WHEN KEN’S CLEANING WINDOWS

With its instantly understandable concept and jolly George Formby theme tune, Wishi Washi was a highlight of Play’s roster and not just because the name is a nod to the brilliant and surreal minigame collection Bishi Bashi Special, a firm favourite with the Eyetoy team. “The initial idea came from the arcade game Rampage,” remembers Pete, rather surprisingly. “It was a joint effort by Eric and I. We talked about a game based on you using your legs and arms to climb up a building but then we realised you would only be able to see your back. Then we thought, ‘What if you’re on the outside of the building, looking in?’, so that led to the window cleaning idea and using your hands to wash off the suds. I remember manning the kiosk at the Playstation Experience for a few days and some kid played Wishi Washi for ages. We overheard his mum saying, ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve been trying to get him to clean up his bedroom for ages!’ We knew that was a good sign.”

“That was the game that really won over Ken Kutaragi,” smiles Eric, who recalls the time the ‘father of the Playstation’ got his soap on. “We were showing it at E3 and Phil Harrison brought Ken in to see it. We had these big yellow sponges as props to play Wishi Washi and someone put one in Ken’s hand and said, ‘Okay, clean the window’. He was like, ‘What?’ There was a fantastic moment as he did the first swipe, the suds cleared and he could see his face. He looked over to his assistant and was like, ‘What is this?!’ We had the head of Playstation playing our game and he was obviously impressed. You know you have something when that happens. The cost of developing and manufacturing the camera itself added an extra level of overhead to the project, but there were enough people at Sony who thought it was worth taking a risk on. When Chris Deering, the president at the time, upped the initial European camera order, someone asked him if it was a risk. He replied, ‘Yes but we’ve taken bigger!’”