Mapping the musou empire

In the 30 years since Akihiro Suzuki started at Koei, he’s spent 20 of them overseeing Dynasty Warriors – progenitor of the musou genre, one of gaming’s longest-running series, and one whose every entry bar the fifth Suzuki has been involved in. It’s a success that the team could never really have anticipated – how could they, given how the series had its start in a different genre entirely.

Released on the original PlayStation back in 1997, the first Dynasty Warriors was a Soul Calibur-like one-on-one fighting game and was met with positive reviews – so much so that Omega Force, the division within Koei Tecmo that Suzuki was a part of, stuck with the genre with its next project Destrega. “Within the team we all thought it was really good, but it didn’t really sell well,” says Suzuki.

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