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cpnpixel · 11 years ago

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Atomic Robo Kid Special/アトミックロボキッド (PCE) - UPL 1990/1/19

It was Atomic Robo Kid that first brought UPL to my attention. I’d heard of the title either through the MD version (outsourced development and by all accounts, lacklustre) or a review of the PCE version in C&VG and was enthalled by the cute, yet steampunk-esque main character. Needless to say, it went on my wanted list and when I found an importer with stock, I promptly picked it up and enjoyed it thoroughly. YouTube

The game is not without faults: the difficulty can be unforgiving at times, but the variety of enemies, each bursting with as much personality as a robot can have, huge bosses and AI-controlled battles with rival robo-kids kept me coming back until it was finished. The system is easy to pick up, part in thanks to its arcade roots (re-arranged exclusively for the PCE), but also thanks to game design by the gifted Tsutomu Fujisawa.

Before the internet, information on import games was sparse and I relied on magazines (mainly C&VG/Mean Machines) and the various UK-based importers 1, with word of mouth via a few trusted friends. This given, brand was a major decision maker for me, especially as many PC Engine games were never reviewed or even mentioned, so track record was often key to my purchase decisions. Having enjoyed Robo Kid so much, it was only logical to buy Gomola Speed when it came out.

Gomola Speed/ゴモラスピード (PCE) - UPL 1990/09/28

UPL didn’t let me down; the first page of the manual suggests foregoing reading it and instead diving straight in [see photo above]. Not blessed with the ability to read this, or indeed anything else Japanese at the time, I leafed through, admiring the Fujisawa character designs and promptly booted the game. It was another UPL hit: simple to grasp gameplay, classic cute bio-mechanical art with Mechano Associates 2 penned tunes to accompany the arcade action. You take control of a mechanical snake head in its quest to rejoin with its bodyparts, scattered through a series of mazes. Various enemies block your path, but can be disposed of by stunning them with a bomb, then encircling them with your body. They weren’t joking when they said it was simple. YouTube

Bioship Paladin/宇宙戦艦ゴモラ (MD) - UPL 1991/9/30

My final sojourn into UPL’s game catalog came on the Megadrive. It was my brother’s console, so I’m not sure how he came to purchase Space Battleship Gomola/Bioship Paladin, but I have a feeling we went halves on it. Or perhaps I just persuaded him, based on the previous two titles. ARK and GS are uniquely personal experiences due to their single player nature, but SBG offered simultaneous 2 player coop play, so my memories center on completing it one Christmas Eve with my brother.

A side scrolling shooter, SBG has the player piloting a bio ship which grows larger with each power up, making dodging enemy fire and ships increasingly difficult. It also sports a cross hair targeted weapon though, which can destroy bullets and target specific enemies and evens the odds. This is where the 2 player comes into its own: aside from the normal 2 ships on screen, a second mode is offered where player 1 controls the ship and 2 handles the crosshair; it’s here that the game came alive as a coop shooting game. Battling against hordes of alien ships and bosses in a single ship is a unique experience and one which I recommend trying. Unfortunately, this was to be UPL’s last foray into the home market. YouTube

UPL 198? ~ March 1992

Which brings us to the crux of this article; UPL the company. Or more importantly their most prolific game designer; Tsutomu Fujisawa. UPL were founded as a subsidiary of Universal Entertainment (currently Aruze), a major Japanese manufacturer of Pachinko and Slot machines. Originally called Universal Play Land; the name was changed to UPL in 1984. They were based in Oyama, Tochigi-ken, but the UPL we are interested was a sales office for that company, located in Tokyo. They apparently handled game development, while their HQ worked on Pachinko and other machines (crane games etc). They went bankrupt in 1992.

They were primarily an arcade game developer, and though many of their titles were ported to the Famicom, this was usually through a third party (NMK, Teichiku, Treco etc). Only Robo Kid and Gomola Speed were created in house. But what many of their games shared was a distinctive character design and pallete which began with Mutant Night and became strikingly apparent with Atomic Robo-Kid. This style was carried over to Gomola Speed and Bioship, and it’s this style that I fell for.

His trademark was like a Geiger and Fukio Mitsuji collaboration with some steam punk thrown in. It features recurring characters too; the most common being Mutron-kun, the star of Mutant Night, but Ninja-kun from Ninja Kid turns up too, as does a Bub/Bob-esque dinosaur. When I got involved in the games industry in Japan, one of the first people I wanted to meet was Fujisawa, so you can imagine the shock I felt when I learnt he had passed away. He had lived just 38 short years.

I’ve been meaning to write something about him since I learnt of his passing nearly 10 years ago, so it’s fitting that now, with a bigger project in mind, an ode to him is how I begin my writing in earnest. In his 7 years at UPL, he worked on at least 13 titles, the earlier ones as programmer, designer and artist all rolled into one. He even created the sound at times. And yet, in the English speaking world, he is virtually unknown. When mentioned, it is only in brief, and no note is given to his passing away.

The Japanese industry lost some of their most prolific stars in the 90s at very young ages; Mitsuji, Hirasawa, Mori and Fujisawa to name but a few, and it’s only fitting that with an opportunity to bring their work, and hopefully their influence to light I do just that.

To be continued…

Console Concepts, Raven Games, Whizkids being the main culprits ↩

Mechano Associates were a group of musicians working on games, TV and film. They had close ties with UPL and later worked on Grandia with Game Arts. ↩

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