Video games have their fair share of auteurs, a term that’s often applied to Japanese game developers like Shigeru Miyamoto, Hidetaka Miyazaki, Hideo Kojima, Shinji Mikami, Fumito Ueda and Yoko Taro. Their games not only have their unique distinct vision but have become widely influential.
One name we should also include, however, is Takeshi Kitano.
Better known by his stage name Beat Takeshi in Japan, Kitano rose to prominence in the 70s as a comedian. He later crossed over into film with his international debut as a sadistic prison officer in the 1983 Japanese POW drama, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, before becoming a filmmaker in his own right with directorial debut, Violent Cop.
But among his wide variety of credits, you could also say that he was a one-time game developer too.
Released for the Famicom in 1986, Takeshi no Chōsenjō (or Takeshi’s Challenge), which Kitano served on as a consultant and designer, had you playing as a poor salaryman who embarks on a treasure hunt on a remote island. In order to get there, however, you’re also supposed to liberate yourself by breaking a bunch of social taboos, which includes beating up an old man in order to get the treasure map in the first place, divorcing your wife and resigning from your job.
While it certainly sounds innovative on paper in the way it combines arcade action with narrative adventure games and even GTA-style indiscriminate violence, it was also a ridiculously and deliberately impossible game to beat, most infamous in the way it incorporated the use the Famicom’s microphone on the second controller for sections at a karaoke bar.
The first game to be awarded Famitsu’s ‘kusoge’ (shit) ranking and considered one of the worst games of all time, it did have the same fate as E.T, however, somehow still selling over 800,000 copies, according to developer/publisher Taito. It has even been re-released on Wii’s Virtual console and for mobile.