ABOUT THIS EPISODE
My guest today is Tetsuya Mizucguchi, the Japanese designer of some of the most transcendent music-themed video games yet made.
He graduated with a degree in media aesthetics from Nihon University, then, inspired by a photograph of a virtual reality headset made by NASA, joined Sega hoping to work on a similar project. A keen sports car enthusiast, he developed the arcade racing game Sega Rally Championship then, during a research trip in Switzerland, attended a dance music concert and found himself in a crowd of tens of thousands. Seeing how the music, lights and bodies moved together, set him on a new path toward making full-sensory digital experiences.
In 2001 he released Rez, a trance-themed game in which players shoot down computer viruses in time to the beat; it is today widely regarded as one of the high points of digital expression. “I still feel like I am in the middle of my career,” he once told me. “I’ve only achieved half of what I want to. And I have not lost my excitement about games.”
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