Document
Nintendo’s Profile, 1998
Nintendo hired him to build live-action versions of the F-Zero X pilots for a television commercial. Then they put a page up about him on nintendo.co.jp — and gave him more room than they gave the director.
The page is long dead. It survives in the Internet Archive, captured on April 23, 1999. It is a detailed contemporary document about his early career, published by a client that had just hired him in 1998.
The credits, dates, and crew information below all come from that page. We have separated what Nintendo printed from our reading of what it resolves. The archived page is linked below.
The shoot
The commercial and its stills were shot in Los Angeles on June 3 and 4, 1998, and ran across Japan from June 15 to the end of August. Where the game used American-comic-style character art on its machine-setting screens, the commercial put live-action versions of those racers on screen. Nintendo described the crew as top American professionals, hired from the commercial and feature world rather than from games marketing.
Who made it
| Role | Name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Special makeup and costume | Screaming Mad George | A full biography and filmography, the longest entry on the page. |
| Director | Bruce Schluter | Title sequences for Independence Day, Twister, Mission: Impossible, JFK. |
| Director of photography | Adam Kimmel | Shot Beautiful Girls, The Ref, New Jersey Drive. |
| Composer | Walter Werzowa | Wrote the Intel chime. |
What Nintendo said about him
The profile runs from his childhood to what he was doing that month, and several of its details appear nowhere else we have looked.
He was born in 1956, the eldest son of a barber in Shinsaibashi, Osaka. After finishing high school he went to New York and studied fine art at the School of Visual Arts, forming a punk band on the side and building special makeup and surreal effects into its performances.
In 1983 he directed and produced a video called The Cure for Folly, which Nintendo describes as the summation of that performance work. We have found no other reference to it. He then made contact with Rick Baker and moved to Los Angeles.
He later worked at Greg Cannom’s studio and Richard Edlund’s Boss Film Corporation (Nintendo’s name for Boss Film Studios) before going independent and founding S.M.G. Inc. in 1986. Nintendo’s profile is the source for the Cannom credit.
The page also notes, almost as an aside, that he was fronting the band Screaming Mad George & Psychosis and presenting a monthly television program on NHK’s satellite channel — Midnight Kingdom from LA — broadcast at 12:45 in the morning on the last Monday of the month. Nintendo’s own summary is that he was working across a range of fields at once.
The filmography, as Nintendo printed it
Nintendo’s years, Nintendo’s titles. Several run a year earlier than the usual Western listings, which probably reflects production rather than release. This is a Nintendo-published list and it is not exhaustive — Predator and The Abyss are both absent, and both are real. Nintendo credits The Guyver to him as director and producer; the film’s own page covers his co-direction with Steve Wang and Brian Yuzna’s role as producer. 帝都対戦 is printed that way on Nintendo’s page; the film’s title is 帝都大戦.
| Year | As printed | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 95 | スペース・トラッカーズ | Space Truckers |
| 94 | テイルズ・フロム・ザ・フッド | Tales from the Hood |
| 93–94 | チルドレン・オブ・ザ・コーン３ | Children of the Corn III |
| 93 | ネクロノミカン | Necronomicon |
| 92 | フリークト | Freaked |
| 91 | キラー・ホビー：サイレントナイトデッドリーナイト５ | Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker |
| 90 | ザ・ガイバー（監督、製作） | The Guyver — credited as director and producer |
| 90 | イニシエーション：サイレントナイトデッドリーナイト４ | Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation |
| 90 | シンクロニシティ（expo'90 花博 ミュージカル） | Synchronicity — a musical for Expo '90, Osaka |
| 89 | 死霊のしたたり２ | Bride of Re-Animator |
| 89 | 帝都対戦 [sic] | Tokyo: The Last War |
| 89 | 孔雀王２−幻影城− | Peacock King 2: Castle of Illusion |
| 88 | ソサエティー | Society |
| 88 | ザ・バイト | Curse II: The Bite |
| 88 | エルム街の悪夢４ −ザ・ドリームマスター− | A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master |
| 87 | アリーナ | Arena |
| 87 | スペース・ボール | Spaceballs |
| 86 | コレクター | "Collector" — unidentified |
| 86 | ゴースト・ハンターズ | Big Trouble in Little China |
What it settles, and what it opens
ゴースト・ハンターズ — “Ghost Hunters” — is the Japanese release title of Big Trouble in Little China, dated 86. 孔雀王２−幻影城− confirms that his Peacock King credit is the Castle of Illusion anime, not the live-action film it is often confused with. Blood Diner does not appear, but this non-exhaustive list cannot settle that disputed credit.
Two entries open new ground. シンクロニシティ — Synchronicity, 1990 — is a musical staged for Expo ’90, the Osaka garden and greenery exposition, and the only live-theater credit in Nintendo’s list. コレクター, “Collector,” 1986, is listed without a format. Our CM Collector page assumes the title is a commercial reel. Since the list also takes in a stage musical, it neither confirms nor rules that out.
Source: Nintendo’s F-Zero X commercial making-of page, nintendo.co.jp, 1998 — archived April 23, 1999. Paraphrases are attributed; the page itself belongs to its publisher. Our working transcript and translation are held in the project research notes rather than reproduced here.