There are many reasons why I've decided to keep to myself instead of making a new friend out of a stranger, and while "I'm scared" is all the way at the top of the list, "they have a beard" sometimes comes in fifth, or like, 25th. So I can sort of relate to original Raiden studio lead Hitoshi Hamada, who found some Sony employees' facial hair extraordinarily off-putting 30 years ago.
Localization veteran Richard Honeywood shares the anecdote with Time Extension while recalling his time with defunct Raiden developer Seibu Kaihatsu around the time of the first PlayStation. Along with "pocketing my Japanese Nenkin, which I guess is like social security or basically your pension system in Japan, because they thought that foreigners would never use their social security in Japan," Honeywood says Seibu Kaihatsu was skeptical about beginning what would ultimately become a beloved collaboration with Sony.
"Sony Music approached us; it wasn't even PlayStation or Sony at the time," he says. "Some executives came to the office, and they brought international staff with them. So that's why I was called into the meeting, too."
"They were talking about creating the PlayStation, and they wanted us to port [Raiden and Raiden 2] as a launch title for the console," Honeywood continues. This ultimately led to the still-coveted compilation scrolling shooter The Raiden Project, which launched in 1995 on PS1.
But it doesn't sound like Hitoshi Hamada was concerned about legacy. He was more disappointed by hundreds of errant hairs…
"We talked about it, and our boss Hamada-san said he'd think about it," says Honeywood. "He shook hands and saw them out the door, and then he turned around and said, 'What do you think? Should we even try doing this PlayStation title?'
"Everybody was a bit skeptical of it, and even he was like, 'I don't want to work with them because they've got beards.' He said, 'Japanese people shouldn't have beards. Sending out someone with a beard to do business like that is bad.'" I'd say you can't argue with that logic, but Honeywood clearly did – "we went back and forth," he says, "and we eventually agreed that we've got nothing to lose."
