Thread by @gosokkyu

former Westone president Ryuichi Nishizawa & Strictly Limited Games co-founder Dennis Mendel discuss the resurrection of Westone's unreleased arcade game, Tokeijikake no Aquario famitsu.com/news/202010/23…🇯🇵

https://twitter.com/famitsu/status/1319571822673752065

to start with, here's Tokeijikake no Aquario actually running, which they haven't really shown as of yet

on why SLG is reviving Aquario: Mendel notes certain games aren't always properly evaluated in their day—he cites DICE's unreleased Mega Drive game Ultracore as a recent example; when the publisher cancelled that game, they didn't know DICE was going to become such a juggernaut

…but when SLG published Ultracore, the response reinforced the desire to preserve lost cultural relics

Aquario is another such game: it was poorly received in the wake of the fighting game boom, transition to 3D, etc but the climate that made it seem "obsolete" no longer exists

on Mendel's attraction to Aquario: he was a young Wonder Boy & Mega Drive maniac who read about Aquario in a magazine & later scoured the internet for what little info existed but never really got closure; much later in life, upon forming SLG, he had the chance to hunt for...

...Aquario in earnest, and after almost three years of searching & negotiations, SLG was able to formally proceed

like everyone else, he'd never played or even really seen Aquario, so he was more motivated by love & faith in Westone's output rather than any real business sense

on the overseas reaction to the Aquario revival, a game one would presume has no name recognition overseas: back in the day, Wonder Boy & Westone were seen by some as being as inseparable from Sega as Sonic, so there were a small number of ppl who knew of Aquario's existence...

...but the spread of information was such that it was basically unknown & forgotten

nowadays, thanks to the renewed appreciation of 2D games & Westone's output, SLG's Aquario announcement garnered a ton of feedback & excitement around the world, even with just a few screenshots

on unearthing the Aquario data: through SLG's release of Wonder Boy Returns Remix, they formed a relationship with Shinji Fujiwara of LAT (owner of Westone's IP) & through discussions & meetings with Fujiwara & many other parties including M2, they were able to acquire the source

within a few weeks they had Aquario running but the sound/gfx data was incomplete; thanks to the Aquario soundtrack release, they've been able to reincorporate the original audio, but the missing gfx are being recreated from scratch by former Westone artists & other dot artists

they're trying to include Westone's former devs to the greatest possible extent, not just because they're fans but in order to complete Aquario as faithfully as possible

Mendel was able to meet former devs Takanori Kurihara & Shinichi Sakamoto & has been put in touch with others

on the prospect of extra content: they don't intend to change the game itself too much but they do want to add functionality like screen filters, soundtrack options, etc as well as features to make this arcade-tuned game more accessible to modern players

Aquario will be sold worldwide which ofc includes Japan; there's no ETA beyond "2021" but SLG's planning a collectors package with lots of unseen stuff

Mendel signs off by saying he's incredibly proud to bring ppl Aquario & that he hopes ppl are as thrilled about it as he is

(Famitsu questioned Mendel & Nishizawa separately, so Nishizawa's comments are up next)

on Nishizawa's reaction to the Aquario revival announcement: he wondered how they'd reproduce a game nobody has seen, relying purely on data—just getting the custom-compressed System 18 data to display is tough, let alone verifying/interpreting the "correct" palettes and so on

on Aquario's background: it was being made in '92, during the era when arcade hardware still eclipses consoles & was the place where ppl pushed for cutting-edge graphics; they were priotitising animation but so was every other dev, so the hook was to be 3-player co-op action...

...but the 3P cabinet they were gunning for ended up not being released so they were forced to switch to 2P, one of a zillion hurdles they faced during dev

initially, it was called Ghost Hunter & was more of a shooting game, but they were struggling to make it fun, so...

...Nishizawa jumped in from that point & helped retool the game into Aquario, but even that version didn't test well & went through a lot of changes

Nishizawa's not working on the restoration; when he was sent a progress video & saw Aquario running again for the first time in...

...27 years, he was shocked—not in a nostalgic sense, but with the overwhelming sense of all the work they'd done on something they weren't able to release

the team hasn't really reconvened but Nishizawa did meet with some old staff to track down materials for the package

on supervising the Aquario revival: Nishizawa was wrapped up with Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, so he pretty much left all the supervisory duties, including verifying the game feel, to Kurihara, the original lead programmer; from the sounds of it, co-op testing wasn't easy

Nishizawa's thoughts during the process were basically, "they haven't said they can't do it... I guess it's actually happening...?"

Nishizawa wants people to take note of the use of color & dot art, which is expertly crafted but pleasantly low-detail compared to modern dot art

in closing, Nishizawa's happy that a lost game from so long ago can be made public, and the feeling of discovering a "new old" game is a little like opening a time capsule or finding Jumanji, so he hopes it can be enjoyed by those who remember that arcade era & those who don't

he also expresses his gratitude to the original development team for sticking with him to complete Aquario back in the day, instead of leaving it unfinished

...& that's that, enjoy