This Final Fantasy XI interview with director/writer Kenichi Iwao was originally featured in the FFXI Story Ultimania mook and explores how the backstory and lore were created for Square's inaugural and long-lived MMORPG. The conversation covers the races and cultures of Vana'diel, the Vana'diel Tribune, and various memories Iwao has after 8 years of managing FFXI.
This has been making the patron request rounds for awhile now, nice to get it done. There are actually 6 (!) more interviews from this mook, each about the same length, covering each expansion and the three kingdoms, plus a more general chat with Hironobu Sakaguchi. So feel free to keep voting for FFXI if you'd like to see more!
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 people'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! Things are kicking along here--the Spring was extremely busy for me, mostly due to personal things like buying a house in Hokkaido. We won't be moving there until next year, which means I'll be making numerous return trips to the Diet Library here in Tokyo to grab anything I might have missed. So expect some more additions to the list over the coming months.
For this cycle, I'm definitely going to finish that Takatsuna Senba interview (with more info on Metal Black and Dino Rex). I also found some nice interviews in the FFXI Ultimania guide which I plan to translate, and maybe something from this Pokemon book here.
This short interview with the in-house SNK sound team known as Shinsekai Gakkyoku Zatsugidan (New World Music and Performance Group) originally appeared in Neo Geo Freak magazine. The conversation never goes too deep, but offers brief comments on Garou Densetsu, King of Fighters, and Samurai Spirits. I've also attached the more colorful liner notes from the Samurai Spirits 1993 OST at the bottom.
That wraps things up for June! This SNK composer interview is a little shorter owing to the extended length of the FFIV and Ace Attorney interviews. It probably won't fully satisfy patrons who have requested SNK material, so consider it a teaser, and we'll be revisiting SNK soon. I also took this moment to add a very small 1999 interview with Koji Kondo about Ocarina of Time, which I've appended here: https://shmuplations.com/ocarinaoftime/
Thank you for your continued support, and we'll have the July/August/September voting thread up next week!
This lengthy Ace Attorney 3 interview originally appeared in the Gyakuten Saiban 3 Shinsou Kaimei guidebook printed in 2004. While conducted for the release of GS3, in their various recollections director Shu Takumi, producer Atsushi Inaba, and designer Tatsuro Iwamoto touch on all three games of the original trilogy.
Final Fantasy IV was a major turning point for Square, and marked the real beginning of their cinematic storytelling ambitions. These interviews chronicle the release of FFIV, with a major emphasis on addressing the criticisms from FFIII. They also piece together the timeline of how the Famicom FFIV was abandoned; please note that the first two interviews refer to the SFC game as "FFV".
Last week was my birthday, and every year I like to translate one interview from my personal past for the occasion: this year it's FFIV, which I've been meaning to translate for years now. Next week we'll be getting back to our normally scheduled patron-selections so stay tuned!
This interview with composer Keiichi Suzuki was sourced at the GSLA (it likely was originally featured in one of the many Japanese 32-bit magazines). The main focus is on his work on Kaze no Regret, Kenji Eno's innovative "no visuals" adventure game that is yet to be translated into English. Along the way, Suzuki reflects on the Mother games, his compositional approach, and what "Japanese" music means.
Sorry for the very late posts this month--I had a minor health hitch here but most of my time was taken up with househunting and closing on a property in Hokkaido. Exciting but exhausting stuff.
Since the Keiichi Suzuki piece was a bit niche (not many have played Kaze no Regret, as it's sadly never been localized), I wanted to include the short SMB3 piece that had also been requested. I've appended it to Kondo's 2001 interview, and you can read it here: https://shmuplations.com/kojikondo/
That'll do it for May for us, but we'll be back to our usual schedule of 3 translations per month in June!
This lengthy interview originally appeared in the legendary gaming magazine CONTINUE in 2001, and was later recompiled with others in "the style of game" book printed in 2012. The first half of this interview covers Senba's experiences in the anime industry (on Char's Counterattack, in particular), the transition to Taito and game development, and the design of his most widely lauded creations, Metal Black and Gun Frontier.
This has been requested by multiple patrons for awhile now, so here is the first part! We'll be translating the second half (which covers Dino Rex and the elusive "Gun Frontier 3") in the coming months.
This Moon developer interview was originally featured in the "Moon: Official Book" printed in 1997. It mostly focuses on the backstory of the characters and world, including things that didn't make it into the game (though some of the answers should be probably be taken with a grain of salt). The book also features a small selection of concept art with developer commentary, which I've included in full here.
...that wraps things up for April! I've actually got a couple more moon interviews in the archive if there's further interest: this one goes over a lot of neat story and character details, with zero promotion fluff, so it seemed like a good place to start.
In these two Famitsu interviews (dated 1990 and 2008), series creator Akitoshi Kawazu, planner Hiromichi Tanaka, and composer Kenji Ito discuss the making of SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu (Final Fantasy Legend II), the popular sequel to the idiosyncratic Game Boy RPG Makai Toushi SaGa (Final Fantasy Legend) and the game that cemented the SaGa series as a pillar of Square's RPG output.
We'll have one more interview for this month (the long awaited moon remix RPG). This and ChuChu Rocket! were both translated by GSK, btw, who picked up the slack for me while I attended to some personal business and took a small breather. The rest of this cycle I'll be devoting exclusively to patron requests so sit tight and don't forget to vote if you haven't yet!
These three interviews, starting with an interview from Dreamcast Magazine vol 35 (1999), cover the making of Sega's 4-player party-puzzler Chu Chu Rocket, an outwardly simple game that served as a template for several pioneering technical efforts for Sonic Team, including full online multiplayer on the Sega Dreamcast and extensive single-cartridge multiplayer functionality on the Game Boy Advance.
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 people'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.
Hi everyone! Last cycle saw a big update to the look of shmuplations, and while I'm still fine-tuning things here and there, I think it's largely been a success. Thank you for your support during that period.
This month, I've added about ~100 new interviews to the list of materials. You can find them by searching for !NEW!, or by sorting by the "Date Added" column. These were primarily taken from Saturn Fan, LOGiN (1983-1985), Nintendo Dream (2002-2004), and Famitsu (late 90s). As such, it's a lot of Sega Saturn/Dreamcast material, with some Nintendo thrown in. Some of the pieces that caught my eye:
* an excellent, lengthy Minish Cap interview * an early interview with "star programmer" Koichi Nakamura before he worked with Enix. This interview has been mentioned before by Yuji Horii when talking about Nakamura's cachet and reputation in the early 80s. * a Kenji Eno x Yuzo Koshiro music interview around the Story of Thor period that looks fascinating * a roundtable interview including Metroid/Kid Icarus designer Yoshio Sakamoto, with lots of reminiscing about the FDS * a super early (1985) profile of Square that focuses mostly on their adventure games, some great rare photos * Super Mario Bros. 3 composer interview with Koji Kondo, short but good * and on the "curio" side, an early Bill Gates interview from LOGiN where he talks about the MSX
...and much more. Oh, I also have a backlog of Street Fighter (II, III, Alpha) video interviews that I would like to subtitle, so look for more video content soon as well. Thank you again for all your support!
This early interview with Thinking Rabbit founder and amateur-turned-pro developer Hiroyuki Imabayashi first appeared in the 12/83 issue of LOGiN magazine. Thinking Rabbit is probably best known in the West for venerable puzzle game Sokoban, but they were prolific in many other areas, notably adventure games. The original editorial commentary is closely woven into the interview text so I've left it in.
This Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land interview was originally featured in Nintendo Dream in 11/2002 (a truncated version was also published online at NOM). The questions are lighthearted and fawning, but it's fun to see the team joke around as they explain the various design choices behind Kirby's first GBA outing. Note: I've edited the interview down a little bit from it's original size (there were a few opening SSMB questions and some more personal info about the devs; both sections might be worth adding at a future date).
This interview with legendary Capcom creator Shinji Mikami originally appeared in the book "Capcom Denshi no Moushatachi" published in 2000. The free-wheeling conversation explores the contrast between Mikami's approach to game design and that of Capcom veteran Yoshiki Okamoto, and also looks at marketing challenges and Mikami's conflicted feelings about his new role as a producer.
I originally chose this one because patrons had requested Resident Evil, but as I translated it, I realized it mostly focuses on Mikami's career and ideas more generally--so there will be more Resident Evil material in the future!
This charming discussion with pioneering creatives Kenji Eno and Gunpei Yokoi was originally featured in an "Eno-themed" special edition of Game Hihyou from 1996. The actual interview took place in August of that year, mere days before Yokoi would retire from Nintendo to start his own development studio. The first part of their talk revolves around the Virtual Boy before opening up into Yokoi (and Eno's) other works.
Hey all! For today's update we've got two medium-sized interviews that patrons have been requesting for awhile. Neither was long enough for a single update, but together they make a nice addition to the archive. FYI, I've appended the Ketsui interview (which features programmer Takashi Ichimura talking about the original arcade development) to the bottom of the existing Ketsui interviews at shmuplations.
We'll have one more lengthy interview to share at the end of this month!
This Shikigami no Shiro II interview originally appeared in the Official Setting Materials book published by Famitsu in 2003. It largely focuses on the new characters Roger Sasuke and Niigi G.B., while also taking a close look at the boss and stage design. The Shikigami series is (in)famous in the West for a butchered "localization" (Mobile Light Force 2), and while this interview does not go into that saga, it does help explain the series' broad appeal in Japan.
Looks like I spoke too soon about getting back to those regular updates--we'll have a couple more interviews (including more shmups) to share over the next week though!
https://shmuplations.com/densha/ Densha de Go! is one of Japan's most enduring and inimitable arcade franchises, but it's little known in the West owing to the inherently local appeal of the Japanese rail system. This interview was originally featured in Gamest magazine and focuses on the game's conception and design. Some of the place names will probably be unfamiliar to the Western reader, but keep them in mind for the next time you visit Japan!
That closes out our work for January! We should be back to regular scheduled updates now (rather than everything clumping together at the end of the month). I've recently made a couple more visits to the Diet Library, btw, and will have some updates to the master list very soon. Thanks once again for all your patience with the site redesign over the last couple months, and for your generous continued support.
This lengthy Ocarina of Time interview first appeared in a Japanese strategy guide. The interviewer's strong opinions are a good match for producer Shigeru Miyamoto's big-picture pontifications about Ocarina's design choices and gameplay changes, plus a lengthy exegesis on interactivity in 3D games. As much ink has been spilled over Ocarina, this interview manages to dig up some brand new info.
This one had been mislabeled as a Mario 64 interview in my internal archive for a long time (whoops!), but I found it randomly when looking for something else. Several patrons had requested the composer interview for OoT, but I will probably append that another time--it's much shorter. Oh, and we'll have one more interview before the end of the month. Enjoy!
Originally appearing in the Radiant Historia: World Guidance book, this lengthy interview with three key members of the development team looks at the conception, design, and story inspiration behind the oft-overlooked DS rpg. This interview was commissioned by patron Lorenzo Hulzebos as part of a Retronauts episode about Radiant Historia he recently participated in; be sure to check it out too!
This interview is presented free to patrons courtesy of Lorenzo!
Greetings patrons! If you've checked out the new Masayasu Yamamoto translation, you've probably had a chance to see the re-design, but I wanted to formally introduce it here and give you a walkthrough of some of the new features and changes. But first, a small look back at how it all got started...
When I first created shmuplations.com in 2013, it had been 10 years since I last touched anything html related, so I enlisted a close friend to create the site for me (check out the comparatively tiny size of the archive back then!). In 2013 it was not advisable, but still possible to ignore mobile and responsive stylings, and in my quest for simplicity that's exactly what I did. Alas, as the years went by, I realized how poor of a choice this was, but because I had relied on someone else to create the site for me (for free, I'll add), I didn't know how to fix anything. What was worse, was that my friend's custom theme couldn't really be updated without breaking things, and this opened the site up to various security vulnerabilities that I've struggled with over the last 5 years.
The straw that broke the camel's back occurred in October, when I was out hiking with my friend at Mt. Mitake. I checked my phone to find the site was down yet again, and after the now-familiar panic subsided, I declared to my friend that I'd had enough of this. I was going to start from scratch and re-build shmuplations entirely from zero myself...
And here we are! After a crash-course month spent acquainting myself with modern CSS and enough Javascript/PHP to work around Wordpress' peculiarities, I'd locked in a new design, and since mid-December I've been non-stop grinding on converting all the interviews over. Now let's take a closer look at some of the changes.
Readability
The basic design philosophy for shmuplations has always been non-commercial and archival in nature, and I hope the new site reflects that. I've chosen a larger text-size and an uncluttered, distraction-free display without the (imo annoying) visual noise and clutter of sidebar content/advertising. Also, now that we're using modern CSS for image alignment, there should be no (or very few) widows and orphans. The footnotes, as well, have improved visibility and are finally readable on mobile now.
Mobile and Multi-Format Responsive
The biggest and long-awaited change is mobile responsiveness. The previous site's mobile functionality can best be described as "non-existent", and if you'd previously persevered through the shortcomings to read the interviews on mobile devices, I commend your efforts. Now everything flows correctly and I personally prefer the mobile reading experience in some ways. I hope you'll now enjoy reading shmuplations on your train commute home, on the couch, or anywhere the fancy strikes.
I wanted to mention tablet functionality too: I tested the site extensively on an ipad Pro in both portrait and landscape mode, and made some fine-tunings for those formats as well. I didn't have access to very small/old tablets, though, so if you find anything weird there let me know. A good size tablet is my favorite way to read these interviews because it most closely approximates a book.
The New Archive and Index
The other big change is the interview archive itself, and how you search through it. The previous site used tablepress to quickly and efficiently display all the meta info associated with an interview: developer names, companies, the games, and the date. The new method still relies on a search bar for quickly filtering interviews, but that meta info is now accessible by hovering or clicking on the header image.
The interview archive always had two somewhat-opposing goals: one, to be a convenient tool for researchers, academics, and anyone doing "serious" gaming history work. The other goal was to spark excitement in readers--especially new readers--to explore the massive library and all that lies within. Tablepress worked well for the first utilitarian goal, but failed pretty badly for the second. Moreover, it really only displayed well on full-width desktop resolutions, and was completely unusable on mobile. As I soon learned, this is a pretty fundamental design problem when using tables. So after much futile wrangling, I set out to design something new.
In fact, I'd say ~30-40% of my design time was spent iterating on a good archive layout; though a very modest website in most ways, shmuplations has some unique features that made it incompatible with out-of-the-box plugin solutions. Ultimately, the insight I had for this re-design was that most people doing actual research already have a somewhat targeted idea of what they're looking for. So I think the new method is a good compromise between research and recreational reading. An improvement I may add in the future would be the ability to sort by date, which is the one piece of functionality that was removed.
By the way, the current archive is "linked" in a clever way to the tag system of wordpress; if you click on one of the tag names beneath the header intro (next to the social media icons), it will take you to the archive and automatically filter for interviews based on this term. It's simple, but believe it or not, making it all work together took some neat php/javascript/css hackery that my novitiate-designer self is rather proud of, haha.
Standardizing the Older Interviews
The basic template for most shmuplations interviews wasn't decided until mid-2015, so about 1/3 of the interviews were what I would call "non-conforming"--no header images, weird text layouts, outdated links, typos galore... well, for the re-launch I've revisited and brought all the old content up-to-date! For some interviews there's no major changes, but others have new images and extra content, so I hope you have fun re-visiting and seeing what's new!
Future Improvements, Feedback, Etc
I think that covers the big changes. On the backend, now that we're using a carefully tuned and customized WYSIWG editor (Gutenberg), the editing, proofreading, and formatting has become soooo much easier. For readers and patrons, this means I can spend more time on the translation itself, and frankly this invisible improvement is one of the hugest things for me personally. The old design had become so outdated that I was honestly spending half my time fussing with margins, padding etc, and it got to be a major drag on my desire to work.
On that note, I wasn't expecting this when I started, but despite how much effort it took, diving back into all these interviews and seeing the whole grand scope of what we've accomplished these last 10 years with shmuplations has re-kindled my commitment to continue this work (which now feels less like "work" and more like the fun it was always supposed to be!)
So I want to again thank all the patrons who have supported us over the years. When I said "what we've accomplished", I meant that to include you too: without your support shmuplations never would have grown into the unique resource that it's become today. I called the site a treasure trove when I first created it, but thanks to you, I think it's truly lived up to those words.
If you have any questions about the layout or suggestions for improvement let me know! I will be adjusting and improving things as we go (the date sorting, in particular, I plan to add), and now that I'm fully in control of site maintenance, such updates should take weeks instead of years. Thanks again and have fun re-discovering all the Japanese gaming history at shmuplations!
This interview with programmer Masayasu Yamamoto originally appeared in the Game Shokunin book. In the 1980s Yamamoto worked on PC-88 and X1 games at Nihon Telnet, and in the 90s he made SFC and PSX games for Climax and Matrix. Today he works at Chunsoft. The main focus here is Valis, but he also touches on other games, including the unusual MSX shooter Androgynous.
This is the first interview to be featured at the new redesign! I'll be posting more about that soon, so stay tuned!
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 people'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.
Hi everyone! Last cycle was a little quieter on the translation front, but I've been super busy behind the scenes working on a full site re-design. Good news: it's all done! I've got a few tweaks to make here and there, but all the content is transferred over and ready to go. I had wanted to launch it today, but I thought it would be best to lead with a new translation. So it should be up in a few days! Also, if you'd like to test-drive the new site design before launch, shoot me a message: I've tested it pretty extensively across different browsers and resolutions but could always use some extra eyes+feedback.
On the collection/research front, I did make a trip to the library in December, and will be uploading some new materials to the backlog list as soon as I organize and catalogue them. It wasn't a massive haul but there's some nice new things in there. Expect that in a week or so!
This interview with Nintendo engineer Masayuki Uemura, who pass away earlier this month at the age of 78, was originally featured in Used Games magazine in 2000. Uemura would retire from Nintendo in 2004 and move on to a teaching position at Ritsumeikan University (a move he predicts at the end of this interview), but here he reflects broadly on the development history of the Famicom, Game Boy, and Super Famicom.
While the popular memory of the NES is that it was a smash hit from the get-go, it’s interesting to hear Uemura recount the incredulity he felt at the Famicom’s continuing success in Japan.
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Season's greetings everyone! This will be our only update for December, but I've been very busy behind-the-scenes here working around the clock on the website re-design. I had hoped to have it ready for the end of the year, but it looks like (at my current pace) it will be ready in early/mid January. I can't wait to share it with everyone. I hope you're all enjoying a relaxing respite over the New Year, and thank you so much for supporting our work this year!
This Abarenbou Tengu (Zombie Nation in the US) interview with director/composer Takane Ohkubo was originally featured in the liner notes of Clarice Disc’s “Rom Cassette Disc” series. For a semi-obscure cult classic, Abarenbou Tengu has a surprisingly interesting development history that sheds a (not entirely flattering) light on the struggles of third-party Famicom development. Incidentally, Abarenbou Tengu was just re-released last month in a lavish deluxe edition for the Switch, which includes a longer interview with more of the original developers.
In 2003 legendary Nintendo composers Koji Kondo and Shogo Sakai met at a music studio where Sakai was recording the Kirby Air Ride OST cd. Nintendo Dream interviewed them both and the result was a free-wheeling conversation covering various aspects of their long careers. The discussion includes interesting trivia about specific songs as well as more general musings on their approach to composition.
Sorry for the late update again! We'll have one more nice interview to share in the next couple days. This time there's a good excuse for the lateness--I've been hard at work on a complete overhaul and re-design of shmuplations.com which brings the site up to modern standards with things like comments, RSS, and most importantly, a fully responsive design for cell phones and other (previously neglected) formats. Of course, the site philosophy emphasizing readability, archival history, and a clutter-free design will still be maintained. I'm aiming to have it ready by the end of the year, so stay tuned!
This lengthy Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions interview was originally printed in Square-Enix’s Official Complete Guide. As one might expect, it focuses almost entirely on the additions to the PSP version, especially the new movies, jobs, and link play features. The team, who were all huge fans of the original, comes across as exceedingly thoughtful in the integration of their new elements. I’ve also appended a short interview with Akihiko Yoshida at the end, which offers some extra detail about his illustrations for FFT.
Like all Dragon Quest fans around the world, I was deeply saddened to learn of Kouichi Sugiyama’s recent passing. I wanted to do my part in celebrating his work with these three vintage interviews. Two of them cover Sugiyama’s personal history and approach to game music, in which he advocated for game composers to learn the fundamentals of music theory as he felt this would elevate both game music and video games as a whole.
The interview with Satoshi Tajiri, while focusing more on Tajiri’s career, exposes a side of Sugiyama which has not often been appreciated in the West: that of the tireless promoter, facilitator, and communicator of gaming culture. Indeed, there are many more interviews in my archive between Sugiyama and other legendary developers/composers, and I hope to continue translating these for all to better appreciate his legacy.
Taken from Studio Bent’s All About Puyo Puyo Tsu book, this long interview saw director Kengo Morita, assistant programmer Yasutoshi Akiyama and designers Sonchou Sawa and Aya Shimazaki discussing the creation of Puyo Puyo Tsu, the second arcade entry in Compile’s wildly popular and influential falling-block puzzle game series.
Conducted during the early stages of development on the Saturn port, their discussion covers a plethora of topics including the sequel’s many iterative additions, the selection of the game’s wide cast of characters, the series’ reception overseas, the voice acting and much more (including repeated apologies for the swathes of scrapped content that never made it to the initial versions of the game, much of which was reinstated for the Saturn version and subsequent ports.
These Front Mission: Gun Hazard interviews originally appeared in Famicom Tsuushin magazine and two aftermarket Japanese strategy guides. Led by Assault Suits Valken director Hideo Suzuki, the Omiya Soft team covers the usual ground of character design, story, and gameplay, but also finds time for some silly-but-practical digressions into cooking and dishes.
For some reason, Gun Hazard seems to have had an especially large amount of interview coverage, so we’ll definitely be revisiting this in the future with more material to share.
