I recently had a chance to chat with Kenta Cho from ABA Games. Well in actuality, Kenta Cho IS ABA Games.  Kenta has been a resident of Tokyo, Japan for about 30 years and he has been making games for much of that time.

"It is about 25 years since I created my first game on a pocket computer PC-1500 from Sharp. Since that time creating games has become my lifelong hobby." -Kenta Cho

[SG]: Before you began programming what types of games influenced you? What was the first game you remember playing?

[KC]: I had little opportunity to play games before starting programming because there were few console games 25 years ago. A rare opportunity where I could play a game came when I went to travel with my family. Many hotels in Japan had a place where some coin-op arcade games are placed (that are called 'game corner') and I enjoyed playing games such as Missile Command, Circus and Tranquilizer gun. It was a great experience to play a video game created with a totally new technology. Characters that moved according to my stick input looked like magic. From that time, I yearned to create my own game some day in the future.

[SG]: Are you actually employed as a programmer or in the games industry,
aside from ABA Games?

[KC]: No. I've never worked in the game industry. I'm working as a researcher in IT but it has no relationship to games. I liked to create games as an amateur developer since I can create what I want without thinking about a market. I like to create the game in shmup [shoot 'em up]  genre but there may be very few people who can create a shmup in the industrial market since it is away from the main stream.

[SG]: What is your philosophy on development?

[KC]: My principle of creating my own game is keeping everything simple. Simple UI, simple graphics and simple gameplay. If the game is kept simple, the game becomes easy to understand how to play for everyone in the world. I don't like to read a complicated manual before playing the game. Since the simpler games require less documentation and shorter development, it is good for me to develop the game in a shorter time.

[SG]: These games are really quite good, why are you giving them away?

[KC]: Because I want to help many amateur developers to create their own games. I released all my games under the free software license with the source code. I hope the source code helps someone to create a game by referring to or using a part of my code.

[SG]: How long did it take to develop these games or what would you say
is the average time you spend on each one?

[KC]: I tried to release a new game every 6 months. Since I write code in my spare time, mainly weekends, and I create two or three games concurrently, I don't know precisely how long it takes to create one game. Recently, I try to create a prototype in Flash to test my idea for a new game in a short time. Since I'm lacking perseverance, I'll try
any way to shorten the time to create the game.

Time to play some Parsec47 , one of my favorite games from ABA Games. Check out some of the other games over at ABA Games and be sure to stop in tomorrow for the second part of the interview. Tak čau.

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