Those of you with keen memories will recall that we covered a Kickstarter campaign last year by western video game journalist John Szczepaniak, who was looking to raise £50,000 (around $75,000) to cover a trip to Japan to interview veteran developers for his book, The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers. More than £70,000 ($117,000) was raised eventually, and Szczepaniak spent September, October and November of 2013 travelling around The Land of the Rising Sun conducting interviews.
To accompany the book, Szczepaniak is releasing a DVD package which contains four hours of footage. Included are video interviews with the likes of Kouichi Yotsui (Strider, Cannon Dancer), Ryuichi Nishizawa (Wonderboy) and Yuzo Koshiro (ActRaiser, Streets of Rage), as well as footage of artwork, rare gaming hardware and much more besides. You can check out the full contents here.
Szczepaniak is only pressing 1000 of these two-DVD packs, with half of that figure going to those who backed the original Kickstarter book campaign. £40 is the asking price, which might seem a little steep, but the access Szczepaniak has obtained with these legends of the Japanese development scene is bordering on priceless, so we dare say it should be worth every penny if you have any interest at all in this golden period of games design.
This article was originally published by nintendolife.com on Mon 14th April, 2014.
[source hardcoregaming101.net]
Comments 3
I'm a backer, but only for the book, but right now I'm kinda worried about the state of the project, so I don't feel confident enough to put that much down on his DVD. Most updates he posts tend to be bad news, like Wil Overton backing out of doing one of the special covers (which was my main reason for backing at the level I did!) or more about how he got screwed over by the translator company he originally went with… Delays are delays and to be expected, but these setbacks have been something else entirely.
In concept, I love this. However all of that shaky camera work got me borderline motion sick. I worry the production quality is going to be a bit lacking. The music rocked though...
I was too late for the Kickstarter, but I will definitely be wanting to watch this!
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