

Don’t let Team Grand Slam’s Monken, or its addictive and cute jingle fool you. Monken in real life was what locals called the wrecking ball used in 1972 in Japan by the police to stop United Red Army radicals who had taken over a mountain lodge. This became known Asama-SansÅ incident.

The developers do not think the footage from the original event convey its shocking essence well enough. Instead, they are using this video game, discovered at Japan’s first BitSummit event, as a way to “construct real incidents and facts” and allow for a new way to “describe history.”



The developers are ready to go at this as an indie team, while combining their skills gathered from their AAA background. The four members are Fumio Kurokawa (SEGA, Apollon Music Industrial Corp), Kazutoshi Iida (Doshin the Giant, Evangelion the movie: 3nd Impact), Takayuki Nakamura (Virtua Fighter, Lumines music), and Ryuji Nouguchi (Chulip, Harvest Moon).

Monken is being designed for PC, smartphone, and touch devices. The release seems TBA, with the developers needing more funds to create the full vision of the game. The game’s site mentions a “MONKEN club” that will use web and Facebook platforms to build some kind of support for the game. I reached out to Fumio Kurokawa for more details.

To read more about the real-world event that inspired Monken, check out the game’s official site and a BitSummit post by Lena LeRay on Gamasutra’s member blogs.