shmups.system11.org

2010/02/14
Toaplan Forever
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2009/05/20
Up next: Shooting with Treasure

Gameside, a bi-monthly publication focusing mainly on older games (but not afraid to to try new ones) ran a multi-page Shooting Game special. Part 1 was the "2D Version", btw. Part of the spread was a mail interview with Treasure. The interviewee turned out to be Atsutomo Nakagawa, a developer who has not appeared in the media before, but has worked on just about all of the Treasure shooting hits.

Enjoy.
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2009/04/11
Time for my yearly update (gotta do these more often).



Guwange Game Talk
I dug this out of a pretty hard to find doujinshi (C-Cube circle) which features an interview w/ IKD, Inoue, and Yasushi Imai. Has some pretty good nuggest in there.

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2008/04/26
The World of ESPGaluda Update Edition.
I translated all the shit found on Cave's website quite some time ago (August 2005 according to this thread) but recently dug up a few articles that I found interesting. I've incorporated it into the main translation hub. Please enjoy.

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2007/12/26
The World of Death Smiles
A while back I translated the quick, 1-page or so interviews posted on Cave's blog. I went ahead and did the website as well. I assume they will had a character profile for Rosa pretty soon, at which point I will update it.

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2007/03/06
STG Developer Interview
11 months since I translated anything fun. Wow... that sucks, but is life I suppose. Anyways, I don't know where this came from, but I found it on a Japanese fan site. As it was already typed in, made everything much smoother. No pictures though. This is really more of a pow-wow than an interview. No real crazy secrets revealed, but is a nice quick read to see some of our favorites (Ikeda, Inoue, Iuchi, Sotoyama, etc.) get together and chat.

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2007/01/01-ish
Interview w/ SWY Yusemi, translated by TWE

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2006/04/07
Gunstar Heroes Producer Inerview
Wow, almost 4 months since my last one. Gotta get crackin'. Anyways, this is borderline material I understand, but I think it's safe to say most people here would be interested in this, given Treasure's track record. This interview is with Maekawa, the CEO of Treasure. He tells some interesting stories about how they got Treasure off the ground, and finally a comment from a developer on why US versions of games back then were harder.

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2005/12/27
Ketsui
Been a while since I've done one of these. Figured I'd crack this one out. Not a ton of information out there, most disappointing of which is the lack of a developer interview. What is included in this one is:

-Story
-Character Profiles
-CD Liner Notes from the DOJ/Ketsui soundtrack (by Manabu Namiki)
-Interview with SYO
-Interview with Futabishi

As usual, enjoy. If you can think of anything kew out there that the English speaking world needs to know (but isn't ridiculously long), send it over. There's little in the queue right now.

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2005/08/28
ESPGaluda
Gearing up for ESPGaluda II, I thought this would be a nice little project. Unfortunately no developer interview (that I know of) exists for this game, which is a shame. I've translated about every possible thing I could find.

-Story
-Character Profiles
-Stage Introductions with Enemy names

There actually is a little story divulged in the stage intros. For the most part, they are real translations of the Engrish found on the stage clear screens of the game (the webpage has them in Japanese). In some cases, they are longer, and hopefully in all cases clearer.

Enjoy.

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2005/07/19
Guwange
Probably not as interesting as a developer interview, but still worth doing in my opinion. Quite a bit of text too. Includes:

-Story (overall and background on characters)
-Character & Enemy profiles
-Stage Info

Enjoy

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2005/07/10
The Man who Made Guwange and ESPRade
A very long interview with Junya Inoue (Joker Jun) found in Continue Volume 6. Dumb luck that I found this. Continue is a pretty obscure magazine... pretty hip actually, when compared to Famitsu.

This is the only thing I could find that's even close to a Guwange developer interview. I'd say this is the most interesting translation to date, as it focuses on one person instead of one game, and covers the many things he worked on, not only at Toaplan, but also at Cave and even his manga after leaving Cave. There's even a brief mention of Gazelle.

I thought of making this a 2-parter due to length. I probably should have which would've made the editing easier (and more accurate I'm afraid). It didn't have a good cut off point though. So, grab some popcorn and have a good read.

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2005/06/28
"Interview" found in Sega Saturn Magzine 1992 Vol. 23
More of a pow-wow between Hiroshi Iuchi and Nami of Treasure and Yuichi Toyama of Raizing.

Amptly titled (by me):
Treasure vs. Raizing
Seems to be set around the time of the RS Saturn port.
As usual, enjoy.

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2005/06/22
Interview found in Gamest #196
Cave interview just after Dodonpachi release

Dodonpachi Developer Interview

No, I'm not super fast... I had both of these done (90%) at the same time. The next one will take a while, unfortunately.

I think there's only one other Cave interview in Arcadia (not terribly exciting either) about the direction the company was going back when they announced Gesen Yokocho. Other than that, that's about it. I'm curious to see if any other magazines have any interesting articles. Would really like to hear the developer/designer thoughts on Guwange.

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2005/06/18
Interview found in Arcade #62.
Short and sweet. Enjoy.

Mushihime-sama Video Game Music Laboratory

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2005-06-07
The World of Progear no Arashi
Okay, bitches. Enjoy. There's quite a bit of info here. Included in this round is:

Progear no Arashi:
-Story translation (from website/OST booklet)
-Character profiles (from website/OST booklet)
-Comic Strip Color (from OST booklet)
-Comic Strip B&W (from OST booklet/Nail & Chain's ending)
-World Sketches (from OST booklet)
-Developer Interview (from Arcadia issue #12)

Link.
Once again, Gaijin, you have outdone yourself. That is an INSANE amount of xlating and it flows smoothly enough that, if I didn't know any better, I'd think the Cave boys were native english speakers!
VERY interesting interview, there. Very interesting that DDP was originally planned Hori and Progear Vert!

Thank you SO much!!!
-ud

GaijinPunch, i am rapidly becoming one of your biggest fans!
Thanks for all the hard work, we REALLY appreaciate it.

Very enlightening! Thanks a million GaijinPunch.

Oh is this the interview where it has a small picture of what progear would look like as a verticle shooter? I scanned that, a long time ago ~_~.

I have tons of Arcadia issues, I will check and see if there are anymore interviews.

Nice work, Gaijin! Progear's art and characters are so wonderful. I have got to find the OST now (and not just for the art). How much does it usually go for, anyone know?

undamned, ord, dew: Glad to see that they're enjoyed. There is a lot of substance there, but it was many fold easier than the ESPRade interview. The only really tricky part when they were talking about terrains and paths and stuff.... mainly due to my crappy English. The Ramen part was kinda weird too. o_O


Valgar: I'll change the credit. Please do tell me what else you have in those mags. The other stuff I've got at the moment is:
-2 page article after Ketsui. It's more about Cave's direction, and is only moderately interesting. They take more about their mobile phone partakings than anything, and only mention Ketsui in passing.
-4 page from Gamest just after Dodonpachi (posted at Click Stick)

Dylan: There's apparently a rush on all Cave stuff right now. ESPRade is about the only board you can find other than the ones with home ports. I think the JPN version of Progear would run you a over 35,000 yen right now if you were lucky enough to find it. The Asian a bit less. I'm after a Guwange myself.

Also, I screwed something up. Forgot to put these pages in from the OST:
Sketch 1
Sketch 2

Excellent work as always, GP. You even didn't use "shooter" this time [...].

Seriously, the interview was really interesting. Just one note: They actually didn't romanize "Progear", they invented the word in English and just made the kana equivalent following the official rules; "gear" is "officially" transliterated as "gia" instead of "giaa" since the "a" is not really that long. Check one of you Game Gear packages to confirm.

Great job!

I have noticed people have been buying up the Cave PCBs, didn't Ketsui's price climb sharply in the last month? And I'm glad I purchased my Progear board back in October. I rank it right up with Garegga and Radiant as my fave shooters of all time.

Thanks....great job!!!

Right, but generally speaking anythign ending in ~er, ~ar, ~or usually ends with the katakana hyphen. ƒvƒ?ƒMƒA?[ in this case. Again, it's a moot point -- as you said, they invented the word. Just curious of how they came up with it.

Cave is definitely not well known for spending time on their romanizations though. They even inconsistently romanize their own names... at least there's one instance I can think of.



I talked w/ a PCB shop in Japan. He said his Cave games are pretty much pre-sold before they come in, and there's not a lot of people selling them at the moment. I guess I lucked out on my ESPRade. I traded it for some PC-Engine and PS. Good games (Soldier Blade, etc) but games that were on my for sale list, nonetheless.

Indeed, there's more than one.

Thanks for the work, GP. :)

There's an interview re:Mushihime OST with Manabu Namiki in the latest issue of Arcadia, #62.

I would be interested to read the translated interview with Mars Matrix devs, it was in a very early issue of Arcadia. If you need some photo of the article I can supply it to you.

p.s. Thanks for the awesome translation work thus far!

regarding the Cave price explosion: that´s the Neo Geo collectors out for a new money sink, without a clue about the genre, just looking for what gets the most hype. I´ve met a few people of this type already. I consider myself fortunate to have bought already what I consider essential, and to prefer a lot of non-Cave stuff they will only become aware of a few years down the road.

Ah shit. Now I HAVE to have this game. How often is it that we shmup-o's get cool stuff like this? RPG kids are spoiled in that way. Thanks a million.

Good stuff as always Gaijin. Thanks.

No more Ibara interviews? I thought I read on Arcadia's main page that there was some more Ibara info coming up. I need to find a local place that sells Japanese magazines.

How long is the Manabu Namiki interview? I'm trying to gear towards development and design rather than music, but it's not out of the question. I am knee-deep in the next one at the moment though.

You think the neo-geo thing is world wide? I've never seen something like this hit in the US and Japan at the same time. For what it's worth, they are the worst people to go up against. Maybe I should get some of the Raiden Fighters PCBs before it's too late. o_O

Thanks for the compliments, as usual.

There's a six page spread for Ibara, all strategy for Stage 1+2 and characters.



Two pages. I think it's interviewing Masaharu Iwata as well, not sure.

Sure. Scan it and send it over. The worst I can do is blow it off for a bit, right?

No scanner unfortunately, just an old 3mp digicam. It should be visible enough to read, though not so useful for making a cool looking page around the shots in the article. Still want?

Excellent job on the translations.



I saw a complete and mint OST on Ebay a few weeks ago that ended around $27.

GaijinPunch for president.

Sure, send it over.

Gozer: I lifted one for 4,000 yen off of Yahoo Japan just for this. The scans click made were great. He even did some at a higher DPI for me b/c there was a line I couldn't read. Still couldn't read it, so bought the OST. Opened it up... and still couldn't read it. O_o Credit fed the game in hopes of finding something and found it printed (with big fonts) in the end. I've still not listened to the CD yet.

Recap sayz: Or use the term "shooter" incorrectly.

Did you want your moment of glory here or something?

Oh yes, have I been sanctified?

Great job! Thanks!

I'll keep updating this thread w/ new stuff, keeping an index on the first message. For those that are too lazy to scroll up and look...

Mushihime-sama Video Game Music Laboratory

Really appreciated, makes me feel good after purchasing the OST locally for the amount of money that I did.