Yu Suzuki

From Sega Retro

Yu Suzuki.jpg

Yu Suzuki (鈴木 裕), AM2's star developer, is one of the most highly-regarded visionaries in the industry. He joined Sega in 1983 as a programmer and producer, and two years later he created Hang-On, the first simulation arcade game.

Suzuki has always tried to push the limits of arcade hardware. In the mid-1980s, he developed Super Scaler arcade technology that scaled, rotated and manipulated sprites/tiles/backgrounds to produce early textured three-dimensional graphics for games like Hang-On, OutRun, Space Harrier, After Burner and Power Drift. He also pushed arcade hardware in terms of controls; Hang-On, for example, was the first arcade game with a fully interactive cabinet where the player sits on and controls a replica motorbike (an early form of motion control), while Space Harrier featured a moving hydraulic cabinet with analog fight-stick controls. He also led the development of the cutting-edge Sega Model 1 arcade board, and developed the first games for it. With the Model 1, Suzuki began his first foray into the world of polygons, and the result was Virtua Racing; this F1 racing simulator was completely rendered in 3D, and allowed players to experience the action from four different camera angles.

Suzuki's next Model 1 masterpiece was the acclaimed Virtua Fighter in 1993. It was the very first 3D fighting game, and featured what is considered to be one of the deepest fighting engines ever. Virtua Fighter’s impact was such that it is housed in the Smithsonian Institution's Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology Innovation. Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter helped popularize 3D polygon graphics, with their dynamic camera systems, polygonal human characters and physics engines. He continued to advance polygonal 3D graphics and gameplay, helping to develop the Sega Model 2 and Model 3 systems, and working on games for them, such as Virtua Fighter 2, Daytona USA, Virtua Cop and Virtua Fighter 3.

In 1999, Yu Suzuki released Shenmue, the first major original title he directed for a home console. Five years in the making, Shenmue on the Dreamcast featured open-world 3D environments, a sweeping story, multiple gameplay elements, quick-time events, and an unprecedented level of detail. Shenmue marked the start of a new genre, dubbed by Suzuki as FREE, or Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment. The story, graphics, environment, and the innovative system, exceeded those of many previous games. Shenmue was the most expensive game to be developed, with the whole project costing $47-70 million (until it was surpassed by Grand Theft Auto IV, which cost roughly $100 million).

In 2003, Suzuki became the sixth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. On April 1, 2009, Suzuki retired from Sega. Since then he now runs his own game company, YS NET Inc. (established November 11, 2008), but still retains a good relationship with Sega. In 2014, The List named him as one of the top ten game designers of all time, for "striving towards realistic 3D gaming".

Career

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Cited as one of the most influential game designers, he is often considered Sega's answer to Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. Suzuki led the development for a number of important games at Sega AM2, helping to revolutionize the video game industry in several ways. Suzuki felt his three most important achievements were starting the trend of "Taikan" games (three-dimensional arcade games with motion-based cabinets) in the mid-1980s, his role in the game industry's shift from 2D to 3D during the 1980s to 1990s; and Shenmue's influence on modern games in the 2000s. [1]

Regarding his game design philosophy, Suzuki stated that the "difference between Miyamoto-san and I is that he takes the same game and takes it deeper and deeper, like with the Mario series," while "I like to work on different games and concepts. I don't like doing the same thing. The same goes for the hardware. I like to change the hardware I work with.[2] Suzuki mostly programmed his games in more difficult assembly language, as opposed to the less difficult C language. According to Suzuki, "C was really slow back then. The fastest program that I used was 200 times faster than C." [3]

1980s

Suzuki joined Sega Enterprises in 1983 as a programmer. In his first year, he created a 2D boxing arcade game called Champion Boxing, which he designed and coded (Retro Gamer, №145, p22). It was later ported to Sega's first home game console, the SG-1000, and then ported to the arcades in 1984. He helped develop it along with Rieko Kodama.

Under the mantle of Sega's development studio AM2, Suzuki began working on an original arcade game which would prove to be the big stepping-off point of his career. "To develop this game," Suzuki told G4TV, "I rode on motorcycles a lot. When we came up with the prototype (for the arcades), I would ride on that prototype bike for hours and hours every day." His and AM2's efforts culminated into the game Hang-On, released in 1985. Suzuki's intention behind the game's motion controls was to make arcade games more accessible to casual users. This new emphasis on a motion-controlled experience revitalized the arcade game industry in the late 1980s, and would be what kept it alive decades later with dancing games like Konami's Bemani franchise. In turn, this laid the foundations for console gaming's much later motion control boom, led by Nintendo's Wii and then Microsoft's Xbox Kinect.

Suzuki had been interested in 3D technology since his days in college. Running on the Sega Hang-On hardware, Hang-On was the first game to use Sega's "Super Scaler" arcade system boards. His approach to three-dimensional sprite/tile/background scaling was handled in a similar manner to textures in later texture-mapped polygonal 3D games of the 1990s.[4] Suzuki stated that his "designs were always 3D from the beginning. All the calculations in the system were 3D, even from Hang-On. I calculated the position, scale, and zoom rate in 3D and converted it backwards to 2D. So I was always thinking in 3D."[5] His uper Scale graphics engine became the basis for the sprite-scaling methods later developed for home systems, including the Neo Geo's sprite-scaling techniques, the SNES console's Mode 7, and the ray casting method used by various computer FPS games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

Suzuki and AM2 soon followed with the three-dimensional third-person shooter Space Harrier later that year, running on the Sega Space Harrier hardware. The game introduced a true analog flight stick for movement,[6] with the ability to register movement in any direction as well as measure the degree of push, which could move the player character at different speeds depending on how far the stick is pushed in a certain direction.[7] It also featured a basic homing missile gameplay mechanic, and a full-motion cockpit cabinet (Retro Gamer, №145, p22); its cockpit-shaped arcade cabinet moved in the direction the player moved the joystick. The game's success established Suzuki as the leading arcade game designer at the time.[6]

Showing his interest in Ferraris, Suzuki created the street racing/driving simulator Out Run, which was released in 1986. It introduced third-person road gradients, adding more depth to racing gameplay. Suzuki's later hits included the jet fighting After Burner series in the late 1980s. After Burner (1987) was a rail shooter that featured a lock-on system, which was adopted by later rail shooters such as Sega's Panzer Dragoon and Rez (Retro Gamer, №145, p28). It also introduced moving cockpit cabinets with true analog flight-stick controls (moving in all directions and measuring the degree of push, a precursor to the analog thumbsticks of the N64 and later consoles). After Burner, with its Sega X Board hardware, also introduced the sprite-rotation graphical technique. The space flight sim Galaxy Force (1988) later introduced a 335-degree rotating cockpit cabinet. He followed up with the roller-coaster-like, drift-based, [kart racer, Power Drift, in 1988. It improving on the "Super Scaler" technology and road scaling & scrolling effects of Hang-On and Out Run, and also created the kart racer genre, setting the template for later popular kart racers like Mario Kart.

1990s

In 1990, Suzuki brought out a spiritual sequel to After Burner called G-LOC, which featured advanced sprite/texture scaling & rotation, anticipating the look of early 3D texture-mapping.

While Space Harrier and Out Run had three-dimensional graphics, using sprites as if they were textures, they could not fully utilize the capabilities of 3D. In the early 1990s, he helped popularize 3D polygon graphics with the Virtua games, which began on the Sega Model series of arcade systems. Suzuki and AM2 were involved with the development of the Sega Model 1 arcade system. When they began developing the Model 1 development board, a piece of hardware capable of generating 3D polygon graphics, they began developing games for it. It debuted with the 3D Formula 1 racer Virtua Racing, which Suzuki began developing in 1991. In 1992, Sega released Virtua Racing. It introduced a dynamic 3D camera system, which can be changed between multiple angles/perspectives, and can pan and rotate around the environment during replays. It was also the first game to render humans (NPCs such as the driving teams and spectators) with polygons in a fully 3D environment. It popularized polygonal 3D gaming, and set the template for 3D arcade racers.

In 1993, Suzuki created Virtua Fighter, the first 3D fighting game. It introduced relatively detailed, recognizably human, 3D player characters, and a gameplay format that would become the template for 3D fighting games, in much the same way Street Fighter II was for 2D fighters. Next Generation, in 1995, stated Virtua Fighter "epitomizes Suzuki's skill of finding the perfect blend of state-of-the-art technology with solid gameplay".[8] Virtua Fighter was a breakthrough for 3D gaming, as the first game to implement 3D polygonal human characters in a useful way, with recognizable graphical details (such as the eyes, ears, nose and fingers), and with animations and reactions based on an early physics engine.

Yu Suzuki continued making significant advances in 3D gaming. He led the development of the Sega Model 2 arcade hardware. In 1993, he debuted the Sega Model 2 with Daytona USA, which featured the use of texture mapping and introduced texture filtering, producing graphics that were, according to IGN, "light-years ahead of anything anyone had seen."[9]

In 1994, he created Virtua Fighter 2, which introduced filtered, texture-mapped characters, and motion capature animation technology. Suzuki noted that the game's texture-mapping technology was limited to the military and cost millions, which his AM2 team acquired and used to create a much cheaper affordable graphics chip for the Model 2 that could be mass-produced, making mass-produced texture-mapping possible for the game industry. Virtua Fighter 2 was also known for its character animations, which were produced using motion capture technology that had previously never been used by the game industry.[10] The same year, he produced Virtua Cop, which revolutionized the light-gun shooter genre with a new 3D first-person rail shooter format, including new mechanics like positional body targeting and headshots, revitalizing the genre in the arcades. It also broke new ground by popularizing the use of 3D graphics in shooter games.[11] It inspired 3D light gun shooters such as Time Crisis and The House of the Dead as well as 3D first-person shooters such as GoldenEye 007,[12] which in turn laid the foundations for console FPS games.

Suzuki continued making advances in 3D gaming with more arcade hits. The Model 2 fighting game Fighting Vipers (1995) introduced destructible environments and destructible clothing. Suzuki also oversaw most of the home console conversions of AM2's arcade games during this time. He was then involved with the development of the Sega Model 3 arcade hardware. The fighting sequel Virtua Fighter 3 (1996) featured a groundbreaking graphics engine, which introduced advances like specular shading, T&L lighting, cloth physics, particle effects, inverse kinematics, facial animation, eye movement, and multi-sample anti-aliasing.

In 1995, Suzuki began work on his first major original console project, The Old Man and The Peach Tree, which was intended to be the first 3D, third-person, open-world game, a role-playing game set in China, for the Sega Saturn. By 1996, this eventually project had evolved into Virtua Fighter RPG, a cinematic tech demo of which was produced for the Saturn. This project then moved to the Dreamcast and eventually developed into his magnum opus, Shenmue. With the game's 1998 demo, he described the game's open-world "FREE" gameplay, based on the interactivity and freedom he wanted to give to the player. Suzuki intended to achieve this by simulating aspects of real life through the game, such as the day and night system, real-time variable weather effects (unheard of at the time), hundreds of fully-voiced non-player characters with their own daily schedules, quick-time events, and various other interactive elements such as vending machines, mini-games at arcades, and convenience stores. The game also revived and modernized the Quick Time Event mechanic, and coined a name for it, "QTE". The mechanic has since appeared in many later titles, including popular action games such as Resident Evil 4, 'God of War,[13] Uncharted, Heavy Rain, and The Last of Us. Shenmue also influenced later Final Fantasy games.

Suzuki's arcade game Ferrari F355 Challenge also released in 1999. Rubens Barrichello of the F1 Team Ferrari was quoted by Suzuki to "have considered to purchase one for practicing."[14][15]

2000s

Despite earning critical acclaim, Shenmue was unable to recoup its high budget. The commercial failure of Shenmue and its even larger sequel Shenmue II, led to the cancellation of Shenmue III and eventually led to Suzuki slowly fading away from the limelight of the video game industry.

After the commercial failure of the Shenmue games, Suzuki returned to developing arcade games. He directed Virtua Fighter 4, which released in 2001. In 2003, Yu Suzuki, along with Hiroshi Kataoka, produced sequels for OutRun and Virtua Cop, entitled OutRun 2 and Virtua Cop 3, respectively. As sequels to classics, these games were well-received. He also worked on innovative projects that were eventually pulled. The Dreamcast game Propeller Arena was a multiplayer deathmatch based flight sim due for release in September 2001, but was cancelled following the 9/11 attacks. Suzuki left AM2 to form a new Studio eventually named DigitalRex in 2004.

At DigitalRex, Yu Suzuki worked on 4 games: Psy-Phi, Shenmue Online, Sega Race TV, and an unannounced fantasy sports game. Shenmue Online, which was a title in the MMO genre, along with the sports game, were cancelled during development, with Shenmue Online reportedly cancelled in 2007. PsyPhi, the first touch-controlled arcade fighting game, was initially delayed due to development shifting from Sega Chihiro to Sega Lindbergh arcade boards.[16] After some location testing in 2005, Sega eventually pulled Psy-Phi from arcades and never gave it a wide release. After numerous problems in development, Shenmue Online was also quietly cancelled.[17]

After four years away from AM2, Yu Suzuki released his first game an arcade racing game titled Sega Race TV, which was released under the studio name AM plus. The game was given a limited release. After the release of the game, Suzuki resumed non-executive work as an adviser for AM2.

Production History

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

SEGA of Japan Executives
Chairmen Isao Okawa (1984-2001) | Hajime Satomi (2004-current)
Presidents Hayao Nakayama (1984-1998) | Shoichiro Irimajiri (1998-2001) | Hideki Sato (2001-2003) | Hisao Oguchi (2003-2008) | Okitane Usui (2008-2012) | Naoya Tsurumi (2012-current) | Hideki Okamura (2014-current) | Haruki Satomi (2015-current)
  1. ↑ htt (Wayback Machine: 2014-06-09 05:49)
  2. ↑ http://www.computerandvideogames.com/279529/yu-suzuki-the-difference-between-miyamoto-and-i-is/
  3. ↑ htt (Wayback Machine: 2013-11-13 17:41)
  4. ↑ http://www.extentofthejam.com/pseudo/
  5. ↑ htt (Wayback Machine: 2013-11-13 17:41)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-07-07-space-harrier-retrospective
  7. ↑ http://retro.ign.com/articles/906/906935p2.html
  8. ↑ http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/virtuafighter/virtuafighter.htm
  9. ↑ http://retro.ign.com/articles/974/974695p8.html
  10. ↑ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/228512/Yu_Suzuki_recalls_using_military_tech_to_make_Virtua_Fighter_2.php
  11. ↑ http://www.ign.com/articles/2004/07/08/virtua-cop
  12. ↑ http://www.zoonami.com/briefing/2004-09-02.php
  13. ↑ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/waypoints/1310-On-Screen-Help-In-Game-Hindrance
  14. ↑ http://www.gamesradar.com/yu-suzukis-five-finest-moments/
  15. ↑ http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/09/20/f355-challenge
  16. ↑ http://www.ign.com/articles/2005/09/01/jamma-2005-hands-on-with-psy-phi
  17. ↑ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/shenmue-online-facing-trouble/1100-6130382/
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