3D Altered Beast details – Whimsical Transformation bits, long development, more
Game Watch chatted with 3D Altered Beast producer Yosuke Okunari and M2’s Naoki Horii. The two talked about the new “Whimsical Transformation” element, long development of the project, and more.
A summary of Okunari and Horii’s comments can be found below.
– Okunari started out by saying he was surprised to be participating in an interview for Altered Beast of all titles
– Was already decided on for them to go with the Genesis version instead of the Arcade version
– When the project of Sega’s 3D enhanced classics started, 3D Sonic the Hedgehog wasn’t the only title they had in mind
– New “Whimsical Transformation” option: allows you to have a chance of going with a different transformation if you’re not satisfied with the one you have
– Ex: in one situation, the players collected the three Spirit Balls to become the Thunder Dragon; Whim Transformation is used to transform the two into the Bear Man
– This could be a useful option depending on the player’s preference, but Okunari believes that it could also create some amusing conflicts between the two players, should one rather not change their transformation
– “Whimsical Transformation” was difficult to name
– Was originally going to be called “Random Transformation”
– Director Matsuoka wasn’t satisfied with the name
– List of other names include: Dokidoki Transformation, Dice Transformation, Gamble Transformation
– Okunari definitely thought that local play should be added
Okunari on the project’s development length…
“The project started 2 years ago (2011), the first one we started with was 3D Space Harrier, which took us about a year and a half. Then the development for 3D Super Hang-On started sometime after we’ve progressed on the works for 3D Space Harrier, which took about a year. Even for titles that we’re very familiar with takes about this long for the transition (for a 3D version).”
“Going at this pace of development, it would be another year for the next title to finish, which isn’t good news for the project. Therefore, in order to supply a degree of stability for the project, it was necessary to have it be a Genesis title. Considering it’s from the same hardware system, it requires less time spent on analysis while working on something that is originally from older hardware, which allows up to plan things out more efficiently.”
Okunari on the difficulty of adding local play…
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure if we could do it. At first, I thought ‘We did it for the Virtual Console Game Gear titles, so it shouldn’t be a problem, right?’ but it wasn’t the same, at all.” – Okunari
“On top of having trouble during our time with the Virtual Console version, this time we had an architecture machine with much heavier processing capabilities.” – Horii
“Some of you who’ve tried Virtual Console Game Gear’s local play may have noticed, but there’s actually a lot of internal things that goes on for local play, which is indicated by how limited the functions can be” Okunari concluded.” – Okunari
