Interest

Manga Delves Into Early Careers of Famed Game Creators

Manga creator Keiichi Tanaka (Doctor Chichibuyama, G no Samurai, Utsu Nuke, Pen to Hashi) launched his Wakage no Itari ~Game Creator no Seishun~ manga on Dwango's Den-fami Nico Gamer website on Wednesday. The manga depicts real game creators when they were young and had just joined the video game industry.

Den-fami Nico Gamer's editorial department describes the story:

The game industry's puberty was 1980 to the 1990s. We want to investigate the hot-blooded, young, extreme memories of game creators who had major struggles during that period. Wakage no Itari ~Game Creator no Seishun~ is a report manga developed from those feelings.

The first chapter focuses on Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi. Here are the first three pages:

The entire chapter is available on Den-fami Nico Gamer's official website. The next chapter will focus on Aquanaut's Holiday creator Kazutoshi Iida.

Sakaguchi will appear with designer and artist Kimihiko Fujisaka at the Anime Expo convention in Los Angeles in July. Sakaguchi was an employee at Square since its inception as an independent company in 1986. He was employed as director of planning and development and created the first Final Fantasy role-playing game. Sakaguchi left Square and founded game developer Mistwalker (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, The Last Story, Terra Battle) in 2004.

[Via Hachima Kikō]