Yasumi Matsuno
Encyclopedia : Y : YA : YAS : Yasumi Matsuno
Yasumi Matsuno (松野 泰己) is a director working at Square Enix (previously called Squaresoft). He was born in 1965 and began his career at the developer Quest, where he created the Ogre Battle series of tactical roleplaying games. After leaving Quest he joined Square in 1995. His colleagues at Square Enix usually call him by his nickname "YAZZ".
At Square, Matsuno oversaw the development of Final Fantasy Tactics for the PlayStation. Similar in design and gameplay to Ogre Battle, it was lauded for its highly intricate and convoluted story, in which a young and naive nobleman becomes embroiled in a civil war over the throne to the kingdom of Ivalice. The nobleman, Ramza Beoulve, must come to term with his own beliefs amidst a number of conspiracies, involving the church, Ramza's brother's, and his childhood friend Delita, and fight for what is right.
After the release of Final Fantasy Tactics Matsuno and his team began development on Vagrant Story. Smaller in scope than FFT, in Vagrant Story players took control of one Ashley Riot, a Riskbreaker of the Valendia Knights of the Peace. Here the focus is more on the protagonist's personal life and past than a world consuming conflict. Like in Final Fantasy Tactics, though, the plot has considerable depth and features a number of forces conspiring to unleash an ancient power. Vagrant Story was highly regarded by critics and has gained somewhat of a cult following since its release.
The soon-to-be-released Final Fantasy XII was written and directed by Matsuno. Although he had to bow out of XII's staff due to health issues, he is still credited for much of the work. There has been some rumors among fans that Matsuno may have left SquareEnix following his stepping down from directing Final Fantasy XII, though these remain just rumors.
Matsuno also supervised Square's PlayOnline project prior to its first beta release. He has the honor of being the director of not one, but two games to get a perfect score by Famitsu magazine. The Japanese game magazine has only given this honor to six games in the history of gaming as of now. Matsuno's Vagrant Story, and the soon to be released Final Fantasy XII were critically acclaimed by the magazine with a 40/40 score.
One of Matsuno's trademarks is to pay homage to the rock band Queen in his works. His first game was titled [[Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen]]. Both Ogre Battle and March of the Black Queen are song titles from the album Queen II. His next game was Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Let Us Cling Together being a song from the album A Day at the Races. His game Final Fantasy Tactics had a chapter called Somebody to Love, also a song title from A Day At the Races. In the game Vagrant Story, the lead character begins the game with a sword called Fandango, which is a reference to a lyric in the song Bohemian Rhapsody, from A Night At The Opera. In the upcoming Final Fantasy XII, the earth elemental summon uses an attack called "Rock You", a nod to the song We Will Rock You from the album News of the World. However, Rock You has apparently been changed to "Roxxor" in the localized English version of the game.
There is also a secret dungeon in Vagrant Story called Iron Maiden.
Gameography:
- Ogre Battle: Director, scenario and game design
- Tactics Ogre: Director, scenario and game design
- Final Fantasy Tactics: Director, script and game design
- Vagrant Story: Producer, director and battle design
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Producer, original concept
- Final Fantasy XII: Original concept, scenario plotter, and supervisor
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.