Kodama and M2 on Phantasy Star, what development was like in 1987, SEGA Ages games on Switch, lots more
–It sounds like it was quite a challenge to get the 3D dungeons to animate smoothly and realistically. How about the character and monster designs? This was your first RPG, after all. You probably hadn’t created something like this before, so you didn’t have any base for your visuals, right? And in those days, it wasn’t as easy to get your hands on a variety of references as a jumping off point.
Kodama: That’s right. We used a lot of imagery from western fantasy films as reference. We took out period research from the equation and put in stuff that we thought was visually striking. We included a lot of fantasy monster staples, too.
Kazuyuki Shibata, who designed the monsters, he was a really big fan of these dolls that were made of brass back then. What were those called?
–Metal Figures?
Kodama: That’s it! They’re like pieces used for tabletop RPGs. Shibata loved those things. One day he brought a bunch of them to work and showed me one that he wanted to use as a reference point for the Magicians (Chaos Sorcerers) in the game. I remember him being really excited and putting his heart and soul into all the designs. (Laughs)
–Sounds like a fun job for him. (Laughs) Speaking of, how would you say the overall development experience of “Phantasy Star” was? Did the team have trouble finding their footing? Or did everyone just hammer it out without any trouble?
Kodama: That’s a good question. Being the first entry in the “Phantasy Star” series, I do recall the script going through several revisions, but I don’t think we had much trouble with the visual designs at all. What we ended up spending a lot of time on was making the images animate. We bounced back and forth between animation techniques. For example, changing up the patterns versus changing up the colors to give off the impression of movement. For the beaches on the field map, we drew the water so that it looked like it was flowing; but for the mountains, it’s actually the same image with just a change of color to make them look snowy. We had to find tricks like that to make the game work.
–Sounds like it was always a struggle with space constraints.
Kodama: It definitely was. And we initially thought we’d have way less data. I mean, we didn’t think that this whole project was going to amount to 4Mbits of data!
Horii: Wait, what?!
Kodama: Yeah. I don’t remember the circumstances exactly, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t plan to use a 4Mbit ROM during pre-production.
Horii: Don’t tell me you were expecting to put this game on a 2Mbit ROM! (Laughs) Wow, this whole interview we keep on saying stuff like, “We didn’t expect this!” Or, “Things ended up taking longer than we expected,” but this takes the cake! I’m so surprised. I thought surely you guys had planned to use a 4Mbit ROM from the start—that’s how you compressed everything so efficiently.
Kodama: What other games had used 4Mbit ROMs at the time? I can’t remember.
Horii: I think “After Burner” on the Master System used a 4Mbit ROM.
Kodama: Hmm, if “After Burner” had already used a 4Mbit ROM, then that probably helped us use one with “Phantasy Star”, too. See? I can’t even remember.
Horii: Ah, that makes sense!
–I think I remember hearing that SEGA created a 4Mbit ROM for “After Burner” specifically because it was a port from the arcade version.
Horii: Ah, yeah. So it must’ve been a situation where like, “They already used one, so why don’t we do the same?” Right? I’m not sure if this is entirely accurate, but I feel like the 4Mbit ROM wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for “After Burner”.
*NOTE: “After Burner” released in Japan on December 12th, 1987. “Phantasy Star” released in Japan on December 20th, 1987. Both games were in development roughly at the same time.
–This was sort of a first experiment where a large ROM was used in a home console release. And it actually became quite a selling point and a way to market the game.
Kodama: That’s right. But SEGA was also a hardware manufacturer at the time, so it might have been easier to fulfill that kind of request.
Horii: I heard the same kind of thing happened with Naka’s game on the Mega Drive/Genesis, “Ghouls ‘n Ghosts”. 4Mbit wasn’t enough, so SEGA made a 5Mbit ROM.
–So it was either, “Do whatever Naka needs, or the port from arcade to console isn’t happening,” right? (Laughs)
Horii: Absolutely. But SEGA always puts faith in those who have a proven track record. So, if Yu Suzuki needed something specific in regards to hardware, then they’d listen to him. They knew that whatever he created was going to be successful. And I think Naka is on the same level as Suzuki.
–I have a feeling that it’s always been that way. Same goes for when you’re creating controllers to accompany the games.
Horii: Right. Like when SEGA made the 3D Control Pad for “NiGHTS”.
–Coming back to “Phantasy Star”, could you tell us how things went during the post-production and deadline phases?
Kodama: That’s a bit tricky. During those days, when a game was in the final phases, designers like myself were finished with their portion of the work, so we had already moved on to the next project. But I definitely remember the last thing that I worked on: it was the final scene where all four characters where standing next to each other.
We didn’t have that image in our original plans, so I was already working on my next project. Good ol’ Naka was able to compress things down so there was just enough space left. He came to me and said, “We’ve got these many cells left. Could you please make one more image of the main characters?” I was like, “I can’t fit all four characters in that amount of space!” (Laughs)
In the end, I was able to make it work, but I’m not entirely happy with how it came out. I feel bad about that, but it was the very last thing, so what can you do?
–Do you have any other comments you would like to add about the development of “SEGA AGES Phantasy Star”, Mr. Horii?
Horii: I’m really satisfied that we as a team were able to do everything with this release that we wanted to do. I think that this is a great place to start for people who have never played the original and for people who played it back then, but want to reexperience the game.
–I feel like I can enjoy this game on a new level after hearing all the interesting things you’ve shared with us.
Horii: I hope that fans of the original feel the same. I think if you play “Phantasy Star” after reading this interview, you’ll look at the game in a whole new light. I hope you all check it out!
Can we expect future SEGA AGES releases on the Nintendo Switch to come out at an accelerated pace?
–I’d like to talk now about upcoming SEGA AGES releases for the Nintendo Switch. Considering some past releases were delayed, I figure your future ones have been affected, as well. Could you elaborate on the state of your release schedule?
Shimomura: We feel very bad that our releases have been much slower than we initially planned. We understand that some fans are upset by this, and we apologize for letting you down. I believe there were some things that we spent too much time developing, but I hope all our fans understand that this extreme attention to detail was necessary to meet our fans’ expectations of the titles in this collection. No one needs a mediocre or half-baked game. We will strive as a team to accomplish the goals we set out to do.
On one hand, the timing of the release is crucial. We want to get the game in the hands of players at the best possible time, based on market research. We don’t want the project to get lost amongst others and we don’t want to lose sight of releasing a great game.
Those two points sort of contradict each other, so it’s tough to find perfect harmony. We were certainly affected by this delicate balance and it caused the development some strain. Therefore, we ended up releasing the game later than anticipated.
M2 really put in tremendous efforts and made the release of “SEGA AGES Phantasy Star” possible. One of the reasons for the delay was the fact that there were some learning curves with the Nintendo Switch. It took extra time to get the SEGA AGES format to pair up with the new hardware. All of those learning curves are behind us now, so I think you can expect our releases at a faster pace moving forward.
Not only are the staff at M2 more familiar with the hardware, but they’ve added new members to the team, as well. We want to get as close as possible to the release schedule that we first planned out. However, we have to accept that our initial goal of releasing 15 titles over the course of one year may not be possible.
–When we last spoke, you estimated 15 titles from April of 2018 to April of 2019. More than half of that time is up, you know…
Shimomura: Unfortunately, that is correct.
