Thread by @gosokkyu

up on Dengeki PS: a GG Aleste series roundtable interview w/ Hiroki Kodama (GG Aleste planner/artist, GG Aleste II planner/artist/project lead), Kazuyuki Nakashima (artist on GG Aleste 3, MUSHA, Battle Garegga, etc) & Manabu Namiki (GG Aleste 3 director/composer, Rezon artist)🇯🇵

https://twitter.com/dengekips/status/1349642431696785408

on how Namiki, a renowned composer, came to direct GG Aleste 3: when M2 president Horii approached him about handling the music, the project itself has no leader, no direction & no other personnel aside from programmer "Fawlabo"; at that time, Namiki was already working as a...

…sound director on another project that was similarly disorganised & was floundering, so when he sensed that this project might be similarly derailed by a lack of organisation, he volunteered to be the director in order to see it through to the end, for himself & the other staff

Namiki had played the previous GG Aleste games when they originally came out & revisited them for analysis: he concluded that the GG Aleste games represented the distilled essence of Aleste, made with respect to the limitations of the GG & stripped of extraneous/complex elements

therefore, he wanted GG Aleste 3 to maintain the tradition of being easy-to-play & optimised for GG but at the same time, rather than just adopting the previous game systems, he wanted to amalgamate lots of new ideas in order to reflect the evolution of STG over the last ~30 yrs

Kodama's excited by the current reactions to GG Aleste & GG Aleste II—ofc, there was no internet back then, but the games were also released in very limited quantities, so while it's nice to see ppl enjoying them now, he kinda wishes he'd been able to see that feedback back then

when Kodama joined Compile, Puyo Puyo was out but hadn't exploded, so they were still very much in the STG mindset; in order to get a feel for the essence of Compile STG, he basically just played their existing games a bunch

GG Aleste was assigned to Kodama based on plans...

...initiated by someone else (early Puyo director Morita), and it was his first time leading a non-computer game—president Niitani assured him that veteran Jemini Hirono would direct but in the end, Kodama basically directed with heavy assistance from Hirono, Nakashima & others

what's more, halfway through, Kodama was told that GG Aleste would be Compile's first self-published game, so that added even more pressure

at the time, MUSHA was the most recent game & one he used for inspiration; Kodama drew all the graphics by himself, but he had some help...

…designing the bosses from Nakashima, who'd been working for Compile as an independent contractor since Spriggan mark2—he happened to be at Compile for something when Kodama approached him and asked for help, & so between them, that may account for GG Aleste's MUSHA-ish elements

they didn't have a lot of time for dev so they basically hit the ground running, addressing issues as they went, and it wasn't until the very end of development that Kodama felt he had a grasp of what was possible & was able to do genuine directorial work

GG Aleste was made in 3-4 months, with another month or two for debugging & other issues; Kodama made it in a blur & lost track of time, even dreaming about editing pixel art

bc the project started with someone else, he never really felt it was "his" until it was done & in hand

(GG Aleste II & 3 had a similarly short dev time, nothing changes)

the last Compile STG released before GG Aleste in Dec '91 was Spriggan for PCE, released that July; Compile's workflow back then was rather chaotic, with projects constantly being started & bolstered by...

…whoever happened to have free time at that moment; Kodama got drafted into the character design process for Spriggan markII pretty much immediately after they heard GG Aleste was done

Kodama was 20-21 at the time: he'd applied for a job at Compile as a high-schooler, but…

…was too young to hire, so he re-applied as an 18yo after graduation and was hired, and immediately put to work drawing erotic art for computer games, for which the lines about what was & wasn't appropriate were very blurry

Namiki & Kodama are the same age & had similar experiences, with Namiki working part-time as a dot artist at a game company (Allumer) during his ronin days

similarly, composer Keiji Takeuchi (GG Aleste, Super Aleste, Blazing Lasers, etc) worked at Compile as a college job...

...and quit once he graduated, completely leaving the world of game music for decades (but he's working with M2 on Aleste Branch!)

Takeuchi & Kodama didn't interact much; for the most part, Kodama didn't feel he could offer direction on music & left it in the composers' hands

Masanobu Tsukamoto (MATS) worked on sound/sfx as a pinch-hitter for Toshiaki Sakoda who'd left for Sting, & also worked on GGAII; Namiki was surprised to learn MATS did sfx for both, as he'd analysed the sound drivers & saw almost no commonality between the sfx for both games

Kodama was tapped to direct GG Aleste II from the start, so he was more involved with the sound, offering direction notes to MATS & meeting with new composers Chie Oya & Tomonori Minami

GG Aleste II's programmer & co-planner was TAKIN (Takumi Yamashita / 山下巧, sup mobygames)

Kodama speculates that TAKIN was assigned to GG Aleste II as a warmup for Robo Aleste; TAKIN was a quiet guy but he could be incredibly combative with other programmers when it came to implementing ideas he disliked, so Kodama let him do as he pleased, hence his planner credit

GGAII's 3D bonus stage came from TAKIN, which he described during the design stage as "a bunch of jump-ropers approaching from the back of the screen"

"when TAKIN proposes ideas, he usually forgets to preface them with 'wouldn't it be fun if…?'so they come off as non-sequiturs"

they were seated next to each other so their ideas were mostly hashed out on the spot rather than planned out

the 3D bonus stage ended up being a flashy sales piece, and during dev, ppl would come just to try the 3D stage & leave; just as well, bc the main game wasn't fine-tuned

at that point, GGAII was extremely hard & couldn't be cleared even with the napalm gun (which trivialises the final game)

GGA3 was the same: the enemy endurance was super high but as devs, you get used to it & it's not until other ppl play that u realise, 'why's this so hard?!'

even if u do notice the game's too hard, it's a problem that's easy to put off for later

in Nakashima's case, he was working remotely; it was easy enough to get a feel for the difficulty with other ppl around, but working on his own, he couldn't really gauge what was too tough

the GG Aleste 3 devs were making so many enemies in parallel that they didn't have the luxury of scrutinising them on a macro level; Namiki was doing a lot of granular balancing via spreedsheet, & the game's packed with so many ideas in part bc they didn't have time to be picky

they were conscious of matching the technical standards set by GGA & GGAII, but also of the fact that being a mere nostalgia play wasn't enough: there are indie games & homages coming from all over the world & they had to exceed those, irrespective of the limitations of Game Gear

on Nakashima's involvement with GG Aleste 3: Namiki emailed him in February, asking if he'd like to work on a new Game Gear STG—Nakashima thought it was a joke & replied with "ah, GG Aleste 3, sure thing", not knowing that's exactly what Namiki had in mind

once Nakashima was filled in, he agreed, but it wasn't until later that the limitations of the Game Gear hardware really set in

even on GG Aleste, he was taking the hardware constraints into consideration on paper: colors per palette, overall palette number, sprite limits, etc

making high-spec games like GG Aleste 3 requires a lot of sleight-of-hand by constantly clearing, preparing & rewriting mid-screen draw; Nakashima compares it to a stage show, with set assembly & wardrobe changes occurring back-stage while ppl watch the actors performing on-stage

they attribute a lot of these feats to programmer Fawlabo, who not only worked professionally on classic STG like Super Star Soldier but is also a hobbyist programmer who continues to challenge the the limits of FC, mkIII, etc

(see for yourself! youtube.com/user/starparo/…)

that said, they were aware they were going overboard with the amount requests made of Fawlabo, not just bc he was the sole programmer but bc they were working remotely and it's harder to tell if you're asking too much of somebody, but they all ultimately had the players in mind

Namiki heaps praise on Nakashima's ability to phrase things thoughtfully in writing & get everyone on the same page, something he struggled with despite being director

not only did they produce good art, music, etc but the team really gelled, so it was a great project overall

Kodama's experience with project mgmt mostly extended to managing GGAII programmer TAKIN: as previously mentioned, he was an obsessive programmer who'd get in heated arguments with other coders, work in a frenzy for days without going home, etc which Kodama didn't know beforehand

TAKIN was known for going on coding tangents—GGAII's bomb with the fancy raster effects was one such tangent, & while the 3D bonus stage came from a request to do something new, Namiki says he was once told that he would've kept making those stages forever if he wasn't reigned in

GGAII's biggest development hurdle was having their ROM size slashed from 4Mbit to 2Mb—it came early enough in dev that they didn't have to scrap too much completed work, but they'd planned for way more zako, boss animations, etc & loads more opening & character illustrations

Kodama was influenced to add lots of character art to GG Aleste II by another GG game—RIOT's overhead tank game Griffin, which is packed with cheesecake art of the main character—but ultimately, when forced to prioritise, he tearfully gave up the gals for bosses & stages

(as an aside, M2's Komabayashi interjected when Griffin came up—he'd referenced Griffin when consulting with GG Aleste 3 illustrator/character Kisai Takayama, blurting out 'you've outdone Griffin, this is the raunchiest GG box art ever!', which he hopes was taken as a compliment)

hearing their ROM size was cut helps Namiki put two and two together about some of GG Aleste II's peculiarities, like the heavy recycling of zako patterns; Kodama basically delegated a lot of space to the huge bosses, which also kept the project on schedule & kept TAKIN on focus

Nakashima asks Kodama why GGAII's bullets are red & green: he thought it might be an homage to R-Type LEO, but it was a suggestion from TAKIN to mitigate the GG's awful LCD

Kodama asks about GGA3's ROM capacity: 8Mb, a size used by a small handful of games including VF Animation

for Namiki, wearing multiple hats has pros/cons—while it's not optimal in terms of individual output, it's very cost/time-efficient & cuts out a lot of back&forth; otoh, there's very little room for trial&error, so he had to very carefully consider every request he put his team

the interviewer posits that STG teams are typically small; Namiki says there was a time when programmers basically made games on their own but as gfx/sound spec went up, so too did the staff, but for a game like GGA3 made this quickly to this spec, their team was just big enough

on how that compares to indie dev: indies have the luxury of time, & while some (like Toby Fox) are able to overcome their own deficiencies w/r/t art, audio, etc many cannot; pro devs have the advantage of being able to make quick & clear decisions guided by practical experience

when asked to score GGA3, Namiki points out that the interview's been conducted ahead of release, so he ought to wait until ppl have played it, but based on his experience as director & the very positive evaluation from the inner circle who's tried it, he gives it 200 points

Namiki asks if Kodama, who's been out of the industry for ~20yrs, is ready to return to game dev: "if you invite me, I'll make the time"

excluding small game-related jobs here & there, including some dot art, Nakashima's been out for ~15 years, but his instincts came right back

Kodama & Nakashima chat about how dot art has evolved, how the first step is deciding on a tool, how hard it is to draw dot art without a specific goal, etc

Nakashima was very conscious of all the hobbyist STG out there when dotting GGA3, particularly Shigatake's Devil Blade

they're also happy to have offered something different to the danmaku style that's been dominant for years—they weren't consciously eschewing that style of game (plus the GG couldn't handle it anyway) or aiming for a throwback, they just wanted to offer a variety of experiences

in closing, Namiki urges those who enjoy GG Aleste 3 & want another game from the same team to please tweet about it & let M2 know, too

they end the interview with a bunch of puns about martial arts moves as performed by over-the-hill dudes that I am not going to translate @ 2AM

(I did not realise this interview was so long & I ended up majorly condensing/skipping over stuff towards the end, my apologies... I'll file this one away, it really deserves a fuller look sometimes)