Thursday, April 26, 2012

15 Years Later: How Sony's Net Yaroze Kickstarted Indie Console Development


It's taken me over a year to conduct all the interviews required for this epic feature, but today my expansive article on Sony's Net Yaroze was published on Gamasuta. I speak with a selection of developers from the UK and Japan, including Mitsuru Kamiyama, behind Terra Incognita. There's also commentary from David Johnston who I spoke about recently, plus many other awesome and creative individuals. If you like indie games, or are active in the XBLIG community, then I think you'll enjoy reading about this wild frontier from the later 1990s. It also follows on nicely from a previous entry I did on the Yaroze.

8 comments:

  1. Why doesn't the article mention anything about Offical Playstation Magazine in the u.s? I remember distinctly them putting a couple games on a demo disc once.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great article, John! An excellent follow up to the HG101 post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I wanted a Net Yaroze so badly when I was a kid, but there was just no hope that I'd ever be able to save up that kind of money -- at least not while maintaining any kind of social life. :) I'm very surprised by how good some of those games look!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I remember NEXT GENERATION magazine having a cover story on this system and thinking about how mindblowing it sounded and then never hearing a single thing about it ever again. Until just now.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent article Sketcz. I never knew the Yaroze had such a strong following. Who knows how many gems are hiding in the collections of Japanese Playstation fanatics that we will never see...

    Also, I really need to get that ISO you mentioned.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @anon:
    Were there Yaroze games on the US OPSM? I found very little information on the US OPSM disc, compared to the Euro demos we received in the UK and across Europe (there's a site documenting all the discs, with listings of every game). I knew Underground Gamer in the US had some Yaroze games, but everyone I spoke to, including 2 US-based developers (not quoted in the article), gave the impression the US side of things was much quieter. I did specifically address the US scene and was aware of it, but despite a ton of research it wasn't something I could cover in great detail.

    ReplyDelete
  7. ///// NEW NET YAROZE DEVELOPERS WEBSITE! /////

    http://psdev.psio.com.au/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Download this one: http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/playstation/psx-homebrew/net-yaroze-collection-2012/

    Soon this worker will release a nother awsome update.
    Release date; Unknown....

    ReplyDelete