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Hideo Kojima

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Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫)
Born (1963-08-24) August 24, 1963 (age 61)
Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
OccupationVideo game designer
WebsiteHideo Kojima's Blog Template:Ja icon

Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer originally employed at Konami. Formerly the vice president of Konami Computer Entertainment Japan[1], he is currently the head of Kojima Productions. He is the creator and director of a number of successful games, including the Metal Gear series, Snatcher, and Policenauts. He has also produced both the Zone of the Enders and Boktai series. Kojima is consistently named by fans and industry experts alike as being one of the most influential and innovative video game directors and writers of all time, as well as being on many all time director top ten lists. Newsweek named Hideo Kojima as one of the top ten people of 2002.[2][3] In 2008, Next-Gen placed him #7 in their list of "Hot 100 Developer 2008."[4]

His Metal Gear series of games often breaks the fourth wall. He is also well known for a quirky and somewhat irreverent sense of humor, and his frequently disarming and powerful plot twists. His games often revolve around contemporary issues such as nuclear terrorism, nanotechnology, the effects of war, Illuminati-style organisations, conspiracy theories, memes, human emotion, passing the torch onto the next generation, genetic engineering, manipulation of the masses, the growth of private military contractors, and the ideology of living one's life with a disregard for personal, ancestral and genetic history.

Early life

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1963[1], Kojima moved to western Japan at the age of three. Kojima has said that early on in his life he often had to deal with death.[5]

When he was little the Kojima family moved to a small city called Shirasaki.[5] Just as quickly, his family soon moved to the Kansai region.[5] Kojima has noted that growing up he was a latchkey kid, often having to watch television and look after himself when he came home from school.[5] Staying at home by himself in isolation still affects him to this day stating, "[whenever] I travel and stay at a hotel I put the TV on as soon as I enter the room, just to deal with the feeling of loneliness."[5]

Initially wanting to be an artist or illustrator, he was often discouraged by societal norms of Japan which favored finding safe and well paying jobs. He was also discouraged because his uncle was also an artist but suffered from financial difficulties.[5]

He eventually started writing short stories and began to send them to Japanese magazines but was never able to get anything published. He cites that his stories were often 400 pages long while most magazines wanted their short stories to be around 100 pages.[5] Eventually he shifted his focus to making films with his friend who had an 8mm camera.[5]

Career

In an interview on G4's TV series, Icons,[6][7] Kojima describes much of his earlier career and influences for game design. Kojima grew up early in life watching movies with his parents. While studying economics in college, Kojima found himself playing video games during his free time mainly games on the Famicom. In his fourth year in college, Kojima surprised colleagues by announcing his intentions to join the video game industry, despite initially having ambitions of becoming a film director.[8] Kojima has cited Yuuji Horii's Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken, as well as Shigeru Miyamoto's Super Mario Bros., as the games that inspired him to make this decision.[9]

1980s

Kojima joined video game publisher Konami's MSX home computer division in 1986 as a designer and 'planner'. Kojima's gameplay ideas were often overlooked initially, and due to his lack of familiarity with programming was repeatedly snubbed for his failures in his initial years at Konami. At one point Kojima considered leaving the company, but stuck on.

The first game he worked on was a sequel to Antarctic Adventure, Penguin Adventure,[5] as an assistant director. The first game he actually developed was Lost Warld [sic], a platform game starring a masked female wrestler, in Template:Vgy. However, the game was ultimately rejected by Kojima's superiors at Konami.

His first released game was Metal Gear. It was released in Template:Vgy for the MSX2 home computer in Japan and parts of Europe. The game centers around a special forces operative codenamed Solid Snake, who is sent to the fortified state of "Outer Heaven" to stop a nuclear equipped walking tank known as "Metal Gear." Metal Gear is one of the earliest examples of the stealth action game genre, where avoiding encounters from the enemies is emphasized over direct combat. A port of Metal Gear was also released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, although Kojima was not directly involved in the production of this version and has openly criticized some of the changes made in this version.

His next project was the graphic adventure game Snatcher, released for the NEC PC-8801 and MSX2 computer platforms in Japan in Template:Vgy. The game, heavily influenced by the movie Blade Runner, centers around an amnesiac detective who faces a race of cyborgs (the titular Snatchers) that kill their victims, copy their likeness and assume their place in society. While Kojima and his team wrote the entire story of the game, they were forced to leave out the final act of the game due to time constraints.

1990s

In Template:Vgy Kojima was involved in the productions of two MSX2 games: a spinoff of Snatcher titled SD Snatcher; and a sequel to Metal Gear titled Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

SD Snatcher is an RPG which adapts the storyline of the original Snatcher, while featuring its version of the originally planned ending. The characters are depicted in a "super deformed" art style, in contrast to the original game's realistic style. Much like the original computer versions of Snatcher, it was only released in Japan.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was produced in response to the creation of another Metal Gear sequel produced for the American market, Snake's Revenge. After becoming acquainted with one of the staff members who worked on the game, he was asked to produced a "true" Metal Gear himself. The resulting game, Metal Gear 2, was released for the MSX2 in Japan only as one of the last games Konami produced for the hardware. The game would not be released overseas until its inclusion in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, released in North America and Europe in Template:Vgy.

All of his subsequent projects after Metal Gear 2 were produced primarily for disc-based media, allowing for the inclusion of voice acting in his games. He remade Snatcher in Template:Vgy for the PC Engine Super CD-ROM². An English localization of the game was produced for the Sega CD in North America and Europe in Template:Vgy, although Kojima was not directly involved in this version, nor with the subsequent PlayStation and Saturn ports released in Japan in Template:Vgy.

In Template:Vgy, Kojima released Policenauts, a film noir/sci-fi-themed adventure game set in a space colony, for the NEC PC-9821. Kojima oversaw the subsequent ports released for the 3DO in Template:Vgy; and the PlayStation and Saturn in Template:Vgy, which all featured animated cut-scenes not in the PC-98 release. No English localization of the game was produced, despite aborted plans to localize the Saturn version.

With the release of Metal Gear Solid in Template:Vgy for the PlayStation, Kojima became an international celebrity among the video game media. Metal Gear Solid was the first in the Metal Gear series to use 3D graphics and voice acting, which gave a more cinematic experience to the game. MGS was highly regarded for its well-designed gameplay and for its characters and storyline, which featured themes of nuclear proliferation and genetic engineering.

2000s

In early 2000, Kojima released the first details of the sequel to Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, for the PlayStation 2. The game's highly detailed graphics, physics, and expanded gameplay quickly made it one of the most anticipated games ever. The game was highly successful and critically acclaimed at release, due to its graphics, gameplay and storyline, which dealt with myriad philosophical themes as specific as memes, censorship, manipulation, patricide, the inherent flaws of democracy and as grandiose as the nature of reality itself. While "MGS2" broke ground with the breadth of its subject matter, the lengthy exposition of these issues, particularly in the bewildering maze of dialogue and plot revelation in the final hours of the game, left a sour taste in the mouths of many gamers, who expected the Hollywood-style resolution of its forerunner. The game also received negative fan reaction due to the unexpected introduction of a new protagonist named Raiden, a rookie soldier, the polar opposite in place of the series' taciturn main hero, Solid Snake.

Before MGS2's release, Kojima produced the game and anime franchise Zone of the Enders in 2001 to moderate success. In 2003, he produced Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand for the Game Boy Advance. In this, players take the role of a young vampire hunter who uses a solar weapon which is charged by a photometric sensor on the game cartridge (forcing them to play in sunlight). Another team inside Konami (in a collaboration with Silicon Knights) began work on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a GameCube remake of the first Metal Gear Solid with all the gameplay features of Metal Gear Solid 2 and with cutscenes redirected by action/horror film director Ryuhei Kitamura. It was released in 2004.

Afterwards, Kojima also designed and released Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for the PlayStation 2. Unlike the previous games in the series, which took place in the near future and focused on indoor locations, the game is set in a Russian forest area during the year 1964, and involves wilderness survival and camouflaging. The North American version was released on November 17, 2004, with the Japanese counterpart following on December 16. The European version was released on March 4 2005. Critical response to the game was highly favorable.

At that time Kojima produced on Boktai's sequel, Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django for the Game Boy Advance. Released in summer 2004, it makes more extensive use of the cartridge's sunlight sensor and allows players to combine various new solar weapons.

Also released was Metal Gear Acid for the PlayStation Portable handheld. This turn-based game is less action-oriented than the other Metal Gear games and focuses more on strategy. It was released in Japan on December 16, 2004. Its sequel Metal Gear Ac!d 2 was released on March 21, 2006.

Kojima wanted Solid Snake to appear in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but due to development cycle problems Nintendo was unable to add Snake in. When Super Smash Bros. Brawl was announced, series producer Masahiro Sakurai, contacted Kojima to work Snake into the game. Kojima also worked on Snake's stage for SSBB.[10]

Finishing in 2008, Kojima codirected Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots with Shuyo Murata. He has announced that this will be the last Metal Gear game he is directly involved in, giving him more freedom to pursue other projects in the future.

Influence from movies

Kojima's love of film is noticeable in his games where he pays homage through his stories and characters, sometimes to the point of pastiche, as in Snatcher. Snatcher is inspired by many science fiction movies, particularly from the eighties, including Blade Runner[11], Akira[12], The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers[13] and The Terminator.[12]

Examples of influence by films include Solid Snake's codename (named after Snake from Escape from New York)[14], alias in MGS2, Pliskin (the last name of Snake in the Escape movies) and real name (Dave from 2001: A Space Odyssey),[15] Hal "Otacon" Emmerich (HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey),[15] Sniper Wolf shooting Meryl in Metal Gear Solid (Full Metal Jacket),[14] Psycho Mantis (inspired from the film The Fury)[14] and the whole Metal Gear stealth concept (The Great Escape).[14]

Works

* Denotes games that Kojima had major involvement in. Every other game are games that he only made minor contributions to.

Metal Gear series

Snatcher/Policenauts series

Boktai series

Zone of the Enders series

Tokimeki Memorial Drama Series

Other Games

  • Twelve Tender Killers (2008: Mobile Phones) - producer*
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008: Wii) - designer of Shadow Moses Island stage.
  • Kabushiki Baibai Trainer Kabutore! Next (2007: Nintendo DS) - producer*
  • Stock Trading Trainer : Kabutore (2006: Nintendo DS) - producer*
  • Lost Warld [sic] (1986: MSX, cancelled) - writer/director*
  • Penguin Adventure (1986: MSX) - assistant director

Movies

Voice acting cameos

References

  1. ^ a b "IGN: Hideo Kojima Biography". Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  2. ^ "Mr. Kojima, Konami Videogame Designer Was Selected One Of Ten "Who's Next?" of NEWSWEEK". 2002-01-22. Retrieved 2008-03-31.
  3. ^ "Newsweek Names the Men and Women of 2002: 10 to Watch". 2001-12-23. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  4. ^ "THE NEXT-GEN HOT 100 DEVELOPERS 2008". 2008-02-19. Retrieved 2008-03-25.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Hideo Kojima Versus the Big Robots". EDGE Magazine (136): 69–74. 2004-04-22.
    An unofficial transcription is available on metalgearsolid.org [1]
  6. ^ "ICONS: Hideo Kojima - Metal Gear Solid". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  7. ^ "G4TV Icons Hideo Kojima". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  8. ^ Steven Kent (2003-05-18). "Hideo Kojima Interview: Konami's master game designer talks about the Metal Gear series and where games are going". Retrieved 2008-03-12.
  9. ^ Kasavin, Greg (2005-03-21). ""Everything is Possible": Inside the Minds of Gaming's Master Storytellers". GameSpot. pp. p. 2. Retrieved 2007-08-15. {{cite web}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
  10. ^ "Super Smash Bros. Brawl revealed for Wii, featuring Solid Snake!". 2006-05-10. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  11. ^ Blade Runner's Influence on Videogames from 1UP.com
  12. ^ a b Great Games – Snatcher | GameCritics.com
  13. ^ Snatcher Review
  14. ^ a b c d Steven Kent. "Hideo Kojima: Game Guru, Movie Maniac". Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  15. ^ a b The Making of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty DVD packaged with European version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
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