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...
Dec 27, 2022 • 44 tweets • 27 min read
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
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...
Oct 31, 2022 • 34 tweets • 5 min read
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
Jun 3, 2022 • 52 tweets • 10 min read
Sega's classic hardware producer Yosuke Okunari spoke to Famitsu about the Mega Drive Mini 2 famitsu.com/news/202206/03…🇯🇵
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 (>)
earth-shattering spoiler from an involved party: these two probably aren't going to announce Shin Sakura Taisen 2, Yakuza 8 or Phantasy Star Online 3🇯🇵
thinking out loud about potential unreleased marquee games Sega might include with whatever it is they're announcing at the end of the week...
Dreamcast: Propeller Arena (not particularly exciting, but an obvious pull)
Saturn: VF3 (assuming it can/doesn't need to be patched up)
MCD/32X... iunno, Wing War? Power Drift's another one ppl were waiting on
SMS: half the library was intl-only, there's a ton they could pass off as a novelty
it'll be a JP product picked with JP sensibilities, so unreleased, playable games at the Tetris level are hard to pick
Jun 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
STG difficulty discourse is back on the agenda on JP twitter over the last day or so—someone was like "arcade STG got way too hard, no wonder everyone deserted them for fighting games" & ppl replying/discussing how STGs actually became more ruthless /because/ of fighting games
that's exactly it—every other genre was fighting for sales & floor space with fighting games & any game that wasn't bringing in ¥x/minute was seen as a liability, so perhaps more than anything else, arcade operators were wary about installing them
devs Subtle Style, in collaboration with Osaka's KO-HATSU arcade, are crowdfunding the development of "EN-Eins: Perfektewelt Anastasis (temp.)", a third game in the Akatsuki Blitzkampf series ci-en.net/creator/5780/c…🇯🇵 they're asking for ¥3M (flex-funding)
they've also set goals for additional content at ¥3M/7M/10M/12M for new characters, stages, BGM, story, etc
also worth noting: this is explicitly being made for arcades in support of game centers & arcade culture, so they're not talking about home versions
Mar 24, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Kirby and the Forgotten Land's teams discuss moving Kirby into 3D nintendo.co.jp/interview/arzg…🇯🇵 not gonna break the whole thing down as it'll probably be officially translated before long, but it's definitely interesting
one tidbit: it took HAL quite a while to accept that moving to 3D would require them to up the enemy density—no matter how many times Nintendo would request it, HAL would send them builds with sparse stages, in part bc they felt bad about swarming Kirby with hordes of enemies
Mar 22, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Kid Icarus Uprising is ten years old🇯🇵 strong, strong contender for best 3DS game, and one I urge people to actually try for themselves before deciding the controls are a dealbreaker
I wonder if people really know just how much stuff is in this game—like, there's a whole fleshed-out online multiplayer mode that's basically Smash meets Virtual On/Gundam, there's a stupidly complex weapon synthesis system, it pioneered the Fiend's Scale difficulty slider...
Jul 7, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
even more Virtua Fighter eSports info, this time from Sega's eSports dude & Japan-Asia deputy general manager Hiroyuki Miyazaki news.mynavi.jp/article/202107…🇯🇵
on how Virtua Fighter joined Sega's eSports initiative: when Sega started this initiative in 2018, VF was naturally floated as a candidate alongside Puyo Puyo, but because Sega was new to this space & wasn't sure they could run with two games at once, they decided on just Puyo
Jul 7, 2021 • 58 tweets • 11 min read
Virtua Fighter eSports/Ultimate Showdown producer Seiji Aoki & Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada discuss the resurrection & future of Virtua Fighter 4gamer.net/games/572/G057…🇯🇵
Harada's always seen VF as the game to beat; he recalls being asked by now-Bandai Namco Studios president Nakatani, "how long it take for Tekken to surpass VF?" & Harada replied "five games, released once every 2 years", and even then he felt he was being conservative
Jun 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
this comment extends to people who don't even venture online at all—you'd be shocked by how large a % of players buy fighting games with no intention of fighting another human being, & that extends to some niche ones that you'd presume have an overwhelmingly hardcore player base
one thing this clip doesn't touch on is how asocial the online experience for a lot of 1v1 genres, particularly fighting games, can be—just jumping into ranked, completely divorced of any pre-existing social/community element, isn't something most people are going to find fun
Jun 18, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
this was announced in the JP Nintendo Direct & I think it bears highlighting: Konami's making a new Pawapuro-kun Pocket (a 1+2 remake, actually) for the first time in a decade 🇯🇵 unlike Momotetsu, Girls Side, etc I think this stands a chance of localisation
Pawapuro-kun Pocket is the handheld companion series to Pawapuro and much like the GBC/A Mario sports games, the draw is all the extra stuff that's not baseball, but these games went much wilder than Mario ever did, both in terms of side content & the weirdly dark scenarios
Jun 15, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
thinking way too big here, but I wonder if the licensed repro market might be a savvy way to establish certain Japan-exclusive games/series outside of Japan—my mind immediately goes to Linda Cube, but even just staying in Konami's stable, there's that one Brooktown High clone...
I thought the same thing about the TG16 Mini and not only did they not do that but they completely excised certain games for content reasons, but I also wonder if a niche format like this, where the buyers understand precisely what they're getting, might make Konami less skittish
Jun 14, 2021 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
just to re-emphasise what disregard for netcode can do to a fighting game: this lauded, once-hyped series revival just flopped onto the world's biggest platform without a whimper because for as fun as it is, it's impossible to play against another person store.steampowered.com/app/1342260/SA…
only the biggest & most casual games can skate by with bad netcode—anything smaller (and that's most FGs) needs to not only implement proven state-of-the-art netcode but do it /from day zero/ so that the launch audience (always the peak for FGs) actually sticks around
Jun 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Rakuten has the red/yellow/blue Game Gear Micros for ¥2739/2739/3300 right now, that's ~50% off🇯🇵 the black one's marginally cheaper, it was designed to be the most popular choice & I guess it worked
speaking of, Platine Dispositif released a remake of one of their mid-'00s doujin games on Switch this week, and both the title & subtitle are references to two of Gamest's more notorious typos store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/…🇯🇵
Jun 6, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Sega Japan's running a survey for Virtua Fighter eSports sega.jp/enquete/ps4-vf…🇯🇵 among other things, it asks ppl to rate their satisfaction with pretty much every aspect of the game /except/ netcode (but it does give plenty of opportunities for people to manually bring it up)
there's also a question that asks ppl to select the fighting games they've played before and/or are still playing now—UNIB is on there, which is nice to see, and MK's also on there besides not having an official Japanese release in ~25 years
