Drying up in the debug room

I’d been bedridden with severe seasonal depression. While I was laid up, I kept thinking about friends who had died. A friend with schizophrenia who gave me a PC when I was homeless in Tokyo. An ASD woman raised by toxic parents who showed me affection for the first time. An alcoholic ADHD otaku who accompanied me when I applied for welfare. They all died in ways “infinitely close to suicide.” I received their Humanity from their corpses.

— By the way, I like Sonic the Hedgehog. Surprisingly, that’s a minority stance in Japan. Mario has a properly refined “competitive edge.” So what about Sonic? The concept of “differentiation through high-speed movement” was cool, but the narrow screen was a problem. That unlucky constraint eventually created its own charms—the cool hedgehog, multi-scroll nightscapes, gimmicks that stimulate physical curiosity, exploratory level design—and settled into a game design of “ilinx (vertigo) and chance.” This feels like one form of an intermediate state between Japanese and Western aesthetics. Why do I think that?

"MYST" / Cyan, Inc.

I grew up with some American games: MYST, Prince of Persia, ECCO the dolphin, Another World, Flashback, and The Elder scrolls series. They have a quiet, shaded quality—“the world simply exists, and I am within it.” By contrast, when I thought of Japanese games it was Bomberman, Dragon Quest, Street Fighter, Mario: a symbolically rendered world under flat lighting.

"Nakamura-za Grand Opening: Backstage Reception Scene" / Utagawa Kunisada

"Benkei and Yoshitsune Dueling on Gojo Bridge" / Utagawa Kuniyoshi

A mountainous country with limited habitable land and an agrarian society fostered visual devices like the bird’s-eye view, symbolic reduction, and the third-person perspective; layered with Zen aesthetics, this led to Japanese painting For example, the graphics of “DQ1” can be seen as a slightly Westernized form of Japanese painting. In contrast, Western painting and the graphics of titles like DOOM and The Elder Scrolls prioritize “where I went and what I saw there.” Of course that isn’t the only Western mode, but there was certainly a design philosophy that aspired to high-powered apparatus—one that, produced games like MYST.

"Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway" / J. M. W. Turner

"Waves" / Gustave Courbet

Next to that, Sonic reads as quite pop. The better comparison is Donkey Kong or Crash Bandicoot. Even Final Fantasy, often held up as the epitome of the “evil” rail-based JRPG, frequently builds scenarios that self-referentially express “freedom on rails” (most notably FFVIII, FFX, and FFXV). That posture shows up, too, in its graphic realism and the lack of freedom in its cutscenes.

"FINAL FANTASY VIII" / © SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.

Another balance can be found in games like Metroid, Panzer dragoon, ICO, and Dark Souls... Framing this as West/East or abstract/concrete no longer catches the nuance. It’s about the zone between “Fire” and “Darkness.” On the very edge of chaos, a diversity of differences, suffering, and joy are born.

"SAMURAI SHODOWN IV AMAKUSA'S REVENGE" / © SNK CORPORATION

Well, I'm no historian, so I'll stop rambling here. This is my story about my Umwelt.

My motive for making games is simply pleasure. I love water; I love pixel art. Yet every time I use fire to seal darkness—that is, to give ambiguous matter definite shape in the form of an idea—an overwhelming amount of suffering, joy, and bugs flares up. Perhaps traffic accidents, disasters, war, and poverty are the same in that way?

Even so, I have the right to burn the Humanity I inherited from my friends—to carry forward their differences, their brightness and warmth. And I have a duty to think of those who are the saddest.

…What was I talking about again? Anyway, I’ll keep making games.

The other day I implemented an attack skill called “Sardine Missile.” Even inside me, though, opinions are split—the inner assembly is in an uproar; there have even been a few "small" deaths.