Question Compilation!

[gsilverfish]

Just sticking them all in one place, I'm sure I'll have more later...

First, the interview with Naoto Oshima on Sonic the Hedgehog and Blue Dragon in 2009--is it really about Sonic the Hedgehog at all? (Is the date right?) Since he left Sonic Team around 2000 this is a surprising topic! I'd be real curious to know what he has to say about it after so much time has passed, if in fact that's the kind of interview it is. (It's a couple years late to just be promoting Blue Dragon as well, if I'm not mistaken).

There are two interviews about Pocky and Rocky, one from the composer (2014) and one from the developer(s) (2008). Which games are these actually about? There's the old arcade game, the SNES titles, or considering the date it could even be Kiki Kaikai World, which ended up dropping the name and got released as Heavenly Guardian. I guess it's all interesting but I'd like to know more specifics.  

Also, Jackie Chan Action Kung Fu interview with an actual Jackie Chan? Is this a real interview or more of an obligatory piece of marketing? 

Thanks!

[blackoak]

The Naoto Oshima interview is from volume 15 of Gameside, so it's actually 2008, yeah. The Blue Dragon reference is pretty minor; the majority of the questions are about the three Megadrive Sonic the Hedgehog games. Various design questions, good length overall (4 pages, though I realize that doesn't tell you much).

The Jackie Chan interview is with Jackie Chan, and it's quite short. Half of it is about his movie Project Eagle, which I probably wouldn't even translate given its non-game related. The second half asks a few questions about his game, whether he plays games, and what games he likes. Honestly, its one of the most marginal in terms of substantive content, but I thought it was a funny curiosity so I left it in the list.

I don't have the Kiki Kaikai interviews on hand, but I'll check them when I get home. I believe the 2008 one is from a massive, massive doujin book on Kiki Kaikai... like, obsessively long interviews with everyone involved in the arcade and SNES games.

[blackoak]

Alright, I was able to look into the Pocky and Rocky (Kiki Kaikai) interviews.

The 2008 one, as I remembered, is from the Video Game Chronicle doujinshi (http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~zekzek/sample_kikai.html) here. It includes interviews with the main programmer, sound/music (OGR), designer, and planner/character designer. But each interview is so long, I'd probably have to tackle them one at a time. You can't get much more in-depth than these, and I believe the arcade and SFC games alike are covered. Of note, this doujinshi publisher just released a similar tome for Gun Frontier, with interviews for Aqua Jack and Cadash as well. (http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~zekzek/gunfrontier.html)

The 2014 composer interview is from the liner notes of Rom Cassette in Natsume vol. 3 (http://vgmdb.net/album/43695). It's very short and doesn't cover too much ground. There's a cool old fax from Iwatsuki to Kinuyo Yamashita and Iku Mizutani that's fun to read though, talking about his ideas for the music of Pocky and Rocky 2. Overall, this is probably something I'd append to another interview, or if it were chosen, translate something alongside it.

[gsilverfish]

Oh neat! Must be the same book mentioned briefly in this article here: www.wired.com/2012/12/japan-gaming-doujin/

So this must have actually been at the Tokyo Diet? I was impressed that they would have so much game material on reference, but even doujinshi interviews--is that unusual? Did they have any of their other books?

[blackoak]

Yup, that's the one. Cool article btw--definitely some stuff in there I'll have to pick up. No, in general the Tokyo Diet does not contain doujins, unless they were published officially (in which case I suppose they'd no longer be doujinshi, hehe). I actually bought the Kiki Kaikai book myself.

[gsilverfish]

Question on the Silpheed interview! Where is that from? The reason I ask is because happened to be at the Silpheed.org fan site and noticed that they have scans of a couple untranslated ones, one from the arrange soundtrack booklet (http://www.silpheed.org/silpheedSND.htm) and one from a magazine I have never heard of called "Graphic Science Media" (http://www.silpheed.org/memorabilia.htm). Like you need more interviews but they might be worth taking a look at. :>

[blackoak]

thanks for the links--I didn't know about those! The Graphic Science Media one looks great. I'll keep them in my list for whenever Silpheed gets selected.

The interviews I have are from Beep Megadrive and Dengeki Megadrive, so they're different.

[gsilverfish]

Thanks again for all the answers so far!

I took a look at Mobygames for the subjects on the Sega Arcade History interviews that I was not familiar with and came up with no results for Akira Nagai and Hisao Koguchi. Could you go into detail at all for the topics they covered? I couldn't find Hiroshi Yagi either but you did put a description for that one.

As for the other interviews, can you give any details on Hisashi Suzuki and Rikiya Nakagawa? I'm sure all of these are interesting but as far as my own highly-specific interest goes (heh), they both worked on Die Hard Arcade, which was Sega's only arcade game to be co-developed with Sega Technical Institute here in the states. There have been many interviews with STI members from the US, but we rarely hear anything about it from the Japanese side so that would be a really cool thing to read about, if it were included.

[blackoak]

No problem, and sorry for the late reply on this one. Was caught up in some traveling the last couple days.

Being one of the oldest Sega employees, Hisashi Suzuki's interview talks a lot about the electromechanical era of the 60s/70s. That leads up to the 80s and the Sega "taikan" games, their famous "body experience" cabinets like Hang On and After Burner. It's basically a kind of mini-history of Sega told by an insider, but there's nothing on game design or Die Hard Arcade there.

The Nakagawa interview talks a lot about his experiences at Sega from a programmer's perspective. There's also some talk about hardware, specifically the system 1 and system 16. It concludes with some remarks about gun games and Virtua Fighter. Cool interview all around, but again nothing about Die Hard or STI, unfortunately!

[gsilverfish]

No worries, thanks for the answers!

As I suspected these all still sound really interesting anyway. Hisashi Suzuki in particular, having just read the Kasco one, it'd be neat to hear about that from another perspective. Now if only I didn't already have such a long list of stuff to vote on...

[gsilverfish]

Happy April!

Of the two Battle Mania/Takayan interviews currently in the voting, which one do you think is more interesting?

[blackoak]

Sorry for the late reply! Both are good. The 2004 interview is from a book called Lost Games, which has some great DECO and Vic Tokai interviews. The interview with Takayan there is very long and in-depth, covering his pre-Vic Tokai work as well. Content-wise, I'd say it eclipses the 2009 interview, so I'd choose this one first.

The 2009 interview is shorter, and it was jokingly billed in Gameside as a "drunken" conversation with Takayan). It's funny, and kind of like a condensed version of the Lost Games interview.

[gsilverfish]

Thanks! No worries on the wait, it's still April after all.

[gsilverfish]

Long time since I asked anything, but what's the details on the Dynamite Headdy interview? Thanks!