Who drew the Detective Jinguji Saburo covers?

Tantei Jingūji Saburō, Detective Saburo Jinguji in the West, is Data East's long-running mystery adventure series, begun in 1987 on the Famicom Disk System: a hard-boiled private eye and a Tokyo of rain, bars and corpses. Across dozens of entries and nearly every platform since, from Famicom to Switch, the series has had many developers and one consistent visual signature.

That signature is Terada's. Japanese references list him as the series' designer from 1987 onward; he is credited with its original character designs and worked on it more consistently than any other artist, above all as its cover illustrator, and the painted noir covers are a large part of how the series is recognized in Japan. It was among his earliest game work, the door that his student debut and advertising years opened into the industry.

The work is substantial enough to fill its own book: Work Jam's licensed art book Detective File, published in February 2005, collects his Jinguji art as the series' official visual record. Artist and series marriages this long are rare in games. Jinguji is the quiet backbone of Terada's career, less famous abroad than Zelda, and longer than everything.