TUNIN'GLUE
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Bandai Digital Entertainment Format Pippin Release 1996
PARAPPA THE RAPPER
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment Format PS1 Release 1996
UM JAMMER LAMMY
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment Format PS1 Release 1999
VIB-RIBBON
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment Format PS1 Release 1999
RHYME RIDER KERORICAN
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Bandai Format WonderSwan Release 2000
PARAPPA THE RAPPER 2
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Sony Computer Entertainment Format PS2 Release 2002
MAJOR MINOR’S MAJESTIC MARCH
Developer NanaOn-Sha Publisher Majesco Entertainment Format Wii Release 2009
Asa young child, Masaya Matsuura, the Japanese musician widely hailed as the inventor of the rhythm-action game genre, struggled to find a place and identity. Born in Osaka City, his father worked for a shipping company, while his mother kept the family home. Matsuura attended a school in Abeno Ward that was popular with wealthy families (he describes his own family as “completely middle class”). One local mother invited Rod Stewart and his band to her home after a concert, where she held a dinner party for them and performed a duet of Sailing with Stewart. Matsuura didn’t fit in and, when his father developed a stomach ulcer that required surgery and a prolonged period off work, became so disruptive at school that his mother was summoned for an emergency meeting to discuss her “difficult child”. (When the teacher suggested Matsuura’s poor behaviour was a result of problems in his parents’ marriage, his mother stormed out.)
Soon, however, Matsuura found sanctuary and community among musicians. Having learned the castanets in junior school, he fell in love with keyboards and synthesisers. As a younger man his father had played the guitar in clubs around Shinagawa Station in Tokyo; performance, it seemed, ran in the family. After a stint playing in a punk band – the name of which Matsuura still refuses to reveal – in 1983 he formed Psy*s (pronounced ‘Saiz’), a progressive pop band fronted by the signer Mami Yasunori, which soon signed to Sony Music. Ten studio albums
