Drillimation Systems

**Drillimation Systems Co., Ltd.** (株式会社ドリリメーションシステム, **Kabushiki-gaisha Doririmēshon Shisutemu**?) is an American independent game development studio headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania, where *Chuhou Joutai* takes its inspiration for Kozankyo from. The Prophet, alongside other students at Mercyhurst University, founded the studio as a way to sell its flagship product, being *Chuhou Joutai*. Although they are the creators of the *Chuhou Joutai* series, they are also the developer of the NES-style remakes of the first four *Touhou Project* games. The remake of the first *Touhou Project* game, *The Highly Responsive to Prayers*, is actually Drillimation's most popular game, drawing in three times of the audience of players than to what *Chuhou Joutai* normally draws. Drillimation's primary target audience is beginners and first-time gamers, and while all their games have a simple learning curve on beating the game, the higher difficulties is where most players will see a challenge. Susumu Takajima, the male protagonist of the *Chuhou Joutai* series, is the company's mascot.

Originally founded to make GoAnimate videos, Drillimation offers a selection of original and derivative content, though not all content is available worldwide due to licensing and/or government restrictions. Drillimation develops games primarily for the Japanese and western markets. Due to the use of "Co., Ltd." in the company name and the Japanese text in the logo, some players mistook the company for a Japanese developer. Despite positive critical responses to all of the games they have produced, Drillimation in the past had faced scrutiny involving the use of asset flipping in their GoAnimate animations to poor treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wiki.

## History

Drillimation was founded on August 20, 2014 as a way to make GoAnimate videos featuring characters from Bandai Namco Entertainment's *Mr. Driller* franchise, with the name being coined the same day. Although they were able to produce more than 80 episodes of GoAnimate material, their content drew criticism due to unauthorized use of fanmade sprites to produce the videos. Drillimation ceased using GoAnimate after the site transitioned to HTML5 in early 2016, which removed the site's most popular themes. Drillimation began restructuring themselves after the HTML5 transition, deciding to become a game developer while still being an animation studio.

In the summer of 2018, Drillimation began developing *Chuhou Joutai*, its first game. Drillimation's website officially launched in May 2019. The game took a year and a half to develop before the beta released in January 2020. They also took the chance and remade the very first *Touhou Project* game, *The Highly Responsive to Prayers*, in the style of an NES game. In the summer of 2020, Drillimation began receiving commission requests from various doujin developers. In November 2020, Drillimation launched their official Patreon page to increase revenue due to declining sales. Drillimation Systems closed their Tumblr site on December 31, 2020.

In July 2022, Drillimation announced they would be rebranding in January 2023 with a new logo. The new logo would also accompany their new philosophy with the aim of connecting players globally as illustrated in the new logo's typeface.

## Development process

Every Drillimation game starting from *Chuhou Joutai* their very first game, has been produced in-house, with all graphics, sounds, and programming done by the Prophet Driller. Starting with *Touhou Meijinka ~ Song of Divine Tempest*, Drillimation outsourced the graphical production to E. Enthusiasm. Drillimation's games generally have relatively low budgets and often employ cost-conscious development techniques, lowering the time needed to produce certain assets.

All of Drillimation's games are retro-inspired, built on an engine that makes use of fewer resources. The games are intentionally produced in low resolution and then blown up to fit the whole screen. While the end result looks pixelated, this allows the game to run smoothly without eating up a lot of video RAM.

## Philosophy

### User friendliness

Almost all of Drillimation's games are designed to be easily understandable, even for newcomers. All of the *Chuhou Joutai* games have tutorials, allowing the player to get a quick understanding of how to play the game the moment they start playing.

### Family friendliness

All of Drillimation's games aim to appeal to players of all ages, with most of its content conforming to the same values set by the Walt Disney Company. As a result, profanity and sexual references are absent, and Drillimation chooses not to design female characters in revealing outfits exposing excessive amounts of cleavage. All instances of violence are not treated realistically, and all depictions of death are done comically, with characters either disappearing or dying off-screen.

## Gameography

### Franchises

 *Touhou Project NES Demakes* | 5
 *Emiverse* | 1

### Canceled

 *Touhou Tenkijou* | RPG
 *Muse Genkaroku* | Action RPG
 *Tenrai Bakufu* | Action RPG
 *Touhou Tengyakushuu ~ Zenith of Antinomic Monarch* | Danmaku shooter

## Criticism and controversy

Over the course of Drillimation's existence, the company has been criticized for a number of instances of alleged plagiarism and poor treatment of users on wikis in the past.

### Plagiarism and asset flipping

Drillimation has been accused a number of times of plagiarising other users' works in their content. Most notably back in Drillimation's early days before they had even entered the video game industry, the company developed a reputation for using other users' sprites as well as art in their GoAnimate videos, a process that is known as asset flipping - the act of creating content using nothing but pre-made assets with little or no original work. As a result, users began attacking Drillimation by exposing their practices on Twitter and Instagram. This eventually culminated in the original sprite artist filing a large DMCA takedown on the videos, leading to all of Drillimation's GoAnimate videos being eventually removed when the company restructured in early 2016.

Drillimation was also accused of the same thing during the development of the first of the *Touhou Project NES Demakes*, claiming these remakes make use of smaller versions of existing assets from the games they were based on.

### Treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wikis

In 2019, Drillimation Systems was criticized for their poor and harsh treatment of users on the Dream Logos and Fiction Wikis, such as censoring content in an attempt to keep the site family-friendly. It was said the overall behavior of the Prophet Driller contributed to his eventual downfall. After the Prophet had been stripped of his administrative rights from a boycott in December 2019, Drillimation announced they would no longer head the site due to the sheer amount of criticism.

### Dispute with KquarGaming

On March 8, 2020, a user by his online handle KquarGaming, made critical remarks on the Prophet Driller by posting two memes of him on Instagram. Drillimation alleged that Kquar violated their copyrights and filed a DMCA complaint through Facebook, leading to the posts being removed. This led to Kquar arguing in a YouTube rant that Drillimation was abusing the DMCA in a deliberate attempt to silence criticism, calling their response "curt."  A few days after the strike, Drillimation claimed through a press release and a direct message on Twitter that Kquar had no right to use the Prophet Driller's face in Drillimation-related derivative works and that his memes violated their Game Content and Brand Usage Rules. He also accused the studio of getting his Discord account suspended for a raid he did not participate in.

It's interesting to note that abusing the DMCA is an example of the Streisand effect, where censoring criticism draws more attention. Drillimation has assured to make sure the personality rights of all of their clients are protected. As mentioned above, Drillimation has taken legal action against those who use photographs or video footage of the Prophet Driller or any of Drillimation's clients without their permission.

### Alleged mistranslations

For localizers learning the Japanese language, it is not uncommon for localizers to rely on Google Translate for words they do not know. On October 10, 2020, Drillimation Systems came under fire for their initial translation of ZUN's new content guidelines that localizers misinterpreted. Drillimation has also been criticized for their poor treatment of users, especially during the Dream Logos and Fiction Wiki era. The team was aware of grammatical and romanization techniques that the Prophet Driller did not fully understand. Drillimation also encourages Japanese players to chip in translations if they find an error. Since then, the Prophet's Japanese proficiency has drastically improved, though not perfect.

## Behind the Scenes

* In an article about the game on the French gaming blog *Graal*, the writer claims Drillimation Systems is a Japanese company. This is false, as Drillimation, in reality, is an American company targeting the Japanese and western markets. This error was nonetheless corrected after the Prophet on Twitter told them of the mistake.

## External Links

* Website
* Twitter
* Instagram

## References

1. ↑ https://twitter.com/Drillimation1/status/1401495436339339266?s=20
2. ↑ https://drillimation.com/faq-general/ FAQ/General
3. ↑ http://drillimation.com/2020/11/22/drillimation-systems-is-now-on-patreon/ Drillimation Systems is now on Patreon!
4. ↑ https://drillimation.com/2020/12/01/monthly-updates-december-2020/ Monthly Updates: December 2020
5. ↑ https://drillimation.com/2020/10/01/monthly-updates-october-2020/ Monthly Updates: October 2020
6. ↑ https://dreaming-seal.itch.io/chuckoplus *Chucko+* by Dreaming Seal Entertainment
7. ↑ https://phoskryfes.itch.io/catch-hina *Catch Hina* by Phoskryfes, SinigangShake
8. ↑ https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LpmqHNfaO9UVyG1CCTt0nE8Fqt8Dqbte/view *Lost Festival* by Vela Premiere
9. ↑ http://drillimation.com/2021/05/22/drillimation-systems-localizes-velocity-noodles-into-japanese/ Drillimation Systems Localizes “Velocity Noodles” into Japanese
10. ↑ https://twitter.com/WonderAtelier/status/1733941472024485980
11. ↑ http://drillimation.com/2020/03/12/the-prophet-driller-on-defamation-claim-did-instagram-post-spark-tic-attack/ The Prophet Driller on Defamation Claim – Did Instagram post spark tic attack!?
12. ↑ http://drillimation.com/2020/08/06/what-happens-if-you-get-dmcad-for-using-the-prophet-drillers-face/ What happens if you get DMCA’d for using the Prophet Driller’s face?
13. ↑ http://drillimation.com/restricted-images-video-and-audio/ Restricted Images, Video, and Audio
14. ↑ http://drillimation.com/2020/10/10/drillimation-systems-statement-on-alleged-mistranslation-on-zuns-new-content-guidelines/ Drillimation Systems Statement on Alleged Mistranslation on ZUN's New Content Guidelines
15. ↑ http://www.graal.fr/2020/04/20/chuhou-joutai/ Chuhou Joutai | Blog des jeux vidéo indépendants (in French)
16. ↑ https://twitter.com/Drillimation1/status/1252285837171142659?s=20