by Brian Ashcraft

Nana0n-Sha's office isn't an office. It's an apartment. For those who've been in Japanese houses, the entry way contains familiar items like a shoes box and slippers. A short hallway leads into a living room and a partition. On the other side of the partition, I can hear keyboard clacking and mouses clicking. The office is 60 percent women, and women drift in and out. "I want to make games that appeal to both men and women," Nana0n-Sha founder and PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura tells me. "It's the same as music. If music only appeals to men, it sounds very, very ugly."

Matsuura tells me he didn't really buy that many games before becoming a game designer. He was busy with other things, namely being a major Japanese pop star for Sony Music.

"The first time I became interested in music was I coming out of my mother's stomach," Matsuura says in English. He's drinking chilled tea. It's already dark, somewhere between 7 and 8pm, I forget. Matsuura's father was into Western music — mostly jazz and movie scores. "And the first song I can remember is Nat King Cole's," he continues, singing, "When I fall in love... I couldn't understand why this guy looked very black and how fat and low his voice was. I never heard that kind of voice in Japan." Matsuura was two or three years old. "There's a reason why I can say that," the designer points out. "My family moved when I was three. My memory is at the place we lived at before we moved."

At age 10, another family move took him from Osaka city center to suburban Hirakata. "I lost all my friends," he says. "I spent time alone in the classroom. The first few weeks were hard." Without friends to occupy his time, Matsuura took to the classroom's organ. "I started to play some unknown song. It was something that I had heard just by listening. I found I could play."

Matsuura was a natural, and he spent all his free time practicing. By the early 80's, he was playing in various types of New Wave bands. Not only was he an accomplished keyboard player, but also an accomplished bassist and guitarist — able to play the guitar right handed and left-handed. While studying at Kyoto's Ritsumeikan University, he made jingles for radio stations. One particular program had an American host and needed jingles in English. Matsuura asked around for a vocalist who could sing in English and found Mami Yasunori, who would later go by "CHAKA" when his band PSY S made its debut.

Through another part-time job at a broad casting station, Matsuura was able to convince a producer to send his demo tape to a record company. "Actually, maybe he just gave it to them," the designer adds, laughing. "That company was Sony Music."

Albums, tours and hit singles like Lemon no Yuuki and Angel Night. (Ashcraft side note: When I first came to Japan from Texas, I dated a girl obsessed with anime City Hunter, which used Angel Night as a theme song.) Domestic success had come, but Matsuura wasn't satisfied. Japanese pop in the 80's was hardly international, and records companies focused on the domestic market. "I didn't have enough power to make English versions of the songs," he explains.

While listening to scraped out-takes, he realized that they were actually great. "Maybe my initial judgment was wrong," Matsuura says. "There were so many good rejected tracks, and I wanted to show all of them together. There shouldn't be a certain sequence or choice, because it's subjective. So I started to think about that. Maybe, we should mismatch tunes. But maybe the user is lazy. So, I started to thinking about it as a game."

Making straight up music was out. Making music games was in. "Many subtle reasons resonated in my head, and I finally decided to switch to games," Matsuura says.

But how are games and music similar? I ask.

"Both games and music you play. When you have a new music score, you have to play it. Maybe something in your mind will judge how you play that. Maybe you don't play it very well, and you have to try it again and again and again. Then somebody says, 'You're really bad.' And that's game over."

A friend of Matsuura's knew how to program, and a simple sample program was thrown together. For the vocal track, Matsuura sampled the voice of Swiss animated character Pingu, which Sony owned in Japan. Sony was interested, but still not quite yet in the gaming business. Ken Kutaragi was working on the Sony created SNES-CD for Nintendo's Super Famicom. "I tried to have a meeting with Kutaragi-san. He was very close to this office," Matsuura says. "But we couldn't find a good way to coordinate and get the game to consumers."

Then in December 1994, it all changed. After Sony's deal with Nintendo went sour, the company released its first PlayStation in Japan. Matsuura didn't even know that Sony was making its own console and bought his own PlayStation. "I didn't play so many games. Just Ridge Racer or something." A year later, a letter came in the mail. It was from the Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment. "It said something like, 'You made some strange music player. How about the PlayStation platform?' Something like that. And I went to meet Sony and discussed the possibility of working with them."

The result: PaRappa the Rapper, one of the first modern rhythm games.

What does he think about music and rhythm games becoming popular in America, years after they hit it big in Japan? "America's market is smart. They watched how the Japanese market went. After it decayed, they released those types of games in America. Very smart."

For someone who's devoted his entire life to music, I can't find anything musical per se in his office's living room. There are a sofa and a large Sony Bravia, under which sit four consoles: PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii. I point to them and ask if he's making games for all consoles.

"No, no. Now the downloadable content, that is interesting," he says.

Are you interested in Xbox Live Arcade or the PlayStation Network?

"Both," Matsuura answers. "And the Virtual Console. I'm really interested in Folding@Home. We should think about connecting those very useful and great ideas for everybody into a game. Unfortunately, Folding@Home is not a game. I really want to do something with it."

Do you miss performing?

"I still perform. I play at game conferences," he says smiling. He's right. He does. Instead, of merely talking and showing slides. He does play and even brings Sony's Aibo out on stage. Back in 2003, he was involved with creating sounds for the Aibo. Matsuura himself is a dog lover and even asked to reschedule our interview so he could take his real dog (not his Aibo) to the vet.

It's kinda sad that Sony killed off the Aibo, I point out.

"The engineers behind the Aibo are doing the PS3. We are talking about making something like the new Aibo."

I ask if it will connect to the PS3. Because that's what I really want: A robotic dog for my PS3.

"I don't know. Connection is not hard. I'm sure some engineer could do that."

Today marks the release of Matsuura's latest game: Musika for the iPod. Originally called Rhythmica, the game was first shown at Australia's G03 back in March. In short, you play a song, and when a letter appears that's in that song's title, you select that letter from the alphabet. The letters bounce around and sway to the music, making it the perfect iPod-geared game — as opposed to other titles that have been shoe-horned into the platform. "Almost all the other games are basic and limited — like a simple puzzle. Our game will be very advanced compared to the others. This will last."

The windows are inky black, and it's night. A few blocks down, there's a large concrete slap of a house — I hear it's Takeshi Kitano's house. The neighborhood is a cluster of cafes and art galleries, expensive houses and European cars. I pass them as I head to the train station. Not exactly typical setting for a game designer. Not exactly the typical game designer.

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