"I've already outlined the connection between these two games in my books, but I'd like to cover it again here, too: Shigeki Toyama, the designer who helped solidify Xevious after many dead ends, & Kikikaikai's original planner, Hisaya Yabusaki, were sempai/kohai in highschool"🇯🇵
"Taito had the Central R&D Lab ('ChuKen') but in the hopes of hitting upon fresh ideas, an in-house contest was held to invite non-ChuKen employees to submit game plans; the first such game was Hiroaki Sato's Scramble Formation & the second was Kikikaikai"
"Just as Namco's Kazunori Sawano envisaged Xevious as 'vertical Scramble', Hisaya Yabusaki's plans for Kikikaikai were inspired by his beloved Xevious, but deliberately opposite—Xevious was an autoscroller, so Kikikaikai was designed with free-scrolling"
"Chack'n Pop, Rumber Lumber & other games were popular with arcade rats but weren't big sellers; it's no coincidence that Taito's mgmt felt action games with unique rules wouldn't be profitable, and that the two games greenlit via this initiative were STG"
"STG were the bedrock of the arcade & maintained a certain popularity via being games anyone could play without instructions. that said, any old thing wouldn't fly; initially, Kikikaikai was being designed with 360-degree scrolling, but that idea was nixed"
"Kikikaikai losing 360-degree scrolling can be attributed to the failure of Metal Soldier Isaac—Isaac I worked similarly but players were aimless during loc test, so the devs redid the game w hard boundaries to guide the player & released it as Isaac II"
(to clarify, by "360-degree scrolling" they mean arbitrary scrolling on both the horizontal & vertical axis
btw, for those who don't know, Metal Soldier Isaac II was released with that exact title, even though the original version never made it to market)
"Yabusaki didn't want to turn Kikikaikai into a one-way scrolling game, so he added hori & vert sections & maze-like, pseudo-3D terrain; overlapping 3D terrain wasn't possible in the AC ver. but the FC ver, for which he did the initial plan, used this idea"
"initially, the main chara was a monk & while there was a shrine maiden chara, she wasn't playable; when programmer Kazutomo Ishida floated the idea of making her the player-chara at a planning meeting, everyone concurred & the 'OG Maiden Shooter' was born"
"Kikikaikai's main character Saya-chan was modeled after Urusei Yatsura's Sakura, who was Cherry's niece, a shrine maiden & teacher @ Tomobiki High School. The name 'Saya' was chosen via survey during development & the '-chan' suffix is considered official"
"Kikikaikai consciously tried to do the complete opposite of Xevious but the influence is everywhere: for example, Bake-Uri attacking from the well is derived from Derota/Garu-Derota, & Sayo-chan's rod move seems like it was inspired by Xevious' backfire"
"Xevious and Kikikaikai are curiously connected; according to Shigeki Toyama, when Hisaya Yabusaki was interviewing for a job at Taito's old toy production company, Toyama stopped over at his apartment before work at Namco to review his portfolio"
if you want more info like this, Zek (the person whose tweets I'm quoting) has written several books on many classic game subjects, incl. several about & with Shigeki Toyama beep-shop.com/ec/products/li…
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Famitsu posted their developer aspirations feature, with 141 devs & assorted industry figures sharing their goals for 2023 famitsu.com/news/202212/27…🇯🇵 dog tired atm but I'll share any that catch my fancy
ArcSys' Daisuke Ishiwatari's aspiration for 2023: he notes how he's subscribed to multiple video services but just browsing them for things to "consume" feels like work, & even though the average quality of content has risen sharply, it's hard to get excited, and in wondering...
...why that might be, he wonders if having so much easily-accessible quality media might be diminishing the value one places on things, so his aspiration for 2023 is to go back to basics and try to create things that people will feel are important to them
as 2022 winds down, I feel like taking a look back at everything published on @shmuplations over the last year—I'm sure there are plenty of translations that people might've missed for whatever reason, so maybe you'll discover something new: (thread)
first off, a big site redesign went live at the beginning of the year—the original design was not only showing its age but becoming unwieldy on the backend, so it was a long time coming
kicking off 2022's interview content was this 2007 interview with programmer Masayuki Yamamoto on his contributions to Nihon Telenet and their influential anime-esque action/RPG series, Valis shmuplations.com/valis/
it also includes a story about a clever dev workaround…
denfami interviewed Masahiro Sakurai on his jump to youtube: why he did it, how he does it & the secrets nobody's yet picked up on news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/2212…🇯🇵
one of the big things he emphasises early on is how extremely specific his channel is—it's helmed by a high-profile, multi-genre director with the freedom to talk about past work, who's also familiar with many other games, good at visual presentation, has a track record of...
…regular, consistent content production (via his Famitsu column), is willing to eat the cost of regular video production without worrying about profits, /and/ he knows the mission & can do what can be quite lonely work without getting caught up in second-guessing or self-doubt
heads up for anyone who imported a Japanese Mega Drive Mini 2: there's a link & 4-digit password for a user questionnaire on one of the inner flaps of the box, which includes questions about future Minis—here are the questions, one by one: (thread)
#1: when did you buy the Mega Drive Mini 2? (release date: October 27, 2022)
-I pre-ordered
-I bought it on launch day (no preorder)
-I bought it within a week of launch
-I bought it a week or longer from launch
#2: where'd you buy MD Mini 2?
(physical)
-game store
-electronics/camera store
-toy store
-dept store
-CD/book store
-conbini
-other
(online)
-major online store
-electronics/camera online store
-online toy store
-online dept store
-online CD/book store
-Sega Shop
-other
on the reception to the OG MD Mini: when Nintendo announced the FC Mini in 2016, Okunari put together a proposal for a MD Mini the very next day; during the pitching process, Nintendo also put out the SFC Mini
bc the MD Mini was designed under the shadow of Nintendo's minis (>)
...they designed it from the perspective of being a latecomer & thinking hard about how they could clear the bar set by Nintendo, which meant going above & beyond
the SFC Mini had 21 games, so they had have 42—they had Starfox 2, so he wanted to add two big bonus games, etc