But something changed-something became stronger than before. “There was a place for making strange games a long, long time ago. The problem, in Kimura’s opinion, is that Japanese games as a whole have sacrificed their weirdness and experimental vibe in service of the mighty dollar (or yen, as it were). I was escaping from the Japanese video game industry and the people,” he said. “I remember I almost gave up making games. Lately, Kimura has felt increasingly dissociated from an industry he’s been a part of for the past 20 years. “I am not only a game designer, but also a traveler on this planet,” he said over email. So why is an old hand with big games under his belt striking out on his own? One reason is because he’s adventurous. Unlike the fresh-faced millennials who form the majority of small independent studios, Kimura’s hair is stippled with gray. His two partners at the studio share credits on classics like Little King’s Story and Super Mario RPG. Those stripes alone establish him as a significant designer, if not a best-selling one. Yoshiro Kimura, their director, is something of a cult figure among cognoscente of off-center videogames, with a body of work that includes cult classics ( Rule of Rose), holy grails that never made it out of Japan ( MOON: Remix RPG Adventure), and the closest games come to grindhouse cinema ( No More Heroes, Shadows of the Damned). The team’s resumes contains some of the most imaginative games ever made. But across the Pacific, in the motherland of monolithic game publishers like Nintendo and Sony, the concept remains foreign-although the tide has started to turn.įor proof, look no further than Million Onion Hotel’s three-man team, Onion Games. Here in the West, it isn’t that uncommon for one person working on a shoestring budget from her bedroom to produce a work that can hold its own with a giant production. But this sea change has been slow going in Japan. Outside of Japan, there has been a cloudburst in recent years of small, startup game studios creating big, important titles-for instance, the Fullbright Company’s Gone Home, and, of course, Minecraft. These stampeding cattle and soaring asparaguses are leading the charge in a cultural shift that may change how Japanese games are made. It is more than a zany mobile app, though. Certain to fill your daily allowance of whimsy in one serving, the hyper-cheerful mobile game features an ensemble of cute magical onions and parading livestock. Million Onion Hotel has the kind of kooky, kawaii originality you can only grub up in Japan. This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel.
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