Seeing all the memes and jokes that have since come out of the English translation of Symphony of the Night was strange for me, but it also taught me an important lesson: Translation is writing. I had already translated Vandal Hearts and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but that was it. In March 1997, I was living in a rented house in the snowy hills of western Massachusetts with a wife and two small children. Kojima wasn’t involved in that port, but my work on it was how he and I became connected before I quit Konami to become a dedicated dad. I supervised the translation done by Scott Hards, added some of my own stuff, and went to Chicago to direct the voice-over sessions. I ended up working on the Sega CD version of Snatcher for two months, and it was some of my favorite work. But things got real when I was called into the R&D 6 (Sega) building in Jinbocho and asked what I thought of Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher. I translated things like Biker Mice From Mars and Tiny Toon Adventures, and I directed the primitive voice-overs for Contra: Hard Corps. I wrote all the text for Animaniacs, Batman and Robin, and Sparkster for the Sega Genesis. It was a boring job, but the research and development division began to ask me to offer opinions on games, and to translate or even write original text for a few titles, since I was the only foreigner in the department. and Europe, communicating with them about shipping numbers and their wishes for how games could be tweaked to suit their respective markets.
Mostly what we did was send two daily faxes to the U.S. We would also sometimes be asked to play some of the company’s games and give our thoughts on them. Breakthroughs happened while relaxing over a cigarette, where everyone felt more or less equal and let their guard down. It’s an unspoken rule that you don’t just go chatting people up at their desks unless you have some kind of directive to do so, or a specific task.Īs a result, there was no synergy in the office itself. This was a cultural quirk of working in Japan, where members of each department sit in their own area. Arakawa, who was then the head of the international business department.īut the smoking lounge at Konami was where the real work was done, because that was when you’d meet people from different departments and could actually talk to your superiors. I nailed the interview due to my skill at both Japanese and English, along with my fond memories of playing Contra. After that, I was lucky enough to get an interview with Konami, courtesy of my twin brother who was working at Konami Chicago at the time. I had come to Konami after a one-year stint as a teacher at a mass-produced eikaiwa (English-language school) called Aeon. We did this while watching the clock, killing time by smoking cigarettes in the lounge. So we shuffled papers all day, passing them down the line to be stamped by our bosses in starched shirts. These were the 16-bit days, before the use of email was common. I worked in the international business department at Konami Japan, a group of about 15 or so employees who sat uncomfortably between the sales division and the law division in neat rows in a single well-lit, bustling office room. I would later translate Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation, a job that might have been much too big for one person. That one-and-a-half-year span felt like at least five years due to the high-pressure environment of being the only foreigner in the office, and the horrible Tokyo rush-hour train commute.
I first met him when I worked at Konami’s HQ in Toranomon, Tokyo, from about September 1993 to March 1995. Good for him.Īlthough it’s hard to believe now, Hideo Kojima was unknown in the West at that point in the early to mid-’90s. He looked more like Psycho Mantis at the time. He was a lot thinner then, before he started pumping iron. It was at a traditional Japanese ryokan’s rotenburo (outdoor bath), on a Konami company vacation near Mount Fuji. The last time I saw Hideo Kojima, we were both naked.