Former President of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, indie game and PS Vita champion, and much-missed industry star Shuhei Yoshida has appeared on the My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin podcast and revealed his top five games.
Before we get into those, can I recommend you check out the full podcast at some point, it’s a really great listen with lots of wonderful stories about PlayStation and game development. You can find the podcast on iTunes, Spotify and all the usual places.
On to his game choices and the first title he picked was PlayStation 3 and Vita classic, Journey
“The impact the game had to human emotions was so powerful, I don’t remember any other game (doing that) before Journey,” said Shu. “People played the game and had tears in their eyes, so that shows the power of the medium and at the same time power of indie games.”
Next up was another PS Vita game, Sound Shapes.
“What was brilliant about the game was it allowed ou to create your own levels. As you play the game, you gain these objects and you are free to lay out and draw things. That was such a creative game, especially when you play on PS Vita. (PS Vita) has touch, so it is very easy to lay out your level and because you play with headphones and the music, it’s really kind of perfect on PS Vita.”
His third choice is Inscryption, a PC game published by Devolver Digital that eventually made it to PS4 and PS5.
“It’s very hard to talk about the game because I don’t want to create a spoiler,” said Shu. “I really want people to try this game without any knowledge. This is one of the games that makes me want to erase my memory so I can replay the game.”
“I played through the game twice because I really, really loved it, but the first time I played, I went, “What?”, you know, “What’s going on?” It’s such an amazing creative work by this, you know, young individual Daniel Mullins, and it was really fun.”
The fourth game is another indie title, Before Your Eyes. The game is the story of a young boy and it has a unique method of control, the game advances when you blink. Shu explained how he convinced the young developers to bring the game to PS VR2.
“I met them at a BAFTA pre-event gala. Everybody is dressed up and there are these two youngsters who looked like the didn’t know what to do, and so I talked to them! Because PSVR 2 has the eye tracking it’s the best way to play Before Your Eyes because you are put in exactly the position of the boy and you’re able to see the scene from boy’s perspective. I want every single human being to try this game because this game’s amazing.”
Finally is a PC and console game from last year, Nine Sols.
“It was my Game of the Year game last year,” said Shu. “There are many Souls-like games and Metroidvania game but they came up with unique, secular-like, 2D action game with beautiful graphics and really interesting stories and amazing, amazing gameplay.”
Shu also revealed that his degree in Economics is probably not worth the paper it is written on.
“I majored in economics,” he explains. “Not that I was interested in economcs, but I knew that it’s so easy to graduate from university if I major in economics. Especially at Kyoto University, it was notorious that they just let people graduate. I didn’t even have to attend the classes.”
“There’s only one exam per year for each class and it was pre-announced so people who attended the classes created the ideal answers, and that was distributed. We just copied that into our paper and submit it!”
