Few of us are fortunate enough... make that brave enough, to follow the path of the auteur. Under the ever present weight of fiscal responsibility and the societal lesson that gainful employment is at the core of a life well lived, we seek occupations in which a large faceless entity exchanges their money for our time and expertise. We justify this choice by convincing ourselves that we really do care about the widgets we make, the gizmos we sell, or the laws we uphold. Sometimes we truly do, but make no mistake, we work for the man.Eighteen years ago a group of developers from Konami decided they'd had enough. After critical and commercial success with such titles as Contra III and Axelay they simply walked away from their corporate masters and began their own development studio, Treasure Video Games. They didn't want to be stuck making the inevitable Contra sequels full of the same game mechanics growing more and more stale with each iteration. They didn't care about the money involved, they just wanted to make games that they cared about.
In 1993 Treasure released their first game, Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Again the developers had a critical success on their hands. But critical successes don't pay bills. In a move that some would say indicate the group sold out their ideals immediately, in the same year they produced McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. Yes, as in Ronald McDonald, the worlds most successful burger shilling clown. Even now this seems like crass commercialism might appear to be the early echoes of a dying venture.
Thankfully for the gaming industry, that appearance could not have been more deceptive. 1994 saw the release of Dynamite Heady, an offbeat platform adventure game where the title character destroyed enemies by launching his head as a projectile, and propelled himself aloft using his head a a grappling device. Beloved by retro game historians, the game is rarely remembered by the masses but to this day is a shining example of the unique vision held by Treasure studio designers. In 1994 Treasure also provided the public with YuYu Hakusho: Makyou Touitsusen. While not as recognizable to westerners as Ronald McDonald, rest assured that YuYu Hakusho was a massive license in it's day - a shonen manga as popular as it's modern day Weekly Shonen Jump brethren, Bleach and Naruto and was the eleventh YuYu Hakusho game released in a period of two years that certainly garnered the studio a decent sum as the next several years of the studio's output is a laundry list of classics completely devoid of licensed work for hire product and some of their most memorable games to date, beginning with Alien Soldier in 1995 and culminating with Ikaruga in 2001, before returning to major licenses with Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Bad Dream in 2002.Unfortunately recent years have seen little in the way of original material from Treasure, but they do continue to pursue their own goals. While continuing to pursue contracts for license holders and large publishers (such as Bleach games for the DS and Wii) most of Treasure's own products have consisted of GBA and DS sequels to older favorites Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes, and Bangai-O. Last year also saw the Japanese release of Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, a Wii sequel to the N64 original which was never published in the United States (though is available on Wii Virtual Console). Star Successor is currently set for publication in North America this coming June.
My personal experience with Treasure games has been fairly narrow. I never owned a Genesis, which was the platform for most of their classics. Thankfully many friends did. While I did have a Saturn, Radiant Silvergun was import-only and though it was all the rage among associates online, it was also squarely out of my price range. Every intention was present to acquire Ikaruga, the spiritual successor to Radiant Silvergun, when it was published in NA for the GameCube but for unknown reasons the event never occurred. The HD release of Ikaruga on XBLA was, however, a day one purchase.
Several days ago while shopping on Amazon for part of Anna's birthday gift I needed something else to bump the order over the twenty-five dollar requirement for free shipping and stumbled across Bangai-O Spirits for the paltry sum of $10.77. The original Bangai-O was released on the Dreamcast in 1999 was also on the "why didn't I buy this game when it was published" list, and the serendipitous discovery sent me on the path of remembering Treasure's rich history. I think once I've finished with Bangai-O Spirits, I may grab a few of their gems I missed out on over VC. While my experience with Treasure is limited, they've never let me down. 
((tag:video games))
