>>58371534His health spiralled down after he took over Pokémon, to the point he collapsed (probably overdosed on coke, but the japs wouldn't admit it) and wasn't even in office when Ruby / Saphire was released (he was in rehab), and thought the game was a "worthless" and "shit".
Read this:
>Ruby/Saphire made Junichi Masuda be hospitalizedhttps://en.as.com/meristation/news/pokemon-ruby-and-sapphire-gave-game-freak-so-much-trouble-that-junichi-masuda-was-hospitalized-n/My headcanon is that either Masuda was ready to flee the country once the reviews came in and the Ruby/Saphire were rejected for being utter trash because he was syphoning in money out of the dev budget and afraid of some internal investigation, or that he legitimately overdosed a few weeks prior to the release of the game and was in rehab.
I don't buy this whole 'developing this game boy game is hard, I am collapsing' nonsense. Even if it is truth, how normal is it that your game director needs to be admitted in a psychiatric hospital prior to the game's release? The people who made Baldur's Gate 3 were going to cocktails and making fun livestreams. Meanwhile Masuda was supposedly near killing himself over a 6 MB game if you believe the official narrative.
