20 Facts About Kenji Eno

Kenji Eno was a Japanese musician and video game designer.

Kenji Eno gained a reputation as a maverick during the mid-1990s for creating unorthodox games like Real Sound and is perhaps best remembered today for his rebellious marketing techniques.

Apart from creating video games, Eno was a well-regarded electronic musician and he created the scores for several of his games.

Kenji Eno founded the video game development companies EIM, Warp, and From Yellow to Orange.

Kenji Eno worked in a variety of fields apart from video games and music including the automotive, cellphone, tobacco, and hotel industries.

Uncommonly interested in video games and music from a young age, Kenji Eno had experimented extensively with programming and recording, and one of his first games, Towadoko Murder Case, placed in a regional game contest.

Unsatisfied with his role at Interlink, and interested in more direct control over the projects, Kenji Eno used his savings to found the video game development contract company, EIM, Ltd.

In 1994, after having his interest in games revitalized by trips to Macworld 1994 and Be-In, a local video game expo, Kenji Eno formed Warp with a small team of programmers and designers including animators Fumito Ueda, Takeshi Nozue and Ichiro Itano, all of whom later became famous under different employment.

Kenji Eno developed a maverick reputation during his work with Warp, and shocked the Japanese video game press in a dramatic 1996 press conference where he burned bridges with Sony by displaying a video depicting the PlayStation logo morphing into the logo for Sega Saturn to indicate that Warp's latest game, Enemy Zero, would be a Saturn exclusive.

Kenji Eno explained that this was his final act of distancing himself from his past at WARP.

Kenji Eno founded From Yellow to Orange in 2001 and headed the company until his death.

In 2006, Kenji Eno announced that From Yellow to Orange was in the process of designing a game and, during an interview at E3 2006, he hinted that the game would be designed for Nintendo's Wii.

Kenji Eno cited the Wii Remote as a key motivation of his return to game development.

Kenji Eno attended a school for gifted children in his younger years, however the regular course of his childhood was greatly affected by the disappearance of his mother from his life during his second year of elementary school.

Kenji Eno dropped out of high school at age 17 and, after brief jobs at Canon and a telephone-appointment company, he soon entered the video game industry.

Kenji Eno cites Space Invaders and Pac-Man as two of the most influential games that motivated him to pursue a career in game design.

Kenji Eno got married during the development of D, he was not planning on having kids as he felt he wasn't economically stable "I was pretty broke back then, living in a one bed room apartment", however with the success of D Kenji Eno stated that he was able to "afford kids".

Kenji Eno has claimed influence from electronic group, Yellow Magic Orchestra.

Kenji Eno died on February 20,2013, due to heart failure brought on by hypertension.

Kenji Eno is credited with having composed music for several of his games including Juuouki, Casino Kid 2, Sunman, and the dark ambient scores to D and D2.