Bernard "Bernie" Stolar served as the Executive Vice President of Sony Computer Entertainment America until he departed Sony on July 15th, 1996. As the legends go, he was a tyrant who forbade RPGs and 2D games from being released for the Playstation in North America during his senseless reign of terror.
But is there any truth to it?
Well, for starters, the claim that 2D was forbidden from Sony's silicone is easy to debunk. There were over a dozen 2D titles released for the PSX during Stolar's tenure at SCEA.
Now what about the supposed RPG ban? The answer to that is a little more complicated.
On February 8th, 1996, SCEA announced it would localize two Japanese RPGs: Beyond the Beyond and Arc the Lad. This is where it gets interesting.
According to the Arc The Lad wiki, SCEA got cold feet about localizing Arc and canceled it. This is when Working Designs stepped in. They wanted to localize Arc themselves if SCEA wouldn't do it, but Stolar responded with a resounding "NO".
This rejection caused the head honcho of Working Designs, Victor Ireland, to develop an extremely public and extremely heated grudge against Stolar. He asserted that Arc was a victim of Stolar's "anti-RPG edict".
Yet SCEA had approved the North American release of Beyond the Beyond. If there was ever a so called anti-RPG edict then it was no longer in effect by February 8th, 1996, before WD had even attempted to localize Arc.
Ireland tried to explain this discrepency by floating a conspiracy theory that SCEA approved Beyond the Beyond because they expected it to fail commercially, which they would then use as a justification to deny all future PSX RPGs from being released in North America.
Of course, it was outlandish to think that SCEA would localize a game if they thought it wouldn't sell, and doubly outlandish to think they wanted to prevent North American Playstation owners from buying RPGs. They were a business focused on making money, not making some strange ideological statement that the RPG genre should stay in Japan.
Despite Ireland's claims of Machiavellian schemes and villainous edicts, Stolar insisted that he had no prejudice against RPGs, and his go-ahead to localize Beyond the Beyond suggests this was genuinely the case. His misgivings about Arc apparently had nothing to do with its genre.
And thus WD lost the battle. But not the war. They were eventually able to secure their coveted license and released Arc The Lad Collection in 2002. They were nothing if not persistent.
So in the end, the story that SCEA had banned RPGs and 2D games under Stolar's leadership was just an urban legend, egged on in part by a spiteful Ireland.
Tall tales of Bernie the Devil continue to be perpetuated over 20 years later. He wasn't perfect, and some people may have a legitimate bone to pick with him, but he certainly wasn't the fiend he was made out to be while at Sony.
Hopefully one day the myths about Stolar and SCEA will be put to rest. It's beyond time.
- C.S. Allin
