Game Gear Micro interview #2: Sega's Yosuke Okunari & Hiroyuki Miyazaki (really, this time) talk Game Gear Mini famitsu.com/news/202006/03…🇯🇵
(I just went through another interview and I imagine this one covers a lot of the same ground so I'll probably skip stuff, go check this thread if you haven't already )
Miyazaki, the producer on MD Mini, was very involved with a lot of Sega 60th projects, most of which have been waylaid by COVID; he wants to come back and do an interview sometime about all the plans they had to cancel
ofc the Game Gear Micro, made in Taiwan, was also affected
ofc the Game Gear Micro, made in Taiwan, was also affected
why go from "mini" to "micro"? the MD Mini was made to match up to the S/NES Classic in form factor & to more realistically evoke the real thing; the Game Gear Micro was concepted with a stronger gimmick from the beginning that'd get ppl talking, which ended up being "micro" size
the interviewer asks whether they really expect ppl to play games like Shining Force on that tiny screen; Okunari says he had the old dudes at M2 test it out and they seemed fine with it, plus they're doing more formal comfort checks
here's OG GG vs the Micro, for comparison
here's OG GG vs the Micro, for comparison
how'd they pick the games? Okunari picked them again, as with the MD Mini, and again he picked them by referencing old sales figures, user comments and ratings from old magazines and more contemporary reactions for games that were reissued on 3DS Virtual Console
why's there a puzzle game on every version? he heard from lots of ppl who bought the MD Mini for games like Landstalker & Bare Knuckle who ended up putting tons of time into Tetris or Columns, and he thought a puzzle-only system might not sell even though people like those games
Game Gear Micro's audio is true to the original hardware; they'd originally planned to only use the in-built speaker but the Game Gear did stereo sound via audio out, so they had to include a headphone jack too
oh & they did reference the VMU when designing the buttons/d-pad
oh & they did reference the VMU when designing the buttons/d-pad
...and that's more or less it, time's tight atm but I'll scan it again later in case I missed anything
