Goichi Suda

Career

Goichi Suda, also known by Suda 51, started his career in video games by working for Human Entertainment starting in 1993. There he worked as a scenario writer and director for the games Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout and Super Fire Pro Wrestling Special on the Super Famicom. On the PlayStation, Suda was writer and director for the Japanese only Syndrome series. In early 1998, he left the company a short time before it closed its doors.

On March 30, 1998, Suda founded the developer Grasshopper Manufacture and got to work on his next project The Silver Case, which he wrote and directed. After The Sliver Case was released in 1999, the next game for Suda and Grasshopper was the PlayStation 2 game Flower, Sun, and Rain, which was released in Japan in 2001. Suda wrote his first known song for it called "F.S.R- For You".

In 2004, Suda released his first game outside of Japan, called Michigan: Report of Hell. Although released in Europe, the game did not come to North America. In 2005, Suda collaborated with two people from Capcom; Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami and producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi to create Killer7 for the GameCube and PlayStation 2. Although not successful sales wise, the game garnered a large cult following and it made both Suda and Grasshopper Manufacture well known outside Japan. This marked the first time one of Suda's games was released in North America.

During 2006, Suda and Grasshopper came out with three games: Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked, Blood: One Night Kiss, and Contact. Both Sidetracked and One Night Kiss were games based off of anime series and came out on the PS2. Contact was a RPG released on the Nintendo DS. One Knight Kiss was the only out of the three to only come out in Japan. While being the writer and director of the other two, Suda was only the producer of Contact.

More recently, Suda directed and wrote No More Heroes and its sequel No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle. The games' main character Travis Touchdown is said to be very representative of Suda himself. He wrote another song sung by the character Dr. Peace called "the virgin child makes her wish without feeling anything". In 2011, he collaborated with Shinji Mikami once again in Shadows of The Damned, featuring a soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka, famous for his work in the Silent Hill series. His current project is a zombie-slasher flick called Lollipop Chainsaw, in which Hollywood filmmaker James Gunn is writing the script. He also serves as executive director and scenario writer on Killer is Dead.

Trivia

• Suda used to be an undertaker before getting a job in the games industry. He wanted to leave mostly due to the smell.
• In his nickname, the 51 is a pun on his given name. "Go" means 5 in Japanese, while "Ichi" means 1.
• Suda is a Burnout fanatic. As of this writing, the developer has over 700 hours clocked into the game.
• Is a fan of professional wrestling, in particular lucha libre. Suda created a luchador character in Killer7 called MASK de Smith. Suda even wore a lucha libre mask to help promote the game at the time.
• He dances better than Travis Touchdown.
• Killer7 is Suda's proudest achievement.
• Cites Another World as one of his favorite games.
• Suda is the voice of Logfella in the Japanese release of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.
• His musical taste of British punk bands has often influenced his games, among them containing references to The Smiths, Joy Division, The Damned, and others.