The Tokyo-based studio Grasshopper Manufacture is celebrating its 25th anniversary and as part of that has put on its first-ever Grasshopper Direct. As the name suggests, this was somewhat tongue-in-cheek rather than immaculate executives crisply clapping us through game reveals and new trailers. We got a couple of the studio's employees ad-libbing it, a quick highlights reel of the company's games, two pretty great fake adverts, and then the briefest of glimpses at the studio's upcoming game.
Whew! Grasshopper is certainly not your average studio. It was founded on March 30, 1998, in Suginami by Goichi Suda, better-known as Suda 51, and the name comes from a song by the UK band Ride: this is something of a theme, with later games like No More Heroes taking their titles from songs, and the studio's catchphrase for a time being "Punk's not dead". Its best-known titles include No More Heroes, Killer7, Let it Die, and the soon-to-be remastered Shadows of the Damned.
