Esprade – 2010 Developer Interview

—What made you decide to create ESP Ra.De.?

Inoue: It was the first title I was entrusted with planning at Cave. At the time my personal hobby was collecting arcade boards, and I was searching for a STG that truly satisfied me. All the earlier 2D shmups, with their roots in Toaplan, felt rather simple to me. "They're fun to play, but I wouldn't actually want to own the PCB." So I was very aware of that gap between "fun games" and "games I actually wanted to own." This story gets long, but shall I continue?

—Please, continue!

Inoue: Well, I think Dodonpachi is a very well-made STG, but even after it had been ported to home consoles, I still felt, "You know, I wouldn't really play this at home…" At the time, I thought this sense of dissatisfaction stemmed from the fact that STG games back then had very meagre world-building and thin backstories. Other genres had these elaborate worlds, which I felt shooters were lacking. So I think I had an unusually strong desire to create something with a deep, thorough, fully-developed world. That said, I was well aware that placing too much emphasis on this kind of excess could also make games fail.

—How do you mean?

—Since you're here, please do continue!

Inoue: At Gazelle, the company I was at before Cave, I worked on a game called Air Gallet. At the time, I was drawing art in a relatively main role, but I was in a slightly awkward position where I wasn't yet entrusted with the core planning aspects. Being technically inexperienced, I just worked like crazy within the scope I was given.

Then, due to company irregularities—you know, adult circumstances—in the middle of the Air Gallet development the deadline got moved up. At that point, the baton was fully handed to me. Over 50% of the stages still needed to be made and we only had 2-3 months left. Nevertheless the massive opening attract demo (which was basically an indulgence) was already locked-in, so I was forced into a hellish production schedule.

This kind of situation isn't all that unusual in game development, but at this point, the programming was still behind schedule, and not a single stage was functioning properly. The programmers weren't at fault; it was truly an unmanageable situation. It was like being told "only ten minutes left!" at the halfway point of a full marathon. From here on, it was all we could do just to get it into a rough workable shape.

—That sounds tough... and also a really clear analogy.

Inoue: In the end, we somehow finished the game, but it had a lot of flaws. At the same time, because we'd done solid technical research during the early, less pressured period of the development, it also left us with many possibilities for our next game.

I believe the game balance for arcade shooters hinges most critically on Stages 1 and 2. That's because most casual players (back then, "salaryman shooters" were everywhere) only get to play Stages 1 through 3. My own skills are at that salaryman level, so I understood perfectly well that if the early stages aren't fun, players won't touch the game again. That's why meticulous crafting of those early stages is absolutely vital.

Especially for Toaplan-style shooters (where you fly just above the ground, and the same player shots can take down both planes and tanks on a background without regard to elevation), the balance of ground enemy placement is extremely important. Frankly, shooters where enemies are easy to place on the ground tend to be more flexible and fun to design.

However, in a desert stage without many terrain features, for example, the movement patterns of ground objects become too unpredictable to satisfy the feeling of "targeting and shooting." Therefore, you need some degree of terrain features like roads, buildings where tanks can hide, or hatches. This kind of terrain balancing requires the background artist to think carefully and draw accordingly.

In Air Gallet, we realized this only when the program was already running late in development. The designer was too swamped to address it, so we released it with every problem intact. To put it bluntly, it felt like we were telling the world, "this is how you make a shitty game!"

—(laughs)

Inoue: To go back to your first question, and I know this has gotten really long, but Esprade was born from those lessons I learned. Esprade is imbued with the resentment of Air Gallet; without Air Gallet, it wouldn't exist.

Specifically, I realized that if you want to realistically depict Tokyo's cityscape, you need human-scale! And shortening the early stages and shuffling them would keep the game fresh and engaging. Another point is no matter how impressive your visual effects are, players won't notice them unless their hands stop moving. I hesitate to share this much as a developer, but I'm saying this in the belief that those reading this book are understanding people who will appreciate this content.

—I think they will see that Esprade is a work imbued with your heart and soul. Thank you for sharing these valuable insights! My next question: were there any influences for Esprade?

Inoue: Early on, I was inspired by Genma Taisen (Harmageddon).

Inoue: Younger folks today might not know it... it's about high schoolers who awaken to psychic powers and save the world from armageddon. The thing is, even though it's an anime, it's incredibly cool. Psychic powers are a subject that can be super lame if handled half-heartedly. This work cooked the "ingredient" of psychic powers using the "realism" cooking method. Sorry, I like comparing creation to cooking.

This realistic touch has the advantage of more clearly conveying the heavy themes, too. Since psychic powers is an inherently weighty theme, it naturally evolved this way. Plus, IKD-san absolutely hated silly stuff…

—So, as a result, it became a realistic, slightly dark work. What does "RA.DE." in ESPrade mean, by the way?

Inoue: It's short for "raging deicide." It means "one who strikes down gods."

—Were there other name candidates?

Inoue: During the development, it was called "ESP Drive." But we found out the word ESP was trademarked, so we had to quickly change it. This is a long story too, do you want to hear it…?

—Absolutely!

Inoue: At the time, the person in charge told us, "ESP is no good, but 'psychokinesis' is available!" Then IKD-san suggested, "How about ‘Judge Psychokinesis’?" My colleague Satoshi Kouyama was totally into it too. The person in charge of the development even started saying stuff like, "We can get the trademark for that!"

I just lost it. "Are you kidding me... who'd play a game with such a lame title?!" Cave devs (especially the old Toaplan guard) had this tendency to come up with wildly unconventional titles to avoid trademark conflicts. After all, just checking the trademark availability cost a pretty penny. It's a boring adult thing, but since we had to finish the game on an extremely tight budget, trying to find a title that's "easy for people to remember and probably hasn't been registered" led to all these weird names.

But back then, I was too young to pay heed to such adult concerns, so I resisted fiercely. That's when the person in charge came up with a compromise: "Instead of ESP Drive, if you can create an imaginary single word with ESP in it, it should be ok legally!" I didn't quite get it, but apparently, ESP and Drive as two separate words were a no-go, but a made-up word like Esprade was okay. They said the word Drive had meaning, so it was off-limits.

So they added the made-up word I created, Rade, resulting in the six-letter word Esprade. I didn't go into this much detail before because it takes awhile to explain… as for Espgaluda, I don't know! Of course now I look at it and go, hey, wait a minute… Galuda has meaning! But back then I just worked diligently and did what I was told.

—I never expected to hear such deep details, thank you ! I've also heard there were other candidates like "Gara Fujin" (Madame Gara) and "Sensan Byakuen" (The Flames of War). Is that true?

Inoue: It's true. As the location test approached, we'd have these "title meetings" that were basically just casual chats. (laughs) It wasn't a proper setting to really focus though, so they'd only bring half-hearted, half-assed ideas. If you took it too seriously, it'd get shot down as "too weak!" If you tried to settle on a simple word, it'd get shot down for trademark issues.

No one spent any serious time thinking about it, you see, because it was more likely that your idea would get shot down (thus wasting your time and work). It was meant to be fair and democratic, but looking back, we probably didn't need everyone's input. (laughs)

—Why did you set Esprade twenty years in the future (in 2018)?

Inoue: One reason was that as a shooter game, we needed a massive number of enemies to fight during gameplay. In those days 3D rendering techniques weren't so commonplace like they are now! You had to meticulously draw each pixel to create the sprites, so technically, it was unavoidable that the visuals leaned towards relatively simple mecha-style designs. Given that environment, we decided to partially use 3D rendering while incorporating sprite-based elements, which is why the human characters were all custom-made.

The enemy character ratio for Esprade was 90% mecha and 10% human characters. As you can imagine that severely limited the subject matter. Given that we needed a setting where massive numbers of mecha could plausibly exist, and our goal to depict psychic powers realistically, the best choice was Tokyo in 2018. Setting it in the present day would be implausible with robotic weapons roaming the streets, and a too-distant future would make it hard for players to relate to the characters and world. Twenty years later was just the right balance.

—What do you think Tokyo will look like in 2018?

Inoue: It probably won't have changed much. It's only 8 years away, right? The internet will probably be more convenient, is all. I wonder if the World Cup will come to Japan again by then?

—What was the goal behind releasing two consecutive games with human player characters: Esprade in 1998 and Guwange in 1999?

Inoue: The reason hasn't really changed, which is that I want to make amazing games. More precisely, games that look amazing. The kind that make you gasp "Wow…" when you see the screen. To achieve that, you absolutely have to focus on graphics. Plus, if we had just kept making pure mecha shooters forever, the customers would get bored. It was like, come on guys… can we stop doing that thing where there's a player ship and we're asking players to "just imagine a cute girl pilot inside!" (I realize I just threw a bunch of games under the bus…)

—(laughs) Since the player ship in Esprade is a person, I imagine "walking" was also an option. Why did you decide to have them fly?

Inoue: It was impossible with the technology back then. Right after making Dodonpachi, making the player character human and then having them walk on the ground… that two-step evolution was way too risky. To be more precise, as an arcade game, it was impossible for a shooter that changed things that much to achieve commercial viability, in terms of arcade income. So the "walk" option wasn't never even considered. Just changing the artwork was all we could manage. After all, we only started using photoshop for the first time with Esprade…

—Why did you choose a hand for the title logo, and also for Ms. Gara's palm-shaped bullet patterns?

Inoue: In my mind, I saw hands as a symbolic image for psychic powers. Psychics don't carry weapons, so don't you picture them holding out their bare hands? So I tried putting that abstract, symbolic hand image in the title logo background. As for Ms. Gara's bullet patterns, the palm-shaped bullets were made half-jokingly, but the programmer started using them because, as he said, "the bullets are easy to see and dodge." Like the whole title debacle, Cave's programmers are so nonchalant—they think the world-building is utterly unimportant! But I do like those palm bullets myself.

—I bet they still care about it. But I guess programmers and designers just focus on different things. Both are indispensable to game development! What feelings did you pour into this work?

Inoue: My sentiment can be summed up in one word: "anti-Dodonpachi!" I think Dodonpachi is very well-made, fun, and a great game in its simplicity. But as I've said many times, I personally don't find that game—which prioritizes functionality to the extreme—very appealing. I might enjoy it in the arcade, but I wouldn't buy it for home consoles. As a designer who's made shooters, I deliberately reject Dodonpachi.

—Can you share any challenging episodes during production?

Inoue: I suppose the daily arguments with the programmer stick out in my mind. During lunch breaks, we'd eat at a nearby Chinese place and yell at each other (clashing over game design). People would look at us like, "what's wrong with these guys?" And honestly, why wouldn't they? We're arguing, yet we come to eat together?!

—And then you'd go back to the office together like nothing happened. (laughs)

Inoue: Yes!

—Tell us a secret about Esprade that hasn't been revealed anywhere yet.

Inoue: Eeeeeh! I feel like I've already talked about quite a few things that haven't been said anywhere… Hmm… How about this: if you say Esprade over and over it sounds like "do S purei" (BDSM play)…?

—What! If anyone noticed that, they're a genius. Who was the first character you completed, by the way?

Inoue: J-B 5th. I'd already thought this one up at my previous company (for the project after Air Gallet).

—Why is J-B 5th called "5th"? Is there a 4th and 6th?

Inoue: Conceptually, I had thought of backstories up to the 5th, but since we wouldn't be able to express all that in the game, I felt it was fine to drop it. I still want to keep the idea that ESPers were sent to various countries, though. J stands for Japan. There's also A, E, and G. A is America… E is… Well, this is really just fanfic level stuff, so let's drop it…

—Why is Yusuke on the volleyball team? Soccer was a no-go?

Inoue: When you think of psychic powers, you naturally picture someone holding their hand out. For Esprade, I wanted to use hands as a key element, so a sport involving hands was ideal. That's why soccer wouldn't work.

—Both J-B 5th and Alice were raised by a Russian ESP training organization, and Ms. Gara is half-Russian. Why Russia?

Inoue: Russia has the most advanced psychic research in the world, right? Psychic powers and Russia have been a given pairing since forever!

—Have you ever been to Russia?

Inoue: Of course not! So no use prying further there!

—Well, about Russians then... Hah, just kidding. On the flip side, were there any characters you argued about until the very end?

Inoue: Unlike Guwange, there weren't any characters in ESPrade who caused arguments among designers… I went over Yusuke and Irori again and again in my head, tweaking them constantly. Thanks to that, I ended up with a huge pile of rough sketches that never really congealed into a thematic whole…

—That's valuable material now! What's your favorite enemy character?

Inoue: Alice Clone, definitely. She was a pioneer of the "creepy-cute" (kimokawai) character type. Back then, I thought a character wasn't appealing unless it had both poison and flowers, so to speak. Alice Clone conveys that creepy-cute quality not just through her design, but also during gameplay, so I think she's a very "complete" character.

—It says for Alice that she "committed suicide on her 13th birthday. Cause unknown." Could you finally tell us the cause?

Inoue: Because she dropped her eyeballs… is that not good enough?

—But why did she drop them?

Inoue: Um, she tripped in the genkan…? (sweating)

—...OK. Let's just leave it as unknown. (laughs) Irori Mimasaka is an unusual name. What's the origin?

Inoue: I decided to take the surname from an old Japanese place name. We quickly settled on Mimasaka because it looks cute. My recent policy is that names should be easy to remember above all else. In this case, names that are completely unfamiliar or overly common are a no-go. I know that may sound a bit like Cave's casual approach to naming their games, but I assure you, I genuinely love my characters! I'm not like those programmers! Oops, got a little sidetracked there… sorry.

So anyway, to help me brainstorm I organized some criteria for the name I wanted: "easy to remember," "not too common," "old-fashioned," "a cold feel would be nice." While discussing this among the staff, someone suggested, "How about Irori?" It clicked instantly for me, and seemed to unite all those ideas, so it was decided right then. The fact that "rori" (ie "lolita") was in the name was icing on the cake! (laughs)

—Was there a reason for choosing the Kansai dialect?

Inoue: In the setting, Kanto is under enemy control, so I wanted someone from Kansai. Also, I'm sorry to Osaka folks, this is just the image I have, but don't people from Kyoto seem more refined than those from Osaka? That's just my impression! Don't get mad, Osaka!

—Well, I'm from Osaka. (cry)

Inoue: Gyaaaah! I just cut down an ally! I'm actually from Kochi, but Kochi folks have a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges too (now I've made Kochi my enemy…).

—Dear readers from Osaka and Kochi, he's not serious (I hope), so please don't get mad! During gameplay, there's an image of a bird flapping its wings above the Irori. What is it?

Inoue: That's a little joke from Wakabayashi-san, who handled the shot graphics.

Wakabayashi (Special Appearance!): That's a muzzle flash. Irori got feathers, Yusuke got flames, J-B5th got lightning bolts. They match each characters' image. By the way, we originally planned to make Irori's effect a tornado, but it was hard to convey, so we ended up with feathers.

—As the creator of Esprade, if there's a scene you think is a "showstopper," please tell us about it.

Inoue: Hmmm… good question. I'm not sure. Maybe the spider-tanks trampling over the mountain of Alice Clone corpses in the final stage?

—If there are any backstories or hidden lore you couldn't fully explore in the game, please tell us.

Inoue: Since we couldn't fully explore them, I probably shouldn't say much. Besides, I've already said way too much. Seriously, there's nothing left…!

—What happens to Irori, Yusuke, and J-B 5th after the ending?

Inoue: Yusuke will probably carry the weight of the classmate he killed. J-B 5th will likely live on the run. There's no place in Japan where his heart can rest. By the way, if we made a sequel, J-B 5th would probably be the enemy. Irori would return to Kyoto and eat mochi with her beloved grandmother, I suppose.

—Why did you set the game during Christmas?

Inoue: Because it's fun! Plus, it gives the work color.

—Winter clothes are cuter too.

Inoue: Well, honestly, there was a proper reason for choosing winter. When we decided to adopt human characters as the player ship, we needed them to stand out properly. Compared to fighter jets, they tend to look slimmer… So, to make them more noticeable, we dressed them in larger outfits like coats and capes. That's the real reason for the winter clothes. The reason for Christmas is as I mentioned earlier.

—Oh, I see~! By the way, what's the moe (cuteness) point of Irori's outfit?

Inoue: Definitely the cape and beret! They're all fluffy and cute. Seeing a little girl dressed like that makes you want to wrap your arms tightly around her and give her a big hug.

—"Tightly", eh...

Inoue: I wouldn't actually do that! I'm not some pervert! I'm a gentleman who adores young girls!

—You voiced the character Omi Satoru. Was there anything particularly challenging about that?

Inoue: I had a clear image of him, so it was easy for me. For the other voice actors, though, conveying the image in my head to them was quite difficult.

—Any memorable episodes with the other voice actors?

Inoue: For Mrs. Gara's damaged voice, I wanted a genuinely painful sound, so I had the office lady speak while being crushed by cardboard boxes. For Yusuke's "Kurae!" ("Take this!") line, I told a senior colleague to stand right in front of me and speak as if he meant to punch my face. He actually produced a great sound… (did he really want to kill me then, I wonder?) Basically I caused everyone a ton of trouble… because I was bullying employees like that, I got reprimanded: "From now on, use professionals!" So starting with Progear no Arashi, we finally got the budget for that.

—I heard you personally compiled a minidisc with songs matching your image for the sound. Were there any songs you referenced?

Inoue: Mostly stuff from the hit charts back then. When I gave samples like ELT or SPEED to the composer, the finished product ended up sounding way too similar sometimes, which was a little nerve-wracking… (laughs)

—Do you believe in psychic powers?

Inoue: I think they're even more dubious than UFOs or ghosts. But I want to believe that Yana, that Russian psychic girl, is the real deal. When I saw her on TV 7-8 years ago, she was 11, the same age as Irori, and she perfectly predicted the location of an internal organ disease. Plus, on a recent show, she's actually studying medicine at a medical university to properly utilize that ability. She's trying to use medical knowledge to supplement her ability to see things, to help people.

If it were a lie or a scam, she wouldn't be going to medical school, right? There must be some truly special people out there. By 2018, when the internet becomes even more widespread globally, maybe more psychics will step into the spotlight.

—What would an "Esprade 2" look like?

Inoue: I'd want to make it with the Power Glove! Or that Xbox thing where you control things without actually touching them, that would be perfect for a game like this about psychic powers. Though a shooter might be tough… But just between us… I'm secretly working on plans for a remake of Esprade called Esupurirade. Heh heh heh…

—Oh! Well, that's not exactly "just between us" anymore, but we'll be waiting for updates! That's all for now, thank you!

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