RITSUMEIKAN UNIVERSITY

Japan's video games trace their origins back to Kyoto and the Kansai region. It is well known that Kyoto is home to the famous video game company Nintendo, but the city was also the site of forerunner companies that produced successful video arcade games. Research on the influence these early games have had on the current gaming industry in Japan is one focus of the Kyoto Art and Entertainment COE Program.

Hosoi Koichi, a professor in the College of Policy Science and the deputy director of RU's Art Research Center, is at the forefront of video game research and is working on an extensive project to archive and catalogue video game software and hardware so as to preserve it for the future. Professor Hosoi’s archive is the only archive in the world that aims to collect and preserve the entire gaming experience, including hardware, software, and visuals. In 1997, he began his archive by acquiring Nintendo’s full collection of video game software. There are currently 1,299 different titles in his completed Nintendo collection. He also has a nearly complete collection of Sega games, as well as many gaming hardware systems, ranging from the mainstream to the obscure.

The game archive project, which is supported by the COE Program, has three main steps. The first is to build a library of the original hardware and software. A part of this step is to digitally scan and catalogue the visuals on the covers and cases of all of the video games. The second step is to preserve the games by developing emulators that run the gaming software through a USB computer interface, allowing one to play the game on a computer even when the original hardware and software have become unusable. Currently, Professor Hosoi has acquired the rights to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game series and has built an NES emulator. The third step of the project is to visually record the screen as a game is being played, with visual notations showing what key or key combination on the controller is pressed to determine each action on the screen. These videos will preserve data of the video game experience for future researchers. The game archive can be used as a base for research in a variety of fields, including the social sciences and visual arts.

Because Japan is the world leader in video game technology and know-how, Professor Hosoi feels that it is important for Japanese video game companies to play a more prominent role in developing "serious games" or game technologies used for such purposes as education, medical research, and emergency response training. He is currently collaborating on serious game projects with several game companies, including Nintendo, Koei, and Sega.

In December 2005, Professor Hosoi chaired a one-day international symposium called “Digital Interactive Entertainment Conference 2005: Interactive Entertainment Industry, Past, Present & Future” that was hosted by Ritsumeikan University. The symposium brought together such prominent figures as Nolan Bushnell, who invented Pong and founded Atari; Iwantani Toru, who invented Pacman; Miyamoto Shigeru, the inventor of Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong; and Robin Walker, whose company created the popular Quake video game.

Professor Hosoi hopes to complete his archive project and continue to collaborate with leading video game companies to produce more educational and reflective games.

Keywords: Business Administration, Corporate Power, Contents Industries, Information System (including Library and Information Science.