Part Two
Part Three

On Friday night, in Ebisu, I met with Kenichi Nishi and his partner Hikaru, for a demonstration of his iPhone game, Newtonica. But first we had dinner – and Kenji Eno turned up too! (Eno is responsible for Newtonica’s music.) The dinner is mostly irrelevant, except for a couple of pieces of trivia I can remember that came up in conversation, that may interest you:

• Despite having left Skip, Kenichi was involved with Captain Rainbow (as its scenario designer), since the game began development before he left. (Speaking of Captain Rainbow, it’s sounding fantastic.)
• Ko Takeuchi, one of the key designers of Rhythm Tengoku (among other things), used to work for Kenji Eno at Warp.

Following dinner, we – minus Eno, who was very busy – went to a karaoke room, where we recorded this demonstration of Newtonica. This one right here:

Then Ken performed some Oasis songs, complete with air guitar. (I didn’t film it; sorry.)

As you can see, Newtonica is a very, very simple, though fun, game; definitely worth getting if you have an iPhone, but definitely not worth getting an iPhone for.

That was the demonstration – come back later this week for the explanation: Kenichi explains the deeper meaning of Newtonica, and tells us a bit about the game’s development.

DISCLOSURE-TYPE ADDENDUM: Yes, this post originally featured more, and more detailed, bits of trivia. Turns out they weren’t ‘extra information’ so much as ‘personal information’, and weren’t meant to be passed on – so, on request, I’ve removed them. This would make me a terrible, soft, journalist, if I were a journalist, which I’m not.