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Hiroshi Matsumoto (Japanese: 松本裕司, Hepburn: Matsumoto Hiroshi) is a Japanese game designer.

Works

Nicknamed "Finish", Matsumoto worked in the 1980s as a planner for the Capcom company and later moved to SNK where he became a director. Matsumoto was a planner in the first Street Fighter game working with director Takashi Nishiyama. He was influenced by the idea of a fighting game where they could explore martial arts. Matsumoto and Nishiyama ended up coming up with these ideas together, to give the game deeper story and character elements. Nishiyama thinks it became a trend at the time to incorporate these kinds of elements into games. Nishiyama would have loved to have more playable characters, but Capcom were only able to put in just the two of them: Ryu and Ken Masters as playable characters. Matsumoto had to teach the programmer staff about the making of the games to develop it. Matsumoto regrets issue with developer Okamoto almost left Street Fighter as an incomplete game until further help. Following mixed responses to prices and gameplay, Matsumoto saw president Kenzo Tsujimoto happy with the game thanks to the sales it achieved.^[1]

Shortly after Street Fighter's release, a headhunter approached Nishiyama and convinced him to leave Capcom and join nearby studio SNK. Nishiyama took Matsumoto and the majority of his team with him and abandoned the Street Fighter IP. In SNK, Matsumoto directed the fighting game Art of Fighting starring the leads Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia who fight people in the city of Southtown to rescue the missing Yuri Sakazaki. The cast were created by Hiroshi Matsumoto as an homage to the Capcom fighting games' characters.^[2] Matsumoto has stated that he felt he was appealing to people who did not usually play games by showing the story in the game instead of just media such as magazines and comics.^[3]

Matsumoto was also involved in the Fatal Fury: King of Fighters fighting games created by Nishikiyama. The game focuses on Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard and Joe Higashi entering into The King of Fighters tournament to avenge Jeff Bogard killed by host Geese Howard. The second Art of Fighting incorporated Geese Howard due to his popularity in Fatal Fury and his younger look from the first original video animation as a hidden boss.^[4] Matsumoto kept working in Fatal Fury 2 in 1992 with an expanded cast from the original cast besides the original trio.^[5]

References

^ Leone, Matt (July 7, 2020). "Street Fighter 1: An oral history". Polygon. Retrieved September 14, 2024.
^ "The Man Who Created Street Fighter". 1UP.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2016. Retrieved March 27, 2016.
^ ストリートファイターアートワークス極 [Street Fighter Artworks Extreme] (in Japanese). Udon. 2012. p. 436. ISBN 978-4862333810. 松本当時は、ゲーム中でざっくりとした世界観だけを見せれば、あとは雑誌やコミックといったメディアがストーリーを補完してくれるという流れがありました。でも、どうせならゲームの中でしっかりと物語を見せれば、普段ゲームをあまり遊ばない人たちにも訴求できると考えたんです。設定資料集を作ったり、 TV コマーシャルをドラマ化立てで見せたりとか。 SNKに移ってからは、そういったゲーム作りを戦略的にやっていきました。 [Matsumoto: At that time, there was a trend that if you only showed a rough view of the world in the game, media such as magazines and comics would complement the story. However, I thought that if I could show the story in the game anyway, I could appeal to people who don't usually play games. For example, making a collection of setting materials and showing TV commercials as dramas. After I moved to SNK, I strategically worked on making games like that.]
^ "Art of Fighting Anthology Hits PS4 Tomorrow: The Origins of an SNK Classic". PlayStation. 29 August 2017. Retrieved October 1, 2018.
^ "The King of Fighters: The History Behind the First Crossover Fighting Game". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved September 15, 2024.