Games at the press of a button: The Rip-O-Bot (1989)

Games at the press of a button: The Rip-O-Bot (1989) 2026-08-02  •  5 mins read #ai #arcade #design #gamedev #history #japan #magazine #videogame 2026-08-02 5 mins read false Fukio Mitsuji (三辻富貴朗)—known by his nickname “MTJ”, squeezed from the consonants of his surname, Mi-Tsu-Ji—was the game designer behind Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Syvalion, Volfied, and Magical Puzzle Popils. Surely one of the greatest to walk these hallowed halls. In the late 1980s he also wrote a column for the Japanese arcade magazine GAMEST called ゲームデザイン入門—Introduction to Game Design—aimed at readers who dreamed of becoming game designers themselves. In part 2 of the series, published in GAMEST No. 31 (April 1989), MTJ is railing against imitation games—パクリ, “rip-offs”—and the industry attitude that produces them. He quotes a manager at an unnamed company: 「10年先!? その頃には今のゲームを知らない世代がプレイヤー層をしめてるさ！ だからあえて変える必要もない！ あとは目さき（外見）さえ変えてやりゃあ…プレイヤーなんて与えられたものをやるだけさ!!」 “Ten years from now!? By then the player base will be a generation that doesn’t even know today’s games! So there’s no need to go changing anything! Just tweak the surface—the outside—and… players just play whatever they’re handed!!” Then, to show where that road leads, he writes a little scene of science fiction. Set in “the very near future” (超近未来), at the development office of the fictional Dekoboko Co., a game is created by conversing with a machine: 「ゴシュジンサマ、コンドハナンノゲームノパクリデイキヤショウカ？ インカムバッチリデッセ!?」 “MASTER, WHICH GAME SHALL WE RIP OFF THIS TIME? THE TAKINGS’LL BE SPLENDID!?” 「ゲームメイヲ、ニュウリョクシナハレ！ ハヨ、センカイ！ ワレ！」 “ENTER THE GAME NAME, IF YOU’D BE SO KIND—COME ON, GET ON WITH IT, YOU!” ○✕社の△□と入力！ いたって簡単だ。 I punch in Company ○×’s “△□”. Dead simple. 「OK! OK! ツギハハイケイノイメージデゴワス。ツギノナカカラエランデタモレ」 “OK! OK! NEXT IS THE BACKGROUND IMAGE, SIR. PRAY CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING.” 私は億というファイルからそれを見つけるのがめんどうなので、いつもの様にランダムチョイスのキーを押した！ 1発でOKだ！ Digging that out of hundreds of millions of files is a pain, so as usual I hit the random-choice key! One shot and it’s done! 「サテ、ツギハキャラクタージャケン、…ツギノナカカラ…」 “RIGHT THEN, NEXT IT’S THE CHARACTERS, SO IT IS… FROM THE FOLLOWING…” 「えぇーい!!」 “Aaaargh!!” 私はいいかげんうんざりしたので、全て、ランダムチョイスのキーを押しまくった!! I’d had quite enough, so I just hammered the random-choice key for everything!! 「出来た!! 大傑作だ。大傑作の…コピーゲームだ。これで我が社も丸もうけ」 “IT’S DONE!! A MASTERPIECE. A MASTERPIECE OF A… COPY GAME. Our company’s going to clean up with this one.” A game, generated in moments, from a prompt. In 1989. I don’t think this was clairvoyance—MTJ was simply so immersed in the game industry that he could see where it was heading. (In the original, the robot speaks entirely in katakana, its speech wobbling between Kansai, Kyushu, and Hiroshima dialects with the odd flourish of archaic courtly Japanese—エランデタモレ, “pray choose”. English can’t really reproduce that, so here it’s an over-formal servant whose register keeps slipping.) MTJ even gives his machine a name: the パクリングロボット (Pakuringu Robotto). パクリング is a word you won’t find in any dictionary—it’s his own coinage, the slang パクリ (pakuri, “rip-off”) bolted onto an English -ing, as in サンプリング (sampling) or ボウリング (bowling). A jokey pseudo-word built from real parts, which is why I can’t resist translating it as the Rip-O-Bot. He follows the skit with a warning that lands rather differently reading it today: と言ったかどうかは知らないけど、こんな時代がもうそこまで来ているのは事実です。 Whether it happens exact