Scott Tsumura

Scott Tsumura
Born (1942-01-01) January 1, 1942
Nagoya, Aichi, Japan
Citizenship United States
Education Osaka University of Commerce（Economics）
Occupation Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Tozai, Inc. (Tozai Games), Co-Founder of Tozai Games Japan, Inc.

Scott Tsumura (Japanese: スコット津村) is a Japanese-born American video game producer. He has produced and localized a number of iconic video games such as Spelunker, Lode Runner, Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master and R-Type Dimensions. He is the co-founder and executive producer at Tozai, inc, based in Bellevue, Washington.

Although Tsumura's Japanese given name is Kenji, he adopted the nickname Scott shortly before moving to America at the suggestion of a friend. The name resonated with Tsumura due to his deep admiration for Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet, Walter Scott. He became a US citizen in 2005.

Career

Early career

After graduating from college, Tsumura started working as a bartender at Kobe Club. Since then, he's had seventeen or eighteen career changes, working in sales, plumbing, civil engineering, apparel, architecture, wholesale, trading, driving and painting. Tsumura moved twelve times and lived in various places all around Japan, including Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo.[1]

Irem

Ten years after graduation, Tsumura got a job in the slot machine industry. At the time, a German slot machine called 'Rotamint' was very popular. It had been converted to work with Japanese 100-yen coins and was said to be bringing in more than 1.5 million yen a month.[2]

A year later, the Businesses Affecting Public Morals Regulation Law was revised and it became illegal to use real money with slot machines, and the use of tokens was enforced. Rotamint machines were soon replaced by video games. Tsumura's acquaintance, Kenzo Tsujimoto, realized that this development might be a potential boon for the video game industry and founded a game company called IPM (which later became Irem, before splitting into Apies and Irem Software Engineering). Tsumura joined IPM and oversaw the distribution of video game cabinets before he launched a global sales department.

Tsumura remained at Irem when NANAO (Now EIZO) acquired Irem in 1980 as well as when Tsujimoto left the company to found Capcom in 1983. As the head of arcade game development, Tsumura produced a number of games, such as Moon Patrol, 10-Yard Fight, MotoRace USA and Kung-Fu Master. When the Family Computer (NES) was introduced, Tsumura started developing game software for the home console market. In 1984, Tsumura obtained the rights from Brøderbund for Lode Runner, which was released for arcade systems that July. Tsumura licensed Spelunker in June 1985 and released the Nintendo Entertainment System port six months later. He also helped produce the TurboGrafx-16 version of R-Type, which was their first port of an arcade game which requires advanced graphic quality and speed of data processing to video game consoles. The NES was released on October 18, 1985 with 17 launch titles including Kung-Fu Master and 10-Yard Fight, which Nintendo licensed from IREM.

U.S.

In May 1988, based on an idea by Doug Carlston, the CEO of Broderbund, Tsumura moved to the U.S. to establish a joint venture located in San Francisco called, Kyodai Software Marketing, with 13 Japanese PC game companies.

Tsumura only planned on staying in the US for about a year to get Kyodai Software Marketing up and running.[2] However, by 1989, Nintendo and Sega home consoles were soaring, and so, in order to capitalize on this trend, Tsumura and Henk Rogers, CEO of the Japanese video game studio BPS, decided to found its Seattle branch. It was Bullet-Proof Software that licensed Tetris, which Alexey Pajitnov had developed in the Soviet Union, releasing a Game Boy version.

Later, Tsumura and Sheila Boughten, then Bullet-Proof Software's Vice President of marketing (now President of Tozai, Inc.) helped Pajitnov and his family immigrate to the U.S., offering him a development position at Bullet-Proof Software US. When Tsumura visited Pajitnov in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed, the economy was so turbulent and Tsumura endured a few dangerous situations, including a near-mugging. In 1993, Bullet-Proof Software was acquired by Spectrum HoloByte (later MicroProse), based in San Francisco. After spending two years traveling between San Francisco and Seattle, Tsumura finally left Spectrum HoloByte. He co-founded a consulting firm Tozai, Inc. together with Sheila Boughten and a development studio, Big Bang Software, in Seattle in 1996. The former became Tozai, Inc. / Tozai Games (a Game publisher) and the latter was merged into Nintendo.[3]

Minoru Arakawa, the first CEO of Nintendo of America, asked Tsumura to help him found an internal American development studio. The result was Nintendo Software Technology. For 4 years Tsumura ran NST as COO/President. He then left NST and founded and/or managed a few of other companies and studios, such as Amaze Entertainment (Black Ship Studio), Kemco US and MTO US, before returning to Tozai Inc. Tozai Inc. (Tozai Games), a consulting firm from 1996 to 2007, consulted to many companies, such as Mitsui & Co., NEC Interchannel, Bandai, Eidos, MicroProse and Hasbro, were now developing their own games. Tsumura and Boughten oversaw Tozai Games' acquisition of the intellectual property rights to Lode Runner and Spelunker, and co-founded Tozai Games with Takuya Banno. Tsumura then produced titles such as the Xbox Live Arcade version/Xbox One of Lode Runner, Lode Runner X/Lode Runner Classic for smartphones and Spelunker HD (PlayStation 3), Spelunker Collection (PlayStation 3) and Spelunker World (PlayStation 4).

Job titles

Major works

Perspectives

The first video game to ever really capture Tsumura's imagination was Lode Runner, which requires reflexes like action games and strategies like puzzle video games. He believes that Lode Runner originated the idea of a built-in level editor.

Tsumura was especially attracted to the unique underground adventure theme of Spelunker. He made the Family Computer Disk System version extremely challenging so that players could learn to strategize and feel a sense of accomplishment as they play. As he puts it, "Home video games at that time didn't have much incentive to compel players to try again, whereas arcade games had to make players feel incentivized to rise to the challenge within the first few minutes."

Tsumura responds to Tetris because he feels it is a profound game, yet so simple that anyone can play. What's more, he thinks there can't be an in-depth conversation about the history of video games without mentioning Tetris.

Releasing games is like selling fun for Tsumura. Even after changing careers so many times in his young adulthood, he ended up spending almost 40 years in the video game industry.[2] He believes that Spelunker, Lode Runner and Tetris changed his life forever.

Hobby

Tsumura's hobby is taking snapshots of people, catching them in unguarded moments. He also enjoys landscape photography. He loves rangefinder cameras, especially Leica, frequently posting his latest photos and essays on his blog, The Wind from Seattle, which is sponsored by Yodobashi Camera. In April 2013, Tsumura held his first solo photography exhibition, "With the Wind – Scott Tsumura Photo Exhibit" at Yodobashi Camera's Gallery Instance in Tokyo.

His personal photo blog, shot & shot is updated frequently. The blog's title was inspired by his rifle shooting experience; according to Tsumura both marksmanship and photography have targets that require a similar degree of precision. Tsumura ranked second in Osaka in rifle marksmanship and thirteenth overall in Japan. Tsumura also loves jazz and classical music, especially romantic music from the 19th century to early 20th century. His photography takes inspiration from the evocative emotional range present in great classical music. His favorite scores are Symphony No. 3, Symphony No. 8 (Dvořák) and Symphony No. 2.

Notes

In 2002, he was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Science from DigiPen Institute of Technology for the guidance he offered to students.

Tsumura married his college sweetheart in 1966 and has a son and two daughters, as well as a grandson and two granddaughters.

References

  1. ↑ ファミコンゲーム『スペランカー』の生みの親・スコット津村氏講演会参加レポート (ツカウエイゴ), 2014年4月20日
  2. 1 2 3 スコット津村氏による「型破りExecutive Producerによるゲームプロデュース裏話」講演会＆交流会開催！会場は大爆笑の渦！ (Seattle IT Japanese Professionals), 2014年4月29日
  3. ↑ ファミコン版「スペランカー」制作者による裏話がここに。
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