Yu Suzuki: Game Works [Chapter 1] - English Translation

Translation Preamble

I’ve owned this book for nearly 25 years, and only recently do I feel that machine translation has advanced to a standard where I’m comfortable using it as a basis to translate the text reliably into English.

I do not speak Japanese. I’ve translated this book using a combination of online tools and manual edits for clarity. It is possible I’ve misrepresented something that was said or unintentionally changed the tone of the dialogue. But overall, I think the results are perfectly enjoyable and enlightening.

I found Google translate reliable for what is a verbose text, containing a significant number of technical and cultural references. I did cross reference its output with LLM tooling, but I found the latter has a tendency to hallucinate information not present in the source material, despite producing more fluid prose. Therefore, I mostly used the former as a basis, before reworking some sections for readability.

I’ve removed small portions of text that were either repetitive or nonsensical after translation.

Personal editorial comments are [shown like this] and are not present in the original text.

Due to the more advanced layout of the original book, some footnotes may not appear in exactly the place they first appeared.

A PDF of the original book can be found here.

If you republish elements of this translation, please do post a credit back to this blog.

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Prologue

Yu Suzuki has been called the man who changed the course of gaming. Take Hang-On, for example, where he transferred the action of moving a joystick into moving the entire arcade cabinet itself. This was the birth of immersive gaming. This set the foundations for a new trend in gaming leading up to Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter. He was the one who transformed games from two dimensions into three, heralding the dawn of the 3D era.

He is not someone who follows trends, but a trendsetter.

"When I make a game, I'm motivated by something other than existing games or trends.

People sometimes say: 'You must hate games,' but that's not true. I don’t hate them. But I rarely play games, other than to research the ones I develop”, he says with a laugh.

"It's more fun to drive a real car than to play a driving game. If you had the same amount of time, wouldn’t you prefer stepping on the accelerator of a real car? That’s it. Real things are more fun. Driving a real car is more exciting. If there’s a real thrill out there, I’d choose that over a game - especially if my time is limited.

So, when I think about what is fun for me, games aren't the first thing that spring to mind."

He has released many masterpieces, but he is not a game nerd or a game fanatic.

“I want to show that life outside of games can also be fun. There are many forms of enjoyment that gamers haven’t discovered yet. I want to convey those through games. 

That’s why my games don’t resemble anyone else’s. Because I don’t even know other people’s games. Not knowing other games means I don’t create things that look like them.”

He says that the most important thing for a creator is a high level of originality.

"Contribute to society after you turn 40!" he says, half-jokingly. But his eyes remain serious. 

"When you reach the age where you have children, you start thinking not just for yourself, but for your children. Because it's your children who will have to carry the future on their shoulders." 

In the past, children dreamed of becoming pilots, professional athletes, and movie actors. Now, one of those professions is game creators. But is the infrastructure in place to help children pursue their dreams?

"No," he says, shaking his head in disappointment. 

“In America, Hollywood is backed by the government. In France, wine and the arts are supported as symbols of national pride. Japan, too, should back animation and games, right? Right now, both are huge industries, with sales exceeding hundreds of billions of yen. That means they’re already national specialties. By recognizing that and appealing to the world, we can make them Japan’s cultural exports.”

He says that this also helps him fulfill his responsibility to children who have dreams.

“For example, take the film Roman Holiday. It’s a truly wonderful work. The value of Roman Holiday isn’t measured just by box office numbers or audience turnout. That’s because film has a clear standard for artistic and creative evaluation. But with games, that doesn’t really exist yet. 

In the world of games, if something is a bit too artistic or too niche, it's often dismissed as boring — ‘What’s this? Some artsy crap?’ That’s where we still lack a proper evaluative framework for games. 

I find this a little sad. If you write a good book, it has longevity, and if you compose good music, it will last the test of time. I want games to receive the same cultural recognition. Now that I'm over 40, I want to contribute in some way to that area." 

 

His office is located in Ota Ward, Tokyo. I was surprised when I visited his room on the 10th floor of the building. There was nothing there. There was a large table in the middle. His desk was at the back. The monitors were blank. There's a guitar, and shelves full of miniature cars, many of them Ferraris. There are several framed commemorative photos of him, including one with former F1 racer Satoru Nakajima, mixed martial artist Rickson Gracie, and even one with Michael Jackson. There was a painting on the easel, and he placed the PowerBook G4 on his lap and said with a smile, "Oh, hello. Come in."

This book is a re-creation of what Suzuki Yutaka told us over six days in October 2001.
- Aspect YSGW Project Committee

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Chapter 1: Yu Can Do It

Yu Suzuki was born on June 10, 1958, in Kamaishi City, eastern Iwate Prefecture.

The town is known for its steel industry and its steelworks. His parents were elementary school music teachers. When he was in the first grade of elementary school, Suzuki Yutaka moved to his parents' hometown of Sanriku Village (now Sanriku Town) in Iwate Prefecture. During this time, Japan was heading towards a period of rapid economic growth.

What kind of childhood did Suzuki Yutaka have in such a town?

“I was always alone. That being said, I had lots of friends, and I wasn't bullied, but looking back, I always felt like I was alone.

I was born in Kamaishi City, Iwate Prefecture, and moved to Sanriku Village when I was in the first grade of elementary school. When you think of Tohoku, you probably think of the Tohoku dialect, but I don't have any accent. So, I was treated as a bit of an oddball in my class.

Both of my parents were music teachers, and both of them have a liberal arts background, so they are very knowledgeable about music and literature, but not very interested in science or mathematics.

My parents were rather permissive in raising me. Both were elementary school teachers, so they both worked. They didn't have the time to spend with me, but they basically let me do whatever I wanted. So I don't really remember receiving any special education from them.

However, since we are both music teachers, classical music was often played in our home.

‘This is Madame Butterfly. Isn't it wonderful?’

‘Beethoven's symphonies are great after all.’

When I hear statements like that over and over again, it actually makes me feel annoyed."

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Major events in 1958

• In November, the engagement of the Crown Prince and Empress Michiko was announced, sparking a Michiko boom.In December, Tokyo Tower was completed.
• In professional baseball, Giants' Kawakami Tetsuharu retired, and rookie Nagashima Shigeo won the Rookie of the Year award.
• Rockabilly became a huge hit in music, Gekko Kamen became a huge hit on television, and hula hoops became a huge hit among toys. 
• The number of domestic television licenses exceeded one million.

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Yu Suzuki was a precocious child. Perhaps because his parents were music teachers, he developed an interest in music early on. However, his interest did not turn to classical music.

Around 1970, the Woodstock music festival was held in the United States and the Beatles split up in the UK. Folk songs became a huge trend in Japan, and Takuro Yoshida, Yosui Inoue, and Shigeru Izumiya were gods among young people.

What kind of music did Yu Suzuki listen to during that time?

"Musically, I was also an oddball. I was one of the only ones into rock bands, even though folk music was at its peak.

From around the time I was in the upper grades of elementary school, I started listening to rock music rather than the music everyone else was listening to, like Deep Purple and Bad Company.

My classmates often asked me 'Hey, why are you listening to this song if you don't even understand the lyrics?'

My music-loving friends preferred to listen to Kaguyahime, Takuro Yoshida, Yosui Inoue, and other genres rather than rock.

But we eventually performed in a concert together and I was instructed, 'Yutaka, play the lead guitar here.' And although I wasn't an official band member, I participated as a friend and played folk phrases.

The first guitar I was given was a nylon-string classical guitar. At the time, my parents didn't approve of electric instruments at all, so I had no choice. I put steel strings on the classical guitar, bought a guitar microphone, and attached it. I connected it to a radio I'd found somewhere instead of an amplifier and played the sound.”

‘Bring your finger close to the pickup and make a tight clicking noise there.’

‘Oh, my guitar doesn't have that many frets. Ah… Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple has a guitar with 22 frets.’

While lamenting this, he played the guitar with all his might.

‘I can make a lot of noise out of this guitar, but it's really hard to play. I'd love to own a Fender Stratocaster someday.'

Apparently, his parents were disappointed with this fascination. At the time, electric guitars were synonymous with rebellion, so they must have thought, "Yutaka might turn to delinquency."

"The first record I bought with my own money, before the CD era, included songs like 'Pearl of the Aegean Sea' by Paul Mauriat. It wasn't rock, folk, or pop music, it was easy listening.

So, I wasn't listening to Paul Mauriat because I really liked him. I know that saying this is a disservice to Paul Mauriat and his fans.

All I had in mind was that I would never listen to the music that all my classmates around me thought was good, or the music that my parents recommended. I had to listen to something different, or so I thought.

I didn't know anything about jazz or rock. The first music I listened to was easy listening and film music. I listened to soundtracks for movies like The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars.

I didn't enjoy what my parents recommended, nor what everyone around me was listening to. But I still didn't have any music that I liked. I thought I had to find something on my own, and the first thing I stumbled across was film scores. From there, I listened to a lot of different songs, and finally I began to develop my own preferences.

By the way, my dislike of classical music continued for a while. It wasn't until I turned 40 that I was able to listen to classical music honestly. I was able to find the classical music that I liked with an honest heart.

From the vast ocean of classical music, I've become able to find the music I love in a very natural way, without any particular preferences.

When I was younger, I had negative thoughts about getting older. But now that I've reached this age, I've realized that this isn't necessarily the case. I can easily get into all sorts of things without any resistance or pressure. It's fun."

Despite having liberal arts-minded parents, for some reason Yu was a child whose mind turned to science.

Yutaka became obsessed with Kawada's Dia Blocks, disassembling clocks, and building plastic kit models. It was at this time that we could already see glimpses of the genius programmer and game creator he would become.

"I loved Dia Blocks. As long as I had Dia Blocks, I could spend the whole day assembling and disassembling them and never get bored. I became obsessed with them because I could make any shape I wanted.

The 1970s were the golden age of plastic kit models. I was crazy about them and bought a lot of them. However, my way of playing with plastic models was a little different from that of my friends.

I liked to collect a lot of model kit parts and combine them to make whatever I wanted, so the reason I bought plastic models was because I wanted the parts.

But my parents didn't understand that.

'All of your other friends have completed their plastic models and painted them beautifully. They're displaying the finished models. So why is it that Yu is so hesitant to paint the ones he's worked so hard to make?'

‘Are you going to destroy the plastic model?’, my mother asked with a worried look on her face.

To me, Dia Blocks and plastic model parts were the same. Regardless of the instructions provided with the kit, they were just a pile of parts that I could use to freely create whatever I wanted. But I just couldn't explain it to my parents in child's terms. Despite my parents' worries, I diligently worked on creating the things I wanted with plastic models.

At the time, Mabuchi's 5-motor was the most powerful. It was a motor used for plastic models and miniature cars. I thought that if I used four Mabuchi 5-motors together and directly mounted a tire on each of them, I would be able to create the most powerful car!

Back then, I didn't even consider using gearing. In my own childish way, I connected a Mabuchi 5 motor directly to the tire. I attached the four motors to a piece of wood with wood screws, then attached a tire to each motor, and finally turned on the switch. The car shot off with great force! It would soon crash into a pillar or a wall and break - but beyond that - I was very satisfied with the powerful ride it had, just as I had intended, and it was a lot of fun.

To me, there seemed to be no point in completing a plastic model beautifully and then just displaying it."

 What first sparked your interest in machines?

"One thing I remember is that from a very young age, I used to dismantle watches.

I had fun taking apart my old alarm clock. But after I took it apart, I couldn't put it back together. No matter what I did, I always had some gears and screws left over.

It's interesting to peek inside a clock and wonder what's going on inside.

It moves and transmits that movement to other gears. It's a mysterious world. Just looking at the parts is fun, but taking it apart is even more exciting. You can see with your own eyes what's going on inside the watch."

Among the parts Yu collected were a motor and a miniature light bulb. When he connected a battery, the motor turned. Without thinking about it, he connected the motor wires to the light bulb wires and tried turning the tire attached to the motor. Then the light bulb lit up dimly. He was surprised. He wondered why. In other words, he had discovered the principle of the generator by himself, without being taught by anyone.

When he was in elementary school, Suzuki Yu wanted to become a school teacher, just like his parents. Eventually, he began to aspire to katakana occupations, and because he loved drawing, he wanted to become an illustrator. At the time, the word 'programmer' had also crossed Suzuki Yu's mind as one of the foreign occupations. However, he never imagined that he would actually take up this profession in the future.

“When it came to my future career, I always had the desire to do something different from other people.

However, in a small village in Tohoku, the only jobs I could think of were working for the fishing or agricultural cooperatives, or as a teacher at the same school as my parents. But I wanted to pursue a slightly different career.

I wanted a cool job, so I thought a job with a foreign title would be preferable. The first foreign word I knew about in elementary school was 'illustrator'. So when I was in junior high school, I started studying illustration.

Later, I was taking correspondence courses. One of the first cool jobs I heard of was 'programmer'. It took me a long time to understand what programmers actually did after hearing the name.

'Pro-' means a professional, as you know. I also knew the term 'Glamour'. [I’m guessing he confused this with '-grammer'] Kyosen Ohashi was a host on a TV program called '1PM'. He even said to Yukiji Asaoka, 'You have big boobs, huh huh huh.'"

1PM was a late-night show aired on the Nippon Television network from 1965 to 1990. It was controversial due to its extreme sex scenes, making it the original late-night talk show. Its past hosts included Kyosen Ohashi, Yoshikazu Fujimoto, and Ayuro Miki.

"Professional boing boing? What's that? Is it really a cool job? Can a guy do it too? But no, in the future I want to be a programmer or an illustrator! That's what I personally decided."

[I have no idea if the above translation is anywhere close to correct, but I’ve left it in for sheer amusement - maybe it’s lost in translation!]

"At the time, my grandfather was running an inn, and one day a person from Sendai came to stay for the night.

My grandfather said, 'If you ask that person [about programming], Yutaka, you might find out.'

'My grandson has a question he really wants to ask', he said to the man from Sendai.

I turned bright red, 'W-w-what kind of job is a programmer?'

I mustered up all the courage I could and listened.

'There's a building, right? Do you know the electronic billboard next to the building?'

'Yeah, I know it.'

'The weather will be sunny tomorrow, or words to that effect, will appear in bright, shiny letters. The programmer is responsible for making those letters appear.'

I felt like I understood, but at the same time, I wasn't sure. But the feeling that I wanted to become a programmer remained."

Although he grew up in a port town in the Tohoku region, Suzuki Yutaka was somewhat isolated from those around him. He was a boy who had no fear of isolation. In fact, he hated being like everyone else.

"When I entered junior high school, all boys had to have short hair. I was the only one with long hair. It was a time when long hair was a symbol of rebellion. I think the teachers thought that long hair equaled being a delinquent, so that's why they banned it.

The elementary school where my parents worked was very close to the junior high school, so all the teachers knew each other. There was probably an understanding among the junior high school teachers that 'Yutaka is from Suzuki-sensei's school, so there's no need to worry about him being a delinquent.'

However, this understanding is only shared with the teachers, not with the slightly forthright senior students at school. They even teased me, asking, 'Why are you growing your hair long?'

I went to Ofunato High School, a fairly ordinary public high school. It was a prestigious school for the area, but I don't remember having to study particularly hard for the entrance exams.

When I entered high school, I continued to act like a good kid to make it seem like I was doing well in front of my parents."

He did some unusual things, but he never caused trouble for other people. Looking back, I think he had a mature way of thinking for his age.

"I had no interest in school classes.

I bought the textbook during spring break and read through it. I felt bad for the teacher, but I always studied the textbook during class, rather than participating.

At that time, I had a lot of medical cards. For dentists, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, etc. I had so many medical cards that I would skip visits by telling the doctor, 'I'm not feeling well. I'm going to the hospital.'

Whenever my teacher gave me the OK, I would go to the beach to play with some bad friends who had taught me similar tactics, and stop work early.

I joined the astronomy club and the geology club. I loved rocks and Ammonites. I became interested in Japanese dinosaur fossils and Coelacanth.

In the astronomy club, we would stay up all night observing the sky. When we knew the Giacobini meteor shower was coming, we would climb a mountain to observe it. When a professor from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at the University of Tokyo came, he joined us in the observations and told us, ‘The air here is the cleanest in Japan.’ Stars hold a special place in my heart, even when I'm creating a new game."

After graduating high school, Yutaka Suzuki entered the Department of Electronics, Faculty of Electronic Science, Okayama University of Science. The difference between Iwate Prefecture and Okayama Prefecture was a choice between two completely different cultures, and he decided to study at the Okayama University of Science.

“I chose it because it was a university with a strong music scene. I thought that Tokyo would be more lively than Tohoku, and Kansai even more vibrant than Tokyo.”

Whilst once aspiring to become a musician, and honing his guitar skills at university, he decided to study 3D programming at university.

"I chose the Department of Electronic Science because it had a cool name, and of course, my childhood dream of becoming a programmer was also a factor.

I thought, 'This is it! The future is electronics and software. I feel like it has a lot of potential. It's kind of cool.'

However, that doesn't mean I was seriously devoting myself to my studies. I earned money for my instruments by working part-time, and spent every day diligently playing guitar in the light music club.

The end of the 1970s was the time when the personal computer was finally taking off. This was still the 8-bit era including NEC's PC-8001, PC-6001, and PC-8800, and Fujitsu's FM8. I was able to buy some of them myself.

The university had a large mainframe computer, but it had to be reserved weeks in advance, and you were only allocated two hours of use. If you made a mistake, you couldn't debug it on the spot, and that was the end of your productivity.

I bought my own computer at a supermarket. It was a time when the term 'microcomputer' was more popular than 'personal computer'.

From then on, I quickly became fascinated with programming. I was happy to finally find a computer that could replace the Dia Blocks that I had been so obsessed with as a child."

 Then, in April 1983, Suzuki Yutaka joined Sega Enterprises Co., Ltd.

"I was immediately informed 'Sega's development involves sound, design, and software programming' and asked 'What's your preference?'

I've always loved art and music, so I was interested in both.

For some reason, my boss responded 'Isn't programming more suitable?'

Perhaps it was because he valued my 3D studies at university. I followed his advice, started programming and before I knew it, I was here.

However, now I'm involved in everything from music and visuals to direction, scripts, and design.

If there's a part of a project that isn't going well, I have to step in and do whatever I can to help make it work. So although I started out as a programmer, I'm now in a position where I do everything."

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Major events in 1983

• Tokyo Disneyland opens in April.
• In September, a Korean Air plane is shot down by a Soviet air force plane for violating Japanese airspace.
• NHK's morning drama series "Oshiga" becomes a huge hit, achieving a high audience rating of 60%.
• The number of personal computers in Japan surpasses one million.

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"Isn't Suzuki Yutaka very competitive?" - there are people who think so. However, it's a misinterpretation of his personality.

It's true that he successfully produced games that no one had created before, spawning a succession of new trends, but these weren't born out of a competitive spirit.

"I've had people say to me several times, 'Yutaka-san, you have a very strong competitive spirit!' he says.

I don't want there to be any limitations.

In my opinion, the opposite is also true. I don't see much meaning in being number one. After all, what are your goals after you become number one?

I feel like it's not reasonable to have a goal that has to be changed. So, I don't really like competing in general.

Questions like, ‘Which is better, Chinese food or Japanese food?’ are nonsense, aren't they? Or ‘Which is better, rhinoceros beetles or stag beetles?’ There's no point in comparing them.

But in reality, it might be normal to have a moderate interest in becoming number one. It's strange to be overly competitive, but I think it might also be strange to lack competitive spirit at all.

Maybe I have some kind of complex.

In elementary school, I got pretty good grades in the four main subjects - Japanese, math, science, and social studies - but in physical education I got a grade of 3 on my report card. In kindergarten, I even won first place in a running race, but after that I barely managed to avoid failing..."

Although he received a 5 on his report card [the original text seems inconsistent here], he was slower than others when it came to calculations, and it took him longer than others to write essays.

"So, in my childish way, I thought, 'If I want to do as well as other people, I won't try harder than others.'

Somewhere along the line I started to think, 'Other people are other people, and I am me'. It's easier to think like that. That's my stance.

The reason I'm not interested in being number one is because I wasn't number one when I was a child.

I don't really understand the underlying reason for this, but perhaps somewhere deep down I have become like this to protect myself.

But it's true that from a young age I've learned to avoid competition. If you do things the same way as others, you'll never be number one. And by being the same, you'll never be better than them. So I don't do the same things as others. That may be at the root of my way of thinking.

Originality is the most important thing in art, and my parents, who were music teachers, also believed this.

When I was in elementary school, I often wondered why I had to write down kanji characters. In my opinion, writing down kanji characters was just memorization. I preferred physics instead, because physics is about thinking, not memorization. I wonder how many children are wasting their time writing down kanji characters.

When I was a child, kids who could write kanji and had beautiful handwriting were praised.

The further you go, the more this may be the case. I think that knowing one kanji character and knowing the chemical formula for acetic acid, CH3COOH, are on the same level. But in reality, kids who know kanji are more likely to be praised.

But it's strange. We live in an age where kanji characters can be easily typed on a keyboard. While Japan treasures and continues to use the kanji characters it received from China through its missions to the Tang and Sui dynasties, the reality is that in China, the original kanji characters are being created in a simplified form, reducing the burden on children.

We are no longer in an era where games can be made by one or two people. They can only be made by a team of 10 to 50 people. In which case, rather than assembling 20 people who all get middling grades across the board, wouldn't it be preferable to assemble a team where some get full marks in math and fail in everything else, combined with others who can achieve full marks in science, to make a better game. Those who have developed their individual abilities are of most use in today's world. I think it's definitely better to develop what you love.

It's okay to have flaws, we're human after all. As long as we have attractive parts that can cover up our flaws, isn't that enough? Rather than making a perfect circle, it's better to have a big circle, even if it's a little crooked. When writing calligraphy, isn't it more fun to be the one who writes characters that spill over the edge of the paper? Isn't it much more unique to be the one who writes the tiniest characters of all? That's what I believe, as someone who hated competition."

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