Naoki Maeda, Konami's Shining Star

I heard stories about this guy from Brad & Nick's experience last E3. But I had never seen such a character brought to life until recently. I have to say, I like it!

Say what you will about his flamboyance and his "uniqueness," when you look to his contributions to the music game genre he's easily one of the most influential developers. On top of that if you look at the musical credits behind those games, you'll see that he's the artist/composer for a ton of those songs. Under dozens of aliases, he single handedley created some of Bemani's most memorable tunes.

Konami hasn't exactly been on the top half of Japanese development recently. They've made some questionable decisions over the last few years that have completely shattered my faith in them. One of the biggest being the mismanagement of the Guitar Freaks franchise and the eventual rise to power of Guitar Hero/Rock Band in a genre Konami once completely owned. They've made horrible decision after horrible decision. The last two E3 Press Conferences have been train wrecks at best and after this year's E3 showing, I am completely afraid for Konami well being and their presence in America. The have some of the best talent but can't figure out a damn thing to do with them.

The worst thing they've done is brought out developers who don't have a good enough grasp of the English Language to talk about their games. You don't see Miyamoto, Yamauchi, or Kojima say anything more than a few cute cuddly phrases before their translators step in to prevent disaster. For some reason, Konami let's the horror continue and even contributes to it by having scripted banter and improv humor between presenters. It's always a hard sell, even for native speakers to pull off scripted dialogue, so the result of a Japanese person trying to accomplish the feat should be obvious. Problems here stem more from how Konami views the west. Maybe they think we're all about excitement, drama, and wrestling matches in the middle of press conferences. But I can assure you, not all of America wants Jerry Springer. I feel it's insulting to see Konami resort to these tactics because it's what they think we want.

But out of all of this, I can say I've gotten at least a little humor and enjoyment out of Naoki's presentations. There's something that is undeniably Japanese about him and pair that with the mouth full of marbles sound that comes out when he's speaking English, tickles my funny bone. Japan is a country full of suit wearing, socially presentable, and by the rules people. And here's a guy who's just excited about dancing without a mat, or at least I think that's what he said. If there was anyone who could have sold me on the idea, it was him. And while I am interested in playing Dance Masters, I'm not looking forward to having to buy a Kinect to do so.

David