People We Wish Would Design Games: Harold Sakuishi

You won’t be familiar with Harold Sakuishi unless you’re an anime or manga fan, but you should be. He has covered baseball, martial arts, and music in his manga, and his dense storylines would translate well into light RPGs and other genres. In particular, his 34-volume Beck Mongolian Chop Squad manga could be the end-all for music/RPG games.

Beck Mongolian Chop Squad is the story of a Japanese rock band attempting to make it in the Japanese music industry. Some may have seen the 26-episode anime, complete with music created for the show and performed by well-known Japanese rock and punk bands. Since the anime only covered the first 12 volumes of the manga, the remaining volumes cover a wide spectrum of what a band could potentially experience.

In 2005, PlayStation 2 had Beck: The Game released in Japan. But with the release of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, this game could be the ultimate video game band experience. The main character of the series is Tanaka Yukio, known as Koyuki, who learns guitar in the start of the series and eventually joins the band comprised of Minami Ryuskue (guitar), Yoshiyuki Taira (bass), Tsuemi Chiba (vocals), and Sakurai Yuji (drums). From the moment Koyuki officially joins the band, the music explodes into the series. If it was possible to add another guitar and microphone, up to six people could play at one time.

The reason this game would work so well is that the difficulty of the music directly correlates to Koyuki learning the guitar. In the beginning of the series, he is only able to play simple songs, but soon the songs that Beck play become more complicated. If a developer could acquire the rights to the songs of the anime, and then rehire the bands that performed previously or create new songs, players would be open to many tracks. Other bands also make appearances in the manga, creating other opportunities for playable songs.

Sakuishi created a whole world for these characters, and even the secondary characters are three-dimensional and have agendas. The RPG elements of gaining fan support, designing fliers, and generating experience to play festival shows could be a great party game. Obviously a player could do it alone (who could get five or six people to play all the time?), but that possibility is awesome.

Honestly, Sakuishi’s manga is the first one that really grabbed my attention beyond the harem, sci-fi, and action manga; his characters are recognizable and distinct. The anime adaptation is also first class mainly because the music created for the series had a lot of thought and planning. The animation company, Madhouse, put work into making the most important portion of the show, the music, shine. All a developer really needs to do is take the foundation of the anime, be influenced by the world of the manga, and create a game that doesn’t make the player feel like they’re in a game, but an experience.

I’m a huge fan of Beck Mongolian Chop Squad, and even admit one song from the anime is my favorite song ever (I almost cried when I heard it). Harold Sakuishi is a great writer and artist, and he created a masterpiece that needs to be developed. Hopefully the United States will be able to see more from Sakuishi in the future.