Topic: The story behind the story?

[Abnormal Freak]

I don't know why certain old school games from the early NES era don't have credits. Think I heard once there was a kind of stigma involved with game development in Japan during those days, like some people wouldn't even admit to their families what they do. Dunno if that's some myth or has some truth to it.

It's sorta like with Mega Man. For the longest time nobody really publicly knew who the creator/director of the first two games was. We had a guy in the credits named "A. K" who was the "planner" of the first two, and Inafune mentioned him on numerous occasions, calling him his mentor, without ever giving a name. But apparently that dude's name is Akira Kitamura, and I don't think that was made public until a few years ago. (In addition to directing the games, he was also a co-designer of Mega Man. I think I remember reading he did the original sprite, probably based on someone else's design [there are a few names for "character designer" in the first game], and then Inafune put ink to paper to actually draw the Blue Bomber.)

[The Silverlord]

You've got Masato Maegawa (Castlevania: The Adventure) who left to set-up Treasure (1992) with a group of other Konami employees supposedly unhappy at Konami's trend of producing sequels.

In October 2005, Good-Feel was set up, again with many development staff moving over from Konami (mainly from former Kobe studio).  Included Shigeharu Umezaki (produced many early games) and Etsunobu Ebisu (CV64/Legacy of Darkness).  There may have been some bad blood at the time of IGA's 2005 interview.

I'm pretty sure Akihiko Nagata was still high up within Konami in 2005 (Executive Corporate Officer), which may rule him out.  But who knows?  Maybe we should try tweeting Hideo Kojima or something?