E3 Day One (9)

Immediately afterward, at two in the afternoon, came Hudson.

Kudo Hiroshi had not come to Los Angeles in person. The one who took the stage was the head of Hudson's North American branch.

His English carried a heavy Japanese accent, but his attitude was very sincere. He opened by saying, "We are a small company, but the games we make are very lively."

Someone in the audience laughed.

The first title shown was Bomberman Blocks. Super Famicom, Mega Drive, PC Engine, PC-98—four platforms. It was a mash-up of puzzle-clearing and Bomberman elements. The graphics were simple, but at a glance, the gameplay looked easy to pick up.

Next was Far East of Eden: True Legend, for the Neo Geo platform. The graphics of this fighting game were top-tier in the 2D field, and the character designs carried a strong Japanese Warring States style. The American audience below did not have much of a concept of this IP, but several fighting-game enthusiasts still gave it applause.

Super Adventure Island 2 and Master Takahashi's Great Adventure Island, on both Super Famicom and Mega Drive. These two were sequels to Hudson's classic series. The graphics were perfectly proper, and their strength lay in solid game feel.

On the handheld side, Super Momotaro Electric Railway 3 was landing on both GamePocket and Game Boy. It was a board-game-style title, hugely popular within Japan, but basically unknown in North America.

Last were three new Jupiter-platform titles—Space Adventure, Maze Explorer, and Thunder Overlord. The trailers for the three games were edited together and played as one, each about twenty seconds long. Their visual quality was mid-tier among Jupiter games, and it was clear they were small-to-medium-scale works, but at the very least, they proved Hudson was not absent from the next-generation platforms.

"This batch of Hudson