Wireframe - #35 - 2020

Developer Profile / Tecmo

50 / wfmag.cc

aking in cleaning

equipment, yacht sales,

expensive lawsuits, and

multiple name changes,

developer and publisher

Tecmo’s history is a long and sometimes

bewildering one. But while the story

behind the Japanese firm is tricky to

sum up in just a few hundred words,

the mark it’s made on gaming is much

easier to pin down. Its Ninja Gaiden

series has remained a mainstay (off and

on) since the late eighties; the Dead or

Alive series of fighting games is still going

strong; even its 8-bit American football

game, Tecmo Bowl, has retained a loyal

following well into the 21st century.

Founded by Yoshihito Kakihara as

Tehkan Ltd in 1967, the company first

started making video games in 1981

with Pleiades, a fairly unremarkable

fixed-screen shoot-’em-up in the

vein of Galaxian. Through the

eighties, however, Tehkan – which

essentially became Tecmo in

1986 – fostered a hotbed of

T

The firm behind Ninja Gaiden and more

Tecmo

Developer Profile

Interface

Developer Profile / Tecmo

game design talent. Michishito Ishizuka,

who programmed Tecmo’s hit Tehkan

World Cup, later went on to co-found

developer Escape (later Westone Bit

Entertainment), perhaps best known

for the Wonder Boy series; Kazutoshi

Ueda, who oversaw the development

of Tecmo’s arcade game, Bomb Jack,

eventually went on to found Atlus, and

worked on early entries in the Megami

Tensei series.

MARK OF THE NINJA

A fair percentage of that eighties talent

arrived at Tecmo from rival developer,

Universal: Ueda was the uncredited

designer of what might be Universal’s

best-remembered game, Mr. Do! – an

unabashed clone of Namco’s Dig Dug

• before he landed at Tecmo. By the
  middle of the decade, Ueda was joined
  by around 20 former Universal staff


• perhaps as much as half of Tecmo’s
  workforce. According to Michishito
  Ishizuka, this led to a saying among
  the company’s staff: “If you didn’t come
  from Universal, then you can’t get
  promoted here.”
  In translated interviews,
  developers paint a picture
  of a lively and creative
  environment, where