© Nintendo LifeA few years ago, British journalist and author John Szczepaniak launched the Kickstarter campaign with a positive outlook – documenting the memories of some influential but thankless Japanese game developers.
The result was an extended series of three papers (and a DVD) which, in our opinion, is a must-read for anyone and even a person with a little wish in the crazy world of Japanese game development. However, with Szczepaniak's own admission, the sales of each book were less than expected and even though he hit his first Kickstarter goal, he had to spend some of his money to end the trilogy.
Thankfully, The Untold Story of Japanese Games Designers continues to use another book entitled Japansoft: Oral History. Published by UK-based Memory Read-Only Memory – which has produced the same book about the UK's development industry back – this digitized program compiles selected interviews from Szczepaniak's series and presents them in an abbreviated form, full of abstract images of time and box art and illustrations by You. That's it.
Like Britsoft: Oral History, Japansoft is largely text-based and has no screenshots and is usually a scattered doodle that sets the pages of Szczepaniak & # 39; s trilogy book. While this can be hard to swallow if you're a lover of heavy coffee-table pictures, it does provide us with a detailed and informative content book full of quotes, anecdotes and much more out there (along with Szczepaniak & # 39; s use of the material, Memory Read-Only Memory Editor Alex Wiltshire has included new interviews with the likes of Dylan Cuthbert, Manami Matsumae and Keiji Yamagishi).
While you will never question the second love of Szczepaniak's first three books, it is clear that he did a lot of creative work himself; it was a love project and it shows. While Japansoft lacked that look of & # 39; fanzine & # 39; s that made the Szczepaniak series so unique and raw, in a better way to present this information; Discussions were taken and edited, with this book being much cleaner for companies rather than specific people. It is also presented in hardback with excellent paper stock, making it something you'll treasure for years. We miss the unpleasant nature of Szczepaniak's origin, however, so it's tempting to suggest that you seek out both of these things, if at all possible (the first three books are now sadly missed and are becoming increasingly difficult to find).
While we were briefly exposed between Szczepaniak's startups and this cohesive and well-crafted review, one thing is for sure: We are pleased that this project is here and that Szczepaniak should be commended for his efforts to report individual awards. for the lowest-paid developer in game history – as Memory-Read only should be thanked for giving it a second chance at critical and commercial success.
Thanks to Memory Read Only for providing a copy of Japansoft for this review.
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