DOSHIN THE GIANT

Developer Param Publisher Nintendo Format GameCube Release 1999

After 1080, I can’t exactly remember why I decided to leave Nintendo, but I did. Then they asked me back on a freelance basis to help out with a project. They just wanted a straight port from N64 to GameCube, but I looked at the code and said, “It’s going to be easier to do this from scratch”. So I did. I basically dumped everything apart from the graphics and started again.

They just sent me a big GameCube devkit, which was this massive box. I put it under my desk, got some monitors and I just sat at home making the game from scratch, basically, in six months. That was the point where I realised it’s actually really hard to work from home and keep sane at the same time. You have to really be strict with yourself.

I had kids and I was married, so I was very much embedded in Japan – I think I had permanent residence at that point. My friends from the UK, either they’d moved on to a different country or they’d got married and moved on somewhere else, so there was very little for me to go back to in London.