Mizuguchi in Tokyo: When Sega made art from the arcade spirit

I waited for him on a street corner in Shibuya. It was the spring of 2000 - my first time in Japan. I was attending the Tokyo Game Show as editor of DC-UK magazine. Somehow I'd managed to score an interview with Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the impossibly cool Sega designer, once an upcoming arcade star, working on titles such as Sega Rally and Touring Car Championship, but now a wayward pioneer, leading his team at United Game Artists on Space Channel 5 and Rez.

I knew about Mizuguchi as a designer of course, but also as a person - a few years before, he'd made friends with my then-editor at Edge, Jason Brookes. The two went clubbing together in Tokyo, London and Bristol, both equally absorbed by the late-1990s dance music culture. I'd heard wild tales of their adventures. The year before my Tokyo trip, Jason and Edge writer Simon Cox had visited Mizuguchi's studio, and, just before the trio hit some weird hippy trance club, Mizuguchi showed them an early version of Rez.

"He said he didn't have a name for it yet, but the placeholder music was Underworld's Cowgirl/Rez," recalls Simon. "I said he should call it Rez because of the track but also because it reminded me of Tron and when you die in that you're de-rezzed. Tetsuya loved the idea. He was asked about it years later and couldn't remember exactly who named it, but Jase reminded him I think. Anyway we both got mentions in the credits."

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