Shining Force III – 1998 Developer Interview

Shining Force III - 1998 Developer Interview

Long-requested by patrons, this in-depth Shining Force III interview originally appeared in the Shining Force III World Book. The team discusses the motivation for making a trilogy (an ambitious feat unmatched by any console game of the time), world design, and the connections between Shining the Holy Ark. Please note I have slightly edited it down from the main text.

Hiroyuki Takahashi - Producer/Designer
Shugo Takahashi - Designer
Yasuhiro Taguchi - Main Programmer
Masaaki Uno - Planner

―First off, what is the origin of your company name, Camelot?

Hiroyuki: It's Camelot from the Arthurian legends. As the name suggests, we want to keep making RPGs.

Shugo: That's why we chose a name for our company that would bring to mind the fantasy genre.

Hiroyuki: My love of fantasy has its roots in Arthurian myth and the Sword in the Stone story. It's not just me either, lots of our staff at Camelot are the same. In that sense, King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone probably form a big foundation for our games.

―Why did you make Shining Force III a trilogy?

Hiroyuki: It was something we'd wanted to do for awhile. Looking back at our childhoods, I read a lot of manga and magazines and stuff, and there was always this excitement looking forward to the next installment. "What will happen next?!" It was fun to let your imagination run wild while you waited… waiting itself was one of the pleasures, if you will.

Games always have one single story, however, and once you've seen the beginning, it's not that hard to predict what the ending will be. I wanted to make something where you couldn't predict what would happen, where waiting would be part of the fun. I wanted to keep all the players in suspense. I knew it would be controversial, but that's also why I didn't write the final scenario at the beginning. Even I didn't know how it would all end, and this approach allowed for some interesting developments. What's funny is that no one at Camelot knew how it would end either. Some of them thought King Benetram would be the final boss. (laughs)

Shugo: There were crazy rumors, like how he would come back as a mecha robot…

Hiroyuki: People were saying he would merge with Saraband too. (laughs)

Taguchi: That's because our original concept for Saraband was that it would be a warship, not a city. The houses atop the ship's base would retract to reveal cannons. We had notes and designs written up for it and everything. (laughs)

Early concept art for Saraband, showing the warship design and retracting house cannons mentioned above.

―What were some of the things you really wanted to do in SFIII? The must-haves?

Hiroyuki: We wanted to avoid convention and predictability. Normally strategy rpgs like this have a certain flow to them… you rescue someone, they join your party, you get new items. But what if your choice to save that person meant the death of someone somewhere else? The scenario we wrote, therefore, has a high degree of "synchronicity", where the choices you make influence events in the story―you are creating the story with your choices. Also, the other thing I knew from the beginning that we had to have was a war between three armies. I think players were hoping for something like that, too.

―The fights and events in Shining Force III have been made with great care, including the animations for the little characters.

Hiroyuki: A lot of things surprised me too. I'd written out notes for all the character animation and movements in the script, to a really high level of detail. But when I saw what the team had done, they'd actually gone beyond what I specified.

Taguchi: Everyone on our staff likes to stay overnight and work on their own stuff independently. Scenario 3, in particular, has a ton of chibi character animation. I love that stuff. Like the scene where Julian is shaking the unconscious Medion back and forth.

Hiroyuki: That "shaking" part wasn't written in the original script by the way. (laughs)

Shugo: That one was a hit. The poor graphic designers, we kept asking them to add more and more animations. Scenario 3 was especially crazy. It was almost overdoing it, like a particle cannon charged to 120% or something. That was kind of our policy though: "let's always add one thing that wasn't in the script."

Hiroyuki: The battles changed a lot from those efforts, too. The collapsing bridge in the underground cave, the falling floor in the Kudan battle… those were not in the original planning docs. In the fight where Jubei joins your party, too, it was supposed to be just a normal mountain battle, but then it was like… wait, he's using the tunnel now? (laughs)

Shugo: It's a common SRPG trope to rescue someone in a battle. To add something new to a tired cliche, we needed to make use of paralell editing, or syncronicity. That's why there's holes all over that area. (laughs) But you know how if you let Jubei die, those sakura petals fall? That little touch surprised me. (laughs)

Jubei's memorable death scene.

―Oh, that's one of the extra things that was added?

Hiroyuki: Yeah! I handed the designer the dialogue for Jubei to speak when he dies, and he adorned it with that scene. (laughs) He was supposed to die normally, but I guess he read my mind because I love it. And you know, I love the Yagyuu Clan. I don't like meaningless, simple deaths. As the designer said, when I asked him why he added that: "Because I am Japanese." He said it's part of the Japanese samurai spirit, to not die easy. (laughs) Everyone absolutely loved that scene when they saw it. I hope players get the chance to see it once too!

Shugo: Jubei is pretty hard to rescue, so it might be more difficult NOT to see it. The whole fight with Jubei gave us trouble. We re-worked it many times, I remember having multiple meetings with the programmer and map designer about it. We wanted him to be rescuable, but just barely… and getting that difficulty right was no easy task.

Hiroyuki: Anyway, long story short, these guys are always adding something.

Shugo: There's a scene in Scenario 3 where Donhort is shining brilliantly. (laughs) I love that event. Up to that moment everyone is saying Donhort is crap, he's an idiot. But then you see that scene and it's like, I never knew what a good character he was.

Taguchi: The guy who made him has a fondness for older characters.

Hiroyuki: He's also the guy who begged us to let him put those graphics in of David huffing-and-puffing as he trains. (laughs)

Taguchi: And that's not all. Each team member would add things on their own. The decorations in the village of Maya, those were drawn by one of the designers.

Uno: We ran out of time to do everything we wanted, though.

Taguchi: It was tight. On the day before the deadline, we hadn't finished the final battle, and only 3 people were working on it… it ultimately took us several days, but that period where we lost sight of when it would be finished, that was the most frightening time.

―Did the same staff that made Scenario 1 also make Scenario 3?

Hiroyuki: Camelot has a pretty low turnover rate for employees. It seems that most companies lose something like half or more of their development team, but not us. Many of our staff joined Camelot because they wanted to make a Shining Force game, and for some people, Shining Force III was their very first project with us. One guy never said anything so I didn't know, but as we reached the end of SFIII, he told me how he joined because he wanted to make a Shining Force game. That surprised me. (laughs)

―His dream came true!

Hiroyuki: All the moreso since Shining Force III has been called the pinnacle of the series by many. What's interesting though, is that many of the staff who were clamoring to make a Shining Force game, they feel satisfied with SFIII and now want to do another Holy Ark game.

―I can't help but notice that Shining the Holy Ark resembled Shining in the Darkness...

Hiroyuki: We really wanted to conclude Shining in the Darkness. We weren't able to do what we'd initially wanted to in that game. The typical battle encounters, where you're just suddenly thrust into combat, I really hadn't wanted that. I had wanted to make an RPG where you could see the enemies coming from a ways off―and that was our main aim with Holy Ark. So that's exactly what we did, and seeing as we'd gone to the trouble of implementing that new system, one of the programmers asked if there was anything else we might be able to add, and that was how the Pixie system came about. Typically I wouldn't do something like that, but it was added after the fact. Very reckless. (laughs)

Shugo: The battle system is such a fundamental part of the game, to suddenly go and add something that changes it all… yup, reckless. (laughs)

Taguchi: It's OK for me to say this now, but at the time I was pissed. (laughs) What the heck are you thinking adding something like this at the 11th hour…?!?!

―I noticed little monsters from Shining Wisdom also appear in Holy Ark, they occasionally pop out behind trees and rocks.

Shugo: One of our staff wanted to add them, so we let him include them as a little extra. We just used the designs.

Hiroyuki: I'm telling you though, with all the revisions to the graphics and other additions, that "little extra" felt like a lot. (laughs) There's a lot of different patterns, and only very dedicated players will see them all, I think. All that work we did on Holy Ark, however, served as a foundation for us and really paid dividends when it came time to make Shining Force III.

L-R: Yasuhiro Taguchi (main programmer), Shugo Takahashi (designer), Hiroyuki Takahashi (designer/producer).

Taguchi: Yeah, the core gameplay systems all originate there. From the tools we use to make the dungeons, to the way we make the chibi character sprites. The only difference is whether the camera perspective is near or far. We revised the internal engine along the way, but our basic approach in the SFIII development was an extension of what we achieved in Holy Ark.

Shugo: Our ability to display polygons also took a major step forward. Something like a 16x increase. The same fire effect in Holy Ark looks so much better in SFIII.

Taguchi: We're using the Saturn DSP chip now. I'm sure other programmers have made use of it before, but using it to program wave theory and other physics like we have, that's not so common.

Hiroyuki: The guy in charge of the DSP programming, Haruki Kodera, he actually studied those things in college. He was already helping us out on Shining in the Darkness in his first year of college. In Shining Force I, he was too busy with school, but by his second year of college he'd filled almost all of his unit requirements, so we said hey, you could be a lead programmer for us now! And he did the main programming for the Shining Force Gaiden games on Game Gear. He played a lead role for us, but by his 4th year he moved to support. I think if things had been different he'd have stayed in college and continued his research.

If he'd joined some research lab though, we'd have never seen those pixies fly! (laughs) That effect was super popular with our staff, and people kept asking me "are the pixies gonna fly?" when we were making SFIII. As it was for SFIII, Holy Ark was also a very beloved project among our staff. Many of us were of the opinion that a 3D polygon RPG wouldn't be well received by our fans. We were therefore very grateful when players who had never tried a 3D game before, or had avoided them up to now, played our game.

Shugo: We revised the first dungeon in Holy Ark many times to make it easier. It's difficult to get your bearings at first, so we included lots of signs everywhere. If you plow ahead without reading the signs, then hey, it's on your head. (laughs) A lot of people don't like getting lost in the dungeons, so we tried to make it so you couldn't get lost.

Hiroyuki: The auto-map was another little bit of help. (laughs)

Taguchi: It's very detailed. All that programming, everything had to be entered manually by hand, I thought it would never end.

―The dungeons in Holy Ark had a lot of interesting features, too.

Taguchi: Each dungeon had a theme, and they weren't gimmicky.

Hiroyuki: I like to make sure the dungeons always have something special. The turtles in Holy Ark would be one example. At the time a lot of games were featuring vehicles, so I wanted us to have one too. (laughs) I didn't want some weird machine, though, and so I thought… what about a turtle, but the only part you see on-screen is the neck? I wrote the idea out and went over to the designer and was like, "make this map!" (laughs)

Shugo: They made it, but at first we'd failed to add enough turtle snacks (which make the turtle move), so you would get stuck down there. (laughs) It was terrible. You can fall to the floor below in this dungeon, you see. We'd not calculated the turtle snacks correctly.

Hiroyuki: It was like a puzzle, figuring out where to put the turtle snacks after the map was created.

Gameplay footage from Shining the Holy Ark, which served as a foundation for the development of Shining Force III.

Uno: Speaking of challenges, the sound recording for Holy Ark was also a challenge. In Holy Ark, Garm was voiced by Taguchi. It's someone else in SFIII, but in Holy Ark we weren't in the practice of hiring proper voice actors.

Taguchi: We'd record ourselves yelling "OOOAHHH", then slap some effects on it and use that. The flying sound the squid monster makes was done by blowing through a straw into a milk carton, then applying effects. (laughs)

Hiroyuki: Even for that golf game we made, Everybody's Golf, we did all the sound effects ourselves. The sound of the ball landing in a pond, landing the ball in the hole…

Uno: I remember recording in the meeting room in the middle of the night, sampling the sound of balls dropping into a bucket of water. We got all wet. (laughs)

Hiroyuki: We got our act together for SFIII though.

Shugo: We figured we'd do a bad job with the movies so we asked Links to do those (laughs), and then we decided it would be best to do the same for the sound, so we asked a specialist to handle that. The sound effects for SFIII were all done by Treasure.

Hiroyuki: There were some Shining Force fans at Treasure.

Shugo: They have a sound specialist on their staff. I remember he got mad at us. "Why do you tell me all this vague stuff, how you want a sound that 'feels' like this… tell me what you want the sound to SOUND like!" (laughs)

Uno: The steam train sound was amazing. When it comes to using these internal hardware sound chips, Treasure is truly the best in Japan.

In the village of Maya, Camelot and Sega employees were used to model a few character portraits.

―Now that Shining Force III is finished, are there any interesting stories you can tell?

Hiroyuki: We created another, different battle system. One thing it had was elevation for the terrain. We wanted to allow battles to take place at various heights, with enemies in the sky, on the ground, and underground. The spell ranges would have been determined by a sphere. That would have allowed for a lot of strategy with magic and targetting. Characters could hide underground and ambush you too, there was a lot of ideas we had. We could have added more races too, like Mole-people!

Ultimately we decided there wasn't enough time to do it effectively, so we shelved that system for a future game. There are remnants of it though, like the ring effect that shows you which characters can take an action in battle.

Shugo: Also, at first we considered changing the way the team roster works. You would have been able to create your team roster for each individual battle. And if someone died during a fight, they would not revive, and the experience would be divided at the end of battle among the surviving characters. We thought this would encourage players to play more carefully, to feel more strongly for the lives of each individual character.

However, it created a problem where the surviving characters who absorbed more experience simply became overpowered, which led to players always using the same characters. So we tried to think of another way to make the player feel connected to the characters, and that was when we came up with the friendship system. If a character dies, their friendship rating with the other characters goes down. What effect that has varies from character to character, too.

Hiroyuki: Another struggle with SFIII was the event system, with the conditional branching events.

Taguchi: The game keeps track internally of what events have happened where throughout the game. We call these "flags", but those flags change what the next event will be. Looking at one or two in isolation isn't such a big deal, but as the Scenario progresses, they form a breathtakingly complex web.

Hiroyuki: That was very difficult, yeah. Especially with the three-army fights of Scenario 3.

―On the Premium Disc, why are some of the graphics in the Special Battles different?

Taguchi: A guy on the team liked designing stuff like that, and he'd made a bunch on his own so we put them in. (laughs)


Staff Profiles

Q1. How did you enter the game industry?
Q2. Games you have made?
Q3. Favorite parts of SFIII?
Q4. Favorite characters in SFIII?
Q5. Your most cherished possession?
Q6. Behind-the-Scenes stories from SFIII.
Q7. Your feelings now after the release.

Hiroyuki Takahashi
1. Answered an Enix job ad
2. All the Shining games and others
3. Ailian, Dominate, Benetram, Julian, Galm
4. Same as 3. Definitely NOT Unoma.
5. My Mevious and Ichitaro set
6. I talked up the syncronicity, but I wasn't very confident about it. I was very nervous.
7. We created something that I am personally satisfied with.

Shugo Takahashi (Direction, Monster Assistance, Counselor)
1. They let me in
2. Various
3. the story, the weirder battles
4. Penko's Japanese hairstyle, David's older brother
5. Progressive Rock CD collection, Golf Magazines, Uno-chan
6. It's my fault that General Reliance doesn't appear in Scenario 3
7. On the premium disc we added bosses from the earlier games for fun. I like how it came out.

Yasuhiro Taguchi (Main Programming & Misc.)
1. I dropped out of college (for real)
2. All Shining Force games.
3. The ending of Scenario 3
4. Pen, Penko, and their children
5. My five Macintosh computers
6. Unoma came about because of me.
7. The Saturn is a good machine.

Fumihide Aoki (Polygon Characters and Profile Graphics)
1. Dropped out of Beauty School (seriously)
2. Shining Force II, Shining Force CD, Shining Wisdom, Holy Ark
3. Symbios (some of the best polygon work ever), Medion's breastplate armor, Hedva, the Dragons in Scenario 3, several of the summon monsters
4. Same as 3
5. Cars, my right middle finger and index finger
6. The Apostle of Light's costume was a product of my recklessness
7. I want to make another game that is a further evolution of SFIII

Unoma (One Man Army Old Man)
1. Hmmm
2. Lots
3. Scenes with Unoma
4. Unoma of course
5. Janya's Ramen
6. The story about eating four portions of ramen is true
7. Unoma will be the hero of Shining Force IV

Junichi Ochiai (Scenario 1&2 Battles and Town Maps, Scenario 3 Polygon Characters)
1. I saw a job ad
2. Holy Ark, Shining Force III
3. It's Cheap
4. Dark Soul (he's the final one I made, so yeah)
5. Photoshop
3.0
6. That's the distant past now and I've forgotten it already
7. Ah, it's over now...

Hiroshi Kajiyama (Character Designs, Monster Designs, Other Concept Designs)
1. an acquaintance introduced me
2. Shining Force Gaiden, 1, 2, 3, SFCD, and Shining Wisdom
3. Everything. But especially Scholar and Oneanera
4. The three girls and Puppets
5. Painter
4.O, PhotoShop
4.0, and my H pencil
6. If I write that Shugo will get mad at me
7. I was given a lot of freedom with my designs, so I am thankful to everyone.

Takashi Kitamura (SFIII Debugger and Planning Apprentice)
1. I was pushed into it
2. SFIII, Premium Disc Debugging
3. Ailian's dialogue
4. Honesty (she's the best!)
5. Debasata (Debug Saturn)
6. --
7. Is anyone on their third loop, I wonder...?

Akihito Kimura (Graphics)
1. I've liked games and manga since I was a kid, so I wanted to become a creator.
2. SFIII
3. Facial portraits, the cute stuttering way the chibi characters move
4. Donhort before you change his class. I missed the last train because of him...
5. the music of Ousama to Geboku, OIL, and D-River
6. The day after joining Camelot I stayed overnight working
7. I will keep doing my best with my drawings.

Shigeki Kimura (Polygons and Facial Portraits)
1. I forgot
2. Various
3. Various
4. No oneeeee
5. My discman with radio and sharp pens
6. None in particular
7. --

Mieko Koguchi (Map Characters)
1. Because the President is so cool. *heart*
2. Everything since Shining Wisdom
3. The scene where Profound is kidnapped by a bird and panicking, Hedva's polygon underboob
4. Grantac, Bresby
5. hand massage ball, electric chair
6. If you look closely the map characters and polygon character colors are...
7. Kupii! Kupopopopupo~

Tsuneo Kodaka (Accounting)
1. Secret
2. Accounting Sheets
3. When Unoma is being ___
4. Unoma
5. My character display rack
6. While everyone was busy on the development, only I was having fun driving around in my newly bought cadillac
7. We gotta get these sales up!

Haruki Kodera (Novelty Programming and Weapons Development)
1. Part-time job in High School
2. Various Shining games
3. DSP-FEM engine
4. the Tiamat summon
5. ICE
6. During the development of Scenario II, our President was looking at a magazine and said, "We've got to upgrade our magic effects", and so I hurriedly created that light effect that centers of characters when they use a spell or ability.
7. It felt as long as it was.

Hidetoshi Sakamoto (Town and Battle Map Graphics)
1. I wanted to do some kind of work where I could draw.
2. Holy Ark, SFIII
3. Maya Village
4. David and the Pigs
5. Eyedrops, my 1000 yen Kubinekko (a neck massager)
6. I am grateful to N-sama, who practically passed out while working on the smoke effect for the train.
7. It was an invaluable experience.

Motoki Sakuraba (Composer)
1. Uno-san selected my demo tape.
2. Holy Ark, SFIII, others
3. the Light theme
4. all of the characters with theme songs
5. MAC, E-mail
6. Almost all of the data-sharing for this project was done over e-mail.
7. I'm so happy there's a soundtrack being released for these tracks.

Akiko Satou (Programmer)
1. I was led here by a hobbit
2. Shining Wisdom, Holy Ark, SFIII
3. During the SFIII development, my husbands repetoire of cooking expanded hugely.
4. Donhort
5. Cigarettes, my neck pain medicine
6. None
7. Thank goodness my home life did not collapse...

Kaoru Shimada (Programming, mainly events)
1. I went to a CG school
2. Holy Ark, SFIII
3.
4. Basanda (his voice when he talks)
5. the black doll (it keeps coming back, no matter how many times you throw it away..!?)
6. One time I was falling asleep in my chair and I saw a cockroach (sorry, I guess I don't have any real behind-the-scenes stories...)
7. Ah, it's all over now...

Shuji Shimizu (Map Design and Events)
1. The President hired me
2. Almost all the Shining series games
3. the fact it's a trilogy, and the syncronicity
4. Spirited, Ailian, Juubei
5. Norisu, Kaoru-chan, Nohara-kun
6. It seems that Ailian was modeled after Vivian Hsu!
7. It was long!

Norio Shimizu (Programming, Event and Windows UI)
1. My teacher introduced me
2. SFIII
3. When Juubei dies. Japanese people need to have a little more bushido spirit, and not sit on the train!
4. The animals, they're so chonky and adorable!
5. My sleeping bag, my foot massager, my tsubo massager, my beloved 74cm sword
6. I saved a girl who was about to go on a violent rampage
7. I want to make another Shining game!

Ayumu Shindo (Planning)
1. The computer company I was working at before went under.
2. Everything since Shining Force CD, and others
3. the map gimmicks/traps, in particular the fight between the battleships
4. Equal! (when equipped with a mace)
5. My computer (I used it to create the maps, so I couldn't do my job without it)
6. None in particular
7. Hmm, I didn't think it was as tough as some of the previous developments.

Yuusuke Sugimoto (Parameters)
1. I was really into tabletop RPGs.
2. Everything after SF Gaiden, others
3. the Navigation system
4. Taruku
5. My E-J and J-E dictionaries (for naming)
6. The love stories were a nice rarity, weren't they. And homosexual ones at that...
7. I pushed myself too far... to the limit!

Toshiaki Tanaka (Polygon Modeling and Animation)
1. The President came to one of my classes.
2. Holy Ark, others.
3. The battle scenes with the polygon characters
4. the Pen-guys, Gracia, Taros
5. Alias, MAC, Tabacco, Toothbrush
6. One night while I was staying at the office, the cleaning lady woke me up.
7. Please god, no more polygon whip animations

Junko Nakamura (Chibi Characters)
1. I befriended a pachinko-crazed man who looked like a host
2. Everything after Shining Force CD
3. The parts that don't require action
4. Fearl. His red left eye is because Basanda hit him.
5. FRISK
6. I created a in-battle chibi character for Reliance... what a shame we didn't use it! There were others too...
7. I don't want to dwell on the past...

Hirito Nakashima (Polygon Characters)
1. I switched jobs.
2. Everything since the first Shining Force.
3. I can't tell you.
4. That's a secret.
5. My American comic books, my figure collection
6. We had to move our desks around at the end of the development, and I had so much stuff it was a real pain.
7. Hey, wanna MAYA?

Kenji Numaya (AI Programmer)
1. Nothing interesting.
2. I've programmed all the AI since Shining Force Gaiden, the sound on Minna no Golf, and more
3. The Synchronicity system
4. Deathelen
5. Sticky Notes
6. Nothing
7. Hmph

Takeshi Nohara (Programming (Maps))
1. I wanted to make games.
2. Everything since Shining Wisdom.
3. David's room, David's stronghold, Primula's summon
4. David, Equal, Gazelle's sideburns
5. Training clubroom
6. I get the feeling that a lot of my own personal ideals found their way into David's character.
7. I did it! I did it!

Gerath Hain (3D animation system programming)
1. I loved anime and wanted to work in Japan
2. Everything since Shining Wisdom
3. Many
4. During the tool development, the dragon got all messed because the animation calculations weren't precise enough.
5. My personal seat, headache medicine
6. The person hitting and screaming at their computer during the tool development was me.
7. I want to make a Gundam strategy game

Masayuki Hashimoto (Polygon Characters and Face Graphics)
1. One day I looked up and there I was.
2. I forgot
3. None
4. Nothing in particular
5. My mainichi honebito [a fortified milk drink]. My CD player and headphones which I use to shut out any info from the outside world.
6. I got annoyed a lot (there were reasons...)
7. Ah... I thought I was going to die there.

Mitsuru Fukumoto (Maps Etc.)
1. I went with my friend to an audition and passed
2. Holy Ark, Minna no Golf
3. The realistic copulation scene (we used motion capture) <-- just kidding
4. The steamship
5. Viagra
6. My special movie is my Shining Finger (also kidding)
7. Mammoth Lucky!

Kanako Horiguchi (Map Graphics)
1. I received a message from God
2. SFIII
3. The bikei characters
4. Same as above
5. My handkerchief
6. There's so many, so...
7. It seemed like a long time but it was over before I knew it.

Masashi Mikami (Map)
1. It was seeing Kunio Okawara's illustrations in a magazine when I was in Elementary School... I think?
2. All the games since SFIII Scenario II, and others
3. The polish of the game mechanics, the expansiveness of the world
4. General Valiant, General Defender
5. Ben Folds Five CD
6. I had wanted the God Warrior to fly in the sky...
7. I want to make a sequellll!

Mitsumasa Muraishi (Maps and Battle Backgrounds)
1. One day I found myself walking towards Tokyo
2. Everything since Holy Ark, Minna no Golf
3. The Church of Deathtonia
4. I don't like Garvin
5. My desktop cat calendar
6. I got a new development machine midway through the project and it sped a lot of things up
7. It felt long, but short at the same time.

Satoshi Murata (Sound Effects)
1. I don't know, I was just here one day.
2. Everything since Shining Wisdom
3. The fresh new synchronicity system
4. Symbios
5. E-mail is a necessity. (laughs)
6. Almost all the sound effect data was exchanged via e-mail. In other words, I could have lived in a nice cottage out in Nasu and worked from home. Not that I own one, though. (laughs)
7. I'm glad I got to participate in this development.

Shin Yamanouchi (Illustration and Character Design)
1. There were many twists and turns.
2. Everything since Holy Ark, and Minna no Golf
3. The movies Links created
4. Spirited, Rainblood
5. Nine Inch Nails CD
6. While I was coloring the illustrations on my Mac, the files got deleted. I was able to recover the data though. After that I had the company buy me some more memory... that was a close one.

Yutaka Yamamoto (Programmer, Mainly Battle Scenes)
1. They asked me...
2. Everything since Shining Force Gaiden
3. The friendship system
4. Guys with high stats
5. Rice Choco
6. ????
7. Am I gonna get a copy of the Premium Disc...?

If you've enjoyed reading this interview and would like to be able to vote each month on what I translate, please consider supporting me on Patreon! I can't do it without your help!

1 comment

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *