Anime lovers have always welcomed video games that develop manga, series, or movies with open arms. Proof of this are the successful Dragon Ball FighterZ games, Digimon Survive, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle or Kimetsu no Yaiba: Hinokami Keppūtan. However, never had the chance to enjoy a game based on the Studio Ghibli movies. Despite the fact that there are currently no playable titles from the company, already in the 90s this fusion was considered in the tenth art.
So, going back to 1992, Studio Ghibli formaba parte de Tokuma Shoten, a publisher that developed video games for Nintendo consoles between 1985 and 1996, and also released anime-related titles. Some of the deliveries were great benchmarks in the sector, such as Yadamon: Wonderland Dream and Eternal Filena. Thus, the publisher considered develop or publish a video game for Super Nintendo of the acclaimed anime My Neighbor Totoro. From what is known to date, the title was never officially announced by the company. But 27 years later, a former artist from Tokuma, Itoh Shigeyuki shared on Twitter some images of the launch of the game that showed Miyazaki.
In which he states that “about 27 years ago, I drew this from scratch, pixel by pixel, to introduce a My Neighbor Totoro game for the Super Famicom to Hayao Miyazaki. (*for Tokuma Shoten Intermediate). There weren’t any decent scanners back then, so I had to stare at an art book and draw this pixel by pixel.” In addition, he talked about the color problem, commenting that “because it was for planning reasons, I think he used more than 16 colors. However, the number of colors is greatly reduced.”
an adventure game
Although it seems that the artist does not know the exact details of why development of the game was never greenlit, he did mention that the director never gave the go-ahead. To this day, the reasons why the director did not agree to its development or if Miyazaki himself rejected it are unknown. “At the time, I felt good bleeding when I watched it on a CRT while working, and it was more anime-like. Tokuma Shoten proposed a plan because he wanted to get him out, but unfortunately the director’s ok did not appearAccording to Itoh’s own statements on his Twitter account.
Among the artist’s comments it is speculated that it was going to be developed as an adventure game Well, “certain odds, and I think he had a plan for director Miyazaki, but in terms of adventure-oriented content, maybe it wouldn’t have made as much sense to make it a game,” Shigeyuki explained.
Unfortunately, this project never came to light and there was no official My Neighbor Totoro video game either. But after that, Studio Ghibli consolidated itself within the film industry with films like Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away o Kikis: home deliveries. In addition, Itoh Shigeyuki managed to work within the video game industry as a programmer in the early 2000s. One of the most notable achievements of his is that of Metal Gear Solid event programmer. Also worked as program director for Final Fantasy Tactics and design director for Star Ocean: First Departure.
At the moment, nothing more is known about this development, but we would love to see Howl, Chihiro or Princess Mononoke in action in a playable title. And you? Who would you like to see in a video game? We read you in the comments.
