Cave Shooting History Interview Extravaganza!

[Tokyo-J]

This is one of the best reads ever.

[DMC]

The exchanges between Yagawa and Ikeda are great! Like this one:

—Is there anything you'd like to put on the record for Cave's 16th anniversary?

Yagawa: Give me a raise. (laughs) Also, please give me more vacation time. And put some air condition or something in here! I know these are rather plain things, but they're important. With all this hardware on all the time, it gets excruciatingly hot depending on where you sit. People are always fighting over whether to turn the air conditioner on or off!

Ikeda: Well, let's change your seat then.

Yagawa: Also, please move the office closer to my house!

Ikeda: That's not possible.

Yagawa: It used to be at Kagurazaka, but now since moving to Shinjuku Gyouen its gotten even farther for me. I want them to build a tunnel from my house to the office.

Ikeda: That is also not possible.

Yagawa: But even when I'm busy, I never sleep over at the office, since the next day I'm just going to have to come in again. Even if it takes a little time, its better to go home I think. So please move the office closer to my house.

Ikeda: Impossible. (laughs)

[sven666]

fantastic work blackoak!

[burgerkingdiamond]

Thanks so much! What awesome reading material.

[blackoak]

Thanks for the kind words everyone! I'm just at a unique point in life, surely not to last forever, when I can easily spend the time on these. Its kind of lonely reading all these cool insights and not having anyone to share them with, so the pleasure is mine.

I've now taken the time to clean up all the little spelling errors and remnant words that occur when you're translating. I only caught one substantive error, which was the phone exchange between Inoue and Ikeda. I had translated "josou" as women's clothing, when it actually exclusively means dressing in drag. So here is the updated bit, which makes more sense anyway:

Ikeda called me one night at 11PM and shared his wisdom, "You can't make dressing in drag look so free and easy! You've got to make him look all frustrated, like he's saying 'No, no!'" As a result of that session I realized, "Yes! I've got it!" and the character Lei was born!

Sorry about that! Everything else should be good. I almost titled this thread "Cave Comedy Hour" as it pretty much is a lot of goofing around and silliness. I agree about the Yagawa conversation... his tone with the interviewer was very different, much more direct and assertive in places. I also think he had some of the most thoughtful things to say about design, though I'd love to read an interview with him (or any classic company programmer) that goes really in-depth, applying these principles to a specific game. Its a little tough finding things like that... interviews at release tend to not be that in-depth, and by the time a game has been enshrined in public consciousness, many of those nitty gritty details have been forgotten by the programmers themselves.

My other laugh out loud part is the Maniki bit about 1st/2nd gen shmups fans getting older and infirm.

[KAI]

blackoak, I think you mean Rei not Lei (he's a crossdressing boy)

http://kai-a-secas.deviantart.com/art/G ... -269686979

Namiki knows about shmups and shmups fan!

[drboom]

Exceptional work.

[Deca]

This is outstanding work and a fantastic read, I can't thank you enough for the translations you've been doing!

[Thjodbjorn]

Great work, thank you!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu
The schedule for this project was very strict: even though the release date was in May (2008), the development didn't start until the end of December (2007). Despite those circumstances, we made the development deadline, and after we had shipped all the pcbs and were casually playing the game, laughing and chatting... one of us turned pale and said: "The 2P score is missing a digit..." If the score got high enough from a combo and the digit increased, the first 2P digit would disappear off screen. As a result, the next day we took a truck to the delivery station and recovered all the pcbs, went straight back to the office, reburned all the roms, repackaged all the pcbs, and reshipped everything... it was no laughing matter. And despite all that, once they had been installed at game centers, it turned out a counterstop was still awaiting us. (Programmer)

So this is the "real" reason why the SH-3 powered DDP-DFK 1.5 PCB release is around. Good to know. That's crazy to recall all the DDP-DFK 1.0 PCBs and re-burn them to release them in time to the game centers (and later still encounter the dreaded "counterstop" issue). That must've cost a fortune to do so (in terms of overtime and the man power to pull it off successfully). Whatever it takes to get the job done right with arcade PCB releases, that's a given.

Crazy to learn about the hardware limitations when making the DDP-DOJ WL PCB release + the issue of trying to overcome the gameplay/game design issue perfected with the DDP PCB release. That's quite a high bar/benchmark to surpass indeed.

Would've been interesting to learn some more new insights into the DDP Special Campaign Version PCB and Cave's thoughts/opinions about it. Sure would be nice to upgrade my plain-vanilla DDP PCB into a DDP SCV PCB -- but I know that isn't likely any time soon.

Most truly excellent read about the fascinating insights of Cave straight from the shmupper of the hour, blackoak.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Ibara
"Make it like that game!" That was the request received to develop Ibara. Our new hardware had just come out, so we were still in the process of writing our coding libraries, and we could only complete one part of the gameplay elements we had initially planned... it was a title full of problems. At the location test people were saying "it doesn't feel like Cave," but the company was telling us "Don't make it like a Cave game," so in a number of senses it was trying. [[tr note: the specific game they were asked to emulate is not mentioned]]

In another interview I read (can't find it right now) Ikeda says he told Yagawa to remake Battle Garegga, this was the beginning of Ibara.

[05pro]

Great read. Thanks for all the effort this must have taken

[kingka]

Amazing work blackoak, thank you.

[TSJ]

<3 blackoak

lots of interesting stuff... never knew Ibara Kuro came after PS2 Ibara Arrange.

Also, regarding ESP.RA.DE

Junya Inoue, who was an employee with Cave at this time, really put us through the wringer on this project. With his catchphrase "It has to feel real!", he'd then tell us "Put a table here!" or "Put cars on this road!" or "Put a sign here!" It was requests like that, one after the other. Finally a programmer complained, "Shouldn't we be placing the enemies before all this...?" to which Inoue replied, "Tables come before enemies!!!"

lol!

[KAI]

Ibara Arrange is Kuro's prototype version.

[nesrulz]

Great stuff. Thanks a lot.

[waiwainl]

Even now this is pretty good stuff to read!! Excellent work!