Hard at work on two big Phantasy Star Online interviews for release later this week... 🧐

Design Room does some of the best historical research and writing on games. If you have the means, consider supporting them--I know readers of shmuplations would enjoy their work (fun fact: we provide occasional translation support for them!)

Incredible archival interview featuring Miyamoto (Mario) & Itoi (Earthbound), discussing creativity, game feel, physchology... with wild gems like this. Finally translated, courtesy of the incredible @shmuplations.bsky.social shmuplations.com/itoimiyamoto/

thank you for the shoutout! incidentally, HLD is my favorite game of the last ~10 years so it's an honor to know you enjoy our work. 😀

Sasano and Kawade share their favorite moments.

Here Kawade talks about the Ninji partner they had planned to add.

Props once again to @gamingalexandria.bsky.social for making these scans available!

(the new interview is appended to our previous Paper Mario interview from the GSLA, so scroll down to read it)

Paper Mario – 2000 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com In these interviews, developers from Nintendo and Intelligent Systems discuss the making of the original Paper Mario, an RPG with a unique papercraft aesthetic.

This week we have an exciting new Paper Mario interview from the 11/00 edition of Famitsu 64! Director Ryota Kawade and Hiroyasu Sasano share their favorite characters and scenes, and reveal cut content and alternate battle systems. shmuplations.com/papermario/

Kojima: I first met Matsuno at the 1998 Tokyo Fantastic International Movie Festival. I was standing in line to see the premiere of Vampires at the Shibuya Parthenon… I was waiting on that spiral staircase there for 8 almost hours. (laughs) Matsuno: That’s right. I never imagined I’d meet you at a place like that! Kojima: We talked movies on that staircase for hours. You said you didn’t mind waiting if it was a movie you really wanted to see. I guessed then, that here’s a guy with the same DNA as me. (laughs) (Translation by Shmuplations)

Hideo Kojima and Yasumi Matsuno (FF Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Vagrant Story) first met while waiting in a long line to see John Carpenter's Vampires on opening night.

Remember all those Street Fighter history stories I did awhile back? Here's a new one.

Itoi: With Giygas in MOTHER... I feel like we could have refined him so much more, but... well, it's out there now. Miyamoto: I know. I really wanted to give it one more shot, right at the very end. Itoi: For that final form, I'd actually given instructions for it to be like Butoh, that "dance of darkness." Something incredibly frail... like if they were right there in front of you, you'd feel like they'd collapse if you barely touched them. Eerie and beautiful... but that's easier said than done, right? (laughs) Itou: That sounds... hard. (laughs) Itoi: I wanted to depict the terror of the weak. But man, it was tough.

The Mother series really hits emotional tenors that a bunch of other RPGs are missing. Like, look at what they were aiming for in the famicom era— they were butting up against stark limitations and still cooked.

(Source: shmuplations.com/itoimiyamoto/ )

—What kind of work does a main programmer do? Ikeda (who was sitting beside him): Our work, as the name suggests, is the game programming that ties everything together. Within that, the work is divided into two types, with one group handling requests to “program such and such a section” and another group that actually does the main core programming. Yagawa: My job as main programmer is to create the game. Ikeda: That’s a vague response. (laughs) Yagawa: Not[sic] it isn’t. Its right on.

a lot of interviews with game industry folk tend to paint them as passionate, somewhat eccentric visionaries, so it's really funny that Yagawa in his handful of interviews comes off as "guy who goes to work"

funny timing, i beat alundra yesterday and it was a great experience all the way through. it gets a lot of unfair comparisons to zelda, but it carved itself a unique identity in the genre with how it intertwines precision platforming with clever puzzle solving. i'm gonna miss this game a lot

That's all for today! Later this week we'll be sharing our first new interview for April, as well as a new voting thread for patrons. Happy reading!

Alundra – 1997 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com These two interviews from the late 90s discuss the genesis and development of Matrix Software’s much-beloved Playstation action-RPG Alundra and its sequel, Alundra 2. While the sequel turned out to be...

The legendary action-rpg Alundra turns 29 this week, and we have a nice interview covering its themes, characters, and music (contributed by guest translator Jayson Young). It's a quick read... but hopefully we'll unearth something deeper in the future! shmuplations.com/alundra/

Eschatos – 2011 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com Eschatos is a vertical shmup released for the X360 by Qute Corp in April 2011. This interview was featured in STG Gameside #3 and covers the creation and design behind Eschatos, as well as its connect...

Qute's modern classic Eschatos celebrates its 15th anniversary this week, and we have an excellent interview detailing its creation and design here. I love hearing from programmers like this; they get into the nitty-gritty game design stuff that I find most intriguing.
shmuplations.com/eschatos/

I'm very busy indexing new materials for patreon voting, so this will be a short Saturday Shmuplations today, but here we go!

Feature: It's Tough Out There, So Check Out These Amazing Websites ...and YouTube channels, and podcasts, and physical magazines...

It's Tough Out There, So Check Out These Amazing Websites.

Phantasy Star – Composer Retrospective - shmuplations.com These light and somewhat wistful reminiscences by Phantasy Star composers Tokuhiko “BO” Uwabo and Izuhi “IPPO” Numata were originally included as liner notes.

We actually do have a small composer interview (from CD liner notes)... wish they went into more detail! shmuplations.com/phantasystar...

lemme add that the user campaign, which ran in BEEP, covered many elements of the game including illustration, game design, etc and had many winners, including top picks for each category, with the Game System Grand Prize going to a fella by the name of Masahiro Sakurai (then a 17yo, iirc)

Interesting to read the composers' (brief) comments here: shmuplations.com/phantasystar...
It's always a pleasure to translate things you have a personal connection to... low-hanging fruit, hehe

Phantasy Star 2 soundtrack: Phantasy (Title Screen) YouTube video by smashington

Phantasy Star II is actually one of my "formative" gaming experiences too. I just love the mystery and atmosphere the title theme evokes... I kept wanting sci-fi RPGs to feel like this but I'm not sure any others ever did again.

youtu.be/vbRORnX_MQk?...

Several other games that we've covered have release anniversaries this week, including Klonoa 2, Gradius II, and Blue Stinger, but for the sake of brevity we'll leave it here. Check them out in our archive if you have the time. Happy reading!

A neat little passage from Iwata and Miyamoto about the maps in Kirby's Adventure.

Aaaand here it is, the picture that launched a thousand clicks. But the whole interview is worth reading!

Kirby’s Adventure – 1993 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com This fun interview with the key creators of Kirby’s Adventure was found in the official Nintendo guidebook released the same year. It covers the design and origins of Kirby as a character, and the…

Kirby's Adventure turns 33 on March 23rd, and this interview from the official Nintendo guidebook remains one of our most read pieces, largely because of the adorable Kirby sketches drawn by the main devs. shmuplations.com/kirbysadvent...

Did you know Sega solicited the public for story ideas for Phantasy Star II? Here we see Fumiko Sato, the winner selected from over two thousand entries. She apparently made some setting suggestions too. I'd love to know what was adopted...!

Phantasy Star II – 1989 Developer Interview - shmuplations.com In this interview from the 9/89 issue of BEEP! MegaDrive, several Sega executives discuss the broader logistical hurdles behind the launch of Phantasy Star II.

Meanwhile, this Phantasy Star II interview from BEEP! Megadrive doesn't go into as much design detail, but it does give an interesting perspective on the promotion and marketing Sega did for PSII. shmuplations.com/psiirelease/