Like many of my games, The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer is a derivative work and a mix of fact and fiction. To be fully transparent regarding IF Comp's transformative works policy, I informed IF Comp organizers that the game includes a fictionalized version of a public figure, Kenji Eno, and adapts several of his real-life interviews.
This table provides a comparison at a glance, plus original sources.
| Fictionalized Statement | Original Source |
|---|---|
| • 'Blood, guts, and gore. You knew that the publisher wouldn't allow it to be released in such a state and would censor the **** out of it. So what did you do? You submitted a clean version of the game for review.' ... Then you deliberately missed the deadline for submitting the master copy,' raves Marco. •'And the penalty for that was that you were required to hand-deliver the final version ... which had all of the disturbing taboo **** in it. • And I managed to get away with it,' says Kenji Eno. 'And sell a million copies |
Eno: 'There's a crazy story behind this. When I was first making D, it had no story. The game was already almost completed, so to put a story in the game, I had to insert it as flashbacks. While I was doing that, I wanted to do some kind of a trick. Back in those days, you weren't allowed to make any violent games -- like, stabbing people inside the game was taboo -- so you weren't allowed to do that. D has cannibalism, which was a total taboo back in the day!' But I wanted to put this in the game, so what I did was I didn't show anyone else in the company those scenes; I was hiding them until the very end. You submit the master, and they check the master and approve the master and put a sticker on it, and this gets sent to the U.S. to get printed. There was a penalty you had to pay if you're late in submitting the master, but you'd also have to deliver it by hand. So, knowing this, I submitted it late on purpose. I submitted a clean one and got it approved. Then I had to bring it to America. So on the plane, I switched the discs and submitted it to 3DO, and it got manufactured like that.' . 1UP: D was actually a huge hit in Japan. It sold a million copies. -- Japan's Wayward Son - A lost 1UP Interview with Kenji Eno |
| “There were a ton of annoying rules around blood and violence at the time. So I tried to avoid them. I thought of myself as a spaceman. I was on Planet A and my audience was on Planet C.' He moves his fingers through the air. 'There were annoying laws on Planet B ... but if I was a spaceman, I could just warp through it. And that's why I called my company WARP” | There were many annoying rules back then, around blood and stuff. Things got a bit better now. There were just many of them back then. I wanted to go beyond that look at sort of a “direct-to-user” approach. Looking at Doraemon or Yamato, when going from planet A to C you had to transit through B. But if you shift A to be close to C, it’s like a warp. It doesn’t make much sense, but that’s how I figured it out.There were plenty of annoying laws on planet B, and I wanted to skip them. Warping is like bending in a way. My thoughts are always bent too. That’s how I came up with it-- Memories of Kenji Eno, Night Warp Eno@Home |
| • “Yeah. I was mad as hell because Sony hadn't been able to manufacture enough copies of my previous game. So when Enemy Zero came out, I told some guy from Sony I was going to punch him in the face if I didn't see my game in stores. ... •“And let me guess. You didn't see your game in the store” •“Right. And I did punch him in the face.” |
So I was talking to a guy at Sony, and this was toward the end of the year, and I said, "OK, I'm going to go to [Japanese electronics retailer] Bic Camera, and if I don't see my game there, I'm going to punch you." and they said, "No don't worry about it. It's going to be there." And I went to Bic Camera and didn't find it, so I actually did punch this guy -- so that should tell you how mad I was. -- Japan's Wayward Son - A lost 1UP Interview with Kenji Eno |
| “No. By D2, I had given up. If the publisher was going to censor it, they were going to censor it. When I look back at it, I can still feel the thick atmosphere of it all. Not just the game, but my own state of mind. I had such a difficult time coming up with anything but the opening chapter. I wasn't fully there. It's like when a band makes their last album before breaking up” | During this time, I was getting unstable again, and I was thinking that if they're going to censor it, then it's going to be like that. I can't be mad, because the only people responsible for this are at Sega, since Sega was publishing it. But I think the game signaled the time for me to leave game development. This is a total coincidence, but like a week ago I saw the ending of D2 on YouTube, and it was a moment that had a strong impact on me. While I was watching the ending, I was remembering the feelings I was feeling at that time, the feelings that probably made me stop making games for a while. I wasn't thinking that this would be the last game I was going to make while I was creating it. But, subconsciously, I was probably thinking that somewhat. So that probably affected how D2 turned out. You know, when a music band splits up, the last album of their music just before the split has this thick atmosphere. I felt something similar to that in D2. -- Japan's Wayward Son - A lost 1UP Interview with Kenji Eno |
| Right. Instead of showing any footage from the game at the Tokyo Game Show, we celebrated the cherry blossom season for the first two days. | No known statement from Eno, but based on Dennis Cooper's Blog - Kenji Eno Day |
| And yet there was a connection,' Kenji Eno hints. 'Cherry blossoms are a beautiful thing, but they also represent change. The characters are literally described as 'blossoming' in-game as they mutate into monsters. | Fictional statement never expressed by Eno in real life. This is instead based on D2's game script transcribed by GameFAQs user Synonx. |
| •The story goes that some of your biggest fans were blind or visually impaired •Yes. After corresponding with them, I decided that Enemy Zero should have combat sections featuring invisible enemies. Then I expanded on that for Real Sound. An adventure game made entirely of audio. A visual novel with no visuals. •'A game for the blind,' Marco says. •'No,' Kenji Eno corrects him. 'A game that would give blind and non-blind players exactly the same experience. •'I had arrogantly expected blind players to thank me for making a game just for them, but they gave the same criticisms as anyone else. Some parts of Real Sound could have been better, they said. Some of them even berated me. But I knew I'd accomplished my goal.' •'Your goal?' •'My dream was that blind and sighted players would share the same impressions.' Kenji Eno laughs. 'Even the same criticisms.’ |
It turns out that blind people also play games. I actually met a few of them and listened to their stories. They rely on sound to play fighting games and all sorts of other games. I'd never thought of that before, so I was surprised. When I heard stories like that, it got me thinking as a game creator. A while after the game was completed, I had the opportunity to hear the feedback from several blind people. To be honest, I thought they would be grateful. I'm really being arrogant. I'm sorry if I sound arrogant, but that's what I was thinking. I had always thought they would say things like, "Thank you for creating such software..." But it was completely different. My impressions were exactly the same as when playing a normal game. I was told things like, "I wish you had done this bit more like this." I was also told, "This part is not good," and got angry. I'll say it again: I created this game with the desire to make a game that would encourage communication between blind and non-blind people after playing it. I wanted to make a game that would have the same impressions. I couldn't stop crying. I was so happy, so happy. At that moment, I truly felt glad that I had made it. --Translated from Kenji Eno's blog: Let's talk about games now, Part 2: Real Sound Wind's Regret |
| 'Yes. I made Real Sound a Sega exclusive on the condition that the company donated one thousand of their consoles to the blind. Then we matched the offer by donating one copy of the game per console | This work was released on Sega's Saturn hardware, but in exchange for providing it exclusively to the Saturn, we made an unreasonable proposal: in exchange for donating 1,000 units of hardware, we would donate 1,000 copies of the software. --Translated from Kenji Eno's blog: Let's talk about games now, Part 2: Real Sound Wind's Regret |
| Before he leaves, Kenji Eno lays one massive hand on your shoulder. He regales you with a tale of the time when he detained the renowned film composer Michael Nyman in his hotel room for six hours, begging Nyman to work for him. Finally, Michael Nyman agreed to compose for one of Kenji Eno's games. | When I found out that [Nyman] was in Japan, I invited him back to my hotel room and tried to convince him, for six hours, to come work with me. So, at the end, Michael was like, "OK, I'll do it, I'll do it. Just let me go back to my room." So he went back exhausted after being convinced for six hours. We didn't work out terms or conditions; he just said that he would do it. And that's the way I convinced him. -- Japan's Wayward Son - A lost 1UP Interview with Kenji Eno |
| •Speaking of politeness, before we, uh ... rudely interrupted you, our boss generously sent you a copy of our game... Did you ... like it? •'No.' Kenji Eno says. • Didn't like it? Didn't like it? Didn't like it? Marco puffs up his chest. 'Would you say that to my boss' face? •I did say that to your boss' face,' Kenji Eno says. 'Last year, on stage. |
"Eno has always been very steadfast and often unyielding in his opinions. Once, he famously criticized Super Mario 64 straight to Shigeru Miyamoto’s face. While he was later flamed by Mario fans, after the confrontation, Miyamoto thanked Eno profusely for his honesty and constructive criticism." -- Kotaku: Kenji Eno Speaks His Mind In This Unpublished Interview (Note: Only secondhand accounts of this event are available -- the event may not have literally taken place 'on stage' but seemingly took place in public or was publicized. -PB Parjeter) |
| Sometimes you're not enough, [Kenji Eno] says. Sometimes you need someone else's work to complement your own. | Not expressed by Eno but by his friend, James Mielke “Eno loved music as much as anyone I know, but because of this he knew when he needed someone whose talents surpassed his own, and in this case it was Michael Nyman, ”says Mielke. -- NME: The musical legacy of Kenji Eno, video game developer and musical maverick |
| 'In the next ten years, we're going to make a console controller that you can throw around like ******* nunchuks. You're going to love it.... In fact, you won't even bother plugging in the console. You'll just throw around the controller like it's a ******* brick. Very ******* meditative. Good for brainstorming, apparently.' | 'Rather than making a game for the platform, [Eno] was just baffled by the Wii Remote. He had these ideas to make something fun with it. That led to the creation of “You, Me, and the Cubes”. Before the remote was actually released, he looked at Shigeru Miyamoto’s keynote presenting the device. He then made a replica of it out of clay. He was holding it, swinging it and throwing it around. He wanted to think of something unexpected with the remote. I remember seeing him a lot playing around with that remote.' Memories of Kenji Eno |
Kenji Eno created Laura, a 'digital actress', to star in three of his games -- D, Enemy Zero, and D2, playing a different character each time. She also appeared in the Japanese high fashion magazine HF in 1999.
Laura is included in The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer's post-credits sequence under IF Comp's allowance for fan fiction. ("Pursuant to IFTF tradition, an entry may be a transformative work, such as a parody, critique, or fan-fiction. You may, for example, enter a game involving the further adventures of the characters from a novel, song or play that inspires you."). I informed IF Comp organizers of this inclusion.
In the final sequence, which parodies the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Laura's role as a reporter is also an allusion to April O'Neil.
While writing this note, I discovered that the names 'Laura' and 'Lorenzo' share the same root. Of course, Lorenzo is a parody of an entirely different character: Luigi of Mario Bros. fame. But it's an interesting coincidence that I didn't have in mind when writing.
These photographs were used in The Kidnapping of a Tokyo Game Developer:
Kenji Eno by Joi Ito, CC BY 2.0 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenji_Eno#/media/File:KenjiEnoJI2.jpg
Kenji Eno and Hideto in front of the Coca-cola "C-Mode" machine they were programming., published by Links.net | https://www.links.net/share/speak/sxsw/2002-keitai/cmode-kenji-hideto.html
Kenji Eno with members from Norway [guitar photo], published by NME | https://www.nme.com/features/the-musical-legacy-of-kenji-eno-video-game-developer-and-musical-maverick-3401461
Michael Nyman and Kenji Eno (WARP), likely originating in Enemy Zero's soundtrack booklet https://merugezu.com/2018/08/19/la-soundtrack-du-dimanche-17-enemy-zero/
Other images are from Pixabay and Unsplash (no attribution needed) or are from in-game screenshots that have been widely circulated online.
