bike as they raced down winding roads.

Hang-On introduced the “Taikan” trend of motion-controlled arcade cabinets that resemble real-world vehicles. These helped dispel the negative image that arcades had in Japan at the time and attract new audiences.

Suzuki followed up the success of Hang-On with increasingly well-received arcade titles such as Space Harrier, legendary racer Out Run, and the Top Gun-influenced After Burner. His desire to take games into the third dimension saw the creation of Virtua Racing, but it was the 1993 release of the first 3D fighting game, Virtua Fighter, that resonated with gamers and saw the birth of a franchise.

Initially wanting to make a 3D sports game, it became apparent that technology at the time would not allow for more than two polygonal characters onscreen, andthis combined with Sega’s desire to make a “Street Fighter-killer” led to Suzuki turning to the one-on-one fighting genre. Virtua Fighter 2 became the first game to employ motion-capture technology, previously only used in healthcare and the military. As with his earlier games, Suzuki eschewed the fantastical in favour of a more realistic approach, choosing to forgo hadoukens and spinning bird kicks and instead to ground the game in the martial arts of the Orient. It was in 1993 during research for the second game in the series that Yu Suzuki would embark on a trip to China that would change the course of both his life and video game history forever.

On their first meeting, Bajiquan Grand Master Wu drank a little too much sake, and the resulting