of misunderstandings like that, I seriously thought: “Man… getting our characters accepted by Americans is really difficult. They might actually be even more sensitive than Japanese people in many ways. We need to study their culture much more.” Anyway, back to the cookout story. Eventually someone explained that a “cookout” in the African American community is actually one of the highest compliments possible—basically saying: “You’re someone we’d trust enough to invite to our close-knit family BBQ, where only real friends and loved ones are welcome.” That explanation was a huge relief. Then they started showing me BBQ equipment and ingredients… …and I was absolutely shocked that everything was several times bigger than what we have in Japan. Sure, I expected the smoker grills to be huge. But even the tongs and spatulas were enormous, and the meat looked like something I’d only ever seen as loot in an MMORPG. Looking back now, I honestly regret not immediately flying to the U.S. and accepting an invitation to one of those community cookouts. That really was the perfect opportunity. Anyway… I’ve wandered way off topic. Of course I can’t claim that I fully understand what you call Black culture. But if we’re talking about the parts that have genuinely influenced me, the cookout story is certainly one of them. And the people in these photos have also had a significant influence on me. (I’d like to include many more, but I’ll limit it to four photos.)

It’s rare to find a thread where reading through the replies leads to so many different discoveries. I imagine narrowing your favorite tracks down to just three is incredibly difficult, but the fact that so many people were still able to carefully select and share their top three really reminds us of just how strongly music is connected to the gameplay experience—and how truly powerful the songs that remain etched in our memories can be.

1) Back in a time when the term “game center” didn’t even exist yet, a dimly lit coffee shop run by my father’s older sister received one of the early Space Invaders cocktail arcade cabinets—long before the game exploded into a nationwide phenomenon. Inside that dark café, I can still remember the glowing CRT pixels floating beneath the glass tabletop, the mysterious low-frequency background music, and the unforgettable sound effects each time an invader was shot. 2) When I was an elementary school student in the 1970s, video games were surrounded by prejudice and social stigma. Teachers and PTA members would patrol arcades looking for students. If you were caught, you could be forced to stand before all 600 students during the school’s morning assembly and publicly apologize in the schoolyard. 3) There were classmates in college—people who happened to share classes with me, though they were never really my friends—who had already secured positions at major corporations. With smug smiles, they would say things like, “Turning your hobby into your job is foolish,” or “You were even captain of an athletic club at such a prestigious university, and you still want to work for a video game company? (laughs)” More than the games themselves, it was the environment surrounding them that shaped who I became. Living in that environment, I refused to be looked down upon by people who dismissed games—adults who judged students only by academic credentials or athletic achievements. So I proved myself by excelling in both. I made sure that those who looked down on games had nothing left to say, whether the measure was grades or sports. People may not expect it, but I started yacht racing at fifteen. I reached the podium at Japan’s National Sports Festival, consistently ranked among the top five in the All Japan Championships, and even raced at the front of Japan–U.S. international competitions. The desire to silence people who insisted that pursuing what you truly love as a career is somehow wrong—or who made bizarre claims such as, “Once you get your dream job, that’s the finish line, so you’ll stop trying”—became one of the fundamental inspirations behind the very theme of conflict itself. As a matter of fact, I once had a manager who genuinely believed exactly that. He said, “If you put someone in the position they want most, they’ve already reached their goal, so they won’t grow anymore.” What nonsense. Isn’t the real reason simply that you never truly loved what you were doing? Then again, for people who never genuinely loved games in the first place and only wanted promotions and social status, a job title really is the finish line. Looking back, I can honestly say that today’s version of myself was forged through fighting against people who never grew, who suppressed what others genuinely loved, and who always chose to stand on the side that condemned video games. I only wanted one thing: to be somewhere I could play games without anyone getting angry at me, and to live my own life by creating the games I loved. That was all I ever thought about. And I can proudly say this: I have never once lost to the people who tried to pull me away from games by dressing up their arguments with one excuse after another.

From my perspective, Miyazaki is a rather unique, yet extremely serious game developer. His career did not begin in the game industry. In fact, he didn’t become a game developer until he was almost thirty years old. Even among developers of my generation (those of us born in the 1970s), I think it’s remarkable that someone who wasn’t even a game developer during the dawn of the polygon era eventually became one of Japan’s most representative game creators. (In other words, compared to the rest of us from the same generation—including myself—his career path is exceptionally unusual. Most notably, unlike many of us, he was not working at one of the major development studios that held a significant technological advantage during the early polygon era. That, more than anything else, is what makes his path so unique.) Next, regarding my impression of Dark Souls. People often focus on its difficulty as a game, but I believe Miyazaki’s true creativity shines through in the world he created. (By the way, I personally think Dark Souls has fairly simple action mechanics, and I don’t actually consider it to be an especially difficult game.) If you look into my own career, you’ll see that I was personally involved with the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring as the General Manager overseeing both production and marketing (Just to clarify, I wasn't part of the development team itself. My involvement was simply as the General Manager of the publisher-side department overseeing production and marketing). From that perspective, I can say that Dark Souls didn’t suddenly become a massive success overnight. It was the result of everything Miyazaki and his team had built up through their previous titles. Today, he receives offers from all over the world, but when I think back to the days when he and his team were struggling the most, many of those offers seem like they’re coming from people who only know who they are today. Some of them almost feel like complete reversals in attitude. Well, that’s just my personal perspective. Personally, I had grown tired of people who would simply compare games by saying things like, “That title cost X billion yen to make and sold Y million copies,” and then use nothing but those numbers to judge them against other games. There were so many people who couldn’t appreciate the journey or the growth of the developers themselves. Anyone can look at the current numbers—they’re available to everyone. Whenever I heard those kinds of opinions, I always thought, “That’s exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s never actually developed games.” What surprised me even more was that, even if people couldn’t properly evaluate that journey, almost nobody even seemed interested in trying to understand the process of how those developers gradually reached where they are today. (I'm NOT talking about the fan community). Now, going back to Miyazaki, there are two things about him that have always stayed with me. The first was back when I was developing Summer Lesson for VR, around the time it was generating a lot of buzz. One day, he came to try an early build of Summer Lesson along with people from several other game companies. While everyone else was laughing, chatting, and having fun with it, Miyazaki alone played it with incredible seriousness. Then, after everyone had finished and started discussing their impressions, he remained completely silent, staring intently at the preview monitor, deep in thought. Everyone became curious and finally asked him, “Miyazaki, what are you thinking about?” He suddenly smiled and said, “Oh… I got completely absorbed in thinking about what I would do if I were making this, and what kind of game I’d create.” What he talked about after that was, in the best possible sense, completely insane. It was one of those rare moments when I caught a glimpse of what I’d call his “mad scientist” side—his deeply serious, obsessive approach to creativity. The other thing that left a strong impression on me was that he generally dislikes video interviews (including live streaming). I once asked him about it by email, and he replied with quite a long explanation. After reading it, I completely understood where he was coming from. Simply put, he doesn’t like watching himself moving around on video. (Psychologically speaking, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.) But there was another reason. According to him, there are naturally many people in this industry who know games far better than he does. Whenever he listens to those people speak, he realizes that his own understanding is still shallow, and it makes him feel that he’s not yet in a position to be the one talking about games. I mean… it’s common for well-known developers to say, “I still have a long way to go.” But whenever someone like him says that, my reaction is always, “Come on… if you say you’re still not there yet, then the rest of us won’t feel qualified to talk about games at all.” (laugh) Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why video interviews with Miyazaki are extremely rare. And conversations with him on camera—especially long-form discussions with another developer—are even rarer. They almost don’t exist at all. By the way, the other game developer in that photo is Masahiro Sakurai. If you ask me, he’s basically: “A Saiyan who genuinely believes he’s just another ordinary human.” Every now and then, when the rest of us are struggling with some problem, he’ll say something that sounds exactly like Goku saying, “Well… why don’t you just fly?” And I’ll reply, “Because we humans can’t use Flight Technique.” Then he just stares at me with a completely puzzled look. To put it in terms of Demon Slayer, I’d describe him as: "Like Muzan Kibutsuji casually showing up at a drinking party where all the Hashira have gathered, genuinely believing he's just another ordinary guest". That’s the kind of person he is.

Back in September of last year, when we decided to bring Roger back, I sent the team a YouTube link to “that famous video” because I wanted us to recreate it. Some of the younger team members had never seen it before. I wasn’t personally involved in editing this video, but I heard yesterday that around springtime the team was actually hesitating over whether to include the recreation because they were running out of time. Apparently, Nakatsu’s final direction was, “We absolutely have to do it.” To be honest, I had already given up on it myself. I thought, “They probably won’t do that gag anymore. They’ve probably forgotten about it.” So when I saw it yesterday, it genuinely made me smile. I thought, “Ah, they actually did it!” Great job to both the team and Nakatsu.