http://blogs.sega.com/2016/04/25/seg...ion-interview/
http://blogs.sega.com/2016/05/17/seg...erview-part-2/

Newly Included Power Drift was a very difficult task with a history behind it!!

Next we would like to introduces Kagasei Shimomura, who has inherited the SEGA 3D Classics project from Okunari-san as the Lead Producer. A SEGA-veteran, he originally started the SEGA Archives project many years ago, but moved on to other projects in the mid-term. But he’s back and joins us now to talk about Power Drift!


Mr. Kagasei Shimomura, acting lead producer for the SEGA 3D Classics.

Kagasei Shimomura (Below KS): What I always aim for is to create something that the fans can be happy about. At the same time, I want to make sure it would be something the production staff would have fun creating as well. If you create something fun, it’s going to be a good product, so I tried to prepare a playfield where our creators can work freely. Get the budget, prepare an environment into which to sell it. That’s my style. I don’t have this skill that Okunari has where he’s super-knowledgeable about each individual game.

NH: Well, you say that, but pretty much know all of these titles.

KS: Well, I’ve been part of this industry for a long time. I think it would be correct to say that Okunari just knows too much. (laughs)

(everyone laughs)

KS: The way Okunari and I work are different. Even though Okunari has stepped back from the forefront, he’s still a project team member.

NH: We still get requests from him.

YO: If I was still part of the project, I would’ve most likely said Power Drift was impossible. When we developed the Galaxy Force II for the PS2, we aimed to release it around 2005. M2 told me, “Galaxy Force II? Hmm, it’ll probably take about 3 months?” so I was amazed, thinking “Wow, they can do Galaxy Force II in 3 months. That’s incredible!” But in reality, it took 2 years!

NH: Uwahhh! There’s reasons and excuses!

(Horii crumbles into a crying heap)

YO: At the time, I had to really apologize to Shimomura. We had to change the ‘SEGA AGES 2500’* series release order.

KS: Oh, yeah, we did change the order, huh? (laughs).

NH: (sobbing)

The image is from 3D Galaxy Force II seen in the Classics Collection. M2 previously took 2 years to port this. Power Drift is also Y-Board game and was released after Galaxy Force II.

YO: I thought it would be a waste not to use what we learned through those hard two years. When we started the 3D Remaster Project for the 3DS, we had the knowledge from those two years so we added Space Harrier and Galaxy Force II to the lineup.

For the second wave for the 3D Remaster Project, we were able to add on After Burner and Out Run to the lineup because we gave ourselves enough time to get it done. We spoke about how we needed to try and get these two games out.

But, the Power Drift uses the same Y-Board hardware as Galaxy Force, which has three 68000 CPUs. When they started on Galaxy Force II to the 3DS, I asked “So, how’s it going? You’ve done this before, so it’s a snap, right?” They replied “N-No, actually… It’s not a snap at all, it won’t run. We’re going to have to pull the programming to pieces.” Turned out to be a pretty big deal.

So, naturally if we tried to do Power Drift, it’s going to take even more effort.

– Taking probably at least over a year, I’d guess.

(Horii-san sits back up)

NH: There would be no way we could release it on schedule.

YO: So when they told me that Power Drift would be the main game for this collection, I thought “Oh, so I guess it’s going to end up releasing like sometime late next year.” I went to Shimomura-san and said, “These guys are pulling a fast one on you!” (laughs)

NH: What!? He said that to you?

KS: I believed you though!

– Shimomura-san is the trusting type! Okunari-san is one being fooled here.

KS: M2 is the little engine that could!

(everyone laughs)
YO: Well, I wasn’t in the position to look at the schedule, so I was only thinking “I hope I can play it someday!” (laughs)

NH: If Shimomura-san is the parent in charge how we are raised, Okunari-san was our grandparent. He would look over us and go easy on us, giving us compliments like, “Oh, you’d did a great job!” He’s very laid-back. Even though he gets scolds us sometimes. (laughs)

We received a comment from the main programmer, Mr. Akira Saito

We heard that you were working on Power Drift from a couple of years ago, which became a huge help in the ‘Archives 2’. Could you tell us any of the appealing points of this port and any stories that happened connected to it?

Saito: One day, President Horii handed over the New 3DS development materials and told me “Make Power Drifter work on this!” which began my porting work. Thinking that the New 3DS will be fast, I started up an emulation but seeing that it wouldn’t move at full frame, I remember being worried for the road ahead.

After that, I would find spare time and kept on re-writing the code and making it more efficient. I managed to make it work in normal speed on the normal 3DS even though there were some skipped frames, and when I showed it to the president he seemed surprised so internally I pumped my fist. In the end, I was able to make it go 60fps even if it wasn’t on the New 3DS. I’m very relieved now.

I remember being staggered at the largeness of the internal character data for Power Drift. Normally, there won’t be characters that are over 1,000 dots for a game with a screen size of 320×224.

To tell the truth, compared to the other games I’ve ported I haven’t played Power Drift as much, so I didn’t know the stories from back then or how the cabinet ran. So when I first started on it, I was worried I wouldn’t notice if there were any differences on how it ran compared to the original. However, I work at M2. The president managed to drag people knowledgeable on Power Drift and put them on the project. I was able to hear many things such as about the game play and tricks. Thank you!

Power Drift: Achieving sound emulation that was not possible for the ‘3D Galaxy Force II’!!



– During the 3D Thunder Blade interview, Horii-san said that, “If we sell a crap ton of copies [of Thunder Blade], then I’ll go and make Power Drift by myself. “ (laughs).

YO: If we went by that logic, we wouldn’t have been able to create it. (laughs)
NH: Well that’s because [Thunder Blade] didn’t sell a crap ton after all! It’s odd that such a great game didn’t sell well… it’s madness!

YO: If my memories serves me correctly, I was having a conversation with Horii-san back during the porting of Galaxy Force II for the SEGA 3D Remaster Project. It was around when started to think that, “If we try hard enough, we can move Y-Board titles on the 3DS too!” And M2 said, “The next Y-Board title should be Power Drift.”

But at the time, even though we talked about getting a ROM ready for analysis, we didn’t actually end up doing it. SEGA’s warehouse had a ROM for Power Drift and one for the Power Drift twin-cab*. We were thinking that we might be able to make it happen if we just put the time into analyzing it. is what we were thinking, but in reality we didn’t have time, so nothing became of it.

– I see. But in reality, M2 was working on it under the radar.

NH: That we were. From the time the 3DS was released, Saito was thinking, “I want to get Power Drift working on 3DS!” But I didn’t see that being possible. Who knew that in the end, we’d get the sound working properly as well?

YO: Yes, this time the sound is a big deal. Unlike the original version of 3D Galaxy Force II, Power Drift has emulated sound as well. When you emulate, it makes it feel much more like the Arcade Game that it due to the sounds playing at the same time. It’s really exciting.

When we did 3D Galaxy Force II, we couldn’t squeeze enough power out of the emulator. If we had emulated the sound, there was a possibility that it wouldn’t run a 60FPS. So we reverted to streaming sound*. For Power Drift, we first started working on it thinking we would stream the sound as well.

* Streaming sound: Streaming sound is when they record the game sounds to audio files and play them back. The main difference between emulating sounds is that the way the sounds interact with each other in real-time differs from the real machine, the fact that audio data makes the game size much larger, and the fact that it’s easier on the CPU since all you need to do is play it.

NH: For the 3D Galaxy Force II, our initial impression was that even if we switched to streaming, we wouldn’t be able to get the game to run on 3DS. But as it turns out, we did get it to work.

So with that background, when we were talking about Power Drift with Shimomura-san, our first take on it was to build it like Galaxy Force II and stream the sound.

But the emulator has been getting lighter and lighter over our interations, so we started thinking that maybe this time we can emulate the sound too. So we gave it a shot.

– During our 3D Galaxy Force II interview, you discussed how even though you gave up recreating the BGM through emulation, it turned out alright that you streamed it instead. However, I got the impression that while it was hard, it wasn’t impossible, strictly speaking.

NH: That’s right. I mean, now that we have it working with Power Drift,we can look back on that time fondly, after all. I can say to you now that, “Power Drift won’t be streaming sound! It’s all internal,” but when we presented at the Tokyo Game Show 2015, it wasn’t working right. That was only 3 months before its release!

YO: They didn’t get the sound working until two versions before the final one.

NH: A ROM 2 or 3 days before the final version.

From the Tokyo Game Show 2015 stage event. Even during then, they were saying “Whether we can release it on the schedule date all depends on how smooth the development for Power Drift goes.”

– For the streamed event during the TGS, the BGM slowed down.

NH: Even the people watching the stream wrote comments like, “It’s kind of rough to be in this state this close to release. Is it going to be OK?” As you can imagine, we felt pressure to get it done as if our lives depended on it. (laughs)

KS: At the time, we figured that showing something would be better than nothing at all, so we had M2 work to prep that ROM. We asked them, “Just do what you can to pull something together for TGS, please.”

NH: While we were working on it, there were still some glitches like the screen going screwy, but we kept on at it. For the TGS, we sort of took a roundabout approach to make sure it looked okay and tried our best to make the sound come off good. But despite all that special work, it was looking like that’d more or less end up being what it was.

KS: They even told us, “Whatever you do, do not push this button.” (laughs)

NH: I remember that. That’s what was going on behind the curtains. (laughs)

– Shimomura-san, you mentioned to me that you told them to no worry about the Power Drift delivery date, just get it done. But if it was in that state in September… How did you feel at the time?

KS: I would talk with M2 about once a week, and I’d always ask, “You’re going to get it done, right?” They’d say, “Well, it’ll be cutting it close, but we’ll manage.” So I’d sort of slide it by the marketing team, saying, “Oh, sure, we’ll hit that street date, no problem,” all while preparing to jump off a bridge along with M2 should the worst come to past.

NH: …Wow…

KS: I had my full trust in M2. And on the other side, I had Okunari-san constantly saying, “Is this really, really going to be okay!?” (laughs)

YO: Well, it was so close to the deadline it really WASN’T okay, you know!?

(everyone laughs)

YO: We opened the lid on it, and found out Saito-san had been working on it from quite a while back. (laughs)

– Thanks to that you managed to finish it on time for the release date, but there was a huge hurdle in actually completing it.

NH: Man, it really was. During the development, we even thought having it so New 3DSs would run it at 60FPS and normal 3DSs at 3FPS. But we somehow we managed to make work on both. If we only focused on New 3DS, it would open a lot of doors, actually.

– I see. New 3DS has a higher clock rate, it’s more powerful, you mean. Sounds like a bit of a conundrum you had to sort though.

YO: Power Drift’s did cause problems for quite a while. The reason for the BGM slowdown we mentioned turned out not to actually be framedrop, but a bug actually. It was changing the speed the sound played at.

But Power Drift only plays one song during a whole play-through, so you only really notice it if you are playing and testing it like it was the Arcade version. You get to the 3rd stage, and you’re like, “Wait a minute, this bit of the song song shouldn’t be playing right here.” (laughs)

NH: Your body remembers from playing it so much.

– So wait…Was it a bug relating to the timer?

NH: No, if it was a timer related bug we would notice it quickly, but we didn’t. The cause turned out to be something much deeper.

A comment from sound creator, Mr. Manabu Namiki

M2 Chief Sound Creator Mr. Manabu Namiki: A sound creator that has worked on various title’s music, most centered around shooting games. Currently works in M2, and is the sound director for the ‘Sega 3D Revival’ series.

Power Drift became the first Y-Board title in the ‘Sega 3D Revival Project’ to emulate sound, but were there any difficulties in recreating it? Additionally, it’s another driving game like ‘3D Out Run’. If there were any parts you focused on about the ambience, please tell us.

Namiki: Starting with the Y-Board ‘3D Galaxy Force II’, for this project we’ve developed and ported similar genres of “physical experience” lineups. So using that previously gained skills, and the fact the game mechanics were close to ‘3D Out Run’, the overall sound including the ambience was smoothly reproduced.

…But that is lacking answer, so here’s a story to go with it. This game’s time functions to control the sound tempo was slightly different than conventional titles, so I asked the main programmer, Saito, to work with that section, but the main game-side’s programming was very turbulent and taking a long time. So until the last moments of the development, the tempos for all BGMs didn’t match… Even I was quite frightened by that fact (sweatdrop).

Of course the finished product has no problems, so there’s nothing to worry about. Please use your favorite BGM in the background while running the course! By the way, I liked the BGM for the E Course (not that anyone asked me).

Power Drift –Yu Suzuki’s Finest 2D Game, Recreated with Detailed Care


Power Drift was released by SEGA into the arcades in 1988. Developed by what would eventually become AM2, the famous Yu Suzuki was involved with its creation. The arcade cabinet’s Deluxe Version seat would move in response to the way you handled it, with a standard style Sit-Down Version and a local multiplayer version being released later, dubbed the Twin-Cab Version.
The game revolves around selecting your driver and starting course and blazing through 5 courses with a total of 12 buggies while trying to place within the top 3. The break-neck up and down of the tracks running at 60 FPS earned the reputation of being a roller-coaster racing game.

In addition to the arcade version, it saw ports for the PC Engine (Turbo Grafx-16) in 1990, the Sega Saturn in 1998, and a Dreamcast version as part of the 2001 Yu Suzuki Gameworks Vol. 1. We’re back with Part 2 of the interview!



– So for Power Drift, there was a Twin Cabinet Version that supported network-versus. What did you do with that?

NH: This is a port of the Deluxe Cab, which is the nicest of them, so not the Twin this time. If we added the Twin, we’d have to make it support network play, which is a totally different beast.

YO: Besides, the Twin doesn’t just change the cabinet; it’s a fundamental rework of the game itself.

I don’t know this first hand, but from what I imagine, when Power Drift was released, Final Lap (1987) had started this Twin Cab boom around thattime. So they must have thought SEGA should release a twin cabinet too. Power Drift filled that need.

But Power Drift wasn’t originally made to be played against other players. It had limitations like it being too fast or courses not being built for multiplayer. So I believe that was why the Twin Version has slower speed and the crazy courses were cut from the game and made into more normal courses.

That’s what the Twin is, so when we had to pick a version of Power Drift to do, you can imagine our hesitation.

NH: Of course, there are people who like it, and being that these are ‘archive’ projects, we would’ve liked to put both of it in. But if we did that, we would have to re-look at the schedule and use extra energy for that netplay. It would have required more memory too. It’d have been very difficult when you think about it.

– The game itself had large differences, and internally it was completely different, so it would have been like a totally new project.

NH: One of the biggest reasons was that from a coding perspective, it was a completely different game. It wasn’t that everything was different, but it was to the point that it wasn’t the same game. We would like to someday port the Twin as well, but it wasn’t possible this time. I mean, like we said, look where we were as of September. (wry smile)

– You spoke earlier about the source code. Galaxy Force II was created by the group later known as SEGA AM1, while Power Drift was create by the team later known as SEGA AM2, so it’s one of Yu Suzuki’s titles, correct? Even though it was the same Y-Board, I’d imagine there were differences in how it worked.

NH: Hmm, I wonder. Regardless, we pull the code the pieces, analyze it, and reconstruct it.

YO: Actually, we never provided the source for Power Drift to M2. We handed over the source for Thunder Blade though….

Oh, I remember now! When we made 3D Out Run, we were looking for the source and materials for Out Run and we found the source for Yu Suzuki Game Works* on the Dreamcast. We found Power Drift in there.

NH: Oh that’s right! I think it was the SH-4 version. *

YO: We handed that to Horii-san, and asked if he could use it to port Out Run. I remember him saying, “This may make Power Drift a reality…” (laugh)

– He was so enamored by the Power Drift (laugh).

NH: I do vaguely recall that!

* SH-4: A CPU architecture that was employed in the Sega Dreamcast and NAOMI Arcade boards.

*Suzuki Yu Game Works Vol. 1 – Released 2001. A book that compiled materials of works by game creator Mr. Yu Suzuki, with the extra disk having five “physical experience’ games that Yu Suzuki worked on including Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner II, Power Drift available to play on the Dreamcast.

YO: The Power Drift from the Yu Suzuki Game Works was different than the other games that appeared in Shenmue. The sound was streamed, and I’m sure who worked on that bit was different from the rest. Out Run most likely was created on the same line as the Sega Saturn version while Power Drift was newly created. While build them, I’m sure there were many changes and tricks done to make it work on the Dreamcast. Those probably became the foundation for the work Saito-san was doing on the project.

NH: He probably got all excited when he realized that they were doing it this way or that way because of the SH-4.

YO: But the source I gave them wasn’t the final version. (laughs)

NH: The source is never the final version. It’s usually the one before the submission master, or one slightly better than that. Looking at the one past the final is really nice. It’s a learning experience as you can see things like, “Oh they regretted that so they went back and fixed it,” or , “Why would they take time to go back and fix THAT?!”

– They make it so that if they have the time to, they can switch it out with an even better build.

NH: It does happen.

– For Galaxy Force II, you have previously mentioned that the Y-Board had its L/R channels reversed. So for the SEGA AGES 2500 series, you fixed it when you recorded the stream data. Was it the same for the Power Drift’s system board?

NH: It was mostly the same, and I believe the L/R channel was reversed just like Galaxy Force II. However, I believe they used to create the Y-Board along with the cabinets so it may be that the L/R channels were fixed in the latter lots.

YO: Most likely, the arcade development for Galaxy Force and Power Drift were done concurrently.

NH: I actually had a chance to talk with Yu Suzuki a while ago, and we chatted about Power Drift. I commented that it was an amazing time back then. SEGA used to build all the boards themselves and still made money back on them. He replied nonchalantly, “Crazy right? But, I think they were able to make all that back with just one of my games.” He’s so cool. (laughs)

A tremendous amount of sprites at 60fps, a title worthy of being called one of the best Sega “physical experience” games of the 2D graphics era.

– As for the porting process, did you make sure Power Drift worked in its 2D state first before starting to make it 3D? Or did you do that process simultaneously?

NH: I believe we worked on the porting and stereoscopy process simultaneously. For Power Drift, you were able to change the camera-view with the start button, so even though it was really rough, we put in depth with the 3D at a rather early stage. We’ve mentioned before how hard it is to add in widescreen back when we discussed Out Run, After Burner II, and Space Harrier, so naturally we had trouble there.

– I see. The Y-Board has z-axis (depth) values for the sprites as well, correct?

NH: The Yu Suzuki Works games do. The z-axis has always been there. So we build off of those for stereoscopic 3D.

YO: Additionally, we have to decide on where’s the center point, where’s the horizon point, those sorts of things. We got a built-up knowledge base for that sort of thing, so we didn’t lose any time figuring that out before dropping in the 3D.

NH: We’ve become pretty used to the 3D stereoscopy process, so we want to tackle new challenges too. Taking an example from Galaxy Force II that we tried and failed, it’s a game where you move forward into the screen, so you know how objects should appear really deep in the screen, right? If we were able to double the limit of how many things we could show, it would look even better. We hope to be able to do that in the future.

– I see. One of the huge aspects of stereoscopic 3D is that the way you view it changes, so it sounds like the feel of it would change a lot as well.

By the way, in Power Drift, the cars move up and down, and the sharp turns cause the course and cars to swing hard left and right. I mean, the things being drawn on screen change drastically, right? Did that all work out in the end?

NH: You have to make sure you can make it over the parts where the load is the heaviest, and man, Power Drift has some really heavy parts! There’s no leeway at all! As we said before, it was enough that we considered splitting framerate targets between normal and New 3DS.

What also made the process difficult was mostly the fact that we didn’t have anything to work off of. We didn’t have the original arcade source code, so we would have to pull data out of the ROM, analyze it, rinse, repeat to finally get a basic source image. Sort of what we for Galaxy Force II too.

– You said that since Galaxy Force II had recreated for the ported to PS2, that helped when building it for 3DS. But you didn’t have [that groundwork] for Power Drift.

NH: Right, we had that for Galaxy Force II. So in that sense, Power Drift was a completely new port for us.

YO: Huh? Didn’t we hand over the source for Galaxy Force II? Though, it was an 8-inch floppy disk so maybe you couldn’t even read it in the first place.

NH: Oh I was readable, but we couldn’t use it in the end. So we had to analyze it by hand. It was quite difficult, actually. (laughs)

Power Drift – The 3D stereoscopy makes the game better! Detailed Painstaking reproduction of how the cabinet handled and the way it sounds!


Playing the Power Drift. Switching into the cabinet mode lets players can enjoy how the arcade version felt back then!

– OK I’m going to give Power Drift a shot… Wow, the background in cabinet mode has Space Harrier and Thunder Blade. There’re posters for for Galaxy Force II and Fantasy Zone too. So much detail.

YO: The placement for it kept changing up until the final version. It seems like they kept reconsidering things, like the placement for Thunder Blade is a little too this, or a little too that. We would take photos of the screen for PR purposes, but they kept changing it. So we would shake our heads and re-take it, but then it would change again. (laughs)

– But it’s the small details that make it fun. Even though it sounds like hard work. By the way, how did you record the environmental sounds this time around?

YO: SEGA doesn’t have the cabinets for ones after Power Drift. So we had to go to the MIKADO game center in Takadanobaba after-hours and record the cabinet noise in the middle of the night. But there were some mistakes and whatnot, so we had have two recording sessions. Other than the sound, the cabinet at the MIKADO is missing the emblem in the center of the steering wheel so we had to go to the ROBOT arcade center in Fukaya in Saitama to make sure we had it right.

– Sounds like you had to travel around a it. Oh, and I’m seeing four gear types in this version, including an AT setting. What is this?

YO: The arcade didn’t have AT, so that’s a new feature. For the ‘Switch’, ‘Toggle’ and ‘Hold’ settings, you can use them to make L/R buttons have the same function, or you can make it the same as how the Dreamcast version had it.

Different people have different play styles based around when to drift or changing gears. You’ll get a variety of gear styles, just like 3D Out Run. You can really feel the attention to detail to make sure the game is easy to play.

YO: There was a lot of attention here. Power Drift hasn’t really seen a proper console port before.. There were ones for PC Engine (Turbo Grafx 16), Sega Saturn, and Dreamcast, and the Dreamcast one was mixed in with others in the Yu Suzuki Game Works, as we’ve mentioned. I don’t think there were a lot of people back then who had the chance to really play Power Drift. Those who did probably did it through the arcade.

That’s why the advice Professor Asobin gives when loading the game are things useful to clearing the game.

Kubota-san, who joined M2 mid-project, was a player of the arcade version, so he taught us all these tricks about the game. This game has lots of ways to slow down before turning a corner, so memorizing those tricks is a real good idea.

NH: Kubota played Fantasy Zone quite a lot, but he also played Power Drift quite heavily too. For example, during the debug process when we had to finish all courses in 1st place, Kubota just blew through it. He was a huge help.

– How did you go about really getting the sensation of steering right, which is very tactile? Were you able to smoothly apply the steering’s analog input resolution to the 3DS slide pad?

NH: There was enough resolution so we could map it directly. However, if we kept it totally same, there would be a noticeable difference due to the difference in how the controls work. So we would play the cabinet at MIKADO, and try to match that sensation with the 3DS. You know, just try to get it right that way.

At the end of the day though, we owe a lot to some guys who let us borrow an arcade board, to which we connected a Dreamcast steering wheel controller and played that. We would make the final adjustments on the 3DS by comparing it to the way the MIKADO cabinet and Dreamcast steering wheel controller felt.

YO: We really put a lot of thought into how this felt, but we are ultimately waiting on feedback from the players as to whether or not it feels just like the arcade or feels completely different. It’s really quite subjective.

NH: Recreating the feeling of the actual machine was really difficult, but by the time Kubota joined the team, it was basically done. Kubota said he didn’t feel anything wrong with it. We think it’s easier to play than the Dreamcast version.

YO: Incidentally, Power Drift has sort of adjusts our position on the track, which makes it easier to drive, but there’s an option to toggle that on or off.

– Since the tactile feel of the game has a direct impact on the gameplay, it’s good to know you’ve adjusted it as needed. So next, I wanted to focus on the 3D itself. This is pretty amazing! Though, there might be some who get sort of nauseous from it…

NH: Well, you are running over a pretty bumpy road, after all.

– You really feel the depth of this screen you are driving into. The stereoscopic 3D goes pretty far into the screen. It feels like this might even have the deepest parallax to date.

YO: Power Drift is a rollercoaster game, so there’s parts where you’re driving high up, and then drop really fast. Thanks to the stereoscopic 3D, you really get that feeling of falling.

– The stereoscopic 3D really delivers a unique charm here. In the other games, the 3D is applies in a similar fashion, but for this game, you can really see how the sprites make up the course, and it makes it easier to play.

YO: Another way we’ve made it easier to play is that while we’ve ported all same difficulties levels that exist in the arcade versions of Power Drift and Puyo Puyo 2, we’ve also add in a lower difficulty that’s lower than what originally existed.

Power Drift is a hard game. Personally, I think when you first play it, you should play it at the easiest difficulty. The collision detection is much looser. You can learn how it’s supposed to feel.

– I get it. I gotta say though, I really feel nothing out of place with the controls, and the 3D really stands out (no put intended). In the original arcade, when you crash, there were just things all over the screen so it was hard to understand what was happening. But seeing it in stereoscopic 3D makes it easy to see the placement and distance between everything.

NH: Well, that’s because it’s a Yu Suzuki game (because z-axis is there from the get-go). It’s all well-thought out. It really is.

– It seems you can switch between the Japanese version and overseas version. What are the differences?

YO: The game itself shouldn’t change. There are a lot of Japanese messages in this game, and all this changes is the messages into English.

– And is it true that the replay fast forward speed is quicker on the New 3DS than the regular one?

NH: Yes, that’s right.

YO: It’s just a matter of the processor not being able to keep up during fast-forward. You can really see the difference in the specs here.

– I see. And you can adjust the BGM and SE controls for arcade games is in as well. You guys started adding that feature in halfway through the SEGA 3D Remaster Project, but it’s basically a tried-and-true standard now. But it’s not actually that easy to put in, is it?

NH: We add interrupt request numbers for all of the sounds, which let’s us change them. We’ve done this before, so since we know how to do it, we sort of leave it until the end to work it in. But does start to pile up, and creates a rather exhausting amount of stuff to do.

– Is my understanding correct that you didn’t add any additional features or modes outside what was in the original game?

NH: No, we didn’t. Our main focus was getting widescreen and stereoscopic 3D.

YO: As you know, we typically add in new and additional content into games in the 3D Remaster Project, which we affectionately call a “Grantanoff”*. For this project, the Grantanoff wasn’t new content, but just simply MORE content.

For example, we added a whole new stage and a boss for Thunder Blade, so we basically added more game. So in that respect, you could say half of the content itself is a Grantanoff.

Putting in an whole new title is a Grantanoff, so you don’t get a Grantanoff in a Grantanoff. Sorry!

*Grantanoff: In the second wave of the SEGA 3D Classics series, this term is used for ‘ a new feature not found in the original’. It comes from the name of a boss specific to the Mark-III version that they tried to add into 3D After Burner II.

NH: We might have been able to do a ‘Grantanoff within a Grantanoff’ if we only had Power Drift to deal with, but there was just a lot going on this time.

It might not mean much to the players out there, but having the Power Drift running on 3DS is a miracle itself. We were even able to recreate the sound so it was a miracle of a miracle. I hope everyone can appreciate and enjoy that.

KS: So rewinding a little bit, before we settled on Power Drift, we had a couple of titles to choose from for this. We talked about Alien Syndrome, Golden Axe, Turbo Out Run, and even Columns.

NH: (looks at the lineup list) These are pretty bold choices.

– I’d like to see Alien Syndrome someday. Stereoscopic 3D would be really effective in that game.

NH: Oh that game is amazing. We did a little test on it to see how it would turn out and it was great. Although, doing every single stage would be quite an effort.

– During TGS, you talked about when Columns was brought up, Okunari-san suggested Puyo Puyo 2 would be better.

YO: Once we settled on Power Drift being sort of the main addition to the lineup, I felt I needed to stir the pot a bit more. You could say it was enough with just Power Drift, but I really wanted more games in the collection compared to the one we had done before.
If we’re doing Power Drift, we have to keep the load light for other games or else we would run out of breath before crossing the goal. That’s what I meant. You guys are turning my words against me!

YO: Well, I had heard that Saito-san was in charge of Power Drift, so I figured there was another open development line.

NH: An open line he says! Ha… Hahahaha!

(Horii-san starts laughing)

KS: Well, you know. If you don’t shoot for just above your capacity, you know? You won’t get anything interesting!

NH: …Oh, I know what you mean!

– Well, I suppose that’s how producers are supposed to be tugging on the leash, handling the team, as it were. (wry laugh)

NH: Investors always say the most unreasonable things!

– Although you’ve done it on a different console, would you consider adding on a new arcade title on top of Power Drift something that is a little or a lot above capacity? (laughs)

NH: I was so sure we wouldn’t be able to hit the schedule this time. When we were building out the team for this Collection, and discussing with the director Matsuoka, he stated, “This is impossible! I’ll have no part of this!” We had to really negotiate with him to get him to stay on board.

YO: This whole lineup thing was before we had the date and budget set though.

NH: But you still told us to finish it before the end of the year.

YO: That I did. (smiles)

– You could kind of guess where they were aiming for the release date though.

YO: I’m just asking this from the position of a fan now though. (laughs)

NH: Even Matsuoka said that even if we got really expert programmer to help, it would help but we still not get it done in time.
To tell the truth, the Mark III Fantasy Zone was almost not included because of the whole FM Sound Unit thing, but thanks to the newcomer Kasuga, we managed to get it done.

– So you barely got it done, but were saved by this unexpected new employee. (laughs)

NH: We brought on a new guy who wasn’t working on sound,this guy Kubota. He’s also a huge SEGA fan, and when he saw the development for the Power Drift on the 3DS he quietly said “Oh… my… god… it’s running…” From a fan perspective, Power Drift looks like it shouldn’t actually run on 3DS.

– You’re right, it’s really hard. On the SEGA side, were you guys really confident Puyo Puyo 2 and Power Drift would really run, be finished on time, and everything would be okay? Or… were you nervous?

KS: We were nervous. (laughs)