Super-Secret Gaming Ninja, Sushi-X
[NOTE: This is a repost of a blog entry from my old personal blog.]
Originally posted June 26, 2004 — Now’s a good time to take a moment and talk about one of EGM’s mainstay characters — Sushi-X. While other people can probably tell this story better than I can from the beginning, I’ll take a stab at explaining some of what I know about this mysteriously pseudonymed character.
The way I figure it (and I’m guessing here, since he appeared in EGM before my time), the Sushi-X persona was inspired by Famitsu’s Taco-X, a reviewer often dressed as a ninja. Since EGM’s Review Crew style is a direct rip-off from Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu’s review style, this hypothesis of mine probably isn’t too far from the truth. The Sushi-X that most EGM fans know and love was the one that was a master of fighting games, hated Game Boy titles just because he could, and was often the “swing reviewer” who would pan something the other guys liked. The guy who played Sushi-X for the longest amount of time was Ken Williams. (Ken now helps run video game site vgevo.com with Trickman Terry.) Ken had been Sushi-X for a good long time before I started in 1994. And his personality was exactly that of the Sushi-X in the magazine — he loved fighting games and had a passionate disdain for anything Game Boy or that involved turn-based role-playing. When a new fighting game would come into the office he’d spend hours on it — whether it was an upright machine or something that could be plugged into the office’s Super Gun. While I was working there, Super Street Fighter II Turbo arrived and the guy went nuts on it, practicing combos, refining his technique — it was insane to watch. I never considered myself very good at fighting games, but I did get schooled by Ken a couple times. And I mean…rocked. Some of his techniques and skills would show up in the magazine as strategy guides or in special fighting game guides that EGM would publish from time to time. EGM did print a picture of Ken at one time semi-hinting that he was Sushi-X. At one of the early ’90s Consumer Electronics Shows, the Sendai booth had a Street Fighter machine set up where people could challenge a staff member. I forget which issue it was, but there is a picture of that scene in the magazine. Of course, no one figured that the white guy with the EGM jacket playing against them was Sushi. Most thought Sushi was a Japanese guy, which had never been the case.
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