to commemorate its 30th anniversary, IGCC spoke to former Taito devs Kenji Kaido and Yasuo Tsumori about the making of Night Striker (part 1) igcc.jp/int-night-stri…🇯🇵 they clearly conducted a long interview, you'll learn more about Jigoku Meguri than Night Striker atm
Kenji Kaido and Yasuo Tsumori discuss the making of Night Striker, part 2 igcc.jp/int-night-stri…🇯🇵 this part covers how Kaido and Tsumori met and the initial production of Night Striker, among other things
Kenji Kaido and Yasuo Tsumori discuss the making of Night Striker, part 3 of 3 🇯🇵 this part covers the location test, cabinet design & post-launch reception
a fun anecdote about Champion Wrestler, which Kaido was planning simultaneously with Night Striker: his orders were to make an action game using a low-cost, low-spec board with quick dev time; since Taito was putting out Technos wrestling games, he chose to make one in-house(>)
Kaido designed Champion Wrestler with trackball controls—they were novel & he didn't have much to spend on the PCB so he wanted to spend a little on the cabinet; he was so confident in the appeal of the trackball that, when sales begged him to use a joystick instead, he took (>)
both the trackball version and the stick version to the location test in order to prove he'd made the right call... and the stick version absolutely dwarfed the intake of the trackball version, so he had no choice but to ditch the trackball
