Samurai Warriors: Chronicles taking full advantage of the 3DS’ storage media

This information comes from the latest Iwata Asks with Tecmo Koei’s Hisashi Koinuma…

Iwata: Until now, it’s been common sense that handheld games that uses semiconductor memory (ROMs) as the game storage media don’t hold as much as games compared with home consoles.

Koinuma: But this time, Nintendo said we can use even a two-gigabyte ROM. They said that with so much memory capability we could make something comparable to a home console game, so we didn’t hold back!

Iwata: Did you use those two gigabytes to your heart’s content? (laughs)

Koinuma: Yeah. We might have gone overboard. (laughs)

Iwata: You could say that you were able to do as much as you did because you had such a large capacity like a two-gigabyte ROM.

Koinuma: That’s right.

Iwata: But it was pretty hard preparing a two-gigabyte ROM in time for release of the Nintendo 3DS system. But the Licensing department that works with outside companies strongly requested it hearing feedback from those companies. Some at Nintendo were saying, “Do you even need all this storage space?” and “How are you going to fill it all with data?”

Koinuma: Nah, it was easy! Oh, well, maybe I shouldn’t say that… (laughs) Actually, there are a lot of voices and cutscenes in this game.

Iwata: That’s right, it’s full voice this time.

Koinuma: Yes. When Warriors games came out for another handheld, we had to cut back on voice to save space, but there was no need for that this time, so it’s the first time we could include voice on almost all of the game.

Iwata: That’s the advantage of making software with a semiconductor memory. Unlike with optical disks, you can ignore seek time, so you can call forth the voice immediately wherever the data for it is on the ROM.

Koinuma: Right. So this time, as with home consoles, we could make it so all sorts of characters are talking all the time, even during battle.

Iwata: Does it make you happy that they can talk?

Koinuma: Yeah. (laughs) We re-recorded all the voices this time. If we reused previous recordings, there are lots of fans who like the voice actors, and they would notice right away.

Iwata: Fans of the voice actors would point out how the sound was the same as last time?

Koinuma: Yeah. As the series builds up, an increasing number of different tastes emerge, with some players simply liking the action, others the history, others particular characters, and so on.

Iwata: While Samurai Warriors is a single series, it possesses various entrances for the players’ varying tastes.

Koinuma: Yes. Since some fans like the voice actors and we had so much capacity this time, I thought they would like it if we went full voice, but partway through development, I thought, “Uh-oh, I’m doing too much.” (laughs)

Iwata: (laughs) And there isn’t anyone there to step on the brakes to stop you.

Koinuma: Yeah! (laughs) But when I tried to put in all sorts of stuff toward the end of development, everyone said, “That’s the limit!”

Iwata: (laughs)

Koinuma: Of course, they stopped me when something just wouldn’t fit, and at the end I applied the brakes myself! (laughs)

There’s much more commentary from Koinuma and Iwata in the full interview. You can check it out here.