French – English
The MO5.COM association has the great pleasure of announcing that Masaaki Kukino, creator of Silent Scope, has just joined the association as an honorary member.
He considers our initiative necessary and welcome, and offers us his support by agreeing to become an honorary member of the association. There is no doubt that the support of such a personality from the world of video games will help us to make ourselves known and develop.
Masaaki Kukino was born on February 2, 1964 in Kurashiki, Japan. Having graduated in art from college, he joined a school to study textile trades, after falling under the spell of traditional Japanese art during his summer vacation in Kyoto. He then heard about Konami and began working there part-time, before joining the company in April 1986, around the same time as Hideo Kojima, but as a graphic designer in the arcade branch. Nonetheless, Kukino did the game design for almost every game he participated in, such as his very first published title, Fast Lane (1987), a car maze game. In 1988, he helped the struggling team of Haunted Castle (1988, the only arcade installment of Castlevania) complete development in two months. He created many other games for Konami such as Crime Fighters (1989) or Speed King (1995). For Asterix (1992), he conducted intensive research, read each volume, watched the films and traveled across Europe. The result is thus much more faithful to the original works than previous Japanese games based on the comic strip were, so much so that French journalists believed that it was created in France! His career at Konami is also marked by Silent Scope (1999), an innovative shooting game where the player manipulates a sniper rifle with its own LCD screen. In 2002, he was asked to create the Silent Scope Fortune Hunter slot machine for the English market. As Masaaki Kukino and his wife always wanted to live in the United Kingdom, they stayed there for two months and then Kukino left Konami to join Gamewax, a company that had just been created there. He made three games there including Chase H.Q. 2 (2007). He then returned to Japan for personal reasons and joined SNK-Playmore where he produced King of Fighters XII (2009) and XIII (2010). Kukino left Japan in 2010 to work at Wahlep Tec in China, but returned to SNK in November 2013. However, he left the company again in 2015 to join the development studio Sotsu.
Haunted Castle (arcade, 1988)
Crime Fighters (arcade, 1989)
Asterix (arcade, 1992)
Speed King (arcade, 1995)
Silent Scope (arcade, 1999)
The King of Fighters XII (arcade, 2009)
Important!
MO5.COM would like to thank John Szczepaniak, the author of the book The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers, for helping to contact Mr. Kukino.
And you, why not become a member of MO5.COM too?