Kodama and M2 on Phantasy Star, what development was like in 1987, SEGA Ages games on Switch, lots more
–You mentioned that the learning curves the team had to get used to are now behind them, therefore you expect a faster paced release schedule. Could you elaborate on that?
Horii: We’re really comfortable with the hardware now, so all the games we’ve been working on are taking off without a hitch. For example, we announced a very special title this year at the Tokyo Game Show, “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”. All of the basics are already finished, but we’ve got some extra-special features planned that we’re working on.
We’ve already got some of these features functional, and they’re turning out really great. …Uh-oh. I think the director is gonna be upset that I just said that. Please don’t kill me, Mr. Matsuoka!
–(Laughs)
Horii: We’re used to the inner workings of the hardware, but sometimes we get stuck on something like the monster bestiary. We’ve gotta be careful about that.
Shimomura: Well, I think that’s the kind of stuff that makes “SEGA AGES” so unique: we go above and beyond. Even though we have to be strict on development and timing, we still want to create those awesome features.
Horii: With our fans’ support, I know we can make it happen!
–Thank you for sharing. I wanted to ask because there was a gap in your release schedule after the lineup of titles had been announced. So, it certainly felt like the releases wouldn’t be able to catch up due to the delay.
Shimomura: That’s understandable. I feel terrible that we let people down based on our announcements that happened earlier in the year, but it was the right time to announce our titles we plan to release, so we decided to divulge that information ahead of time. Like at SEGA Fes in April and Tokyo Game Show in September. It’s expected of us to make some sort of announcement at these pivotal times, so something would have been announced no matter what. We may have over-promised and under-delivered this time around.
Some may wonder if it was a mistake, then, to have announced the releases that early. However, I feel like it was critical to tell fans about what games we’re working on to keep us plugging away at development. We’ve heard the feedback and criticisms from our fans on this, so I want to put the worries to rest and assure everyone that we’re ramping up development on the future games.
Horii: For me, the worst thing to hear from a player about a game we release is something along the lines of, “I tried it out, but it wasn’t worth my time and purchase.” If a game is delayed, I’ll feel terrible about it, but I know how much extra care will be able to go into that game. So, I want to make our fans feel like, “Yeah, you made me wait for it, but I’m so happy with the final result!” Please have faith in us!
–I see. So, you want to avoid a situation where even though you release a game on time, it actually becomes a problem that you did so. You’d lose your customers’ trust in the quality of games you put out, and it’s hard to come back from that. Probably the worst thing that you can hear from a gamer is, “This game sucks. It isn’t even finished!”
Shimomura: Yes, if we ever let that happen, we wouldn’t be in business anymore. So, we want M2 to make games that have the heart and soul of their staff members poured into them. And the spirit of SEGA, too!
Kodama: I wanted to add, I’m really glad that we could explain ourselves in this interview. For example, players might look at the bestiary in “SEGA AGES Phantasy Star” and think, “This couldn’t have taken them very long to make.” Without this interview, no one would know how or why it really was a tremendous effort.
Horii: It absolutely was, on a technical level. All of us at M2 felt the same.
Kodama: I think the only people who can really look at it and know just how difficult it was are those who actually worked on it. (Laughs)
Horii: I think there’s something satisfying, though, about the bestiary giving us a tough time. There were many times during development where we appreciated the unique techniques used in 8bit game development. Of course, with that came a lot of grief, but I don’t think we would’ve been able to really appreciate everything without having some trouble along the way.
So definitely play the game, beat Dr. Mad and check him out in the bestiary because we worked really hard on that!
–So I take it, if you get handed another old title that Naka worked on the programming for, you’re gonna be pretty nervous, right?
Horii: We’ve already got some in the pipeline! We’ll be working on “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”, but we’ve already got some direction on what to do with it. To be vague, we were told that there were some ideas that Naka had for the game originally, but he couldn’t do it due to the Mega Drvie/Genesis hardware limitations. They want us to use those original ideas of Naka’s as a jumping off point.
So, it’ll be a different kind of challenge, but we’re up for it!
–With all this talk about Yuji Naka, I can’t help but think about my favorite game from him: the Christmas-themed version of “Nights Into Dreams”. Do you think you guys could add that one to the list? Pretty please? (Laughs)
Horii: Oh, man!
Kodama: (Laughs)
*NOTE: “Nights Into Dreams” was ported to the Playstation 2 in 2008, but the team underestimated the difficulty of the project. The gruelling development process went on for a total of 16 months. The story of the porting process is renowned for the terrifying, yet amazing techniques of Yuji Naka.
A new mode designed to “get everyone playing together” is currently in development for the upcoming release of “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”
–We spoke a bit about this earlier, but I’d like to ask some more about “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”, a title you announced on stage at the Tokyo Game Show 2018. How are things progressing and what can you tell us about it?
Horii: Well, we’ve worked with SEGA’s 3D games since back on the PS2 with its “SEGA AGES” collection. Games like “Cyber Troopers Virtual-On”, “SEGA Rally Championship” and “Last Bronx” for the PS2. But now we’re working on the Nintendo Switch, which is a much more powerful console.
With “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”, we still have to work on some particulars like how things are displayed, but from a technical point of view, we got it running on the console effortlessly.
–You got the SEGA Model 1 arcade board running on it?
Horii: Totally. I bet we could get all of the games that used that board to run just fine. I’d love to port SEGA’s “Star Wars” over! If only we could get the rights to it…
Shimomura: Yeah, that’d be great to work on “Star Wars”!
Kodama: We’ve been wanting to work on that game since… a long, long time ago. (Laughs)
Horii: We touched on this earlier today, but I want to say that we’re hard at work on adding a new feature to “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”. It’s a “necessary addition that gets everyone playing together”, and it’s gonna be great.
You might hear this and worry that we’re gonna delay the game or something, but don’t worry. For the Nintendo Switch, we’ve prepared a system that’s like a lite version of the system we always use in the office. This is to ensure we have plenty of technical resources, and to recreate a satisfying visual experience for “Virtua Racing”.
–This is all fascinating stuff! How about games from the Dreamcast library?
Horii: Specifically, we’re currently exploring games that use the SEGA NAOMI series arcade board, rather than the Dreamcast. There is a game that uses the SEGA NAOMI board that we really want to play, ourselves, so we’re working on it now. It’s a game that even Shimomura is all about, so perhaps he can speak further about it. We want to release it one way or another.
Shimomura:We do have the SEGA NAOMI series arcade board running on the Nintendo Switch already. Hopefully with the success of the first volume of releases in the “SEGA AGES” collection, we can make it a reality.
*NOTE: The SEGA NAOMI series arcade board shares the same architecture with the Dreamcast.
Horii: We’re excited about the prospect of getting games that use NAOMI to play in beautiful HD resolution—And played portably, at that, thanks to the Nintendo Switch.
–There must be different challenges with converting a 3D title into HD compared to a 2D one.
Horii: Yes. With “SEGA AGES Virtua Racing”, I think players will be pleased with how crisp the visuals are and how much better the draw distance is. We’ve got a lot of other ideas in mind, but I can’t say much about that right now, you know?
