Yoshitaka Tamaki, the artist and character designer behind Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, Landstalker and many other classic titles, passed away earlier this year, it has been revealed.
Tamaki passed away on July 13th following a battle with lung cancer. He was just 55 years old. A private service was held in his memory today.
Having initially worked as a freelance artist for Enix, Tamaki would join Hiroyuki Takahashi at the newly-formed Climax Entertainment to create Shining in the Darkness on the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. While he is most famous for the art and character designs he produced, Tamaki would also contribute to story and scenario writing on several titles he worked on.
As well as working on the Shining series and the seminal action adventure Landstalker, Tamaki would also work on FEDA: The Emblem of Justice (Super Famicom), Lady Stalker (Super Famicom), FEDA Remake!: The Emblem of Justice (Saturn), Alundra (Playstation), Time Stalkers (Dreamcast), Shining Soul (GBA), Shining Soul II (GBA) and Shining Force Neo (PS2). He is also credited on Shining Force: Resurrection Of The Dark Dragon, a GBA remake of the original game.
Back in 2018, fellow Climax / Camelot Software Planning artist Hiroshi Kajiyama, who also worked on the Shining series, passed away.
[source twitter.com, via x.com]
Comments 8
Not a huge fan of his design style, but as a colorist he was top notch.
I didn’t know the identity behind that art but I always really liked it.
Alundra is one of my all time favorite games. Sad news. I wish there was more appreciation of these games today… especially Alundra I guess, lol.
I'm an absolute sucker for that '90s anime style — very evocative of the Zelda LttP instruction manual art.
that dude could draw, man. RIP.
I've often wished we could get short animated series in the US based on artwork like this. Worse was when there was some bit of anime FMV in a game that literally showed what it would look like.
A recent example of this is Battle Chasers: Nightwar. I was so itching to watch that animated series, but it was just part of the game. Sea of Stars does it to me most recently. Come on, man! You've already done all that pre-work to do animation clips. Flesh out the story, find some VOAs and let's dig into this.
As for Tamaki, very much the style of the day, and I liked it back then. It just fit the mood of that era so well. Very Japanese and anime influenced for the time. RIP
Landstalker and Shining Force 2 are 2 of my top games OF ALL TIME. I love the art style, sound effects, and colors of those games. Classic Genesis.
What a terrible loss. I always appreciated how games like Landstalker and the first Shining titles actually carried his designs as closely as possible in pixel art, unlike so many games where design and concept art sometimes don't even match the final product.
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