1944: The Loop Master (#20984)

[Pash Master]

My research notes on the game for others to look over and verify/cross-check with their own notes.

There are no staff-credits in the arcade game. I also checked the publication and game manuals/arcade servicing manuals from Capcom, and no staff are credited there either. (Source)

I found the Composer through Japanese sources. He is Yasushi Kaminishi and was identified via an interview in a doujinshi publication. I'm still trying to track down this interview and where it was done, but hunting it down hasn't proved fruitful yet. (Source of interview confirmation)

This interview also sheds light on the development of the game, and it appears to have been a much smaller dev team that went uncredited under 'Logic & Magic'. This is further collaborated by the fact that even in-game, Eighting/Raizing Co., are only listed on the title screen as 'Supported by' rather than 'Developed by'. (Source)

Two programmers are listed, 上村建也 (Tatsuya Uemura) and 弓削雅稔 (Masahiro Yuge). It appears they may have handled either sound effects or the sound driver, but I'm still researching them and can't quite confirm at the moment. They are both on VGMDb with sound credits to their names, and also have history of working with Yasushi Kaminishi.

[Pash Master]

I've been able to identify the magazine where the confirmation of the above artists came from, and I'm now looking to acquire a copy and have it translated.

It comes from a Japanese magazine called 'Yes, Let's Ask The Game Music Guys!' (そうだ、ゲームミュージックのひとに訊こう！) by Scarab Team (スカラベチーム).

If I can find one, I'll post here the full interview relating to 1944 for others to read and verify the findings. I'm hoping this will clarify Tatsuya Uemura and Masahiro Yuge's roles in more detail. I did find a quote from the magazine on shmups forum which claims '2人で自分たちが作った' in reference to them, which roughly translates to 'The two of us made it ourselves.' when talking about 1944: The Loop Master.

This would explain and confirm the 'support' role that the studios Eighting/Raizing Co. had. Apparently, Tatsuya Uemura and Masahiro Yuge did not have experience creating graphical assets, so these art assets may have been provided by Eighting/Raizing. The question now is if this support also extended to sound effects too, which I'm not sure about. But do remember that both Tatsuya Uemura and Masahiro Yuge have a long history of composing for games, and so would be more likely handled by themselves.

[fusoxide]

Considering Manabu Namiki was the sound manager at Raizing by this point, I wonder if he had any involvement with support. He said that during his later years at Raizing, his role was mostly doing stuff like coordination with external composers (Jin Watanabe, Atsuhiro Motoyama, Kenichi Koyano, etc) and sound editing. It's not on his old worklist, but neither was Brave Blade, where he was credited in-game but his role was just providing support.

[Pash Master]

Thanks fusoxide, that's really good information to know. I'll do some more digging and see if I can find his name pop up anywhere with this game.