Love to work for Konami
Momotaro Dentetsu isn’t a household name in the states, but in Japan the series has sold tens of millions and long predates Mario Party as a popular (train-themed) video game board game. The Hudson series has seen dozens of entries since its 1988 start. Hudson also made all the Mario Partys prior to Mario Party 9.
Konami finished buying out Hudson in 2011, though, after long being a majority stakeholder. The last console Momotaro Dentetsu came to DS in 2010 (there were also mobile releases in 2011 and 2012).
Series creator Akira Sakuma tweeted, “Konami hasn’t gotten in touch with me at all. This is how they’ve tossed me aside for a while now. I’m announcing here that Momotaro Dentetsu is officially done. Ishikawa at Konami squelched everything.”
Sakuma threatened to “end” the series back in 2011 if Konami messed with the development team, though Konami owns the rights. He took to Twitter in 2012, too, stating, “As long as there’s a guy named Imura at Konami, I won’t make Momotaro Dentetsu.”
Now it’s Ishikawa that’s the problem.
Mariko Sakuma, who works on the series as well, also Tweeted about the whole affair explaining, “They told us that we’d get a response in May, so we gave them the weekend, and ended up waiting until June 2nd. But we still haven’t seen any contact. I wonder what happened with Konami’s Mr. Ishikawa.”
Konami: It’s bad.
Developer Gets Testy with Konami, Ends His Beloved Game Series [Kotaku]
