Attack

At one point or another we've all found ourselves playing some ridiculously addictive game when we know we should really be doing something else, whether it's working or walking the dog or taking gran to her doctor's appointment. Video games, eh?! It seems that during development of the original Resident Evil on PlayStation, the development team got so distracted by Tetris Attack that director Shinji Mikami had to put a ban on playing the Super NES game.

This is according to PlatinumGames developer and industry veteran Hideki Kamiya in a newly translated interview that went up on the developer's blog recently. As spotted by GoNintendo, the interview with Kamiya and his younger brother (who's not in the game industry) is called Growing Up with Games and was originally published in Famitsu in 2017, but it's now available in English on Platinum's website. While reminiscing about retro games, the pair recalled playing Tetris Attack (or Panel de Pon as the not-really-Tetris-at-all game is known in Japan):

HK: I just remembered! This was after I’d already become an adult, but there was something else we played together. My brother and I used to go at it in Tetris Attack.

YK: That’s right, we did.

HK: When I was working on Resident Evil, Tetris Attack was really popular at the office. We’d play against each other every day, to the point where work got ignored and Mikami san had to put out an order banning Tetris Attack. A while later when I went back home, my brother was there playing Tetris Attack. Now I was one of the better players at the office so I thought I’d take him on, but once we got going…

YK: (Laughs)

HK: He destroyed me. I couldn’t do anything.

Toyoda: You didn’t win at all?

HK: Not once. He was on another level compared to everyone guys at work. It was like I’d hit a wall. I probably still couldn’t beat him. We played Planet Puzzle League too, but he was still really good.

Of course, Kamiya has form when it comes to Tetris addiction, as anyone who follows him on Twitter will know when Tetris 99 hit Switch earlier this year.

The Kamiya brothers discuss playing several Super NES games including Super Mario World, Street Fighter II, F-Zero and more. In fact, the interview is filled with retrogaming tidbits and talk of various games and consoles including Super NES, the Japan-only 64DD and a host on non-Nintendo gems. It also features photos of the brothers' collection of hardware and software, so it's well worth a read with a cup of tea, coffee or your beverage of choice when you've got a spare 15 minutes.

Are there any standout video games you can remember that interfered with your work? Did you still manage to knock out a genre-defining video game despite the distraction? Let us know below.

[source gonintendo.com, via platinumgames.com]