Japanese Pinball – Developer Interview Collection

Shinichi Oguri - Director (KAZe)
Norio Nakagata - Producer (Sega)
Junichiro Kawazoe - Executive Producer (Sega)

—How is the development of Necronomicon going?1

Oguri: Of the three tables we're designing, only one of them is ready to the point where I think we could show it. Pinball development proceeds in a different way from regular video game development; there's more debugging work you have to do upfront, before the graphics. So those tables are still in a wireframe form, but now that we've got the gameplay aspects dialed in, they should be completed pretty quickly. We've already got the color scheme for each table figured out, and the first table will feature a lot of reds, with a dark, gloomy feel.

—Why did you choose the title "Necronomicon"?

Oguri: The theme for our previous pinball game, Last Gladiators, was a battle between interdimensional warriors, and I wanted to continue in the same tradition of refinement for this title as well. When we were deciding on this game's theme, horror came up as one of the ideas. So I quickly went online and did some research, and learned that there are a lot of homepages out there centered on the Necronomicon and the Cthulhu mythos! Pinball is more popular in Europe than Japan, so we have to think of the global audience. Since the Necronomicon was a relatively recognizable name around the world, and it fit our idea for a horror theme, we went with it.

—You chose it for its global recognition, then.

Oguri: Right. Also, we're aiming for a gothic horror theme, not splatter or gore, so it fit there too.

—What is the Cthulhu mythos?

Oguri: It was created by the American author HP Lovecraft, and he was cool with anyone writing stories within it. Following in Lovecraft's footsteps, many of his friends and disciples continued to expand on the lore over the years. The necronomicon itself is the name of a fictional book within the mythos.

—Have you finished the story for your game?

Oguri: To explain it in the simplest terms, a monk learns of the existence of the necronomicon, and following those clues, goes on a journey to find the book. However, when he opens it, he summons dangerous demons into this world. That's the story, which will be told across three pinball tables.

—It sounds like you're putting a lot of effort into the story this time.

Oguri: Yeah. We're preparing a story mode in which you'll proceed through the three tables in order. We plan to include movies between each table too, to help players understand the progression. These are only supplemental or "bonus" content to the main pinball game though—we're thinking the story will be told visually mainly, with the details left up to the player's imagination.

—Will the pinball tables build on the experience of Last Gladiators, your previous game?

Nakagata: In terms of the basics, yes, but we are also adding new features.

—As with Last Gladiators, it appears the visuals and music will also be created overseas...?

Kawazoe: Yes. As you know, pinball is quite popular in Europe, so being able to compete in those English-speaking markets is very important to us. That's why it's necessary to have both the visuals and music created in America. In our case, we want to always strive to be the number one maker of digital pinball, and we have lifted our production limits on both time and budget for this series of games on the Sega Saturn.

For Necronomicon, for example, we've asked the band Dream Theatre, who are extremely popular in America, to write the music—and that act alone cost as much as an entire development normally would. For the visuals, too, we've hired some of the top class people in the field, editors who worked on Michael Jackson's videos.

—When did you start focusing on the international market?

Kawazoe: We started releasing games under our own brand name in June 1995. It may be somewhat of an oversimplification, but I believe that game companies should focus on one genre, and that companies which try to do everything don't last very long. So when we asked ourselves what we should focus on, pinball was natural as we'd already created two games in that genre.

—Did you create your company because you wanted to make pinball games, then?

Nakagata: No, it wasn't like that. I happen to belong to the pinball generation myself, but I'd always wondered if there wasn't some way to bring pinball into the home. When the Super Famicom came out, I thought this hardware might be able to realize this dream, and we created the Super Pinball series. We were still unsatisfied with the graphics, though, among other things. Then the 32-bit systems started coming out, and finally with this hardware I knew we could make something worthy of the name "digital pinball."

—Right now only the Saturn version is planned, correct?

Nakagata: To create the realism we are trying to achieve with digital pinball, we're utilizing every ounce of power in the Saturn's twin CPUs. It would be difficult to port these games to other consoles and maintain the same level of quality.

—How realistic are you trying to make it?

Nakagata: Necronomicon is a major step-up from Last Gladiators, but there's still a long way to go to reach the heights of real pinball. We'll be aiming at that ideal for another 2 or 3 years yet, I think.

—Please give a final message to our readers.

Kawazoe: KAZe will continue to pursue quality above all else. For those who have taken an interest in our work, we hope you continue to follow us for a long time to come.

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Satoshi Matsuoka - 2018 Developer Interview

excerpted from the original feature at hatena news

—When did you start working at HAL?

Matsuoka: HAL Laboratory was established in 1980. Shortly before that, there was a PC section in the Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro, which was the first place in Japan to sell Commodore and Apple products. There was also a PC section in Akihabara, but competition was fierce there, so Ikebukuro was something of a hidden spot. So I started hanging out there after school and programming until the store closed. Several of my friends hung out there too, including Hitoshi Suzuki, who later became the head of MSX development, and the late President Iwata of Nintendo.

Together we formed a company called HAL Laboratory. I was still in high school at the time, so it was still a part-time job for me, but Mr. Iwata was just graduating from college, so after graduating I went straight to work for him.

The turning point for HAL was the release of the Nintendo Famicom, which used the 6502 CPU. The arcade game machines in coffee shops and game centers used the Z80 CPU, but they were complicated and expensive. Therefore, in order to reduce the cost of home video game consoles, Nintendo had decided to use a modified 6502, which had simpler circuitry, was faster, and less expensive.
　
This was fine in the U.S., but in Japan, there were no programmers for the 6502, so Nintendo was in trouble. But HAL Laboratory was a group of elite 6502 programmers so it was the perfect match. We had also written many games ourselves. When we were first approached, we looked at Nintendo's code that had been ported from the arcade games to the Famicom, and I'm sorry to say that it was horrible. (laughs)
　
The Z80 and 6502 have completely different CPU systems, so just transcribing the code as-is would have resulted in an incredibly inefficient program. That was not good enough, so HAL Laboratory began undertaking the development of various software for the Famicom, including Nintendo's Golf, F1 Race, and Pinball, which I wrote. Balloon Fight came a little later.

—Pinball was developed by you and Mr. Iwata, correct?

Matsuoka: I was the main programmer and Mr. Iwata was the sub-programmer for Pinball. The graphics were drawn by one of Nintendo's designers, but the programming was written almost entirely by the two of us.

I was in my fourth year of college then. Of course, I understood all the physics of a moving ball, but the hardware of the time was too slow for an exact recreation of the physics. It needed to be faster, and since it was a game, of course it had to be real-time. But I couldn't think of a way to do it. Meanwhile, Mr. Iwata kept reminding me how little time we had. "The deadline is getting closer and closer, and we're still stuck…?" Two months passed like this. One day, however, I had a sudden flash of inspiration.
　
The most difficult part, you see, was the collision detection. While any smart phone can handle it today, for the hardware back then, calculating the rigid body motion of the pinball, on a pinball table with its complex shapes, was simply impossible.

But I came up with an algorithm for an approximation method that could successfully perform high-speed calculations, by treating a curved surface as a collection of square blocks. I wrote the physics package and wrote the real-time driver—exactly the same development process as for embedded systems—in a month and a half. It sold over a million units, making both Nintendo and us happy. Looking back now, the Famicom was a very unique and interesting machine. What was really interesting about it was that it was a machine that showed off the abilities of the programmers.

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Masaya Horiguchi and Data East Pinball

originally featured at automaton-media in 2017

―First off, could you tell us how old you were when you first started playing pinball?

Horiguchi: It was around third or fourth grade, so around 1970. A friend invited me to the New Hachioji Cinema at the next station over. "I've got something cool to show you!", he said. They had a bunch of pinball machines there lined up in a row on the first floor. But the real switch flipped for me in fifth grade. I started seeing shops with pinball machines around my local area near Toyoda. That's when I started casually playing pinball with friends, even if just for short bursts. There's a McDonald's in front of Toyoda Station now, but back then it was a game center called Ding Dong. I still clearly remember there being about ten machines lined up there.

―I understand that your activities with your pinball buddies back then laid the groundwork for forming the Tokyo Pinball Organization (TPO).

Horiguchi: Back in my sophomore year of high school, as our pinball crew was taking shape, something really clicked for me on August 1st, 1977, and that date became TPO's founding anniversary. Beyond just playing among friends, we started inviting our high school classmates and other younger students. "You guys have to check this out, it's so fun!" That group of about 15 people became the precursor to TPO. For people unfamiliar with pinball, we wrote down flipper techniques, how to rock the machine, and the rules for each specific machine on paper. This approach of educating people about pinball and the different machines continued long after I joined Data East and even when I started working at Toyoda Neverland.

―TPO aims to promote and develop pinball in Japan. Would you say your greatest achievement since founding the organization has been your collaboration on Pinball Graffiti, the pinball mook published in 1989?

Horiguchi: I believe the publication of Pinball Graffiti was a major achievement. From a player's perspective, it served as a catalyst to show the world that pinball enthusiasts exist in Japan too. Since the 1990s, TPO's elite members have excelled at world championships. Our yearly exhibition at the Pinball Expo in Chicago each fall was important, too. As an extension of these activities, when Pinball Expo reaches milestones like its 10th or 20th anniversary, I sometimes give a celebratory speech at the banquet. It's not for personal gain or for the TPO, but I believe it serves as a way to showcase the existence of the Japanese pinball community.

―You witnessed the birth of video games starting with Space Invaders in 1978. Did you feel a certain threat?

Horiguchi: Yeah, I saw pinball machines gradually disappearing from arcades in places like Shinjuku, which felt like a threat. I often joked, "Space Invaders isn't invading Earth—it's invading our space!" (laughs) I remember seeing rows of arcade cabinets where pinball machines had been just yesterday. Seeing the indentations where the machines' legs had sat on the floor or patches of untanned wall made me wistful: "there used to be a pinball game here…" However, as a high school and college student with plenty of free time, I was also drawn to video games, so I never got seriously depressed about it.

―As someone who didn't experience it in real time, I feel pinball was steadily losing momentum to video games, which were rapidly evolving during the transition from electromechanical (EM) machines built with relays and motors to solid-state (SS) machines using CPUs.

Horiguchi: The early 1980s were a tough time for pinball. Even when new machines came out, I think their visibility in arcades was declining. Even I, a pinball enthusiast, found myself playing video games more often. That just shows how many exciting video games were being released one after another. Pinball manufacturers also started making video games. Considering the market as a whole back then, they were likely pouring both talent and money into video game development. That probably made it difficult to focus resources on pinball. Yet, even under those circumstances, pinball makers continued to experiment. They must have felt an immense pressure though, and my personal impression is that we saw quite a few bizarre, often low-quality tables that seemed to stray far from the essence of pinball.

―And yet I assume your attachment to pinball was something special, since you continued to play throughout the years.

Horiguchi: Well, considering a college student's budget, pinball was probably cheaper to play than video games, which cost 100 yen per game. If you were skilled at pinball, you could rack up 15 or 20 credits, so in that sense, it had a big advantage. Then, after graduating and entering the workforce, I had no time for games at all. I couldn't keep up with both pinball and video games anymore. So, around 1983, I made a personal decision to stop playing video games entirely and refocus my dedication solely on pinball.

Then, about two or three years later, when High Speed came out, I became completely absorbed. That machine was truly revolutionary. It's something you had to experience in real-time to appreciate. I honestly think pinball still exists today because of that machine.

―What led you to join Data East?

Horiguchi: I used to go to the Amusement Machine expo shows for TPO, and I would play pinball like crazy at the Data East booth. I would always discuss sales promotion strategies with the sales staff there, telling them "you should highlight this part of the game" and stuff like that. Eventually they said to me, "if someone as knowledgeable as you, Mr. Horiguchi, could join us, it would be a huge help." I enjoyed teaching people about pinball, so I joined Data East at the age of 27.

That was April 1988. At that time, Data East USA, a subsidiary of Japan's Data East, had just started pinball operations by building a new factory in Chicago. They had only recently begun importing and selling those machines in Japan. The sales and marketing people didn't seem to know much about pinball, so everyone was trying hard to gain more knowledge. That's why I was given this core role. Actually, I had always wanted to be a teacher. If things had gone smoothly down that path―if I hadn't joined Data East, in other words―the history of pinball in Japan might have taken a different course!

―Just to confirm one more time, the background for Data East entering the pinball market stems from the legacy of the former Stern, which withdrew from the industry in 1984, correct?

Horiguchi: Gary Stern was an important figure in Data East Pinball's history, and so his name might give that impression, but I wouldn't say it's a direct continuation of the old Stern legacy. It seems Gary and his team's idea of "finding capital somewhere to establish a new manufacturer" aligned with Data East USA's business strategy, leading to the decision to build a new factory in Chicago. To support circuit board design and other foundational development tasks, quite a few Japanese staff who had worked on video game development were also sent to Chicago.

Additionally, there was Takashi Ishikawa (1930-2013), who had previously worked at Sega and was deeply involved in pinball. He reportedly spent several months at the Chicago pinball factory teaching workers the basics, like soldering. We at TPO felt it was absolutely essential for people to know about Ishikawa, who later dedicated himself to pinball at Data East in Japan. That's why Toyoda Neverland held the Takashi Ishikawa Memorial tournament in April, the month he was born, and in October, the month of his passing.

―Your business card at the time listed your position as "Coin-Op Sales Department, Pinball Sales Promotion." Could you tell us what your specific duties entailed?

Horiguchi: I worked on machine debugging and was involved in creating instruction cards and playing manuals. The first thing I suggested myself was making stickers showing the location of the start button. Many regular people would say, "I put in coins but can't find the start button," so we added a marker. Some things we did for the Japanese market were adopted by the Chicago staff, creating a sort of reverse import effect. Data East issued playing manuals starting with their second title, Secret Service, but those were still primarily planned by the advertising department. Starting with the third game, Torpedo Alley, they entrusted me with everything.

―What was the internal atmosphere like at Data East when its pinball division was acquired by Sega of America?

Horiguchi: Many people within the company felt sad about letting go of the pinball business we'd been developing. A meeting was held at Sega headquarters regarding out future pinball operations, since the acquisition involved not only new pinball machines but also aftercare for existing tables. Mr. Ishikawa and I attended. Contrary to expectations, it concluded with them saying, "Data East, please continue working as you have been." (laughs) We were all wondering what would happen, but ultimately, we remained at Data East and continued working on pinball.

―Like Data East in the beginning, Sega Japan was also initially perplexed by the pinball business.

Horiguchi: This is purely speculation on my part, but in both cases, discussions progressed first in America, so Japan's response might have been somewhat delayed. The difference was that when Data East entered the market, pinball was just starting to pick up, but by the time of the Sega acquisition, things had clearly changed. For Data East, the timing was good. For Sega, however, they bought the division just as the pinball industry started its steep decline. As a result, it probably felt like they'd been saddled with a liability. Sega had once made pinball machines themselves, but roughly 20 years had passed since then. The game industry had changed dramatically, so it's hardly surprising they couldn't get enthusiastic about pinball.

―It sounds pretty grim... by the way, did your main duties change much?

Horiguchi: My work duties remained completely unchanged; I was still creating promotional materials. Since Data East handled domestic sales of Sega pinball products in Japan, we now included the message "For inquiries, please contact Data East" on flyers and catalogs for distributors. Even after Sega became the parent company, the Chicago staff requested that I continue my work, so I was still responsible for debugging. If I had to point out a change, it was that many machines used to display MASAYA HORIGUCHI in the staff roll on the display. But after becoming Sega Pinball, it seems they couldn't display my name since I belonged to another company.

Data East continued working diligently for Sega Pinball. But the number of machines imported into Japan kept declining. After 1996's Independence Day, I was no longer involved with new machines, including debugging duties. I remained on staff for a while afterward, partly due to responsibilities for product aftercare. But the company's overall performance deteriorated, leading to a situation where they sought voluntary retirees. I left Data East around the same time Mr. Ishikawa retired.

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