Masanobu Endo | Code Like It's 198x

Masanobu Endo’s two famous games both hid things. In Xevious, bombing an empty-looking patch of ground could raise a hidden structure out of the earth. In The Tower of Druaga, each of the tower’s 60 floors hid a treasure chest that appeared only when the player solved that floor’s concealed riddle. Endo said in 2016 that Druaga was “clearly designed with the expectation of spreading by word of mouth among gamers” (in translation): a game no single player could solve, made for players to talk about. Both games came from Namco in the early 1980s, and Endo, unusually for a game maker of the time, was known to players by name.

Fast facts

Born: 1959.
Namco: joined in 1981.
Games at Namco: Xevious (1983), Grobda, and The Tower of Druaga (1984).
Game Studio: co-founded in 1985 with Kazuo Kurosu, a fellow Namco developer; it went on to make The Return of Ishtar (1986) and The Quest of Ki (1988) for Namco.
Teaching: professor in the game department of Tokyo Polytechnic University from 2014, and later a visiting professor there.

Namco and the Dig Dug notebook

Endo joined Namco in 1981. His first job, as he told it in 2016, involved little programming: he was testing Dig Dug, and wrote down everything he noticed about how its monsters behaved, inventing his own names for what he saw. Namco’s president Masaya Nakamura came across the notes and had them published as a small booklet, the Digtionary. “The first thing made was a booklet called the Digtionary, which collected strategies for Dig Dug,” Endo recalled (in translation).

Xevious

Xevious reached Japanese arcades early in 1983. According to a Japanese retrospective on its 40th anniversary, Endo wrote the program and drew all the graphics apart from the map. The game’s double weapon system, a Zapper for aircraft and a Blaster for ground targets, gave the player two jobs at once, and its scrolling landscape held secrets. Dropping a bomb on an apparently empty spot could make a hidden structure, the Sol, burst out of the ground; the bomb-sight blinked over the right place, so players could hunt for them. A hidden special flag gave no such clue, and finding it unaided was, GAME Watch wrote, a near-impossible feat.

Endo gave the game a world as well. Its story, called Fardraut, came with an invented language in which the names mean something: “Solvalou”, the player’s ship, is “bird of the sun”, and the enemy Zakato is “magic”. Almost nobody playing it in an arcade would have known. In 1991 he published a novel set in that world, Shōsetsu Xevious: Fardraut Saga. He also did something few designers of the period did: he appeared under his own name and with his face in Japanese magazines such as Login, talking about Xevious and Druaga.

The secrets kept players coming back and comparing notes. A teenage Satoshi Tajiri wrote a fanzine issue about Xevious that sold 10,000 copies, and in 2016 Endo, Tajiri and Ken Sugimori sat down together to talk about it for the Japanese site Denfaminico Gamer. One of Xevious’s enemies, the Grobda tank (Atari’s American advertising promised players “ZOSHI Death squads, GROBDA tanks”), got a game of its own: Grobda, an overhead tank battle over 99 levels, which Edge likened to Atari’s Combat.

The Tower of Druaga

Endo’s next big game took a different shape. His first proposal, dated 25 March 1983, was called Quest; it became The Return of Ishtar in July 1983, Tower of Anu that November, and finally The Tower of Druaga in March 1984. The game reached arcades in July 1984. The player climbs a 60-floor tower ruled by the demon Druaga to rescue Ki, held captive at the top, and on every floor the chest holding that floor’s item appears only when the player solves a hidden riddle.

Endo was frank about what that meant. Asked about it in 2016, he first joked that he did not want to name the game: “There was this game with an absurd number of mysteries scattered throughout, one that absolutely couldn’t be solved alone.” It was, he said, “clearly designed with the expectation of spreading by word of mouth among gamers” (both in translation). In the same conversation he accepted that the game had helped spread the arcade notebooks in which Japanese players wrote down their discoveries for others.

Outside Japan the design puzzled people. When Namco reissued Druaga on the PlayStation in Namco Museum Volume 3 in 1996, Edge called it “a wildly tedious and snail-paced maze game”, noting that it “was apparently a huge smash on the Famicom in Japan many years ago”. Edge had already observed in 1994 that the game “proved a massive hit on the Famicom”. For its 40th anniversary in 2024, a four-volume, 1,200-page collection of the original development documents was published, Endo’s proposals among them.

Game Studio

Endo left Namco in 1985 and, with Kazuo Kurosu, another veteran of Namco’s arcade development, founded Game Studio, a development company aimed, in its own description, at raising the artistic quality of games. It kept working for Namco. The Return of Ishtar (1986), an arcade sequel to Druaga which Edge later noted was “one of the first titles to employ a password system”, and The Quest of Ki (1988), a Famicom prequel, continued the series known as the Babylonian Castle Saga. The company has since been reorganised more than once, for a time as Mobile & Game Studio; in 2023 GAME Watch described Endo as an adviser to Game Studio.

Teaching

Endo moved into academic life alongside the industry. He joined the board of the Japan Digital Game Society in 2007 and became a professor in the game department of Tokyo Polytechnic University’s Faculty of Arts in 2014. In January 2026 the university described him as a visiting professor.

He also chaired the judges of PERACON, a game-planning contest, from its first year in 2011. In September 2020 the judges’ written comments on that year’s entries were widely criticised as personal attacks on the entrants. The organisers deleted all of the comments and apologised, and one judge was disciplined. Netlab reported that comments by Endo himself, telling entrants to give up on game planning, were among those criticised. Endo said on Twitter that the volume of entries had cost the judges their tolerance, and that he had taken note of suggestions for improvement.

Sources

“『ゼビウス』の生みの親・遠藤雅伸氏が『ポケモンGO』を斬る！”, Game Deets, 6 September 2016 (web, in Japanese): joining Namco in 1981; testing Dig Dug; the Digtionary. https://games.app-liv.jp/archives/175005
Shigihara Moriyuki, “ゼビウス” 40th anniversary feature, GAME Watch, 29 January 2023 (web, in Japanese): the arcade release in January 1983; Endo’s programming and graphics; the Sol and the special flag; Fardraut, the invented language, “Solvalou” and “Zakato”; the 1991 novel; his appearances in Login; his post at Game Studio. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/kikaku/1473560.html
Atari advertisement, Electronic Games vol. 1 no. 15, May 1983: “ZOSHI Death squads, GROBDA tanks”.
Videogaming Illustrated, June 1983: the Zapper and Blaster buttons.
“The Ultimate Game Freak”, TIME Asia, 22 November 1999 (web, secondary): Tajiri’s fanzine issue on “Zabius” (Xevious), “We sold 10,000 copies”. https://time.com/archive/6951818/the-ultimate-game-freak/
“「ゼビウス」がなければ「ポケモン」は生まれなかった！？”, Denfaminico Gamer, 8 February 2016 (web, in Japanese): conversation between Endo, Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori; Endo on The Tower of Druaga, word of mouth and arcade notebooks. https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/projectbook/xevious
Edge issue 29, February 1996: Grobda, “an overhead tank game with 99 levels”, compared with Atari’s Combat.
“『ドルアーガの塔』40周年記念公式記録全集”, Denfaminico Gamer, October 2024 (web, in Japanese): the arcade release in July 1984; the 60 floors, Ki and the hidden riddles; Endo’s proposals and their dates; the four-volume, 1,200-page book. https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/news/241025y
Edge issue 8, May 1994, pp. 54–61: Namco feature (Druaga “a massive hit on the Famicom”).
Edge issue 36, September 1996: Namco Museum Volume 3 review (The Tower of Druaga). Issue 39, December 1996: Namco Museum Vol. 4 (The Return of Ishtar and its password system).
Game Studio company profile, Green recruitment site (web, in Japanese): founded in 1985 by Masanobu Endo and Kazuo Kurosu, formerly of Namco’s arcade development; its aim; its later names. https://www.green-japan.com/company/3416
“Game Studio (company)”, Wikipedia (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): founded in 1985 by Endo; The Return of Ishtar (1986) and The Quest of Ki (1988). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Studio_(company)
“アーケードアーカイブス VS. カイの冒険”, 4Gamer.net, 6 November 2024 (web, in Japanese): The Quest of Ki (Namco, 1988), the third Babylonian Castle Saga game, after Druaga (1984) and The Return of Ishtar (1986). https://www.4gamer.net/games/854/G085430/20241106025/
“Retro Game à la Carte” announcement, Famitsu.com, 4 April 2016 (web, in Japanese): profile of Endo (Namco from 1981; Xevious, Druaga, Grobda, The Return of Ishtar; the Japan Digital Game Society from 2007; Tokyo Polytechnic University from 2014). https://www.famitsu.com/news/201604/04103007.html
Tokyo Polytechnic University, Faculty of Arts game department blog, 23 January 2026 (web, in Japanese): “本学客員教授遠藤雅伸先生” (visiting professor). https://blog.t-kougei.ac.jp/game/2026/01/23/3503/
“ゲーム企画コンテスト「PERACON」炎上で謝罪”, Netlab, 8 September 2020 (web, in Japanese): Endo as head judge since 2011; the comments criticised, including his own; the apology. https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/cont/articles/3309382/
GAME Watch, September 2020 (web, in Japanese): the PERACON 2020 organisers’ apology and the removal of all judges’ comments. https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1275813.html
Automaton, 10 September 2020 (web, in Japanese): a judge disciplined; Endo’s response on Twitter. https://automaton-media.com/articles/newsjp/20200910-136325/