23rd May 2011

Link reblogged from Tiny Cartridge with 20 notes

Takahashi Meijin leaving Hudson Soft →

tinycartridge:

While the recent dismantling of Hudson Soft into a source of cell-phone game IP was disheartening, it didn’t really feel like the death of the company. But now, the dream is unquestionably over.

Takahashi Meijin is leaving the company on May 31. In a post on his 16Shot blog (which is also ending), he apologized for the abruptness of the announcement, and said that he doesn’t plan to leave the game industry.

Toshiyuki Takahashi, a PR executive who joined the publisher on August 21, 1982, became famous (earning the nickname “Takahashi Meijin,” or “Master Takahashi”) for his remarkable ability to press a button 16 times per second — a valuable asset in Star Soldier and other shooters. And, though Tiny Cartridge readers either knew this already or learned it from the fact that I post about him all the damn time, he was the inspiration for the Shooting Watch toy and the Master Higgins character in the Adventure Island games.

This feels like the end of an era to me — one of the heroes of the Famicom era leaving the post that he held for so long. It’ll be weird to see Takahashi Meijin at another company. Will he still be the Meijin? Will he still be rapidly pressing buttons in public? Or will he become another executive?

See also: More Takahashi Meijin posts

[Video: the Meijin performing “Runner”. Thanks to Heidi Kemps for assistance with blog translation!]