Kenji Orimo

Kenji Orimo discusses the relationship between Climax and Sonic.

Kenji Orimo (折茂賢司, Orimo Kenji) is a game developer who worked as a director at Sonicǃ Software Planning and as a producer for Climax Entertainment. His Shining series credits include direction and writing for Shining Force.

Published Statements

Development of Shining Force

Seeː Masaki Wachi § Published Statements

Game Development Philosophy

The following is excerpted from an interview in the November 1991 issue of Beep! MegaDrive.

[Editor] What was your goal with the founding of Sonic?

[編集部] ソニックの設立目的は？

[Orimo] With game development increasing in scale every year, we want to proceed with development of a proper project. Take RPGs for instance. We thought, up until now, the scenario and character design has been done by game developers, but if we requested specialists, couldn't we make much more interesting games? Since game developers aren't used to looking for or using outside staff, it's very difficult. But the staff at Sonic have a lot of diverse know-how from having gained experience in businesses outside of games. With us at Sonic taking advantage of that, I have no doubt that the project we produce will be the best game!!

[折茂] 年々大型化していくゲーム制作を、きちんとしたプロジェクトとして進めていくことです。例えばRPGの場合、今まではシナリオもキャラデザインもゲームメーカーの開発の人間がやっていたけれど、それぞれを専門の人に頼めば、もっと面白い優れたゲームがつくれるんじゃないか？　と思うんです。ゲームメーカーの人は、外部スタッフを捜すのも使うのも慣れていないので、とても苦労してる。でもソニックのスタッフには、ゲームとは別の業界で培ってきたいろいろなノウハウがある。それらをいかして、そのゲームに合った最適のプロジェクトを組み、プロデュースを代行しよう!!　というのがソニックなんです。

[Editor] I see.

[編集部] なるほど。

[Orimo] A business practice everywhere is to purchase the publishing rights to manga and novels and then borrow the name of the work. We don't want that. What we want is what the manga author and novelist expresses in their work—part of their mind, so to speak. To put it briefly, in the case of manga, we want to listen to what the manga artist expresses in their work and then put that into our game.

[折茂] 漫画や小説とかの版権を買ってきて、その作品の名前を借りるのはどこでもやっていますよね。そうではなく、ぼくたちが欲しいのは、漫画家や小説家が、作品の中で表したかったこと、いわばマインドの部分なんです。つまり漫画なら漫画家が作品の中で表現したいことを聞いて、それをゲームの中に取り込んでいく。

Staff Directory

Seeː Who Made the Shining Series?