Hiroyuki Takahashi

Hiroyuki Takahashi plays the most important game of his career.

Hiroyuki Takahashi (高橋宏之, Takahashi Hiroyuki) is a writer, game designer, producer, businessman, real estate investor, athlete, and actor whose name appears in the credits of every Shining game published in the '90s except for Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict. Hiroyuki Takahashi currently serves as the representative director of Camelot Software Planning, a studio founded by his brother Shugo Takahashi in 1994 to make games for the PlayStation.

Hiroyuki Takahashi's career in video game production began at Enix, where he served as assistant producer on Dragon Quest IV and executive producer on the Japanese side of the production that adapted the 1990 North American release of Dragon Warrior II.

Takahashi's involvement with the Shining series began after he left Enix to form Climax Entertainment in April 1990 alongside former Enix freelancers Yoshitaka Tamaki and Yasuhiro Taguchi, as well as former Chunsoft programmer Kan Naito. Climax's first game would be Shining and the Darkness, published by Sega in March 1991.

In June 1991, Hiroyuki Takahashi left Climax to establish Sonic! Software Planning with investment from Sega. His brother, Shugo Takahashi, joined Sonic after the release of the first Shining Force to direct Shining Force Gaiden. After the departure of Climax from the series, Sonic became the main developer of the Shining series until Sega merged the subsidiary into Nextech in April 1998.

After moving to Camelot following the dissolution of Sonic, Hiroyuki Takahashi oversaw development of Shining Force III, which would be the studio's last game in the series.

Takahashi began producing Mario sports games at Camelot in 1999 with Mario Golf, following the success of the studio's Everybody's Golf for the PlayStation. He has continued to work as a producer on further Mario Golf and Mario Tennis games ever since.

Hiroyuki Takahashi is also known for writing and producing the Golden Sun series in the early 2000s alongside other staff who had worked on Shining Force III, including artists Shin Yamanouchi and Hiroshi Kajiyama, composer Motoi Sakuraba, and programmer Yasuhiro Taguchi.

Takahashi Interviews

The following statements are excerpted from interviews that are available in full at the links given in the citations.

Famitsu, Issue 176 (May 1992)

Hiroyuki Takahashi describes his colorful history in an interview about Shining Force published in the May 1992 issue of Famitsu, which has an English translation available on shmuplations. He also describes how he only considered less than half of one percent of the video games he had played to be of an acceptable quality.

[Interviewer] So, I bet you were surprised we’d be starting off this interview wearing these funny costumes?

[Takahashi] Nah, I was in theatre in high school, so I love this kind of stuff.

[Interviewer] You did acting? That’s very unusual for a game designer.

[Takahashi] I’ve done a lot of different things, yeah. Before entering this industry, I was a manager of an executive planning committee at a big company…

[Interviewer] How about before that, did you ever play games?

[Takahashi] When I was a student, for awhile I was really into Gradius. But more than games, I liked physical activities, stuff that involved moving your body.

[Interviewer] Sports?

[Takahashi] Yeah. I was a ski instructor at one point, and I loved bowling and tennis. Right now I’m into golf.

[Interviewer] You sound like a proper exercise nut. (laughs)

[Takahashi] I might be a jock. (laughs) But Mario really jolted something awake in me, and within half a year I had bought over 120 games. (laughs)

[Interviewer] That’s amazing.

[Takahashi] Of all those games though, I would say only 5 were really good. I’ve often said, with regard to Sonic, that we don’t want to deceive players, but that feeling comes because I myself have been scammed by so many bad games. (laugh)

Takahashi explains how although the idea for Shining Force came from being tasked by Enix to make a strategy game, he was not really interested in making strategy games and found little inspiration in the ones he had tried, being more compelled by games with rich stories. Takahashi later clarifies this account in his 2009 GamesTM interview when he states he was given the idea for making strategy games by playing Silver Ghost.

[Interviewer] Turning to Shining Force, how did the project get started?

[Takahashi] Well, first of all, people are always comparing Shining Force to strategy games, but that didn’t have much to do with it at all.

[Interviewer] Oh, seriously?

[Takahashi] I mean, they informed our work, but I already had the rough idea for a game like Shining Force just three months after joining Enix, now that I think of it.

During that time, Enix told us to create a strategy game for the home console, something brainy where you’d need to use your head. As research, I tried playing a famous PC strategy game, but it wasn’t happening for me. This doesn’t fit me at all, I thought.

[Interviewer] Your impatience rearing its head again? (laughs)

[Takahashi] …yes. (laughs) That wasn’t the kind of game I wanted to make. I was attracted to the idea of a game where you used your head more, but that was it. I wanted to do something more like Dragon Quest, a dramatic tale full of tears and romance, with a rich world and setting.

Takahashi tells a different story about the creation of the Shining Force character Yogurt than is usually recounted by artist Yoshitaka Tamaki.

[Interviewer] By the way, who or what is Jogurt? He’s mysterious.

[Takahashi] Yes, he’s a mystery. (laughs) He was originally just a sketch made by Yoshihiro Tamaki [sic], who did the concept art for Shining Force. He thought it would be cool to have a completely out-of-place character in those battles.

In Tamaki's version of events, Yogurt was the result of a graphics artist asking Tamaki for a character to use as a test graphic. Tamaki had not yet designed any characters for the game, so he gave the artist a doodle that he had. Tamaki says that he eventually grew tired of being asked to draw the character because he had hoped it would only be used for the test.

64Dream (2000)

Excerpt from an interview with Hiroyuki and Shugo Takahashi published in the July 2000 issue of 64Dream.

When interviewed in 64Dream about their role in developing Mario sports games, Hiroyuki and Shugo Takahashi said the following of their athletic prowess:

[Interviewer] When you talk about ball games, you mean golf and now tennis, but what else?

[Hiroyuki] I'll do just about anything.

[Shugo] I played bowling when I was a junior. We both went to the world conference (laugh). When I was in elementary school, my older brother was in junior high, and we were strong athletes. That's why we trained with famous professional bowlers Ritsuko Nakayama and Masaaki Saijo.

GamesTM (2009)

In an English-language interview about the development history of the Shining series published by GamesTM in 2009, Takahashi said of his role in the development of Shining and the Darkness:

Because we were on such a tight budget, apart from the programming and graphics, I did nearly all of the work on Shining In The Darkness.

GamesTM writes the following of Takahashi's perspective on Nintendo's position in the industry in the late 1990s:

With Sega effectively turning its back on Camelot, Takahashi began the search for another major company that could benefit from little Camelot's big skills. He recalls how back in 1998 Nintendo was "very isolated" and "seemed helpless". The reason for that sentiment? "I felt Nintendo's line-up of games was lacking. There's no doubt that Nintendo is the company that produced today's game market, and it's Nintendo that has provided the highest-quality game software to the largest number of users. But back then I felt as though NCL's line-up was missing something, so it was Camelot's turn to help. Nintendo was most in need of our assistance."

Takahashi describes the influence of the game Silver Ghost on the design of Shining Force and how he believed that strategic battles were more important to him in RPGs than their stories:

At that time, the games industry’s way of thinking about role-playing games put the emphasis squarely on telling an interesting story. That was apparently the purpose of role-playing games – just to tell a good story. However, I’ve always believed that engaging battles are the most crucial factor in an RPG. Even today, you see many role-playing games that are designed according to a philosophy where battles are just a bonus and the story is the main thing. I could never accept that and I wouldn’t go along with it. RPG players spend such a great amount of their time in battle that there’s no way a battle system should be treated merely as something that’s tacked onto a good story.

Prior to Silver Ghost I didn’t like tactical simulation games at all – they gave players too much time to think…  their tempo was all over the place. But Silver Ghost was different: it was a simulation action type of game where you had to direct, oversee and command multiple characters; it was the title that convinced me simulation games didn’t have to be crap.

Game Credits

The following table categorizes Hiroyuki Takahashi's roles in the development of all the games in which his participation is known.

Release	Title	Writer	Designer	Producer	Credits
1988-02	Dragon Quest III				(Uncredited) Marketing
1990-02	Dragon Quest IV			✔	Assistant Producer
1990-10	Dragon Warrior II (NA)			✔	Executive Producer
1991-03	Shining and the Darkness	✔		✔	Writer, Producer
1992-03	Shining Force	✔	✔	✔	Scenario, Subscript, Game Design, Producer
1992-12	Shining Force Gaiden	✔		✔	Subscript, Producer
1993-06	Shining Force Gaiden II	✔		✔	Subscript, Producer
1993-10	Shining Force II	✔		✔	Subscript, Producer
1994-07	Shining Force CD			✔	General Producer
1995-07	Shining Wisdom	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Map Design, Producer
1996-12	Shining the Holy Ark		✔	✔	Game Design, Producer
1997-12	Shining Force III Scenario 1	✔	✔	✔	Story, Subscript, Main Game Design, Producer
1998-04	Shining Force III Scenario 2	✔	✔	✔	Story, Subscript, Main Game Design, Producer
1998-09	Shining Force III Scenario 3	✔	✔	✔	Story, Subscript, Main Game Design, Producer
1998-12	Shining Force III Premium Disc	✔	✔	✔	Story, Subscript, Main Game Design, Producer
1999-06	Mario Golf (N64)		✔	✔	Lead Game Designer, Producer
1999-08	Mario Golf (GBC)	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Lead Game Designer, Producer
2000-07	Mario Tennis (N64)		✔	✔	Lead Game Design, Producer
2000-11	Mario Tennis (GBC)	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Lead Game Designer, Producer
2001-05	Mobile Golf	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Lead Game Designer, Producer
2001-08	Golden Sun: The Broken Seal	✔	✔	✔	Scenario, Game Planning, Producer
2002-06	Golden Sun: The Lost Age	✔	✔	✔	Scenario Design, Game Planning, Producer
2003-07	Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour		✔	✔	Main Game Design, Producer
2004-04	Mario Golf: Advance Tour	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Game Design, Producer
2004-10	Mario Power Tennis (GCN)		✔	✔	Lead Designer, Producer
2005-09	Mario Tennis: Power Tour	✔	✔	✔	Subscript, Game Design, Producer
2009-01	Mario Power Tennis (Wii)		✔	✔	Main Game Design, Producer
2010-10	Golden Sun: Dark Dawn	✔	✔	✔	Scenario, Game Design, Producer
2012-05	Mario Tennis Open		✔	✔	Lead Game Designer, Producer
2014-05	Mario Golf: World Tour	✔	✔	✔	Scenario, Lead Game Design, Producer
2015-11	Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash		✔	✔	Lead Game Designer, Producer
2017-03	Mario Sports: Superstars		✔	✔	Game Design Lead, Producer
2018-06	Mario Tennis Aces		✔	✔	Game Design Lead, Producer
2021-06	Mario Golf: Super Rush		✔	✔	Game Design Lead, Producer

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