Yu Suzuki.
While he's a mostly forgotten name today, because of Sega's downfall, Suzuki's impact on the game industry is huge, easily rivalling, or arguably surpassing, Shigeru Miyamoto, and definitely more important than Carmack and Kojima.
Suzuki is pretty much the grandaddy of 3D gaming. He was largely responsible for the game industry's shift from 2D to 3D, first with pseudo-3D arcade hits like Hang-On (1985), Space Harrier (1985), OutRun (1986) and After Burner (1987), then with polygonal 3D arcade hits like Virtua Racing (1992), Virtua Fighter (1993), Daytona USA (1993), Virtua Cop (1994), etc.
He introduced new concepts, techniques and technologies to gaming, like sprite/texture/background scaling graphics & digitized drum sampling audio with Hang-On, as well as sloping hills, non-linear branching paths and changeable music with OutRun, sprite/texture/background rotation with After Burner, fully rotating 3D camera system (with changeable camera angles & action replays) with Virtua Racing, polygonal 3D human characters with Virtua Racing & Virtua Fighter, 3D character physics with Virtua Fighter, 3D lighting & anti-aliasing with Virtua Racing & Daytona USA, filtered texture-mapping & bilinear/trilinear filtering with Daytona USA, textured 3D characters & motion-capture animation with Virtua Fighter 2 (1994), position-dependent hit reactions & headshots with Virtua Cop, the MSAA, motion blur, facial animations and specular highlighting/reflection/shading of Virtua Fighter 3 (1996), the interactive open-world environments with real-time weather simulation and fully-voiced NPCs with independent AI schedules in Shenmue (1999), etc.
He pioneered immersive new ways of controlling and experiencing games, introducing full-body motion controls with Hang-On (over 2 decades before the Wii), true analog fight-stick controls (360-degree movement & measuring degree of push) in a rotating hydraulic arcade cabinet with Space Harrier, dual-analog controls (flight-stick & throttle) with After Burner II (1987), a 360-degree rotating gyroscope-like arcade cabinet with G-LOC (1990), etc..
He pioneered new genres, like arcade-style street racing with OutRun, kart racing with Power Drift (1988), 3D fighting games with Virtua Fighter, 3D light-gun shooters with Virtua Cop, 3D urban open-world games with Shenmue (1999), etc.
He inspired a whole generation of game designers/programmers/engineers, from pseudo-3D techniques like Mode 7 on SNES and FPS ray-casting on PC, to Virtua Fighter's impact on Sony's 3D hardware design for the original PlayStation and Lara Croft's 3D character design in Tomb Raider, to Virtua Cop's impact on GoldenEye's gameplay, aiming system and console FPS template, to the motion controls of DDR and the Wii, etc.
But not everything he did had a positive influence. He's the guy who revived, modernized and popularized QTE's with Shenmue. And that's unfortunately what many remember Shenmue for, despite breakthroughs like fully interactive 3D open-world environments (which it before, and better than, GTA3), fully-voiced NPCs, independent NPC AI schedules, real-time weather simulation, etc. But after the commercial failure of Shenmue II (2001), Sega demoted him and the legend eventually faded away into obscurity.
Log in to comment