PixlBit

The controversial Japanese game developer leaves a legacy of genre bending titles.

Last week was kind of a crazy week of news for video game fans of all walks of life. Naturally the PS4 announcement took up the lion’s share of the attention, and with good reason considering how long the current console generation has lasted. Obviously big and sad news hit a lot of people close to this website with the announcement that 1up would be closing, and some excellent writers getting laid off. With all of that commotion it’s easy to forgive if you didn’t realize that Kenji Eno died last week, as well. You can also be forgiven for asking who that is, because although Eno was a legendary game designer to a lot of people, he was also an enigma that hadn’t been in the gaming news for over a decade.

Kenji Eno is best known as a Sega developer, but he had been in the industry since the early ‘90s. He was able to combine his love for music with his deep interest in video games early on in his career, acting as sound programmer for the NES game Casino Kid 2 and as the composer for the soundtrack to Panic Restaurant (a personal favorite of mine). He worked on a cancelled superhero game for Sunsoft that bore a striking resemblance to Superman, titled Sun Man. That game became somewhat of a holy grail for gaming historians, and unfinished ROMs of the game have found their way around the internet.

It wasn’t until Eno struck out on his own, forming the independent game company Warp in 1994. Always a maverick when it came to game design, Eno had gotten tired of publishers like Sunsoft forcing him to work with licensed material or other people’s ideas. He chose the 3DO as his preferred console platform, but eventually moved over to the Sega Saturn when the 3DO started its decline.

The puzzle/horror game D was possibly his most famous game, and the first Warp title to make it to the United States. It was a standout at the time for its liberal use of CG cutscenes and its first person perspective. D became a cult classic, and spawned a pseudo sequel in Enemy Zero, a first person horror game where the only way to know where enemies were located was through sound. Enemies were completely invisible, which made for a tense experience. It starred the same protagonist from D, Laura. She would go on to headline D2 for the Dreamcast in 2000. D2 received mixed reviews and ended up being more famous for its creepy tentacle scenes than its gameplay.

D2 would ultimately be Kenji Eno’s final game. He exited the industry shortly after its release, and stayed far away from the industry, only breaking his silence for EGM in 2008. He died on February 20^th at the age of 42 from heart failure. Kenji Eno was a man that stood alone in the notoriously rigid Japanese development community, and paved the way for similar mavericks like Suda 51 and Hideki Kamiya.