Spirit Bomb
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Mar 26, 2018 10:35:27 GMT
This week's game designer subject? Hideyuki Suganami (numerous Treasure games, including Mischief Makers, Alien Soldier, and Sin and Punishment, among others)
What do you think of Mr. Suganami and his games, artwork, etc.?
Please share your thoughts on his works.
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Spirit Bomb
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#DeathToAmerica #DeathToTheAmericas #DeathToChristianity #DeathToFascism
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Mar 26, 2018 10:57:17 GMT
I have nothing but respect for the oldschool members of Treasure, and Hideyuki Suganami is perhaps the most important designer they ever had for me personally, because Mischief Makers was not only one of my favorite N64 games as a kid (and remains one of my most nostalgic games), but it was essentially my introduction to anime, and the tokusatsu genre. As a 90s kid I was born just at the time where anime was becoming increasingly mainstream in America, but since my parents never rented any anime for me or my brother, that left only video games as a source of anime influence, and Mischief Makers was the only one we owned as a kid that was distinctively anime, as in, noticeably anime-looking.
I still to this day am blown away by the presentation in Mischief Makers. Sure the character designs themselves are a little jagged and unrefined for my taste, but they're extremely expressive with a variety of different emotions/drawings for each model, all presented in comic-book style squares, which additionally got me a part of comic books and manga. They really enhance the storytelling dramatically. And then there's that amazing (in my opinion) animated intro, which, along with Jonny Quest, only further fueled my love of limited animation and its untapped potential:
I haven't played Sin and Punishment or Alien Soldier but I've heard very good things about both, with Sin and Punishment in particular often being regarded as the best of its genre by gamers and critics alike. It's a damn shame that Alien Soldier was never released in the US, since that's one I would have loved to have played.
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Armored Core Raven
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Post by Armored Core Raven on Mar 27, 2018 13:03:19 GMT
He's worked on some good games so I'd say he's a good game designer.
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Cervantes
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Post by Cervantes on Mar 27, 2018 17:33:55 GMT
I haven't played Sin and Punishment or Alien Soldier but I've heard very good things about both, with Sin and Punishment in particular often being regarded as the best of its genre by gamers and critics alike. It's a damn shame that Alien Soldier was never released in the US, since that's one I would have loved to have played. Sin and Punishment is my favourite on-rails shooter after the Panzer Dragoon series, it's definitely one of the best in the genre. I also heard good things about its sequel. Alien Soldier is awesome. I don't even know how to describe it, it's a very different kind of action game. It's also super hard, even on easy. |
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Mar 28, 2018 1:05:13 GMT
All these guys from Treasure are ex-Konami members from the NES TMNT era, and even after forming Treasure they made games for them such as Gradius V, which is my favorite shmup of all time and one of my favorite games of all time as well.
They also made Radiant Silvergun, Bangai-O, and Ikagura that are regarded in the industry as the best spaceship shootets of all time.
These guys are genius game designers, they are to me on the same smart level as guys like Nobuya Nakazato, Hideo Kojima, and Koji Igarashi. Without them there wouldn't be Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier, or Gunstar Heroes.
It is also important to consider that many games these guys work for are not directly credited to Treasure. G-Rev, Nintendo, and Sega have released titles using assets from the team.
Talking about that, I always wanted to play Code Of Princess which had heavy work by these guys, and I heard it is coming to the Switch later this year, so I'm looking forward for that.
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Spirit Bomb
Cartoon Pony Wrangler
#DeathToAmerica #DeathToTheAmericas #DeathToChristianity #DeathToFascism
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Sept 8, 2023 13:54:48 GMT
Ok, I f*cked up big time. After years of uncertainty following the making of this thread, I decided to go back to do some research into the Treasure staff and discovered that I was indeed wrong about the man behind the artwork on Treasure's 90s classics Mischief Makers and Guardian Heroes, among others. Hideyuki Suganami was NOT the character designer for them. It was
TETSUHIKO KIKUCHI
^
THIS was the guy I was thinking of! He eluded me all these years! I can't believe I credited the wrong designer for his work all this time! I KNEW I had the right to doubt myself because I was indeed wrong! I'm so glad I went back to double check this!
All the OG treasure staff were gods of video game design, but it was Tetsuhiko Kikuchi who's artistic influence stood out to me the most. I absolutely love the music and the beautiful backgrounds of Mischief Makers, but it was the character designs of the game that I remember the most, and that was his work. To me, this is the man who made Tresure elite, the man who put Treasure over the top, the man who made Treasure a LEGEND in the world of 2D video games. His design work was among the most iconic and creator driven of the japanese video game industry. Maybe I'm overexaggerating here, but Tetsuhiko Kikuchi was the game designer who gave Mischief Makers its iconic "manga" visual flair. You know, the comic book panel illustrations and detailed character portraits. I LOVED that stuff about the game. And he was the one who conceived & drew that.
He WILL be getting his own game designer thread. My sincere apologies for the mistaken identity. Hideyuki Suganami is an amazing figure in game design (namely programming), and I've enjoyed his work all the way up to Gunstar Super Heroes (which was the most recent Tresure title I've played), but he wasn't who I was thinking of here.
This was partially the reason for my confusion:
In the credits for Mischief Makers and Guardian Heroes, he's credited as "HAN". WTF? I had NO idea who they were referring to. No wonder I was so confused.
This is the same problem with the OG Nazca Corp staff. They encrypted all of their names in the credits of their titles which made it very difficult to determine who did what and what their real names even were. There was no reason for Nazca Corp and Treasure to humble themselves like this. All it did was make it more difficult for the internet to credit them for their amazing LEGENDARY work!
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stratogustav
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Post by stratogustav on Sept 16, 2023 20:15:05 GMT
They just didn't want other companies to steal the artists. At the time they will offer more money and companies can lose key talent people from their staff, so they hide them with nicknames instead.
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Spirit Bomb
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#DeathToAmerica #DeathToTheAmericas #DeathToChristianity #DeathToFascism
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Post by Spirit Bomb on Sept 17, 2023 2:25:34 GMT
They just didn't want other companies to steal the artists. At the time they will offer more money and companies can lose key talent people from their staff, so they hide them with nicknames instead. ... You know, I think Strat might actually be right here. I've never had a job in the entertainment industry, but that does make sense. SNK eventually lost Shinkiro after they declared bankruptcy, who despite hiding behind a pen-name was hired by the wealthier Capcom. But let's face it, everybody knew who Shinkiro was. The difference here is that most people didn't even know who "Han" was. Even many Treasure fanboys like myself can't recall either his pen name or his real name. I think he needed a better pen name. If he was going to use a pen name, then he needed something that would stand out, something distinct. But either way it was a real shame that I couldn't even figure out his identity a few days ago. I mean, Kikuchi wasn't strictly the best artist in the industry or anything like that, but (especially for western gamers) his art was wildly imaginative with a style that was highly distinct and he was definitely a defining trademark of early Treasure games. I think I remember reading that he left the company sometime after Guardian Heroes and the look and feel of Treasures 2D games was never the same. Treasure tried so hard to mimic his style in their 6th gen handheld games and for example as amazing as the graphical style was in Gunstar Super Heroes, it still didn't match the overall quality of the look of one of their 5th gen 2D games like Mischief Makers. Close, but no cigar, as the saying goes. I wonder what happened to Kikuchi. I mean, we all know what happened to Shinkiro and where he is nowadays, but what became of the artists at Treasure and Nazca Corp who all hid behind pen names? That's what I wanna know. Their style was so distinct that it's crazy to think that they could just disappear into the industry afterwards. Maybe they just started drawing with a different style. I'm guessing that's why, since artists are often forced to adopt different visual styles when they move from studio to studio. Most directors won't let their artists just do their own thing. They say "imitate this artist" or "imitate that style", and they artist has to comply or they won't have a job. It's possible that Kikuchi simply retired from art altogether and found work in another field. The art world is infamous for having very little in the way or paying jobs, thus most artists (even professionals) starve from time to time, so maybe he got tired of competing for infrequent jobs that (we can assume) provided little in the way of income. |
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