From my experience, executives mostly play shallow social mobile games with shared online rankings that allow them to compare their daily scores with other executives. Some will usually have exactly one PC or console game they like and mindlessly play for hundreds of hours per year, be it The Division 2, Call of Duty, Fortnite, Civilization, Animal Crossing or Derby Stallion.
Anyway, the reason I am posting here is to share this recent two parts playthrough of the sūfami game Kachō Shima Kōsaku: The Super Business Adventure (1993), which reminded me of this thread. Developed by Tom Create for publisher Yutaka, it is the adaptation of a popular manga on the Japanese corporate world and culture, published from 1983 until 1992.
I said until 1992 but there is a pretty damn huge caveat: while it is true that the career of section chef (kachō) Shima Kōsaku came to a close then, he was subsequently promoted several times and each promotion led to a different series. So you have the tales of manager Shima Kōsaku, deputy general manager Shima Kōsaku, etc. all the way to CEO Shima Kōsaku and the latest series (still running as I write this), Chairman of the Board Shima Kōsaku.
Foolishly, given the theme and IP, I had always assumed this Super Famicom game was some sort of heavy management simulation with graphics and budgets and tons of menus, but I discover with these videos that it’s a simple graphic adventure for limited choices, akin to a CYOA novel. It looks pretty good!
It probably won’t surprise you to hear this is a popular manga series among Japanese salarymen; you can often spot a few volumes in a manager’s bookshelf behind their desk, typically from the series at their current employment level. I have wondered in the past if you could astutely guess a promotion in advance by spotting new volumes belonging to the next series in their shelves.
