Category: Uncategorized

Dragon Quest 30th Anniversary Special

This documentary special, featuring interviews with main Dragon Quest creators Yuji Horii, Koichi Nakamura, Akira Toriyama, and Koichi Sugiyama, originally aired on NHK at the end of 2016 to celebrate Dragon Quest’s 30th anniversary. In addition to the interviews, there’s behind the scenes footage of DQXI, plus a re-telling of the making of the very first Dragon Quest.

Doujin STG – 2010 Roundtable Interview

This roundtable style interview appeared in Shooting Gameside #1 in October 2010. Doujin means “amateur” and refers to the large body of unlicensed or fanmade works in Japan. The interview is a fascinating look into this world and an insightful discussion of shmup design generally. For context, I also translated the editors’ comments about doujin STG, comiket, and the interviewees’ games.

Dodonpachi Saidaioujou – 2012 Developer Interviews

These three Dodonpachi Saidaioujou interviews appeared in magazines Arcadia and Famitsu between June 2012 and March 2013, which corresponds with the release of the Arcade version and the development of the X360 port. These go into a nice level of detail about the design and inspiration behind what would become Cave’s last bonafide arcade STG.

Dodonpachi Saidaioujou – 2013 Developer Interviews

This is an interview with the main staff responsible for Dodonpachi Saidaioujou, including the arcade and X360 teams. It was published in the artbook that accompanied the limited and “super” limited editions of SDOJ. It’s a lengthy, thorough account of the development; and although game developers often must adhere to crazy schedules, this one sounds particularly exhausting.

Dodonpachi Daioujou Death Label Interview

These two interviews were conducted to celebrate superplayer MON’s incredible Dodonpachi Daioujou Death Label clear in 2010. Death Label was a mode specifically created by Arika, and Arika VP Mihara talks a little about its creation at the end of the interview. This interview is long and detailed, so be sure to watch MON’s clear beforehand to better appreciate his comments.

Dodonpachi Daioujou Superplayer Roundtable

This interview coincided with the then-impending release of Arika’s 2003 port of Dodonpachi Daioujou for the PS2. Arika was known for high quality ports, a tradition sadly not carried over by 5pb who handled the flawed X360 port of DOJ. An earlier portion of this interview discussing the challenges of porting DOJ has been omitted; what remains is a candid look at what it takes to be a STG superplayer, or “scorer” as they are called in Japanese.

Dodonpachi – 1998 Developer Interview

This interview with Dodonpachi creators Tsuneki Ikeda, Satoshi Kouyama, and Takashi Ichimura was published in the liner notes of the Dodonpachi / Esprade cd, released in 1998. Although the creation of DDP has been well covered elsewhere, this interview is unique for being conducted by the superplayer ZBL-NAI. It contains some nice notes about the devs’ favorite STGs and the design of Hibachi.

Dodonpachi – 1997 Developer Interview

This quick interview with Dodonpachi programmers Tsuneki Ikeda and Satoshi Kouyama is the second part of an interview originally featured in Gamest. The first part is well worth a read if you haven’t; this interview focuses on the surprisingly positive public response to an “extreme” danmaku game like Dodonpachi in arcades. Other topics include the design of the scoring system and the choice to make Hibachi an unusually tiny final boss.

Dino Crisis – 1999 Developer Interview

This fascinating pre-release interview with Dino Crisis director and producer Shinji Mikami was originally featured in the 5/99 edition of The Playstation magazine. While many pre-release interviews are essentially little more than promotional fluff, this one sees Mikami expounding on his ideas about horror game design, difficulty, and how to engage players on a deeper level than just “winning”.