Sega's Yosuke Okunari, M2's Naoki Horii & Tsuyoshi Matsuoka of the Oboro-ryuu discuss Sega Ages G-LOC, out tomorrow on the 🇯🇵 Switch eShop
why'd they pick G-LOC, especially over the similar & more well-known Afterburner? from the jump, they started by deciding on which new games to take on, knowing that their budget & schedule would only allow for so many bigger-scale projects; with that in mind, they chose...
...Gain Ground, Virtua Racing & G-LOC as their big new games, with the expectation that they could release more familiar games early on, Gain Ground somewhere in the middle & the trickier games, VR & G-LOC, at the end, but those "easy" games ended up requiring more work than...
...expected, plus more games were added, which led to the current situation where they're more than a year behind schedule
G-LOC ran on System Y hardware, so this is game #3 on that hardware for this team, after Galaxy Force II & Power Drift; those games were running on weaker…
G-LOC ran on System Y hardware, so this is game #3 on that hardware for this team, after Galaxy Force II & Power Drift; those games were running on weaker…
…hardware (PS2, 3DS) that required them to rewrite the original code in C for the sake of performance, but they presumed the Switch would let them fully emulate the Y board, but they ended up having to rewrite the assembler for this version too—emulating three 68000s ain't easy
for reference, Galaxy Force II on PS2, which they pledged to finish in three months, took around two years, and Power Drift on 3DS took around a year and a half of them constantly rewriting & replacing code, not knowing if it'd ever get to a state they were happy with
one of Okunari's other goals is to reissue all of Yu Suzuki's games, and G-LOC was one of the big remaining outliers: they put out Champion Boxing and Power Drift on 3DS, and even the original Hang-On is now playable again via Shenmue 1&II HD
unlike other projects including Gain Ground and Virtua Racing, Sega wasn't able to provide source code for G-LOC, so the Sega Ages version was produced completely via reverse engineering; even the arcade board had to be borrowed from the store BEEP as Sega couldn't loan theirs
the interviewer remarks on how modern hardware like Switch still has issues running a 30yo game; they explain that the hardware's strengths let them, say, add 8p split-screen to Virtua Racing, but aren't suited to emulation, "it's like using an F1 machine to carry your luggage"
on whether they considered including the R360 version of G-LOC or the semi-sequel Strike Fighter, the basic answer is that because this is basically a port and not an emulator that they can drop ROMs into, including three games simply would have required three times the work
Matsuoka: we have G-LOC R360 running on a PC, so we could do it on high-CPU hardware
Okunari: now that u've said that, ppl will say "ok, bring it to PS4"
Matsuoka: after all the work I did rewriting the game logic in C & rewriting the emulator for Switch, I don't want to (lol)
Okunari: now that u've said that, ppl will say "ok, bring it to PS4"
Matsuoka: after all the work I did rewriting the game logic in C & rewriting the emulator for Switch, I don't want to (lol)
for the moving cabinet feature, they went to Sega's warehouse to get photos of both the standard & DX cabinets; the DX cabinet was broken, so they just took photos & used the mechanical drive sfx they'd previously recorded from the Afterburner cabinet, but within weeks of...
...the final master, Matsuoka stumbled over a youtube video of the G-LOC DX cabinet, heard the authentic drive sounds & decided they needed the genuine sfx in the game
aside from Sega's broken cabinet, the only other one they knew of was owned by the Japan Game Museum in Aichi…
aside from Sega's broken cabinet, the only other one they knew of was owned by the Japan Game Museum in Aichi…
…so they called them up & said "our deadline's in a week, we really need to record you cabinet, can you help?"
they said "ours still needs repairs but we'll see what we can do"; a few days later, they got the word it was fixed & sent M2's sound crew on the shinkansen to Aichi
they said "ours still needs repairs but we'll see what we can do"; a few days later, they got the word it was fixed & sent M2's sound crew on the shinkansen to Aichi
back when they were making Galaxy Force II 3DS, they heard a hotel in Hokkaido still had a super DX cabinet, so they made the effort of securing a travel budget, expert consultants, etc only to get there & find they didn't have it any more, so this G-LOC trip made up for that one
when they were recording the drive sounds they took off the case & shot footage of the internal mechanisms of the moving cabinet, and they've recreated the vibration via HD rumble, the front-of-cab LEDs on the virtual housing, etc in an attempt to provide the authentic sensation
G-LOC's Ages Mode is akin to the extra mode in Afterburner 3DS; they took the advanced course of the arcade game but completely remixed the enemy spawns with tons more enemies that are easier to hit, to bring it closer to a more casual Afterburner-ish experience
Strike Fighter was basically a previous attempt at "Afterburner-ing" G-LOC, so they thought about how to make the Ages mode distinct while achieving the same goal & also still feeling like G-LOC; increasing the enemy count & shot count was one way & they liked the lock-on from...
...the R360 version, which is much more accommodating than the standard version, but Matsuoka hadn't been inspecting the R360 ROM didn't think it could be copied by eye so he gave up; all of a sudden, the intrepid programmer Minami who was leading the ROM analysis had it working
before the Ages Mode was solidified, they'd implemented a mode that would halve the game's notoriously strict enemy takedown quotas, but Okunari eventually vetoed it because the fun of G-LOC is fighting against the clock & when you suddenly have lots of extra time it's kinda dull
they also added a quick lock-on a la Afterburner 3DS, which was suggested by Sega's Masato Nishimura based on something he saw in an old prototype ROM; Nishimura's an artist by trade but he's very opinionated & has a weirdly good ear for audio discrepancies, so he helps out a lot
like Virtua Racing, G-LOC only plays short tunes that fade out before the action stars, so they added the option to have them play & loop during gameplay; this mode was included in part because the original composer, Sega legend Hiroshi "Hiro." Kawaguchi, requested it on twitter
Matsuoka tried to get a brand new song from Hiro in exchange for adding the mode but it wasn't feasible in the end
they've also added the R360 version tunes to the sound test, and the credits video is actually running (non-playable) footage from the R360 version in ride mode
they've also added the R360 version tunes to the sound test, and the credits video is actually running (non-playable) footage from the R360 version in ride mode
on the new G-LOC OST: one of the previous OSTs listed a certain rune as "unused" but through making this port, Okunari learned it's actually in the game & plays when you have lots of time left; he told this story to Nishimura who replied with "I always heard it at the arcade😏"
as they sign off, Horii remarks on how for M2's first Sega project, Gunstar Heroes for Game Gear, Sega sent them a Game Gear package that included the G-LOC Game Gear "port" & he remembers thinking "...this is G-LOC?"& how he's finally come full circle with this Sega Ages version
...and that's pretty much it, kinda sleep deprived atm so if I messed anything up, my bad & lemme know
here's that G-LOC OST btw: OG, R360 & Strike Fighter plus a new Kei Takanishi medley, ¥2750 beep-shop.com/ec/products/de…🇯🇵
here's that G-LOC OST btw: OG, R360 & Strike Fighter plus a new Kei Takanishi medley, ¥2750 beep-shop.com/ec/products/de…🇯🇵
