AN AUDIENCE WITH...GOICHI SUDA

Grasshopper Manufacture's founder talks creativity, counterculture, and becoming a "weird old dude"

- CHRIS SCHILLING

When Goichi Suda, alias Suda51, appears on our monitor screen, he’s sitting inside the cockpit of a Boeing Super Hornet. He isn’t actually flying it, of course; rather, he’s chosen the fighter jet from Top Gun: Maverick as his Zoom background for the call. It’s a typically Suda sort of entrance, and naturally we take the opportunity to ask a man who likes to keep his finger on the pulse of popular culture whether he’s seen the film. Not yet, he replies – but having just received a PSVR2 headset, he’s looking forward to watching it in VR. We think he’ll enjoy it, we say, and after his translator has relayed that message, he grins and gives us a thumbs-up.

As the founder, CEO and creative figurehead of Grasshopper Manufacture, Suda’s leisure time might be at something of a premium these days – enough, evidently, that he hasn’t yet seen one of the biggest blockbusters of recent times – but then it’s apparent that he’s still enjoying making videogames too much to care. On March 30, Grasshopper celebrates a significant milestone: it’s been 25 years since Suda founded the company, originally situated in Tokyo’s Suginami ward, now headquartered in Chiyoda (though Suda himself is calling in from Osaka). The studio has withstood some turbulent times, particularly prior to its acquisition by Puzzle & Dragons publisher GungHo Online Entertainment in 2013 – but also during development of