Amiga in Japan

[Tigerskunk]

One of the most famous japanese Amiga users might be Fumito Ueda, of Shadow of the Collossus fame...

See here:
https://blog.amigaguru.com/shadow-of...tion-to-amiga/

and an Interview with the man himself:

https://shmuplations.com/ueda/

—Why did you choose the Amiga, then?
Ueda: At the time, the Amiga was in the spotlight thanks to its use in creating TV shows like Ugo Ugo Ruga. I actually was torn between the Amiga and the Mac. (laughs)

—A fateful choice!
Ueda: Yeah. I think my choice had a big impact on where I ended up. But I loved animation. I used to make little animated flipbooks. I didn’t really know much about the distinction between full animation and limited animation. But I thought it was cool how, in animation, it wasn’t about having a single, beautiful still image—in fact, when you look at a single animated frame, it might not even be drawn that well, but when it’s put together and animated smoothly, it looks cool. So I chose the Amiga because I wanted to do animation like that. There was also this popular Amiga tech demo called “MegaDemo” I had seen, which I thought was awesome.

—Were you completely self-taught with the Amiga?
Ueda: Mostly, yeah. There was nothing like the internet back then.

—When you consider that, it seems like a really difficult environment to learn the Amiga in. Were you still living in Osaka then?
Ueda: I was. After graduating I supported myself with a part-time job for awhile. Luckily, right at that time there was company in Osaka who was using an Amiga to make CG.

I joined them as a part-time employee, but when I got there, although they had a brand new “CG Department”, they actually didn’t have any real work waiting for me to do. The President had bought an Amiga just because he liked the hardware, but he didn’t have anyone who knew how to use it. (laughs) Anyway, I started using that Amiga to make things for Kansai Television.

[sokolovic]

I wonder where were made the Koei wargames on the Amiga. Japanese developpers or western ones ?

[TCD]

Sadly the full credits aren't in the manuals. It seems like all the KOEI Amiga games were produced by Kou Shibusawa, so there's a good chance that they were developed in Japan.

[kremiso]

interesting that Ueda interview

maybe there is some hidden Amiga game prototype also in Japan then

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by TCD

Sadly the full credits aren't in the manuals. It seems like all the KOEI Amiga games were produced by Kou Shibusawa, so there's a good chance that they were developed in Japan.

For me Kou Shibusawa was only main designer of all Koei historical series. Nothing related to Amiga. I think that Amiga conversion of Koei games was made in USA/Canada, because using audio.device for playing music. Also music files looks very familiar for me, but I forget when I seen similar music files. Of course if someone has fast PC and depacked all Amiga games DOS as disk images, then can search for ID. If i remember right, Koei music files has very characteristic file suffix. Then searching for this ID (suffix) is enough to find Amiga developers.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Regarding the x68000, the machine was so powerful that it was at this time subject to restriction on exportation outside Japan !

Still had a cack version of Chase HQ lol

[Torti-the-Smurf]

@Tigerskunk

You did read my previous post !

Nice !!!

Yeah, Ueada called himself "Amiga Nut" and its really interesting to hear,
how Ueda san experienced the Amiga in Japan.

; how the Amiga changed his life and consequently Videogames.

The next time he release another "game", (whenever that may be) i´ll be there, day one !

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Still had a cack version of Chase HQ lol

For sure. But here's the catch : the game has to run with 2mb of ram. I guess they slashed the sprites frames, and the coding is not the greatest possible

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Torti-the-Smurf

@Tigerskunk

You did read my previous post !

Nice !!!

Yeah, Ueada called himself "Amiga Nut" and its really interesting to hear,
how Ueda san experienced the Amiga in Japan.

; how the Amiga changed his life and consequently Videogames.

The next time he release another "game", (whenever that may be) i´ll be there, day one !

The personal website of Ueda was skinned after the workbench for years IIRC.

Also, first Pokemon music was made on an Amiga and Tetsuya Mizuguchi was influenced by Xenon 2 on the Amiga hé discovered at a friend house.

You also mentioned an Amiga game, Xenon 2, as a major influence. I was quite surprised by this, as I didn’t think the Amiga was popular at all in Japan.

You’re right. Japan’s PC market at the time was dominated by NEC’s PC-98. You had to be a very high level of geek in order to even know about the Amiga. One of my really good friends was the hardcore “mania” guy out of our little nerd group, and he’d have a whole bunch of these amazing demos from Europe.When Xenon 2 booted up and I saw all of those logos, it got me thinking – musical artists in games, is that a thing? I didn’t know that something like that existed. I was immediately hooked. The game felt like a real diamond in the rough and captivated me immediately.

Plus Hideo Kojima who spoke recently about playing Amiga games.

https://twitter.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/...03952023949312

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Yupp, Kojima said that Super Mario Bros & Another World had a profund impact on him

If you do a bit of digging, its crazy how much impact the Amiga really had on "the Medium".

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

The personal website of Ueda was skinned after the workbench for years IIRC.

Also, first Pokemon music was made on an Amiga and Tetsuya Mizuguchi was influenced by Xenon 2 on the Amiga hé discovered at a friend house.



Plus Hideo Kojima who spoke recently about playing Amiga games.

https://twitter.com/HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN/...03952023949312

Did anyone sent him the H0ffman version of Metal Gear?