Having successfully completed work on Project N313, better known as Metal Gear, Hideo Kojima took a week off to relieve pent-up stress and restore his creative energy. It was standard practice at Konami to send employees on vacation when they finished working on a difficult project. And Metal Gear turned out to be very difficult.
Firstly, Kojima’s authority was greatly undermined by the cancellation of Lost Warld, a game he was planning for before Metal Gear. Secondly, it was not at all easy for Hideo to convince his superiors to allocate resources to the project, which at that time had no analogues on the video game market. Thirdly, although he already had experience overseeing Lost Warld, in fact, Metal Gear was the first full-fledged project that Kojima was able to turn into reality, starting from the first sketches of gameplay mechanics based on the technical limitations of the MSX2 platform, and ending with release in Japan and then Europe in the summer of 1987.
We can say that working on this game was Hideo Kojima’s baptism of fire at Konami, so the vacation was well deserved.
Together with a friend, he decided to visit Awaji, an exotic island located in the eastern part of the Inland Sea of Japan. Having thoroughly enjoyed the swim, sunbathed in the sun, and, most importantly, gained strength for new grandiose achievements, Kojima returned to Kobe and began planning his next game.
First we needed to decide on a genre. And here two very significant factors had an influence. Firstly, Hideo remembered the game Portopia Serial Murder Case, which he loved to while away his evenings during his student years.
This project, developed by designer Yuji Horii and published by Enix, told the dramatic story of a mysterious murder investigation in the port suburb of Kobe. Taking on the role of a nameless detective, players had to investigate this complex and intricate case – by exploring locations, collecting evidence and interrogating suspects. By 1983 standards, the game world was open and nonlinear. For a young student of the Faculty of Economics, Hideo Kojima, who dreamed of being a director since childhood and devoted his free time to writing stories, the game Portopia Serial Murder Case had a strong inspiring effect.
He realized that video games, just like films, can tell exciting dramatic stories, make people empathize with certain characters, encourage them to be sad during tragic episodes, and enjoy happy endings. This discovery prompted Kojima to abandon his career as an economist and choose the riskier path of a game designer.
Therefore, in a couple of years, when he has more or less mastered this area and is planning his next project, Hideo will decide that his new game must certainly have the same genre as the bestseller from Enix, namely Graphic Adventure, i.e. e. graphic adventure game.
Just like Yujii Horii in Portopia, Kojima wanted to make the most of cinematic techniques in his next project, and the chosen genre was perfect for realizing these goals.
The second factor that prompted Hideo to make a choice in favor of Graphic Adventure was some misunderstanding when working with programmers, which caused a lot of trouble for the young glider. The fact is that while working on Metal Gear, he often noticed that certain elements of the design document he developed, when transferred to the game, were either somehow distorted or completely thrown out as unnecessary: “I explained to the programmers what I would like to see on the screen, when the dialogue should start or under what conditions the sound signal would sound. But sometimes they did it their own way – they made various small changes and said that thanks to them the game would supposedly become better. Considering that Konami valued the point of view of programmers over the point of view of gliders, Kojima could only put up with the changes made to his game by other people.
Hideo really wanted to avoid such situations on his next project, and the Graphic Adventure genre would give him just such an opportunity. And all because graphic adventure games were direct descendants of text adventure games and, accordingly, borrowed key gameplay mechanics from there – interaction with interactive elements through text commands. For example: “Open the door”, “Look at the table”, “Pick up the phone”, “Dial a number”, etc. d. All these interactive elements and ways to interact with them were written in the script. And if the programmers decided to change something or throw something out of the game plan, they would have to get directly into the script and rewrite its individual parts. Hideo understood that no programmer would do such a thing, and therefore the young glider would receive much more creative freedom than he had on the previous project.
Having sketched out a brief description of the future game, Kojima went to the management to make a presentation. At that time, the Konami company specialized mainly in the development of shoot-em-ups and platformers, so Kojima’s adventure project was received with a fair amount of skepticism. However, Hideo was no longer a simple newcomer from the street – he had a very worthy original project behind him, which, despite its experimentalism, was very positively received by the players, and therefore Kojima’s ideas could no longer just be taken and thrown into the trash. The project was given the green light and thus Konami initiated the development of its first game in the Graphic Adventure genre.
To find inspiration, Kojima decided to familiarize https://nadcascasino.co.uk/games/ himself with a large variety of literature and began to spend quite a lot of time in the library. The company, however, did not welcome this approach. The management believed that it was not rational to spend a lot of working hours on writing a script for a video game. It was not uncommon for an employee to be given only one day to prepare the backstory of the game world. At that time, games for arcade machines were in great demand, and such projects attracted the attention of gamers with exciting gameplay, and not at all with a deep, intricate plot.
One day, on his way to the Library, Kojima ran into some big boss who directly told him: “Kojima, why do you spend so much of your working time sitting in the library – go make a game!». Hideo had no choice but to shorten his time in the library and formulate a scenario based on the knowledge he already had. Fortunately, his horizons were very developed. Since childhood, his parents instilled in him a love of cinema and literature, therefore, by the age of 24, the young glider had already read a huge number of books, leafed through countless manga works and, most importantly, watched an incredible number of feature films in a variety of genres.
So, drawing inspiration from the works of Ridley Scott and James Cameron, Katsuhiro Otomo and Yoshiaki Kawajiri, Agatha Christie, Michael Crichton and many others, Hideo Kojima began writing the script for his new game.
At the initial stages, the project was developed by a team of only 2 people. The first, of course, was Kojima himself, as a screenwriter and game designer, and the second was the artist Tomiharu Kinoshita. I mentioned earlier that many Konami employees chose the gaming industry due to failures in some other endeavors.
Tomiharu Kinoshita apparently had plans to become a successful mangaka and publish in popular publications. For a while, things were even going quite well – his manga “Mad Soldier” was published in the popular magazine Fresh Jump. However, in the end, a career in this area somehow did not work out, and Kinoshita got a job at Konami, where he could use his talent as an artist to create video games. When developing Kojima’s new adventure game, Kinoshita’s key responsibilities were: character design, as well as the creation of storyboards, which then formed the basis for all in-game graphics. In total, based on the script written by Kojima, Tomiharu Kinoshita drew about 300 storyboards.
The game plan itself, which included illustrations, game design, and a script, divided into as many as 6 acts, took up a total of about nine hundred sheets!
The plotline was as follows: 1991. Moscow. Soviet Union. In the secret research center Chernoton, a powerful explosion occurs, as a result of which a terrible biological virus enters the atmosphere, which very quickly covers the planet and destroys 50% of the world’s population. This incident was called the Catastrophe.
However, the rest of humanity managed to recover from the disaster. People lived, developed and, despite all the adversities, were able to achieve considerable scientific and technological progress. However, in 2039, the world is faced with a new threat – mysterious artificially created mechanisms, the purpose of which is to kill people, copy their appearance, character traits, and then assimilate into society. Officially, they were called bioroids, i.e. e. humanoid organisms created for the purpose of enslaving humanity. However, their unofficial name has become more common – Snatcher, which translates as kidnapper.
The peak activity of these bloodthirsty creatures was recorded in the Japanese metropolis of Neo-Kobe, so the local government is forming a specialized police squad whose goal is to identify and destroy Snatchers. This organization was named Junker – Judgment Uninfected Naked Kind & Execute Ranger. Literally, this name can be translated as Justice Uninfected Nude and Execution Ranger, however, through a simple brainstorming, I chose a more understandable and, I think, quite suitable name – “Executioner Rangers Bringing Justice”.
Around the same time that bioroids first made themselves known, in Siberia, a research team discovered two unconscious people – a man and a woman. All that researchers can find out are the names of the people found – Gillian and Jamie Seed, as well as facts indicating that they are spouses. They are evacuated to Neo-Kobe, where they soon regain consciousness. However, it is not possible to find out the secret identity of these mysterious people even after they awaken, due to the fact that both suffer from complete amnesia and cannot remember anything about the events preceding their discovery on Russian territory.
However, deep down, Gillian feels some inexplicable connection with the mysterious bioroids. He does not remember where and under what circumstances, but he knows for sure that he has already encountered creatures known as Snatchers. Therefore, the government sends Gillian to undergo a long course of special military training in order to enroll him in the ranks of the Junkers. Hunting the Snatchers could help Gillian recover information that would shed light on the origins of these ruthless creatures. Actually, from Gillian Sid’s first working day as a Junker, the events of the game itself began.
When it came time to choose a name, Kojima christened the project Junker, in honor of the profession of the main character, by analogy with the film Blade Runner, where the name also meant the profession of the main character. However, when registering a trademark, it turned out that there is a mahjong simulator on MSX called Janka. Therefore, to avoid confusion, I had to look for a different name.
For some time, Kojima thought about christening the game New Order, which translates to “New Order.”. I dare say that this name was chosen in honor of the popular British rock band. Alas, this name also did not catch on, however, we will talk about the group itself later.
Ultimately, the game received the most obvious name, which, however, Kojima did not want to call the project until recently – Snatcher. In honor of those very robots that steal human bodies. This name was ignored for such a long time due to the fact that Hideo had already titled one game in honor of the main antagonist, and he did not want to repeat himself.
As for the platform on which Snatcher was supposed to be released, a rather interesting situation has arisen here. All previous projects that Hideo worked on were developed primarily for the MSX platform, and it would be logical to assume that Snatcher would follow the same path, but circumstances turned out a little differently.
While planning his new project, Kojima at some point became familiar with another interesting adventure game from Enix called Jesus. This bright representative of the Graphic Adventure genre described the events of a very distant, at that time, future, in which scientific progress had reached such a level at which interplanetary flights began to be carried out in a matter of days, and landing on a comet moving at great speed became common practice. In the role of an employee of a space research station with the non-trivial name Jesus, the player went in search of a crew whose ship stopped communicating shortly after the team discovered some unknown life form. The main character named Hayao must explore the spaceship, find survivors and understand the reasons for what is happening. To help with this difficult task, a very original device was introduced into the game – the portable robot assistant Foji. He often came to the rescue in difficult situations, helped in solving various puzzles, and also did not let players get bored.
Kojima was impressed by the atmosphere of the distant high-tech future, comfortable gameplay and interface, a very original concept of a portable robot assistant and, most importantly, the fairly high quality of graphics.
The young designer decided to take a closer look at the platform on which the game was released, namely the NEC PC8801. PC88 is a family of eight-bit personal computers manufactured by Nippon Electronic Corporation. The family’s computers were among the most popular in Japan due to their balanced price-performance ratio. Initially, these computers were positioned as an effective tool for business, but later the 88 series began to be promoted as an entertainment device.
The PC-8801 mk IISR model, seriously improved in terms of graphics and sound, finally consolidated this direction. A large number of different exciting games were released on the platform, many of which belonged to the Graphic Adventure genre.
In addition to adventure games, the PC8801 also released many products in such a genre as “Visual Novel”. At first glance, this genre has many similarities with graphic adventure games, but one must understand that visual novels give users a slightly different gaming experience. If adventure games pose complex tasks for players, the solution of which sometimes takes a lot of time and effort, then visual novels rather provide the opportunity to read an original work, which, in addition to colorful animated illustrations and sound, also adds a certain minimal degree of interactivity. Such games require readers to make some specific choices, in particular, to choose an answer in the dialogue, but very rarely such actions have any effect on the course of the story.
As I said, a lot of adventure games and visual novels were released on the PC8801. As you can see, this platform was very popular among the target audience for which Kojima was developing his new project. Therefore, due to its genre, Snatcher had a good chance of becoming commercially successful if Konami’s management had allowed it to be released on personal computers from NEC.
However, for Konami, developing a game for this platform would be a risky undertaking – the developers did not have the experience and software necessary to work with the platform, and the sales department did not have established sales channels. Despite all these nuances, Kojima still received approval to create a game for NEC computers. At the same time, in order to minimize risks, management also demanded that the game be released on the company’s familiar MSX platform. Although this made things difficult, Hideo was still very grateful for the opportunity.
Step by step, new people began to join the project. These were specialists from the so-called Third Production Department – a division of Konami that specializes in creating products for MSX. These talented people developed such once-famous titles as Vampire Killer, Penguin Adventure, Nemesis, Hinotori and many, many others.
With a complete team, the production of Hideo Kojima’s new project was finally able to enter the full development stage!