Kotaro Uchikoshi

Kotaro Uchikoshi
Native name	打越 鋼太郎
Born	(1973-11-17) November 17, 1973 Higashimurayama, Tokyo, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Other names	Hagane Tsukishio (槻潮 鋼, Tsukishio Hagane) (pseudonym)
Occupation	Game director, planner, scenario writer
Years active	1998–present
Employer	KID (1998–2001) Chunsoft/Spike Chunsoft (2007–)
Notable work	Infinity series Zero Escape series

Kotaro Uchikoshi (Japanese: 打越 鋼太郎, Hepburn: Uchikoshi Kōtarō), born November 17, 1973, is a Japanese video game director and scenario writer. He is known for co-writing the visual novel series Infinity with its director Takumi Nakazawa while working for KID, and directing and writing the visual novel adventure game series Zero Escape at Chunsoft.

Biography

Uchikoshi was born on November 17, 1973, in Higashimurayama, a city in the western part of the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. He studied management engineering at university, but dropped out. He spent one year without a job, after which he joined the vocational school Vantan Design Institute, where he studied video game planning, 3D modelling, 2D art, sound, and programming. Vantan had started out as a school for clothes design, and only branched into video game development later; according to Uchikoshi, the level of the teachers wasn't very high because of this, leading to uninteresting courses and many students dropping out. Eventually, only Uchikoshi and a few others attended classes, which resulted in the teachers being able to better focus and taking care of the smaller group of students who still attended; because of this, Uchikoshi says that he and the other remaining students were able to achieve a higher level of proficiency.

Career

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Uchikoshi's first job was at the video game developer KID.

Uchikoshi's first job was in 1998 at the video game developer KID. They produced visual novels, as well as video game versions of board games, such as The Game of Life for the PlayStation; he originally wanted to work there because of these board game projects, as he was interested in making simple games that a lot of people would be able to enjoy. His first project at KID was the action game Pepsiman, which he made 3D models for. He was originally supposed to be a planner for KID's video game versions of board games, but at some point, the producer at KID asked him to write a scenario for a game. According to Uchikoshi, he thinks the reason the producer thought he would be a good scenario writer was because he had seen him writing things such as design documents, and because of Uchikoshi's personality; Uchikoshi describes himself as a not very serious kind of person, which he thinks could have been the main reason he was asked to write scenarios. The first visual novel he worked on was Memories Off, followed by Never 7: The End of Infinity, which was the first in the Infinity series, and Memories Off 2nd.

In 2001, he left KID and became a freelance writer and developer; he did this because he wanted independence, and the ability to work for other companies besides KID. During this time he wrote the second and third Infinity titles, Ever 17: The Out of Infinity and Remember 11: The Age of Infinity, as well as work for two erotic visual novels, the first being a 2003 game which he was uncredited for and whose title he says he does not remember, and the second being the 2006 game Eve: New Generation. He started doing work for the video game developer Chunsoft in 2004, after they contacted him and asked him to write visual novels for them. According to Chunsoft, they had found success in visual novels, but wanted to "create a new category" that could be received more broadly. He stopped freelancing in 2007, because he had a wife and a daughter at this point and wanted a stable income, and joined Chunsoft. There, he planned, wrote, and directed the visual novel-adventure game hybrid series Zero Escape, which consists of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors for Nintendo DS, and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward for Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita. The third game in the series, Zero Time Dilemma, was put on hold indefinitely due to low Japanese sales for the previous two games, but in 2015, the project was announced to have been resumed. In November 2014, it was announced that Uchikoshi was the writer for the TV anime series Punch Line, which premiered on April 9, 2015, on Fuji TV's Noitamina block. He also worked on a Punch Line video game, which features different endings from the anime.

Accolades

Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward received widespread acclaim, winning Gamespot's "Handheld Game of the Year" award for 2012, and IGN's "Best of 2012 Best 3DS/DS story" award.

Works

Video games

Year	Title	Role
1999	Pepsiman	3D modeller
1999	Memories Off	Planner, scenario writer
2000	Never 7: The End of Infinity	Planner, scenario writer
2000	Memories Off 2nd	Planner, scenario writer
2001	Close To: Inori no Oka	Scenario writer
2002	Ever 17: The Out of Infinity	Planner, scenario writer
2003	Unknown erotic visual novel	Scenario writer
2004	Remember 11: The Age of Infinity	Planner, scenario writer
2006	Eve: New Generation	Planner, scenario writer
2006	Kamaitachi no Yoru Niwango-ban	Scenario writer
2008	12Riven: The Psi-Climinal of Integral	Planner, scenario writer
2010	Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors	Planner, director, scenario writer
2012	Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward	Planner, director, scenario writer
2013	Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram	Scenario writer for one scenario
2016	Punch Line	Scenario writer
2016	Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma	Director, scenario writer

Other works

Year	Title	Media format	Role
2015	Punch Line	Anime	Writer
2015	Punch Line Max	Manga	Original concept

External links

• Kotaro Uchikoshi on Twitter (Japanese)
• Kotaro Uchikoshi on Twitter