Kodama and M2 on Phantasy Star, what development was like in 1987, SEGA Ages games on Switch, lots more

–Moving on, we noticed the official site says that the overseas version of Phantasy Star will include frequency modulation sound synthesis. Could you explain what this means? Did the original overseas version not have the FM sound synthesis?

Horii: That’s correct. Although it didn’t have the FM sound synthesis back then, with the updated rerelease of “SEGA AGES Phantasy Star” overseas fans can finally enjoy it. I think the reason was because back then, when the game’s language was translated to English, it took up more space. So, I think maybe something had to give and they cut it out.

–That’s interesting. So overseas fans will be happy to know it’s included in this release! It’s great that you included this just for the overseas fans.

Dr. Mad’s data was nowhere to be found! M2 couldn’t believe it!

–A few more new features in the game are a bestiary and a full list of magic and items. This really seems like not only something Matsuoka wanted, but something newcomers would want, too.

Horii: This is just my personal opinion, but I think SEGA created “Phantasy Star” to go toe-to-toe with “Dragon Quest”. It was absolutely mind-blowing to see 3D dungeons and monsters with full animation at the time. Those aspects are a big part of why it’s so memorable and such a pioneering video game.

That’s why we wanted to make the bestiary and magic and item lists that the player could access at anytime.

–These two features didn’t take too much work, did they?

Horii: Uh, to be honest, the monster bestiary was pretty taxing. For some reason our biggest problem was… well, to make a long story short: we had trouble when adding a text box to an enemy with animations.

The Master System game was on a 4Mbit ROM, so there was some data compression involved with the monsters. We have a standard process for decompressing data so we thought it would turn out fine if we did that, but that’s totally not what happened!

We found out that they used whatever process suited each individual image best in order to save the most space. I think Yuji Naka, the lead programmer on the original release, he must have been thinking about which algorithm was best for each one.

It’s like if they could save even 1 byte more, then they would go with a different compression process to save space.

–What?!

Horii: When we started making the bestiary, we felt pretty good with how well it was going, but then one by one it started to pile up. We were like, “Why isn’t this working?” And after looking into it, we realized that a different compression process had been applied to each and every monster. The disappointment in the air was palpable. We thought, “Well, there goes the bestiary!” (Strained Laughter)

Kodama: (Laughs)

Horii: They put so much hard work into each animation no matter how big or small the savings was; Yuji Naka went out of his way to choose the absolute most efficient process to make everything fit on a 4Mbit ROM.

When I realized all this, I was so excited and thought, “Damn, that is so like SEGA !” But, man… I wasn’t so excited after all the frustration it caused us. Looking back on it, I admired SEGA for what they did, but I was frustrated by what they did, too!

–Kind of a love/hate relationship right there. (Laughs)

Horii: The most unexpected thing in the whole process was this, though: after extracting and decompressing around 90% of the data, we couldn’t find Dr. Mad’s data!

–What?

Horii: We looked over all the code extensively, but we still couldn’t find him. He was the only thing missing. We didn’t know where the data was hiding, and we definitely didn’t know how we were going to extract it.

So we had no choice but to input new data by ourselves, just from looking at the actual game. That’s the only way we could get him into the bestiary.

Hey, Mr. Naka! If you read this interview, will you tell me where the hell you put that damn Dr. Mad code?

Everyone: (Laughter)

Horii: No, for real! I’m not kidding!

Kodama: It just really goes to show you how much data he stuffed into that ROM back in the day.

Horii: Yeah… I mean, the man was integral in creating “Phantasy Star”, “Fist Of The North Star” and “Sonic The Hedgehog”! He’s brilliant! I’d love to just sit down with him and have a long talk about all this stuff. It’d be amazing.

–Looks like the team at M2 still has a ways to go before they’re as good as him, huh?

Horii: Yeah, I’d say so. But out of all that data, there was only one monster that we had to create from scratch for the bestiary. Something about that is just unsatisfying.

Kodama: It really did take you guys a lot of time and effort to finish the bestiary. Even I was thinking, “What’s taking them so long?” Like, wouldn’t you think,  “All the data is there already! They just need to grab it and put it in a list.” Right? (Laughs)

–Yes, you’re right. So this probably lead to some anxious workdays since others on the development team didn’t know that all this was going on, huh? But anyway, that’s quite an uncommon experience for game development at M2, isn’t it?

Horii: We were already beating ourselves up with a sense of defeat on this. It was like losing all confidence in your ability to develop games.

–But you all have such talent!

Horii: We may have talent on a technical level, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t sometimes our own worst enemy. But taking measures into our own hands like that felt really empowering! It felt like we were really doing this for the fans.

–I have to mention, that’s quite shocking to hear about the monster data, though. Of course, that was a time when developers were really crippled by space limitations.

Kodama: Absolutely right. Naka would actually find ways to pack stuff in so well that there’d be just enough space for me to design another monster or two! He really helped me out.

RPGs didn’t really have enemy animations at that time, so he initially said that he wanted to include them but that it didn’t seem possible because of memory constraints. But he somehow made the impossible possible! And I’ll never forget that.

Horii: Even the biggest Famicom and Master System games at the time were only on a 2Mbit ROM. So it’s really impressive that “Phantasy Star” uses a 4Mbit ROM. We’ve got no clue much data it was uncompressed. Knowing Naka and his incredible talents, though, it was probably closer to 5 or 6 Mbits. We really admired him, even during the arduous process of creating the bestiary.

He’s incredible; he always pushes hardware to the absolute limit. I knew this was the case when I had first seen his work on “Fist Of The North Star”, but now that I’ve worked on “Phantasy Star”, I can tell he’s a cut above the rest.

–This is just my impression of game development at the time, but it seems like people were really given a lot of freedom to get their job done. If one person was assigned to something, the could choose how they’d get it done.

Kodama: Yup!

Horii: That’s totally what it feels like! “We can do it, so why shouldn’t we?” For example, what Kodama said about having extra space so she made more designs—That totally wouldn’t fly today.

–Right. Small portions of a greater project are delegated to many different people these days, so one person can’t decide to just do something differently.

Horii: Exactly.

–But on the other hand, I feel like that sort of relaxed work style played an integral role in fostering the creation of so many amazing things.

Kodama: I feel like there was a lot that was handled just by one person, though. Sometimes they’d tell me, “We need a design here.” So, I’d ask, “Sure, what kind of design?” And they’d tell me, “You decide! It’s all up to you!” So I’d make whatever I wanted as long as it felt like it worked. (Laughs)

It wasn’t uncommon for us to play several different parts in designing, programming and whatnot. It was feasible to do things like this because this was an era of game development where games could be made in under a year. We’d only have 2 or 3 designers tops back then. These days there are tons of people assigned to each project, but the scope of work has also greatly increased. So, you have to keep large projects like these on a tight leash or things can go wrong quite fast.

–It sure seems like it was a time when creators and craftsman were all rolled into one.

Horii: Also, you could look at a game and know right away who made what. You could tell who wrote the code just by reading it, who made the designs just by looking at them, who made the sprites based on the color palette that was used, and so on.