In Tokuro Fujiwara’s best-known game the hero spends much of his time in his underwear. The knight Arthur of Ghosts ’n Goblins loses his armour at the first touch of a zombie and is reduced to a pile of bones at the second, and Fujiwara meant it that way. The armour, he told Edge, was his answer to the balance he wanted in an action game, between “the happiness that a player feels from their successes and the frustration derived from making mistakes”. The same designer later steered Mega Man through its most successful years, made a Famicom horror game that became the model for Resident Evil, and, 36 years after the original, directed Arthur’s return in Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection.
Fast facts
- Born: 1961. Wireframe describes him as a 21-year-old graduate when he joined Konami in 1982.
- Konami (1982–83): Pooyan and Roc’n Rope.
- Capcom (1983–95): Commando and Ghosts ’n Goblins (both 1985), Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1988); producer of Mega Man 2 and the later Mega Man games; director of Sweet Home (1989); producer of Resident Evil (1996).
- Credited as: “Professor F” on many of Capcom’s 16-bit console games.
- Later: founded Whoopee Camp (Tomba!, 1997); Extermination (2001) and Hungry Ghosts (2003) for the PlayStation 2; director of Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins (2006) and Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection (2021).
Konami, pigs and a grappling hook
Fujiwara was studying at the Osaka Designers’ College when a recruiter from Konami came to the campus. “They had an opening for a product planner, and the pay was good,” he recalled in a 2003 interview with the Japanese magazine Continue. He started on artwork for arcade cabinets and leaflets, and then on games. In Pooyan it had already been decided that the main character would be a pig; Fujiwara turned the idea into a shooting game. Roc’n Rope, an arcade platform game of 1983, gave its hero a grappling hook, an idea he would come back to.
After about a year he left. He, Yoshiki Okamoto and one other were the only three people doing game design work there, he said, and the two of them were invited separately to join Capcom, then just starting to develop its own games, and decided to go together. Retro Gamer later wrote that Capcom “could trace the majority of its successes to just two engineers”, Fujiwara and Okamoto, and that their “friendly sense of competition” produced hits such as Commando, Ghosts ’n Goblins and 1942.
Commando and Ghosts ’n Goblins
At Capcom he worked on Pirate Ship Higemaru and Exed Exes, and in 1985 he directed Commando, the up-the-screen war game in which Super Joe fights an army alone. Wireframe credits it with starting “a wave of imitators”, SNK’s Ikari Warriors first among them. While Commando was still being made, he was working on a second arcade game, and it came out a few months later.
Makaimura, sold in the West as Ghosts ’n Goblins, was his own idea. “When I first began thinking about the sort of game I wanted to make I immediately looked back to my childhood for ideas,” he told Retro Gamer. “I imagined a game world filled with the sort of characters that had appeared in my favourite cartoons.” The comedy of the armour made room for a brutal difficulty, and Fujiwara tuned that by hand: “I conducted location testing in arcades. If the players that tried the game tended not to get stuck at a certain point, I’d have to hurry back to the company and redo that portion.” He did not accept that it was a scheme to take coins. “Arcade games first and foremost do need to earn money, but this was not our primary objective,” he said, and on the series as a whole: “We never thought that we were being cruel when we were making the series, rather we were reacting to the desires of strong gamers to deliver titles that challenged their skills.”
The sequel, Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1988), was the second game on Capcom’s CP System arcade board. Asked by Retro Gamer whether he was proud of it, he said only: “I am personally very happy with the way Ghouls ’N Ghosts turned out, very happy indeed.” The grappling hook from Roc’n Rope came back as the bionic arm of Bionic Commando (1987), which Wireframe called “an ingenious upgrade” on the earlier game.
The console years
In the late 1980s Fujiwara moved, reluctantly at first according to Wireframe, to Capcom’s console side. His first job there was to oversee Mega Man 2 (1988), a sequel that “even he wasn’t sure about making at first”. It became a hit, and Wireframe puts its sales at 1.5 million. When the first game’s director, Akira Kitamura, left after Mega Man 2, the series carried on under Fujiwara as producer, with Keiji Inafune as artist, through the rest of the NES games and into Mega Man X on the Super Nintendo. Edge noted that he produced “a huge swathe of Capcom’s 16bit console titles”, credited as “Professor F”. The Game Boy’s Gargoyle’s Quest (1990), which gave the red demon from Ghosts ’n Goblins a game of his own, was another he was involved in.
In 1989 he directed Sweet Home for the Famicom, a role-playing game of the Japanese horror film of the same name. Five people explore a haunted mansion, each carrying one item the others need. It was never released in the West, but it had a long life inside Capcom. Shinji Mikami said that Biohazard, known outside Japan as Resident Evil, began “when my boss at the time — Fujiwara-san [Tokuro Fujiwara, Capcom’s general manager] — told me to make a horror title using the game system of Sweet Home”. Fujiwara produced it, and when a consultant’s report recommended cancelling the project, it was Fujiwara who asked Capcom to let it continue; Mikami learned this only about ten years later. Wireframe reported Fujiwara’s claim that Mikami hated horror films and had to be talked into the job, on the reasoning that someone who felt fear so strongly would make a frightening game. Mikami’s own description of his old boss, from a 2001 interview quoted by Wireframe: “He is a scary master for me. He’s not big or macho, and he doesn’t raise his voice either, but he is really scary.”
Whoopee Camp
Wireframe dates his departure to late 1995, shortly before Resident Evil came out, after 13 years in which he had grown tired of Capcom’s focus on sequels. He set up his own company, Whoopee Camp, whose first game was the PlayStation platform game Tomba! (1997; Tombi! in Europe). Computer and Video Games reviewed it in September 1998 and said the “pedigree of hits becomes quickly apparent” as you play. By 2001 Edge reported that Fujiwara was making Extermination, a horror game for the PlayStation 2, under a new company name, Deep Space. Hungry Ghosts (2003), a first-person journey through the afterlife in which the player’s choices decide whether they escape hell and are reborn, followed on the same machine, and was never released outside Japan.
Back to Arthur
In 2005 Capcom announced that Fujiwara had come back to direct a new Ghosts ’n Goblins for the PSP. Capcom’s Hironobu Takeshita told Retro Gamer that “only with Fujiwara as the Director could we make a faithful sequel”. Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins came out in 2006. Explaining to Edge why it was still a side-on game when so many old series had gone fully 3D, Fujiwara compared the two to a play: side-scrolling action gives “a viewpoint akin to that of the audience, while a 3D platformer makes you feel as if you’re actually on stage”. In 2009 he co-designed PlatinumGames’ violent Wii brawler MadWorld.
He directed Arthur once more in Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection, which came out in 2021 for the series’ 35th anniversary; Shacknews, interviewing him that January, described him as the series director and chief executive of Whoopee Camp. His view of the difficulty had not moved: “You don’t think an easy Ghosts ’n Goblins game would be fun, right?”
Sources
- Wireframe issue 7, February 2019, pp. 50–53, developer profile of Tokuro Fujiwara: joining Konami in 1982 at 21; Pooyan and Roc’n Rope; leaving for Capcom after a year; directing Commando and working on Ghosts ’n Goblins at the same time; Ikari Warriors; Bionic Commando as “an ingenious upgrade”; the reluctant move to consoles and Mega Man 2 (1.5 million); Sweet Home; producing Resident Evil; the story of Mikami and horror films; Mikami’s 2001 remark; leaving in late 1995 after 13 years; Extermination, Hungry Ghosts, MadWorld.
- Tokuro Fujiwara, interview in Continue vol. 12 (Japan, 2003), translated by GlitterBerri as “The Man Who Made Ghosts’n Goblins” (web, secondary): the Osaka Designers’ College and Konami’s recruiter; Pooyan’s pig; Roc’n Rope; joining Capcom with Okamoto; location tests. https://glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/tokuro-fujiwara/
- Wireframe issue 12, April 2019, and issue 62, April 2022: Roc’n Rope’s grappling hook as the origin of Bionic Commando’s arm.
- Retro Gamer issue 18, 2005: Capcom’s successes traced to Fujiwara and Okamoto.
- Retro Gamer issue 29, 2006, pp. 35–39, Sean Smith, Ghosts ’N Goblins series feature with Tokuro Fujiwara and Hironobu Takeshita: Pirate Ship Higemaru, Commando and Exed Exes; Fujiwara’s comments on his cartoon influences, the difficulty, Ghouls ’n Ghosts and cruelty; Gargoyle’s Quest; Whoopee Camp and Tomba!; Takeshita on Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins.
- Edge issue 156, December 2005, interview with Tokuro Fujiwara: “Professor F” and Capcom’s 16-bit titles; the armour; side-scrolling and 3D. Edge issue 155, November 2005: the PSP game announced with Fujiwara “at the helm”.
- Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, pp. 44–47, “The changing face of Mega Man”: Kitamura’s departure after Mega Man 2 and the series under producer Tokuro Fujiwara.
- Jonti Davies, “The Making of Resident Evil”, Retro Gamer, reprinted in Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010: Mikami on Fujiwara, Sweet Home and the rescue of the project.
- Computer and Video Games issue 200, July 1998, and issue 202, September 1998: Tombi! and Whoopee Camp.
- Edge issue 94, February 2001: Extermination and Deep Space. Edge issue 126, August 2003: Hungry Ghosts.
- “Tokuro Fujiwara”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): Tomba! (1997). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokuro_Fujiwara
- Ozzie Mejia, “Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection interview: Tokuro Fujiwara on his return to the series”, Shacknews, 26 January 2021 (web, secondary): series director and Whoopee Camp chief executive; the 35th anniversary; the quote on difficulty. https://www.shacknews.com/article/122399/ghosts-n-goblins-resurrected-interview-tokuro-fujiwara-on-his-return-to-the-series