Interview:Mikito Ichikawa
This is Part 1 of our interview with Mindware (formerly MNM Software) founder/president Mikito Ichikawa. More questions and answers will be appearing on this page soon. In the meantime, if you live in Europe or Australia and own a Wii, be sure to check out MaBoShi: The Three Shape Arcade, Mindware's latest WiiWare game.
GDRI: What does MNM stand for?
MI: The name MNM stands for our policy: "Minnade Nakayoku Moukeyou" (everyone making money together harmoniously).
Before founding MNM, I had seen people take credit for other people's hard work. Not only that, I had witnessed several deaths from overwork. Managers took advantage of shy and modest programmers. Managers would pick some programmers as "lead," then these programmers would work so hard thinking, "We were chosen! We must work hard!" They would eventually burn out - sometimes the worst awaited them. I thought this was very wrong, yet they simply let these things happen without even questioning the situation. So I decided to make my own company where I wouldn't allow such things to happen.
There was another reason, too. I wanted to make unique games. I strongly believe that originality is the only way to move people in the end. Yet even at that time, the market was full of copycats. I looked for a company which would appreciate original ideas, but there were none, so I had to set one up for myself.
I remember wondering around that time, "How can a really amazing game rise from the sea of sequels and blatant rip-offs?" It's sad that the situation hasn't got any better these days.
GDRI: When you were working on non-MNM developed games like Batman Returns for Game Gear, were you working on behalf of MNM?
MI: As MNM, I provided the music driver and converted the music data for them.
GDRI: What was your relationship with Yuzo Koshiro?
MI: During my first year of high school, I was developing games for Dempa Shinbunsha (they were making PC ports of Namco games). My school had a student uniform. One day, Koshiro-san saw me wearing it at Dempa and said hello to me (he was from the same high school - he had already graduated). I hadn't found a composer for Mars [X1] yet, so I asked him to do it, and he said OK. Koshiro-san was already really well-known, but I didn't know his reputation because I was not so keen on Japanese PC games. I just thought he wrote awesome tunes!
We found out we had much in common. Our taste in games is similar. The age gap between us is small, just like brothers. We lived in the neighborhood, so we became good friends. I often asked him to compose tunes when I thought my project was really ambitious. I really appreciate him as a producer/director. Some people might just handle composing as routine contract work, but Koshiro-san always examines the content of the game deeply and writes tunes that really suit it. Highest quality guaranteed. There would be no worries about sound when Koshiro-san did his work. This indeed lessened my burden when I was starting MNM at the age of 16.
GDRI: Why was the name changed from MNM to Mindware?
MI: In the summer of 1992, the doctor told me that I had collagen disease. He also said I had only one and half year left. In May 1993, I became bed-bound, so I had to close the MNM office.
At one time, I only weighed 36 kg. Fortunately, I could pull myself together again in the spring of 1995. As I recovered, I thought about bringing MNM back. I discussed many things with my long-time friend. He had been programming with me since junior high, and he was also the director of the company. We talked about things like, "Why do people work?," "Why do people play games?," "What makes people happy?" These questions cleared my mind. We developers are not tools. We have minds, and we put our minds to our games. I hoped our games would touch and interact with players' minds, so I changed my company's name to Mindware.
I was also thinking that many games were failing to touch and move players. I remember seeing this random game magazine review around that time. It said that a particular game was "well polished, but it doesn't excite me somehow" (this review was almost an *incident* - this kind of magazine was paid by the publisher, yet reviewers were so bored of similar titles that they made a negative remark!). I realized I didn't want to make games that were polished, but not exciting. I think this also pushed me towards the name Mindware.
GDRI: What is Mindware doing today?
MI: We are making video games and leasing/developing pinball machines.
I once stopped making video games in the late 90s. More games started to have FMVs, but games with qualitative change became really rare. So I decided to step back for a while. I continued prototyping many experimental games behind the scenes, hoping the new era where people appreciated new ideas would come.
Our new game will be announced and released soon. It's a game full of never-before-seen ideas. We believe this game can turn the current tide of similar/rip-off games everywhere. We received several offers around the PS2 launch, but we turned them all down. Now we have a powerful publisher that can fuel us to go full throttle!
As for pinball, in addition to pinball machine leasing/maintenance, we host the Flip-Out Tournament annually. We also do pinball lectures for beginners.
We've been developing pinball machines since 2000. Our first prototype machine with our own hardware was completed in summer 2003, but it will take some more time before you will see one in arcades.
In the future, we hope to release the specifications and SDK for our pinball machines so that hobbyists can develop their own. In the world of video games, there are development environments that everyone can use, and they can have their games played. There are contests that they can enter. This ecosystem nurtures the future developers, thus supporting the whole industry. The world of pinball has none of these things. Pinball designers are getting older and older, and there are no young ones. What will happen in 20 years? The world will have no pinball designers if we do nothing, so we'd like to do things to foster future pinball designers, contributing to the future of pinball in our own way.
English translation written by Rumiko Hoshino and edited by CRV.
Interview conducted via e-mail by CRV in July and August 2008.
