![]() ![]() By then, it was well known that Square was developing Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation, and Murayama and his team were sure from the start that their game would not be able to stand up commercially to Square's RPG. Konami was also intent on making Suikoden into a franchise, and he was asked to develop its sequel, bringing back most of the team from the first game. Murayama personally responded to each and every fan letter that was sent. However sales increased when word of mouth started spreading and a cult following was formed. Suikoden was released in Japan in 1995 to positive reviews and an initial lackluster response from the market. The pitch was a success, and in this short meeting the game was given the name Suikoden, the Japanese reading of Shui Hu Zhuan, and Murayama was tasked with making 108 characters mirroring the 108 outlaws in the Chinese classic. In the winter of 1993, when pitching his idea of an RPG with a great gallery of supporting characters, inspired by Murayama's preference for manga such as Fist of the North Star and Captain Tsubasa he instead decided to use the classic Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan in order to better illustrate his point to his boss, who was around 50 years old and assumed to be unfamiliar with these manga. Unimpressed with their early 3D polygon tests, he opted to make a traditional 2D RPG using sprite graphics. With the pick of making a baseball game, a racing game or an RPG, Murayama and Kawano decided to reopen their RPG project, although Murayama has stated that given the opportunity, he would have preferred to make a shoot 'em up, citing his preference for arcade action titles such as Taito's Metal Black.Ĭommitted from the start to make a franchise to rival series such as Enix's Dragon Quest and Square's Final Fantasy, Murayama wrote the scenario of the first Suikoden. Murayama, Kawano and ten other employees were instead assigned with developing Konami's first games for Sony's upcoming console, the PlayStation. This game was scrapped in the early stages of development & despite the popular belief was not the basis for the script of Suikoden. Initially hired for QA and menial tasks, he was handpicked six months later along with a few others to create his own launch game for an internally developed video game console, where he began collaborating with designer Junko Kawano, also a newcomer to Konami and future writer and designer for Suikoden IV and Suikoden Tactics. He is the creator of the Suikoden series of role-playing video games, which he produced and directed for Konami until his departure in 2002 before the release of Suikoden III.Īfter finishing his computer programming studies at University of Tokyo in the summer of 1992, Murayama visited Konami's newly opened Tokyo headquarters to submit his first job application whereupon he was hired. Yoshitaka Murayama ( 村山 吉隆, Murayama Yoshitaka) is a Japanese game designer, game director and game producer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |