Hidetaka Suehiro
| Hidetaka Suehiro | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 14, 1973 Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Other names | SWERY, Swery65 |
| Occupation | Video game director |
Hidetaka Suehiro, known as SWERY or Swery65, is one of the founding members of the Osaka-based game developer Access Games and works at the company as a game director, game designer and scenario writer.
After completing his degree in film and video advertising at Osaka University of Arts, he joined the game industry. Swery worked at various game companies until when he founded Access Games in January 2002. His directorial debut SPY FICTION focused on, rather than aiming the Japanese audience as the primary target, the western audience, and eventually led him to complete Deadly Premonition in 2010, a highly acclaimed modern cult classic game. The game made its way to the Guinness World Record as “the most controversial survival horror game”, and in 2011 Swery was listed as one of the fifty most influential game creators in the western industry.
In 2014 he has partnered with Microsoft and developed a brand new Xbox One game title called D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, which utilizes the next generation Kinect. The game was selected as NEXT 10 games at Game Developers Conference 2013.
Aside from D4 and Deadly Premonition, his other best known works include The Last Blade on Neo-Geo, Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return on Playstation, Extermination on Playstation 2, Lord of Arcana on Playstation Portable and Lord of Apocalypse on Playstation Vita.
In 2015, he gave a lecture in Osaka and at GDC 2015 regarding physical input in video games and the Kinect device. He also opened a booth along with Access Games at Penny Arcade Expo East 2015.
Works
| Title | Platform | Release status | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Last Blade | Neo Geo MVS | Released in Japan (1997) | Scenario |
| The Last Blade 2 | Neo Geo MVS | Released in Japan (1998) | Scenario |
| Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return | PlayStation | Released in Japan (1999) | Designer |
| Extermination | PlayStation 2 | Released in Japan (2001) | Writer/Planner |
| Spy Fiction | PlayStation 2 | Released in Japan (2003), North America and Europe (2004) | Writer/Director |
| Kidō Senshi Gundam: Senjō no Kizuna Portable | PSP | Released in Japan (2009) | Director |
| Deadly Premonition | Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/Microsoft Windows | Released in Japan, North America and Europe (2010) | Writer/Director |
| Lord of Arcana | PSP | Released in Japan (2011) | Designer/Co-writer |
| Lord of Apocalypse | PSP, PS Vita | Released in Japan (2012) | Designer/Co-writer |
| D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die | Xbox One/Microsoft Windows | Released in Japan, North America and Europe (2014) | Writer/Director |
Other activities
He was the first Japanese game director to lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and also Berklee College of Music.
Also, he played air guitar at the Berklee Performance Center with the Video Game Orchestra and Berklee's Video Game Music Choir.
He is famous for joining live streams from his family's house, which is a Buddhist temple.
In recent years, he has been carrying around a stuffed monkey named Sharapova, who he claims is his partner.[1]
His games often feature characters who share the same names across different games. He has dubbed this system the Kimura Shonosuke system, in reference to the professional name that is inherited by higher-ranking sumo wrestling referees, and explains that while the same names are passed on, the characters are entirely different.[2]
References
External links
- ACCESS GAMES INC.
- SWERY (@Swery65) on Twitter
- SWERY on IMDB
- Hidetaka Suehiro(SWERY) on Facebook
- Hidetaka Suehiro's "Cafe SWERY65" blog