Yasumi Matsuno (松野 泰己)

Director

Yasumi Matsuno was born in 1965 in Nigata-ken, Japan. When he was studying in university, his primary interests were in AD&D novels and music by Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the rock band Queen. This eventually led him to write the "Ogre Battle Saga", an eight-chapter fantasy novel.

In the summer of 1989, he graduated and joined Quest to fulfill his dreams of being a game designer. The first project he worked on was the Famicom action title Matendouji, known in the US as Conquest of the Crystal Palace. During his time at Quest, they also released games like Dungeon KiD for the Famicom, Battle Ping Pong and Legend for the Game Boy and Magical Chase for the PC-Engine. While it is known that Hiroshi Minagawa directed Magical Chase, the credits for many of Quest's other efforts are shrouded in mystery.

As a small developer, it was difficult for Quest to gain wide recognition. That is, until Matsuno spearheaded the project that would be based on his original fantasy idea of the Ogre Battle Saga. Together with Akihiko Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa, two of his peers at Quest, Matsuno created the Super Famicom strategy game that would forever define Quest, as well as himself - Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen.

While doing research for Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, Matsuno travelled much of eastern Europe and was deeply impressed by the culture, architecture and religious aspects of the West. This would continue to influence all the scenarios and art design of the games he would work on from then on.

After creating two games in the series that Quest is most recognized for today, Matsuno left Quest together with his core team in 1995 to join Squaresoft. He went on to direct Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story on the Playstation and subsequently aided the company in setting up their online service PlayOnline. When Squaresoft and Enix Corp merged, there was an internal studio reshuffling that put Matsuno as the head of Product Development Division-4, along with his core team. It was then that the company proceeded to acquire Quest's software development division and the Ogre Battle Saga franchise to place in the same department.

In Fall of 2001 Matsuno and his team began work on Final Fantasy XII for the Playstation 2, while he oversaw the production of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on the Game Boy Advance (which was developed by the Quest team). Final Fantasy XII would continue to be delayed for several years, until it was announced in July 2005 that the game would finally hit retail on 16 March, 2006. It was revealed that one of the reasons for the delays and silence over the project was that Matsuno had fallen very ill and was unable to continue as producer and director on the project.

Matsuno has since recovered and continues to work in development, recently appearing during a Nintendo press event to tout the Wii controller. He is currently purported to be working with Hironobu Sakaguchi (Mistwalker) on a project for Nintendo DS.

Source: ja.wikipedia.org

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