Retro Developer Interviews - The Making of Your Favorite Games

[GlitterBerri]

Hi there,
I'm a Japanese to English game translator and I run a website called GlitterBerri's Game Translations.

I have a lot of retro game interviews I'd like to share with the community, and I'll try to keep them all in this thread, as I update regularly and don't want to spam the forums. For now, try these on for size:

1987:
• The Creation of R-Type

1989:
• A Discussion Between Miyamoto & Dragon Quest's Horii on ALttP & DQIV

1991:
• The Men Who Made Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Miyamoto on A Link to the Past

1993:
• The Spirit of Sunsoft
• Link's Awakening: Staff List Interview
• Star Fox: Message From God - Developer Interview

1994:
• The Making of the Famicom

1995:
• Yuji Horii & Hironobu Sakaguchi Talk Chrono Trigger

1997:
• Pokémon Gold & Silver in Early Development

1998:
• Developing Ocarina of Time
• Link's Awakening DX: Staff Questionnaire

2000:
• Creating the Chrono Cross Events
• Creating the Chrono Cross Battle System
• Making Pokémon Red & Blue

2002:
• The Wind Waker: Designing the Characters

2003:
• Yoshio Sakamoto Talks Metroid
• Konami: The Nintendo Era
• An Inside Look at Konami's Nintendo Games
• The Man Who Made RE & Ghosts'n Goblins
• The Development of Pacman

2005:
• Shadow of the Colossus: Extended Developer Interview

2008:
• Special Interview With Koji Kondo
• Event Planner & Story Writer Kazushige Nojima Talks Final Fantasy VII

2011:
• The Music of Mr. Gimmick
• The Making of Mr. Gimmick

2012:
• Final Fantasy VII Staffer Talks Unused Sidequest & JRPGs Today

Have something awesome that you've always wanted to read in English? Commission a translation here!

[GlitterBerri]

R-Type is a side scrolling shoot-em-up arcade game produced by Irem in 1987. It spawned a long series of sequels and spinoffs that are still being released today.

In this interview, the small team of developers for the original title discuss the issues they encountered while making the game. They also drop a few pieces of interesting trivia. Here are some examples:

• The look of ship with its attached Force power-up got its inspiration from dung beetles
• The programmers were very aware of the existence of another space shooter, Konami's Gradius
• Developers worked hard to come up with outlandish and interesting designs for weapons
• The "R" in R-Type stands for ray, because there are many types of ray weapons in the game

Read the full interview here.

[TonyTheTiger]

Miyamoto: How about a game where you get to be a mother-in-law who bully’s your son’s young wife? It’d be like in Star of the Giants where the wife wouldn’t submit to you and you’d have to compete with her by trying to throw her out of the house within a certain number of months.

Suspiciously specific, Shiggy. Suspiciously specific.

Horii: “My wife walked out on me! Where did she go?! What should I do?” Talk about funny.

[lkermel]

I love these interviews !! Thanks GlitterBerri for uploading and translating them !!!

[GlitterBerri]

Mr. Gimmick (AKA Gimmick!), Sunsoft's last 8-bit title, is a little-known cult-classic for the Famicom and NES that only saw release in Japan and Scandanavia. Though it didn't sell well, it's still praised by game fans for its eye-popping graphics, grievous difficulty, and high-quality music.

In this interview, a prequel to The Making of Mr. Gimmick, composer Masashi Kageyama looks back at his time working on the game. His answers touch on the following subjects:

• What the Mr. Gimmick soundtrack means to him
• The variety of unusual musical influences present in the game's BGM
• His struggles composing within the hardware limitations of the Famicom
• His current activities, 20 years after the game's release

Read the full interview here.

[FoxNtd]

No original texts? I'd prefer them over translations...

[schnuth]

These are really great reads. Thanks for translating them, I'm fascinated by these sorts of amazing interviews. Great job!