Misplaced Pages

#474525

33-566: HAL Laboratory developed the Picross 3D spinoff series, with games on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS. Due to the popularity of pen-and-paper nonogram puzzles at the time in Japan, Makoto Nakayama, founder of Jupiter Corporation, pitched a video game version of nonograms to Nintendo. Since Jupiter had little experience in game development, Ape Inc. (known now as Creatures Inc.) assisted with

66-525: A Beatles and Elton John cover group, which sometimes performed concerts at his school. He has held a longstanding obsession with reggae music. In his teens, he was also in a reggae band, which was known variously by the names the Shampoos or Roots Rockers. For the music event "Reggae Sunsplash" held in Osaka , the Shampoos were an opening act for Sly and Robbie on more than one occasion. Tanaka did meet

99-644: A Picross DS sequel to Nintendo for the 3DS, Jupiter opted to self-publish Picross games under a licensing deal. They released nine titles and many spin-offs in the Picross e series for the Nintendo 3DS. Jupiter continues to self-publish Picross games on the Nintendo Switch, releasing nine titles and various spin-offs in the Picross S series. Ape Inc. Creatures Inc. is a Japanese video game company affiliated with Game Freak and Nintendo , and

132-689: Is a Japanese musician, composer, sound designer, and executive who pioneered chiptune music. He is best known as one of Nintendo 's in-house composers during the 8- and 16-bit era of video games. Tanaka also had a role in designing and programming the Famicom and Game Boy audio hardware, along with the NES Zapper , Game Boy Camera , and Game Boy Printer . Tanaka's soundtrack credits include Metroid (1986), Kid Icarus (1986), Super Mario Land (1989), Tetris (1989), Mother (1989), Dr. Mario (1990), and EarthBound (1994). He

165-625: Is one of the owners of the Pokémon franchise. It was founded by Tsunekazu Ishihara in November 1995, with the assistance of then-president of HAL Laboratory , Satoru Iwata , as a successor to Shigesato Itoi 's company Ape Inc. Alongside Game Freak and Nintendo, Creatures jointly owns The Pokémon Company . It is best known for developing the Pokémon Trading Card Game and designing Pokémon toys. Creatures operates

198-668: The Game Boy , researching and creating its audio hardware. He was inspired to develop the Game Boy Camera from a product called ViewCam that was popular at the time — Tanaka also ran experiments on the possibility of watching television via the Game Boy. At the advice of EarthBound (1994) co-worker Tsunekazu Ishihara , Tanaka would join Creatures as a guest composer, where he would end up composing dozens of songs for

231-473: The "buuu..." That was something I never heard before in rock music. It drove me like no other genre in music." Among specific musical influences, Tanaka has cited Brian Wilson , Randy Newman , Stackridge , Yabby U , the Flying Lizards , Prince , Lalo Rodriguez , My Bloody Valentine , Frank Zappa , Keiichi Suzuki , Hal Willner 's various artists compilations, Sly Dunbar , Jah Wobble , and

264-665: The 7th floor of the Nintendo Kanda Building ( 任天堂神田ビル , Nintendō Kanda Biru ) in Sudachō , Chiyoda, Tokyo. They later moved to the fifth floor annex of the Kawasakiteitoku Building ( 川崎定徳ビル , kawasakiteitoku Biru ) in Nihonbashi , Chūō , Tokyo. Creatures has a division called Pokémon CG Studio that is dedicated solely to making Pokémon 3D models and animations. They only make

297-538: The Beatles' " Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) " (1967). Tanaka did not personally see a difference between the music he composed for video games and the music he composed in his off time. For Metroid (1986), Tanaka acknowledged that games were becoming more complex, and his scores were becoming more like a film's, desiring in Metroid not to "repeat the same game-melody cliches," although he recalls that

330-687: The Pokémon CG Studio, which focuses on the 3D modelling and animation of Pokémon models in all Pokémon games. Creatures has also developed Pokémon spin-off titles and various non- Pokémon titles. The company has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo , in proximity to Ichigaya Station . Ape Inc. was founded in March 1989 with Shigesato Itoi as its chief executive officer (CEO). Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi had wanted to support new talent in game design. Liking Itoi's work, he proposed

363-583: The President of The Pokémon Company, and will continue to commit to the management of the company as a founder, while Tanaka will remain as Creative fellow. Yuji Kitano assume Creatures as CEO and President; meanwhile, Tomotaka Komura will step into the role of Executive vice president. Ape/Creatures has developed or has contributed to the development of the following games. Hirokazu Tanaka Hirokazu " Hip " Tanaka ( 田中 宏和 , Tanaka Hirokazu , born December 13, 1957) , also known as Chip Tanaka ,

SECTION 10

#1732797721475

396-787: The Western world as EarthBound . When development of this game began to falter, Satoru Iwata of HAL Laboratory was brought in to help the project. The game was released in Japan on 27 August 1994. Ape's game development activities ceased in 1995. Ape also produced a line of official guidebooks for Nintendo, in co-operation with Nintendo and Shogakukan . They began with Encyclopedia Mother in October 1989, and ended with Nintendo Official Guidebook—Pocket Monsters: Red, Green, Blue (Complete Compatibility, Revised Edition) on 10 January 1997. Shogakukan assumed Ape's role and continues to produce Nintendo Official Guidebooks in their stead. Creatures Inc.

429-430: The acquisition of Ambrella , the developer of a number of Pokémon spin-off games. Creatures acquired all property rights of Ambrella, and Ambrella disbanded, with its employees becoming part of Creatures. In April 2023, Creatures announced that Tsunekazu Ishihara has stepped down at his position as CEO and executive director, and Hirokazu Tanaka has stepped down as president and executive director. Ishihara continues as

462-455: The amount of "fun" a game would have, but that there was no financial pressure in creating games, nor were there sales quotas to meet. At the time of Dr. Mario (1990), Tanaka began observing an increasing number of "serious" game composers who had graduated from music schools . Dr. Mario was thus the first time Tanaka had asserted his musical personality in a game. Tanaka was one of "about five or six" Nintendo-based developers who designed

495-523: The duo during those times. On The Shampoos, Tanaka described it as an obscure local band which did gigs in Tokyo about once or twice a year, and that it was "never a formal thing". In 1980, after graduating from university with a degree in electronic engineering , Tanaka successfully applied for a job at Nintendo as a sound designer. He did not initially want to be an engineer, but Nintendo were accordingly scouting for "different sounds or toys or something at

528-546: The first Japanese Pokémon anime and various Pokémon promotional releases. Despite the fact that his themes were not used in the West, they inspired best-selling singles and albums in Japan due to their popularity there. Tanaka was eventually forbidden by Nintendo to continue to write more songs for the anime due to their policy of not allowing employees to work for other companies, so he resigned at Nintendo and joined Creatures full-time in 1999. Tanaka succeeded Ishihara to become

561-525: The game's damsel-in-distress, but the idea was vetoed by then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi 's daughter, who did not feel that the sample sounded like the exclamation "help me!". Tanaka noted that he learned "a lot" from series creator Shigeru Miyamoto due to his perfectionism and "level of commitment". Donkey Kong 3 (1983) was the first game where Tanaka acted both as composer and sound effects designer. His approach to game composition carried on from his dub obsession: "For instance, if you listen to

594-660: The game's development. Shigeru Miyamoto oversaw the process from Nintendo's side and proposed adding Mario to the game. Mario's Picross was released for the Game Boy in 1995. While it did not take off in the West, it sold well in Japan and led to several Japan-only entries, including Picross 2 for the Game Boy, Mario's Super Picross for the Super Famicom, the Picross NP series for the Nintendo Power service, and Tamori no Picross for Satellaview . Picross DS

627-504: The game's soundtrack was not well-received within Nintendo because of its dark atmosphere. He was inspired by the film Birdy (1984) to create a game score that was dark until the very end, where the player would finally receive music with a strong melody. Despite disapproval from his Nintendo colleagues, Tanaka was allowed full creative freedom on projects, and even had a fluctuating role in influencing some games' content and play style. He remembers Nintendo's strict, repeated criticisms over

660-422: The idea of the company to Itoi and invested in it. Ape's staff included Tsunekazu Ishihara , who later became The Pokémon Company 's president, and Ashura Benimaru Itoh, a renowned illustrator. They began working on Mother , which was released on 27 July 1989. Its music was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka , who later became the second CEO of Creatures. The team went on to develop Mother 2 , which would be known in

693-529: The models and animations for the Pokémon themselves, as human characters are modeled and animated in-house at Game Freak. The studio as of 2017 had 22 full time 3DGC artists, however according to studio director Atsuko Ujiya they wanted to double it in the following years. She states that during its peak workload they have around 100 employees (including temporary contractors) to work on the creation of models and animations. On 16 October 2020, Creatures announced

SECTION 20

#1732797721475

726-480: The morning. They didn't make us do it. It was just fun. We talk about the history of games, but for me, the history of games and computers overlap. If anything, I think it was more of the history of the evolution of computers ... I studied all about computers after I joined Nintendo. I think our generation of Nintendo employees were all the same. We learned as we went, built our own systems, and built them again. For instance, we made our own development tools. So everything

759-483: The music in Wrecking Crew (1985), you could recognize that some parts are drum and bass only. So that turned out to be an idea for working around the limitations of the game software. I figured that, to get the most out of the game music, a dub-based structure would be a really great solution. I'd play the melody in some parts, then cut it off and insert a part with just drums and bass, and vice versa. No one else

792-450: The president of Creatures in 2001, while Ishihara continued as CEO. Starting in the late 2000s, Tanaka began to perform at Japanese dance clubs under the name " Chip Tanaka". The moniker was suggested by a foreign acquaintance, as Tanaka thought "Hip Tanaka" was too attached to his time at Nintendo. After the death of Satoru Iwata in 2015, Tanaka wrote a tribute track titled "Dedicated to Satoru Iwata". In April 2023, Tanaka announced he

825-532: The time. I thought toys would be relatively stress-free, so I applied." The first game Tanaka worked on was Space Firebird (1980), where Tanaka was composer and constructed a new sound chip for particular sound effects. Following this, Tanaka worked on Donkey Kong (1981), providing the sound effects for Mario 's footsteps and jumps. Usually, the same sound effect was repeated across many different actions, but Tanaka's approach differed where he invented subtle variations. He attempted to insert voice synthesis for

858-423: Was a music lover that happened to be working at Nintendo. ... The reason I like reggae, especially dub, is because there actually is vocal and guitar on it, let's say, but in the essence, it's strictly driven by drums and bass. That's what I love about it the most. ... I think I like how there's this raw aspect to it. The gritty, raw quality of the sound, let's say. That really caught my ears. And that deep bass sound,

891-548: Was doing it, but it was what I wanted to do." Tanaka described what he remembered as a "typical day" at Nintendo in the brief period following the release of the Famicom home game console: Everything just stayed the same. From morning to night, we made new circuits and developed software. We had computers for work but they were TTY devices ; they had no monitors. Back and forth, morning to night. Sometimes designing hardware, and sometimes creating software. Back and forth, for me at least. ... I'd work from 9AM to as late as 2 or 3 in

924-499: Was established on 8 November 1995, with Tsunekazu Ishihara as CEO, and consisting of former staff from Ape. In 2000, Hirokazu Tanaka , a.k.a. Hip Tanaka, a former Nintendo composer and sound designer, who joined Creatures in 1999, became President of the company as Ishihara went to become the President of The Pokémon Company in 2000, while still holding his CEO position in Creatures. At one point, Creatures had its headquarters on

957-460: Was handmade. It was really fun. ... There was a continuous stream of new jobs and you'd go from one to the next. While working full-time at Nintendo on two or three games a year, and sometimes two simultaneously, Tanaka continued playing gigs in Osaka and Tokyo with the Shampoos. Sometime in the late 1980s, they recorded the 45 rpm " Thunder Dub " which prominently sampled the opening drumbeat from

990-521: Was stepping down as president and executive director of Creatures, but would remain as a Creative Fellow. Tanaka has said that his tastes in his youth were typical of the time, listening to artists such as the Beatles and the Carpenters . His first exposure to dub music was through the 1978 album Negrea Love Dub by Linval Thompson while eating pasta at a restaurant with live music in Kyoto. It

1023-488: Was the first Picross title in 12 years to be released internationally, launching on the Nintendo DS in 2007. Shortly thereafter, HAL Laboratory, known for the Kirby series, developed Picross 3D for the Nintendo DS. The game used similar mechanics to traditional Picross but adapted them to a three-dimensional environment. The sequel, Picross 3D: Round 2 , was released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2015. After unsuccessfully pitching

Picross - Misplaced Pages Continue

1056-409: Was the president and executive director of Creatures from 2001 to 2023, before resigning and becoming creative fellow in the company. Born to a schoolteacher mother who had Tanaka undergo piano lessons, Tanaka recounted that he first began paying serious attention to music while in elementary school, and attempted to form a band during that time. His first band was formed when he was in middle school,

1089-506: Was the record's use of exaggerated tape delay which astounded Tanaka, who stopped eating every time he heard it occur: "I thought 'Is this music sick?' But the more I listened to it, that groove with the bass line and the mixer... I think the mixer takes full control of it, directly and instinctively. When I felt it, I thought 'This is amazing.' I was totally hooked." Tanaka explained his fascination with reggae music and his application for it in his game scores: "It wasn't proactive on my part. I

#474525