Kenji Eno was always very anti-Sony and pro-SEGA back in the day. So much so that his franchises turned out to be exclusive and the man would go on a media rampage to put down Sony when he could. He is known for his horror SEGA Saturn titles like Enemy Zero and D (which later got a sequel on Dreamcast).
“I felt betrayed when Sony was treating me like that, so when I heard that the Sega vice president was a very interesting guy, he and I met and created this whole plot. My original conditions to make the game exclusive for Saturn involved my earlier story about supplying 1,000 Saturns for the blind people, and also to have Sega’s president appear onstage, personally, for the event. That was the original plot, and that was what was going to happen until the last minute, but he had a board meeting at Sega, and they were like, “OK, you’re actually appearing?” Like, Sega is a big, successful company, and a high-up management-level guy in that kind of company appearing in a situation like that isn’t good, so everybody stopped him. So he appeared in a video rather than in person.” – Kenji Eno tells 1up in a exclusive interview back in 2008.
Cause of death is said to be heart failure brought on by hypertension. Its funny how ahead of his time he was, one of his conditions to make his games exclusive to Saturn was for SEGA to give a 1,000 Saturn’s to blind people. He even created a game for them called ‘Real Sounds: Kaze No Regret‘ for the Saturn that was later re-released on Dreamcast.
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R.I.P
“Kenji Eno was always very anti-Sony and pro-SEGA back in the day. So much so that his franchises turned out to be exclusive and the man would go on a media rampage to put down Sony when he could.”
Then there is a sense of eeriness in that he died on the eve of the PS4…
No, no no!!!
I so wanted to see his return to main stream. Fuck man, this is some devastating news for the game industry. If Japan doesn’t get their act together one day we will read the obituary of Yu Suzuki, Yuji Naka, Noriyoshi Oba, Makato Uchida and more. They will be remembered for what they did in their early days and nothing recent.
Such talented artists to die in such an unceremonious way.
I think Sega should get Marza Animation Planet aka Sega Sammy Visual Entertainment to reanimate D & Enemy Zero and release it for current gen consoles.
Such sad news. That bit about the giving out of Sega Saturns is very admirable.
It made me wonder what Sega’s plans are for their future games, at least in this year. Besides a rumored Sonic game and Code of Joker which might not even leave Japan. I can’t think of anything.
Creative Assembly is working on a Aliens game and Warhammer (both license) and also a new total war game.
Relic has Company of Heroes 2 coming out March.
PSO2 is suppose to coming out west in ‘Early 2013’, nothing on that yet.
Oh wow, Sega’s got ‘loads’ of ‘brilliant’ line up for this year, best one in years it seems.
*Note sarcasm
I remember reading about him in the Official Sega Saturn magazine around April 1997, and an interview he did in it as well as a photo shoot with the staff and autograph ect.
I barely heard much from him since D2 on the Dreamcast, I did try to look him up last year and he apparently had since more recently changed the name of his company ‘Warp’, and extended another word onto it, but it seems he mostly became more reclusive and his lifestyle became more based on solitude after the Dreamcast days.
Sad news.
R.I.P
George describes him as pro Sega and anti sony.
However, he was screwed by Sony and Sega.
He stopped developing for Playstation after they didn’t produce enough copies of D. He left the video game industry when Sega messed with the development of D2.
Cube u need to come back to the forums bro
Sega saturn wouldn had been the same without him