Huge interview with Yu Suzuki on 1up.

[Drum]

Sorry for the ridiculously long post - hopefully it's coherent and I don't repeat myself too much.

[Ed Oscuro]

I had to reset the DC. I will never forgive Yu Suzuki for that. NEVER.

The lady doth protest too much.

Inclined to agree with Drum's dismissal of Yu Suzuki's output generally, nothing there that really grabs me - but then again I wouldn't say I know how to properly play an OutRun game, either.

And, for better or worse, the focus was always on the "ride" aspect. I look at something like Deadstorm Pirates (that again!) and think it's an evolution of the Hang-On idea. Granted, "make a game you can ride" isn't an idea that requires genius. I don't know what to think of the focus on psuedo-3D sprite graphics in a lot of those works - it may have been ultimately a distraction from the gameplay, but it was a very effective distraction. Besides, there are some legitimately great examples of the type of game - Galaxy Force for instance. And I wonder if there isn't something to be said about making a game cleanly, without all sorts of irrelevant junk thrown in - I like Buck Rogers / Zoom 909 as much as Space Harrier, if not more, but I would think that Space Harrier is still the better game.

[GaijinPunch]

Dunno... they're games. To me it was never about being technically impressive (although this helps)... they were (and still are) more about style and having fun... which is what he excelled at.

[Drum]

Guess I can't argue with that.

[Skykid]

Drum, your argument is all well and good because it's engineered entirely around your personal tastes. It's easy when you have a passion for a particular specialist interest subject to reel off a convincing inferiority/superiority argument based around preference.
The truth is, however, while your mind was being ignited by games of a different ilk to Suzuki's sensationalist gimmick division (and that's fair enough, I too rarely played his games when I was a kid cos of the cost difference) it's still incorrect to tar the chap with the uninspired brush.
You don't like Virtua Cop because you abhor on-rails shooters - that's your fault. I happen to love lightgun games of the 90's and early 00's very much, dedicating a lot of time to 1cc'ing the Time Crisis series and Virtua Cop before that. VC was a simple revolution of the genre, a perfect balance of pace, accuracy and point accumulation that wasn't really present before (and with a generous learning curve that could make a credit go far). I'd go as far as to say Virtua Cop redefined lightgun arcade games for a long period.
Talking up things like VF would take all day, simply because the nuances of the games are subtle, detailed, masterfully implemented and endless - but that has to be worth more than 'boilerplate' gameplay. You stand by your argument because you're not a VF player - is that entirely fair?

I'm not so sure.

[louisg]

louisg: There were multiple racing games with hills in the background before Outrun, and some that were really open-ended. My fave racing game of the early 80s was Change Lanes, which is surprisingly freeform. Daytona USA was Nagoshi. No offence, but don't presume to lecture me on arcade history - but thanks a lot for being Exhibit A of why Yu Suzuki gets too much credit! kekeke

EDIT3: ohshit I just discovered Winning Run and Driver's Eyes! Namco

Ummm, the hills in OutRun weren't in the background.. that's my point. If you can find another racing game that did that before OR, then I'd retract that argument. If you wanted to slam OutRun's branching paths BTW you should've mentioned TX-1, which branched in 1983. The point still stands of course about OR being an impeccably well-balanced game. And yes, Turbo is pretty good (the first arcade game I remember playing)

I know of Winning Run but can't comment on it since I have never seen it (whether it's an arcade-style game or a sim like Hard Drivin').. it's somewhat uncommon.

The Virtua Fighter argument doesn't make sense .. the gameplay is exactly based upon the kinds of fluid movements that can only be done in 3d-- or with vector graphics at the very least (to say nothing of the moves that turn 90-degrees or so). It was extremely different from 2d fighting games of the time in more than just its graphics.

I see your point about other game designers just not getting the credit they deserve. That's just the way it is (and it doesn't really detract from Yu Suzuki's games...); how many people know Sid Meier, whose claim to fame is a competent computer adaptation of an existing boardgame VS. Dan Bunten who was a complete genius and pioneered multiplayer games? They're both good designers of course...

[KBZ]

what kind of guy posts a great review, and then immediately steers the entire topic towards how much he hates the guy. We should be talking about all the great info in this interview. Instead we're bickering over personal tastes because someone doesn't own a stress ball?

Let's try and forget about the OP and discuss the interview.

Buying chips from lockheed martin, debugging debuggers, the hints of Shenmue 3 material, and let's not forget the quote answering why the industry is totally impressed with graphics and the amount of cars in the game over everything else: "user expectations are to blame."

It seems his approach to making games isn't going to go well in his current position. He needs someone with a lot of money to let him do whatever he wants. Not sure if that's going to happen though.

[E. Randy Dupre]

Despite it's linearity and shortcomings Shenmue is an ultimate videogame experience. If you don't 'get' it, it's cos you ain't given it the time it deserves.

I've put hours into it. I've never completed it, but that's because it crashes every time I get to a certain point near the end-game, on both my DCs. I have, however, played more than enough of it, enough times, to be able to form an educated opinion on it.

[Mortificator]

Let's try and forget about the OP and discuss the interview.

I'll write an abstract of part 1 to bring everyone up to speed!

Milkman: You are awesome. Did you know that? Really awesome.
Yu: Ha ha, I guess I am a little awesome.

I played Yu Suzuki games back in the day - rode the plastic bikes, fiddled with the radio in Out Run, spun around with an idiot in Afterburner II - but it's easy to see the game mechanics weren't very good. Like Drum said, the intent was on making a cheaper alternative to an amusement park. A quarter bought you a ride with the prettiest sprite-scalers around, and by two quarters you'd seen everything the game had to offer and gone as deep as the the design goes. Afterburner II and Flying Shark are both plane-flyin' plane-shootin' titles from 1987, and compared to Flying Shark, AB is barely a game.

And Virtua Cop: realize that at the time Virtua Cop came out, every gun game was an inaccurate machine-gun game like Mechanized Attack or T2.

Lethal Enforcers.

If you played Vitrua Cop in the arcade, you know that what players talked about wasn't strategy, but how cool it was a guy would react if you shot him in the face or arm or wherever. It goes for the same draw as the shooting galleries where they'd give you an electronic rifle and you'd get a minute or so to make birds sing and make a lumberjack chop a tree.

Shenmue is Godly.

And as fitting a god, Rob gave Shenmue the appropriate tribute.

I have absolutely no enmity toward Yu Suzuki. He did his job, made games that brought in quarters, and as far as I know wasn't a douche. If you gave him a billion dollars and free creative reign right now, though, what would you get?

Shenhua and Ryo are at home, Shenhua will ask Ryo if he would like to drink tea or coffee and the player will select one or the other. Or, Shenhua will ask Ryo a hypothetical question like: "There are four animals; a monkey, cat, dog and bird. You are crossing the river but you need to leave one behind. Which one will you leave behind?" And the player has to choose one. Shenhua will ask lots and lots of questions like these and the answers will get stored in the game and affect the outcome of the player's relationship with other characters. It's like a personality test.

Wow.

[Skykid]

Shenmue is Godly.

And as fitting a god, Rob gave Shenmue the appropriate tribute.

Lol, that was actually really funny. But even though it was kind of a piss take, that vid brought back many fond memories for me. Man, I am pining for Shenmue 3 so bad right now.

[louisg]

And Virtua Cop: realize that at the time Virtua Cop came out, every gun game was an inaccurate machine-gun game like Mechanized Attack or T2.

Lethal Enforcers.

That's true.. somehow that slipped my mind (I loved Lethal Enforcers back in the day)

If you played Vitrua Cop in the arcade, you know that what players talked about wasn't strategy, but how cool it was a guy would react if you shot him in the face or arm or wherever. It goes for the same draw as the shooting galleries where they'd give you an electronic rifle and you'd get a minute or so to make birds sing and make a lumberjack chop a tree.

..but that's not really true. Sure, it raised my expectations for animation in games as far as reactions and such go (which must count for something), but it also had a good scoring system that rewarded streaks. You'll have a long way to go to convince me that it's somehow not as good as Lethal Enforcers. In fact, I like the pacing of Virtua Cop a lot more.
And, the HUD solved a problem that plagued gun games for a long time (which is how to prioritize targets when the bullets are too fast to see). Even Time Crisis adopted a similar system with the little mark that telegraphs when a bullet is about to hit.

I played Yu Suzuki games back in the day - rode the plastic bikes, fiddled with the radio in Out Run, spun around with an idiot in Afterburner II - but it's easy to see the game mechanics weren't very good. Like Drum said, the intent was on making a cheaper alternative to an amusement park. A quarter bought you a ride with the prettiest sprite-scalers around, and by two quarters you'd seen everything the game had to offer and gone as deep as the the design goes. Afterburner II and Flying Shark are both plane-flyin' plane-shootin' titles from 1987, and compared to Flying Shark, AB is barely a game.

I'd argue that although Afterburner II doesn't hold up very well, his other games do. OutRun remains one of my favorite driving games, for example, 20 years after its release (and Super Hang-On improves on that, too!). I can't find a fault with its gameplay, which is much more compelling in my opinion than other racing games at the time (except for possibly Speed Buggy, which is often overlooked). The other driving games are all very good, too. He has, almost completely consistently, designed games with tight gameplay with only a couple missteps.

And from a technical standpoint, as has been pointed out even by the critics, the games are impressive. For example, take Power Drift. It's a pretty bad game (I'd count it as one of his missteps), but it had a really crazy graphics system in which little sprite blobs were used to create a full 3d track. That's a pretty original take on how to design a graphics engine for a racing game.

I could see a successful argument that he's an overrated game designer, and that others should be better-known instead. But, this is really just trolling. The arguments don't really make much sense.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Shenhua and Ryo are at home, Shenhua will ask Ryo if he would like to drink tea or coffee and the player will select one or the other. Or, Shenhua will ask Ryo a hypothetical question like: "There are four animals; a monkey, cat, dog and bird. You are crossing the river but you need to leave one behind. Which one will you leave behind?" And the player has to choose one. Shenhua will ask lots and lots of questions like these and the answers will get stored in the game and affect the outcome of the player's relationship with other characters. It's like a personality test.

Wow.

Can't say I'm following the context all that dilligently, but this doesn't sound bad to me at all. See, I enjoyed Jane Doe's film plot summaries in MGS3 to the point of not skipping them.
Never played Shenmue. Played Yakuza and enjoyed it as much as the 30 fps combat engine allowed me to.
I also enjoyed Planescape: Torment for what it's worth (and I dislike BioWare's Infinity Engine big time).