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Grasshopper Manufacture, Inc. (グラスホッパー・マニファクチュア Gurasuhoppā Manifakuchua) is a Japanese video game development house founded on March 30, 1998 in Suginami, Japan. Grasshopper gained mainstream notoriety in 2005 for the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 game Killer7. In addition to Killer7, they have developed Michigan: Report From Hell (released in Japan and Europe) and a number of Japan-only titles. Grasshopper Manufacture was also recently responsible for the Nintendo DS game Contact, as well as the Wii game No More Heroes and its sequel No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. The company is headed by Goichi Suda, also known as Suda51, and is noted for its original and imaginative titles - ones that are also fraught with financial risk. Potential losses are often made up by the development of games based on popular anime franchises, such as Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked and Blood+: One Night Kiss.
In May 2007, Suda announced during a speech at the 2007 Game Developers Conference that Grasshopper was at the time working on three titles for the Wii, two of which have now been released: No More Heroes and Fatal Frame IV. There is no information on the status of the third Wii game in development then.
Grasshopper is also said to be working on an Xbox 360 title, and have presented a concept for a PlayStation 3 game called Kurayami, a non-linear action adventure inspired by the worrying and confused universe of the Czech writer Franz Kafka, whom Goichi Suda admires.
In August 2008 EA announced a deal to publish an as yet untitled action horror game developed by Grasshopper in conjunction with Q Entertainment. The project will be directed by Suda and produced by Shinji Mikami for release on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii and PC.
Games developed[]
| Year | Title | System | Miscellaneous |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | The Silver Case | PlayStation | Only released in Japan; a remake was developed, but not released, for Nintendo DS |
| 2001 | Flower, Sun, and Rain | PlayStation 2 | Japan-exclusive |
| 2003 | Shining Soul | Game Boy Advance | Co-developed by Nextech |
| 2004 | Shining Soul II | Game Boy Advance | Co-developed by Nextech |
| 2004 | Michigan: Report From Hell | PlayStation 2 | Only released in Japan and Europe |
| 2005 | Killer7 | Nintendo GameCube & PlayStation 2 | PlayStation 2 version ported by Capcom |
| 2006 | Blood+: One Night Kiss | PlayStation 2 | Only released in Japan; co-developed by Namco Bandai |
| 2006 | Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked | PlayStation 2 | Only released in Japan and North America |
| 2006 | Contact | Nintendo DS | |
| 2008 | No More Heroes | Wii | An enhanced port was developed by feelplus and released for Xbox 360 in Japan and PlayStation 3 in Japan and Europe under the title No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise |
| 2008 | Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen | Wii | Only released in Japan; co-developed by Tecmo and Nintendo |
| 2009 | Flower, Sun, and Rain | Nintendo DS | Remake developed by h.a.n.d. |
| 2010 | No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle | Wii | |
| 2011 | Sine Mora | Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network | Co-developed by Digital Reality |
| 2011 | Codename D | Xbox 360 | |
| 2011 | Shadows of the Damned | Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 | Co-developed by Q Entertainment and EA Partners |