Expo ’90 at Tsurumi Ryokuchi, Osaka Japan was a turning point in the world of entertainment. Namco was able to evolve the amusement park experience with what they called “Hyper Entertainment.” This was the hybrid attraction that was part arcade game, part amusement ride, and part themed environment. The fantasy
RPG Tower of Druaga in the previous blog was one of their arcade hits-turned-hyper entertainment attraction, and the other was the science fiction shooter Galaxian³. When astronaut Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon in 1969 he said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Namco took the “giant” part literally when designing this attraction.
I had already sung the praises for this game previously on the blog, and I would no doubt talk about it again in the future.
If you had no idea what I was talking about, the Galaxian³: Project Dragoon attraction was the largest video game in history. It was a polygonal interactive shooter on a gigantic moving platform that supported 28 people at the same time. Shigeki Toyama was in charge of concept planning, system design, mechanical design, graphic design, logo design, decorative design, etc. He had a singular focus; revenge on the 1985 Tsukuba Expo committee for not giving Namco a proper Pavilion. Revenge for not being prepared to have Namco show their best work five years prior. He literally challenged his team to make audiences feel like they were the heroes of Star Wars. They were already fans of the Star Tours attraction in Disneyland, and Tokyo Disneyland. They still wanted to make something far superior. His goal was to get the nation talking about how fantastic Namco’s showing was in the ’90 Expo in Osaka. Since I was still praising it 35 years later I would argue that it was mission accomplished.
I don’t think you understand how epic this experience was to Generation-X in Japan. Up until that point the evolution of space simulator cabinets had been slow but steady. Although the space shooter video game genre started in the ‘70s, the use of deluxe cabinets to immerse the players started in 1981. Sega/Gremlin released Space Tactics, the deluxe sit down cabinet was very much a Space Invaders-meets-simulator. Instead of a joystick the player sat behind a gunners yoke, with an illuminated display. It was one of the early space shooters that reinforced the idea of fully realized simulators. They followed up in 1983 with Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. It was a vector graphics space combat simulator. It had the same synthesized voice from Space Fury. The game was poorly received, especially when compared to Star Wars by Atari which came out that same year. Sega would elevate the cabinets by adding motion to them starting with After Burner in 1987.
The full timeline, and importance of these gradually bigger, and bigger cabinets was discussed previously on my blog.
Namco, and Sega had been going back-and-forth in the racing, and space genres for decades. Everything from game design, to gameplay were hotly contested by fans of the studios. Sega’s motion cabinets could be seen as superior to anything Namco had ever released. While Namco lead the shift to polygons for the industry, Sega managed to get a lot more attention for their efforts. I would argue that Galaxian³ was created in part because it would be all but impossible for Sega, or any other studio to top. How confident was I of that statement? My friend asked if the Mario Kart attraction at the Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios could be considered a bigger video game. While it took a bigger footprint I would argue that it wasn't a bigger game. The Mario Kart attraction had six groups of four riders each for the Mario, Luigi, Daisy, Peach, Toad, and Yoshi teams. That's 24 concurrent players on the same game, still four shy of Namco’s record.
Mr. Toyama joined Namco as an industrial designer in the early '80s. He said that he knew nothing about video games. That part was true, but his love of out of home entertainment ran in the family. His grandfather Tokio designed the “Flying Coaster” at Futakotamagawa Garden in Setagaya, Tokyo. Here’s a bit of trivia for you, the flying coaster appeared briefly in the 1971 film Godzilla vs Hedorah. While the movie was in theaters before I was born, I remembered seeing it in reruns. When I was a little kid the local drive in theaters would feature a Godzilla movie marathon during the summer. It was a cheap way for our parents to keep my brothers and I entertained. We would stuff our faces with hot dogs, and popcorn while watching the rubber suit battles. I was terrified of the smog monster because it melted people with its toxic spray. But I digress…
As a kid Mr. Toyama would practice his illustrating skills by drawing the various attractions in Futakotamagawa Garden. He would end up working at the park before graduating from college. This history would help him plan arcade cabinets for Namco, and later on the largest attraction of his career. The location of the park would become very important for Namco’s history, but we would get to that in a future blog. Mr. Toyama’s team, included fellow designers Hideyuki Kikuchi, Wataru Yanagawa, Tatsuya Ishikawa, Takashi Yano, and Katsunori Mizuno. Yasunori Tashiro as the producer, Koichi Tashiro who was in charge of parts, and assembly, Hajime Nakatani directing, with planning from Hiroyuki Takejima. Kimimasa Matsuura, Norimasa Matsuura, and Jinto Saito handled programming duties. The mechanical structure, and external negotiations were handled by Akira Osugi and Takashi Sano, the electrical design was handled by Masataka Yamada. Fumio Ishikawa was in charge of overall operations, including production, installation, and removal. The team had quite an adventure putting together the enormous Galaxian³ machine.
Osaka was a massively busy city on the island of Honshu off the coast of mainland Japan, it was known for turbulent changes in weather, this was especially true during the construction of the “Flower Expo.” Namco arrived in February, and the expo started on April 1. Remember that the company had to get both of their untested Hyper Entertainment attractions up, and running in that window. While they did the majority of the work at Namco, taking everything apart, and putting it back together on site was a different battle. They wanted the best graphics, and simulator experience they could get . This meant that they ended up literally debugging, and programming the gigantic hydraulic cabinet with entirely new software, and hardware on site. The team actually had a small office hidden off to the side of the platform where they could troubleshoot any problems during the expo. They were 99% certain that they would not be able to get it ready for opening day. In order to accomplish the impossible Namco added a couple new faces. Mr. Satoru Yano, who designed the motion unit, and Mr. Katsunori Mizuno, who designed the visual, and hydraulic data joined late into the project.
The team worked around the clock in the chilly winter weather. Mr. Toyama placed a sleeping bag under the hydraulics of the attraction, he called it “Hotel Galaxian.” The staff said they survived the freezing winter rainstorms thanks to consuming a massive amount of hokaron (hand, and body warmers). Several of them called it the "Cursed Galaxy" as team members kept getting seriously ill. Mr. Nakatani contracted acute hepatitis, Mr. Takahoku was run over by a motorcycle while riding his bicycle, breaking his arm in the process. The team didn't slow down because Masaya Nakamura, the president of Namco would be visiting on opening day. The final touches, the facade, hallways, airlocks, lights, bulkheads, and other decorations were done within a set budget. Mr. Toyama was not happy with the initial look, he felt it looked sparse, and even cheap. He spent his own money adding additional details, pipes, lighting, painting, and weathering the sets. Sleeping on the floor, and detailing everything down to the very last second when guests arrived. Their biggest compliment came from visitors who assumed they had spent millions on the attraction instead of a fraction of that. According to them it rose to the standard of the Star Tours by Disney Imagineering.
The group in Osaka teased the Namco sound team as having the easiest part of the job. Shinji Hosoe aka Megaten, Ayako Sasou, and a few others were indeed the luckiest during the entire ordeal. Megaten was the main composer, and musician. He was most famous for scoring Ridge Racer, and a number of Namco’s biggest hits. He even worked on Street Fighter EX, which was one of my favorite SF soundtracks. For Galaxian³ he was tasked to come up with five original pieces that were cinematic, and a response to John Williams’ Star Wars music. It was no small task. Especially since he started at the end of February, as the attraction was being put together. The genius composer shocked his coworkers. He cranked out his five pieces in five days. He would write the songs in the morning, and arrange them in the afternoon. The team said great, from that point on he should compose everything that R&D threw at him.
The guests that played the “Active Simulator” absolutely loved it. Best of all the staff loved the employee uniforms that ride operators were given. They said they looked very cool, up until they had to clean up the seats whenever a guest vomited. Namco conducted surveys of the visitors “most people said it was amazing and they were impressed, but 2 out of every 1,000 people said, "I don't want to do it again!" This reaction was mainly from people that got motion sickness from the rocking action. The platform would rise, and fall up to six feet. This happened dozens of times over the course of eight minutes. The guests were warned about the movement during the pre-show video that played in the queue. Of course some people still thought that stuffing themselves with carnival food, and then riding a motion ride was a good idea.
Between the classic carnival attractions they built, many of them still operating decades later, as well as The Tower of Druaga, and Galaxian³ Namco had proven they were the best entertainment company at Expo ’90. This forced all of the other studios, especially Sega, to step up their game. There was little else Namco could do except dismantle the attractions after September 30th, 1990 when the expo had reached its conclusion. The thing was that the company, and its employees had poured so much of themselves into the attractions that they didn’t want to see it all end. That was with the exception of the sales department, who asked them to never again to spend so much building a one-off attraction. The team scaled down Galaxian³ to a 16-person screen for dedicated locations. They even offered a 6-person Galaxian³: Project Dragoon cabinet for arcades that wanted to advertise the “World's Largest Video Game.” Their revolutionary engine would even get two expansions, The Rising of Gourb, and the Attack of the Zolgear.
Variations of Galaxian³ lived on after Expo '90, and however the Tower of Druaga would have been lost to history if it wasn’t for a bold idea. President Masaya Nakamura believed in the power of play. His company flourished because they created games at a time when society (and corporate culture) said it was a waste of time. What if his teams could combine everything they had learned over their 35 years in business? What if play was the critical to the next evolutionary step of themed entertainment? They might end up creating something wonderful. We will explore the roots of this revolutionary idea in the next blog. Were you a fan of the Namco space shooters? Had you ever heard of them before today? I’d like to hear about it in the comments section. As always if you would like to sponsor me
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Wonder Eggs, and Egg Empire research collected from: Wonder Eggs Guide Map, Namco Graffiti magazine, the book “All About Namco II", NOURS magazine, The Namco Museum, Namco Wiki, Ge-Yume Area 51 Shigeki Toyama Collection, mcSister magazine, first person attraction details from Yoshiki. Event details from Hole in the Socks
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