https://shmuplations.com/okada2022/ Today we have part 2 (technically the first part) of the lengthy Satoru Okada retrospective from February. This covers Okada's early days at Nintendo up through the Donkey Kong arcade development, and offers more interesting "behind-the-scenes" look at the decision making process in Nintendo's early days.
We will definitely have at least one more interview to share this month, but I might take May off as some recent work projects + family stuff has left me stretched very thin and needing to catch my breath a bit.
Greetings to all patrons new and old! It's time again to offer suggestions and feedback re: what you'd like to see translated in the next few months. I'll still be referring to the previous voting posts, but it's never a bad idea to post again what you'd like to see translated. Also, if multiple people suggest the same interview, it's more likely to get translated, so feel free to second other patron's suggestions. And as always, don't hesitate to ask questions about the interviews if you're curious about their content/length etc.
To vote, please take a look at the list here: http://shmuplations.com/patreonlist/ and leave a comment on this post letting me know what you'd like me to translate.
Not much to report this time--I've recently finished a huge commercial project (for Taito's Rayz Arcade Chronology series, actually) and am looking forward to returning my focus and attention to shmuplations. I'll be kicking this month off with the remainder of the long Satoru Okada retrospective, and later a privately commissioned Bloody Roar 2 interview which was generously given permission to host here. Other than that, I'll be devoting myself to your requests/votes, and I'll endeavor to comment on your selections more actively now that my time has freed up a bit.
This vintage interview with Bill Gates was originally featured in the 8/83 issue of LOGiN magazine. It's largely an advertisement for the upcoming MSX, which would be released in Japan two months later, and Gates' vision of a "computer in every home." Gates also shares his thoughts on Atari and the video game landscape, differences between the Japanese and American computer markets, and the meaning behind the 'X' in MSX.
That wraps up March for us! Apologies for the lateness of these last couple updates--I was quite busy with the Taito Ray'z Collection work this month. On that note, a special thanks to our editor GSK for picking up the slack with the Shinobi and Dynamite Deka translations. We'll have a new voting thread soon and should be back to our normal update schedule for April.
Taken from Shinobi THE WIDE Illustration Archives, this long interview with producer Masahiro Kumono and director Toru Shimizu of former Sega satellite studio Overworks covers the making of Shinobi for PlayStation 2, with their discussion touching upon protagonist Hotsuma's striking design, moving to 3D, difficulty preferences around the world, the pursuit of pure action gameplay and much more.
Taken from the Dynamite Deka 2 Official Guide, this interview covers the making of Sega's popular polygonal brawler Dynamite Deka/Die Hard Arcade and its then-new sequel, Dynamite Deka 2/Dynamite Cop, offering insight into the series' cinematic underpinnings, changing hardware, unused ideas and much more. Apologies for the relatively late update this month--we'll have two more interviews to share next week. This one was published by our longtime editor/translator GSK, btw (as was the Yoshio Sakamoto piece from last month). Enjoy!
This delightful little interview first appeared in the 2/86 issue of Famimaga. At the time Endo was riding high on the success of Tower of Druaga and Xevious, and while his impact and popularity has largely gone unappreciated in the West, Miyamoto pays him due respect as the elder, senior personage. Endo, for his part, seems duly impressed by Miyamoto's rising star and the impact of Super Mario Bros, in particular.
That wraps up February's translations! I wasn't planning for all three interviews to be Nintendo-based, but fear not, next month we'll have a normal selection of different devs. Btw, I think this is now the earliest Shigeru Miyamoto interview available in English... lmk if you're aware of an earlier one.
Taken from Nice Games' Game Boy Navigator tankobon, this interview with veteran Nintendo designer/director/producer Yoshio Sakamoto offers a brief overview of several of his early works, with a particular focus on Japan-only titles like Famicom Detective Club and Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls), as well as an extended discussion about his then-new Game Boy CCG, Trade & Battle: Card Hero.
This lengthy Satoru Okada interview was originally featured in a two-part series at 4gamer.net; this is the latter half which focuses mainly on the Game Boy, GBC, and GBA developments. Okada offers a wealth of interesting anecdotes about Nintendo's internal dev process, including some comical moments with presidents Hiroshi Yamauchi and Satoru Iwata. Next month we'll translate the first part, which covers Okada's early days designing toys and the Game & Watch.
This pre-release Armored Core interview originally appeared in The Playstation magazine. The questions largely center on mecha designer Shoji Kawamori's contributions, though producer Yasuyoshi Karasawa and programmer Eiichi Hasegawa also share their ambitions (at this point, the game was only 1/3 complete).
These two lengthy Live a Live interviews were originally published in Famicom Tsuushin and Gamest magazines. The first, with director Takashi Tokita, discusses some of the big-picture themes and how the original omnibus concept was conceived. The second interview covers some similar ground but includes three other members of the team and a discussion of their respective contributions.
The first of these two Jaleco interviews appeared in the book Famichuu Seishun Famicom Gekijou in 2011. Y-san, a manager who joined Jaleco in the Famicom era, shares his thoughts about the companies' famous franchises, including the numerous Moero! games (the baseball iteration of which is known in the US as Bases Loaded) and the many Ninja Jajamaru-kun games. The second interview is from a 1986 issue of BEEP magazine and includes a rare instance of criticism from the interviewee, over the magazine's harsh review of Argus!
Greetings to all patrons new and old. It's time again to offer suggestions and feedback re: what you'd like to see translated in the next few months. I'll still be referring to the previous voting posts, but it's never a bad idea to post again what you'd like to see translated. Also, if multiple people suggest the same interview, it's more likely to get translated, so feel free to second other patron's suggestions. And as always, don't hesitate to ask questions about the interviews if you're curious about their content/length etc.
To vote, please take a look at the list here: http://shmuplations.com/patreonlist/ and leave a comment on this post letting me know what you'd like me to translate.
Happy New Year everyone! Not much to report this quarter--the last few months have been incredibly challenging and busy for me (professionally and personally), but things are finally leveling out.
We've added about 10 new interviews to the backlog list, which you can search for by the !NEW! tag and Date Added filter. They include a neat ESPrade interview which I don't believe has been translated before, a nice history of the Fire Emblem series, a slew of Psychic Force 2012 interviews, a rare Racing Lagoon interview, and a lengthy Satoru Okada retrospective looking back at Nintendo hardware. Several of these were donated by patrons--thank you!
This short-but-sweet L.A. Machineguns interview was originally featured in Dreamcast Magazine. Often called a spiritual sequel to Gunblade NY, the Sega AM3 team is in a jocular mood here as they discuss this game's intended market and design challenges, including a more robust scoring system and an ambitious (for the time) "AI" system for both camera and enemies.
I've also added the much-requested Tomba 2 interview that user ProtoSnake generously uploaded. Unfortunately, it's a very short interview (there was some silly in-character banter that I opted not to include since it was a lot of grunting that didn't translate very well, haha), but it makes a nice bookend to the original Tomba interviews. I've appended it here: https://shmuplations.com/tomba/
...that wraps up this quarter for us! We'll have a new poll for the New Year, and I hope to get another video piece up soon too. Hopefully updates will return to a more regular schedule now that the stress of moving is (mostly) behind me now... thanks for your patience. Cheers and Merry Xmas + Happy New Year to all!
This Street Fighter III developer interview is part of a longer series of interviews contained on the 15th Anniversary Street Fighter limited edition DVD set released in 2003. Producer Noritaka Funamizu and main designer Hidetoshi Ishizawa discuss the challenges of designing everything "new", including the characters, mechanics like the parry system, and more. We will be translating the other portions of this series soon!
These three interviews with the members of The Black Mages were originally found at the GSLA archive. Each interview coincides with the release of their three cds in 2003, 2004, and 2008. While not the most in-depth discussion, they contain rare commentary from each member on their individual Final Fantasy arrangements; as such, they're probably best enjoyed by listening and re-visiting those works as you read.
Hey all! Sorry for the late update this month, was super busy with moving up to Hokkaido... but we're all settled in now, and hopefully December will be more regular with updates. This nice Thexder interview was a little short, so I've added Aconcagua as well.
These two PoPoLoCrois interviews cover the making of Sugar & Rockets' heartwarming (but often overlooked) RPGs for the Playstation. The first, found at the GSLA archive, discusses general concepts and inspirations, while the second, from The Playstation magazine, explores the characters and story of the sequel in more detail. A long-awaited translation patch was finally released for the first game in September.
These Bushido Blade interviews were originally featured in Playstation Magazine and Dengeki Playstation. Bushido Blade was the debut production of developer Lightweight, who went on to make several other unorthodox fighting games before being relegated to the world of smartphone development. Here director Kunihiko Nakata and two of his key team members discuss their ideas about fighting games, the challenges of designing the arena maps, and some surprising influences.
The first of these two lengthy Suikoden II interviews appeared in the 3/99 edition of Dengeki Playstation; the second comes from the Japanese Gensou Suikoden II 108 Stars Character Guide. Both get deep into the nitty-gritty details of how Suikoden II's many characters were created, and include various other design topics and comical accounts of behind-the-scenes hijinks.
Hey guys! This massive piece is the guest-contributed interview I mentioned last month. I had planned to publish it as a free post, but unfortunately the original translation had so many errors that it required extensive re-writes; it now reads much cleaner (and is accurate) but it took a lot of time given the length. Anyway, next month we'll be back to our normal update schedule & patron requests!
These two Dragon Quest VI interviews (one pre-release and one post-release) were originally featured in Famicom Tsuushin magazine. Director Yuji Horii, programmer Manabu Yamana, and composer Koichi Sugiyama discuss their ambitions and challenges in the last of the SFC Dragon Quest games. Interestingly, according to Horii the freedom of DQII was a touchstone of DQVI's design.
In this 1996 interview, taken from Studio Bent Stuff's All About Super Puzzle Fighter IIX guidebook, several key members of Capcom's arcade team discuss the making of their all-star versus puzzle game, offering insight into the genesis of the project, selecting the characters, applying their fighting game expertise to a new genre and more.
hey all! bit of a late update this time--very busy month here, but we'll have two more interviews to share later this week, and November should be back to our regular update schedule.
Greetings to all patrons new and old. It's time again to offer suggestions and feedback re: what you'd like to see translated in the next few months. I'll still be referring to the previous voting posts, but it's never a bad idea to post again what you'd like to see translated. Also, if multiple people suggest the same interview, it's more likely to get translated, so feel free to second other patron's suggestions. And as always, don't hesitate to ask questions about the interviews if you're curious about their content/length etc.
To vote, please take a look at the list here: http://shmuplations.com/patreonlist/ and leave a comment on this post letting me know what you'd like me to translate.
Hey all! Last cycle we focused heavily on Nintendo Dream interviews and fairly mainstream names/titles. This time, patron-votes permitting, I'd like to mix in some more niche or under-represented titles.
Otherwise, these days I'm splitting my time between Hokkaido and Tokyo, and will soon be taking more trips to the Diet Library to gather new material. I also want to make sure I do another video interview before Christmas (I haven't scoured youtube/nicodouga lately for video content, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to request them here!)
These mini-interviews with four up-and-coming developers first appeared in Famicom Tsuushin. While it doesn't contain many specific development and design details, it presents a neat snapshot of the thinking surrounding RPGs in 1993. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest still loomed large as major reference points, and thoughts were mixed about the pros and cons of CD-ROM media.
That does it for this cycle! We covered a lot of "mainstream" series this time (many from Nintendo Dream magazine), but next round I'd like to return to some more niche series, patron votes permitting, of course. Cheers and please look for the new voting thread next week!
These two Super Mario Sunshine interviews feature a candid discussion between producers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and director Yoshiaki Koizumi. The first is from Nintendo Dream and discusses how the unique FLUDD system came out of the GameCube controller design. The second looks at the nozzles, action, and other level design choices.
This lengthy Minish Cap interview with director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and producer Eiji Aonuma originally appeared in Nintendo Dream magazine. It offers a deeper look into the making of Minish Cap than the other interview hosted at shmuplations, and looks at the working relationship between Capcom and Nintendo, the notion of "map-as-dungeon" design, and Fujibayashi's abiding love of 2D.
This pre-release Metal Gear Solid interview with director Hideo Kojima originally appeared in Famitsu Weekly magazine in early 1997. Kojima is his usual talkative self and shares his thoughts about the game design, working in 3D, and his now-familiar cinematic aspirations. There's even a fun little note about Mario Kart 64 at the end, too...!
Originally published in Nintendo Dream #107, this interview with Sega director Takashi Iizuka discusses the making of Sonic Heroes, successor to the Sonic Adventure series and Sega's first multi-platform, third-party 3D Sonic game. The talk largely focuses on Sonic Team USA, the US-based but primarily Japanese-staffed branch of Sonic Team that developed or supervised most of the Sonic games released from 1999 to 2008.
This wide-ranging interview with composer Yuzo Koshiro first appeared in the jp book series game maestro. Koshiro recounts his early days at Falcom, writing for the Megadrive, and some of his recent work like Legend of Oasis and Shenmue. There's a fun digression about then-new "music games" too. The influence of classical music is a recurrent theme, as is Koshiro's conception of game music generally.
Hey guys, two long-requested interviews for this update: the PS2 cult classic SkyGunner and the Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge OVA. Neither was quite long enough for a full feature so I decided to do both. Enjoy!
At long last, we've got the second part of the massive Takatsuna Senba interview ready. It features more discussion of Metal Black, and a look at the development (and failings) of Dino Rex. FYI, part two begins with the question "How long did it take to make Metal Black?" Enjoy!
