Background info:Nikenme kara Hajimaru Radio, meaning "Radio from the Second House", Nikenme Radio for short, is a monthly UStream live broadcast where ZUN chats with Tetsuro Okonogi, his editor at Ichijinsha (publisher of the majority of official Touhou books), and usually some other guests, over dinner in the titular second pub on the street. The topic is not restricted to Touhou, but naturally Touhou may be brought up from time to time.
In November 3, 2012, a special event called "Nikenme Radio 3D ~ Dangerous Deisui Dimension." (
deisui: "drunk like mud") was held in
Loft Plus One, Shinjuku, and fans could buy tickets to attend.
The event sounds suitably lively. Several other internet personalities were guests, especially three members of
PoriPori Club: Yuuichi Tanzawa (ZUN's younger co-worker at Taito, now a game designer at Square Enix), Yoshiro Kimura (game designer, creator of games such as Little King's Story) and Tatsuki Yoshinaga (blogger); quite a few Touhou doujin creators were present, as well as Aya Azuma (artist of WaHH); coasters signed by Aya Azuma can be won in rock, paper, scissors games (pic:
1,
2).
Most importantly, ZUN talked a bit more about himself during this event.
The summary:* When he was in college, he played a fun eroge called Toushin Toshi.
(Toushin Toshi is a dungeon crawler from Alice Soft, an old erotic game company known for making games that have actually worthwhile gameplay. ZUN also
swiped the PoDD Marisa attack portrait from Rance IV, another Alice Soft game.)
* When Taito was looking for shooting game projects, he pitched a game design called "Gensokyo Kitan". Afterwards, Taito suddenly said they wouldn't be making shooting games anymore, so the pitch was unused.
("Gensokyo Kitan" is most likely 幻想郷奇譚, "Strange Tales from Land of Fantasy". It's obvious that ZUN entered Taito, the company of Space Invaders, KiKi KaiKai and Darius with the hope of working on his favorite franchises, yet Taito would give up on shooting games when he was there, and ironically, revive the Darius franchise after ZUN left. )
* When he was working on Magic Pengel (ラクガキ王国 in Japan), the situation was very tough, and he accumulated a lot of stress. To release the stress and anger, he made EoSD.
* The game system of EoSD is the same design he had pitched. The people at Taito all knew that. They said to him, "do your job properly." He said, "I am doing my job." There weren't any actual big tasks to do, and they didn't even have to work overtime.
* He was assigned to be the main programmer on the first game Yuuichi Tanzawa was to direct. He said he would quit the job after finishing the game. However, this project was cancelled, and on the same day they started a new project, and he would be the main programmer on both the DS and PSP versions. This was impossible, so he resigned.
* Just before he resigned, he was still thinking about the design of a haunted house arcade game. That was in 2007.
* The way he worked was like this. When a project was at its beginning, he always went home on time. He dislikes seeing everyone tarrying at workplace, and would invite them to finish their work and go drinking with him. When the project reached its end, he would make up by working like mad.
(In Japan, people often stay at their workplace past the work hours, and don't want to be seen as the first person to leave, even if they are not actually getting anything done.)
* Eventually people began to throw all kinds of tasks at him, until in the end, giving him the impossible task of simultaneously doing the main programming on two systems.
Other tidbits:
* The first date between ZUN and his wife took place in a pub. "Don't take this as advice!"
* When other guests were making gay jokes, ZUN got very serious, and said "gay jokes are disrespectful to real gay people".
* The period after
Lord of Vermilion got the Reimu and Yuyuko update was its highest earning period in 5 years.
