Nakamura, Koichi

Early activities

Back in school, Nakamura was a member of the mathematical circle and from childhood began to get involved in programming, in particular, among his other projects, using Basic language, ported a shooter for Galaxy Wars arcade machines to the TRS-80 home computer. Having saved up some money for the delivery of newspapers, in 1981 he purchased the NEC PC-8001 computer and began to create various applications for it, so the tool he developed for the convenience of introducing machine code was published in I / O magazine, and the young man received a fee for 20 thousand yen. Also for training skills in May, Nakamura ported the Space Panic arcade and, with the participation of the same magazine, released it under the name ALIEN Part II . Audio cassettes with the recording of the game sold quite well and brought the publisher 200 thousand yen of income.

In January 1982, he reworked the horizontal scrolling shooter Scramble , later due to copyright issues renamed Attacker , and this project collected more than a million yen. Then came the action port of River Patrol , renamed River Rescue , and was released as part of the I / O compilation Maikon Game Book 4 . In total, during the cooperation with this publishing house, Nakamura earned about two million yen and was remembered in the company as a very talented young programmer ^{[1] [2]} . After saving enough money, he acquired the NEC PC-8801 computer and decided to become a professional video game developer. To this end, he took part in the first annual amateur programming competition organized by Enix , and, taking second place with his Door Door puzzle, received a cash reward of 500 thousand yen ^[3] .

Collaboration with Enix

After graduating from school, in 1983, Koichi Nakamura moved to a permanent place of residence in Tokyo, where he entered the University of Electronics and Communications. At this time, he was actively engaged in porting his main door hit door to various home computers, and at the expense of this activity he earned about 10 million yen per year ^[4] . Soon he created his second game, called Newtron , and on April 9, 1984, he teamed up with four other developers and founded his own studio, Chunsoft , while still being only in the second year of university. For work, they rented a room in a residential complex not far from the capital in the town of Choufou, and there they began to create new games.

The first release of the company formed took place in 1985, and it was a ported version of Door Door for the NEC PC-6001 personal computer. Soon, their main publisher, Enix, began to master the console market, and the developers began to prepare games for the rapidly growing Famicom console ^[5] . This activity immediately brought dividends, for example, if the PC version of Door Door sold only 80 thousand copies, then the console version of cartridges sold more than 200 thousand pieces. Another promising game designer, Enix, Yuji Horia , who also won the programming competition, invited Nakamura to take part in porting his detective visual novel The Portopia Serial Murder Case . Both authors were avid fans of Western role-playing games Wizardry and Ultima , so they soon decided to make their own RPG for Famicom. The game, called Dragon Quest , subsequently developed into a large-scale series, and Nakamura remained a regular programmer until the fifth part, released in September 1992, after which he ended relations with Enix ^{[6] [7]} .

Late projects

The first independent work of Chunsoft was the visual novel Otogirisō , for the first time the company was engaged not only in developing the game, but also in publishing. In the mid-nineties, they released some pretty successful games for the Super Famicom platform, the most famous of which are Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon , Kamaitachi no Yoru and Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer , thanks to them the company has made a good reputation in the industry. Over time, Nakamura withdrew from programming, mainly engaged in producing new projects and managing the studio ^[8] . Chunsoft's later products are more focused on a narrow audience of consumers and are no longer so popular, most of them were released in collaboration with Sega , and one of the last successful projects in which Nakamura took direct part was the visual novel 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de .

• Door door
  • Door Door mkII
• Newtron
• Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken
• Dragon Quest (director, programmer)
  • Dragon Quest II (director, chief programmer)
  • Dragon Quest III (director)
  • Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (director)
  • Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (coordinator)
• Famicom Jump II: Saikyō no Shichinin (director)
• Otogirisō (director, producer)
• Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon (producer)
  • Torneko: The Last Hope (Executive Producer)
  • Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko no Daibōken 3 (executive producer)
• Kamaitachi no Yoru (producer)
  • Kamaitachi no Yoru 2: Kangoku-jima no Warabe Uta (executive producer)
  • Kamaitachi no Yoru x 3: Mikatzuki-jima Jiken no Shinsō (producer)
• Shiren the Wanderer (producer)
  • Shiren the Wanderer GB (producer)
  • Fushigi no Dungeon: Fūrai no Shiren 2: Oni Shūrai! Siren-jō! (executive producer)
  • Shiren the Wanderer GB 2 (executive producer)
  • Shiren the Wanderer Gaiden (coordinating director)
  • Shiren Monsters Netsal (producer)
• Chocobo's Dungeon (coordinating director)
  • Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (coordinating director)
• Machi (producer)
• 3-Nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei: Densetsu no Kyoudan ni Tate! (producer)
• Homeland (producer)
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and Explorers of Darkness (producer)
• Imabikisō (executive producer)
• 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de (producer)
• Trick × Logic (executive producer)

• Koichi Nakamura (English) - profile on the site MobyGames