the great gaming translation giveaway!

[blackoak]

hey everyone!

I'm doing a little grassroots outreach campaign with shmuplations.com for several of the vg communities that have helped me out in the last couple years. As some of you know, each month I translate 5 japanese game developer/composer interviews from this list of materials I've accumulated. Half of what I translate in a month is devoted to whatever my patreon supporters vote on, but the rest is whatever I feel like doing. This month I'm opening that voting process up to you guys, and will translate whatever 2 interviews you choose as a way of saying thanks, and hoping to raise interest in this great (and free!) source of gaming history.

How it Works

1.) Choose two interviews that look interesting from this list of interviews here.
2.) Reply in this thread with the title of the two interviews you'd like translated, i.e. "Beyond Oasis - 1994 Developer Interview"
3.) At the end of the week (Friday, May 8th), I'll pick the two interviews that had the most votes, and translate them by the end of May.
4.) Bask in the warm CRT-like glow of gaming history.

Let me know if you have any questions (and yes, you can use both your "votes" on a single interview--you don't have to choose two).

Much of the material available to me came from liner notes generously provided by the vgmdb community, which is why I wanted to come here as my second stop on this grand tour (hg101 was the first, and you can see what they chose in this thread!). I do have recommendations on composer interviews, if you're curious; I'll also answer any questions I can about the interviews on that list--length, general idea of the content, etc. And finally, feel free to send me anything that isn't on the list, and I will get it added for voting.

Looking forward to a musical May! ;D

[CHz]

SO MANY CHOICES WOW <3

Originally Posted by blackoak

I'll also answer any questions I can about the interviews on that list--length, general idea of the content, etc.

Based on the titles I'm not getting my hopes up too much, but in those Treasure interviews, is there any discussion about their composer Norio Hanzawa (NON)?

[Jormungand]

I can't even wrap my mind around that list! I'd like to vote for the Langrisser V - Composer Interview and the Breath of Fire IV interview.

Thank you so much for what you do.

[Nisto]

Voting for "Silent Hill Interview Collection".

[MiLO]

Oh. Wow. Yeah...
My vote goes to "Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner - Developer Interview".

[Alcahest]

The interviews I'd like to see translated:
- "Toshiya Yamanaka - Composer Interview"
- "Front Mission - 1994 Developer Interview"
Thank you!

[Teioh]

I'm curious about the following:

• Seiken Densetsu 3 - Composer Interview
• Langrisser V - Composer Interview

[yvk2000]

Whoa, this is crazy! I'd love to see that Ys IV interview (if it indeed features Ryo). That Chrono Cross/Xenogears composer interview is also most welcome.

Thanks!

EDIT: The Mitsuda interview didn't seem so interesting whereas the Ys IV does so I'm changing to a double vote for:

• Ys IV interview

[Blitz Lunar]

Ooh, you marvellous human being, you! This is very exciting. The only downside is I have to somehow select just two! Didn't even realise some of these developers had been interviewed.

Okay, I pick:

• Assault Suits Valken - Composer interview (Masanao Akahori)
• Toshiya Yamanaka - Composer Interview

[lynx]

I'd like to cast both of my votes on this one:

1. Hironobu Sakaguchi - Final Fantasy Retrospective
2. Hironobu Sakaguchi - Final Fantasy Retrospective

Thanks for the fine work!

[Datschge]

Originally Posted by blackoak

I do have recommendations on composer interviews, if you're curious; I'll also answer any questions I can about the interviews on that list--length, general idea of the content, etc.

So what are your recommendations? ^^
Also the list has two "Motoi Sakuraba - Composer Interview" entries, one for 2003 and another for 2002 (one says "Valkyrie Profile; Baten Kaitos" and "tri-Ace" which is confusing as BK is not by tri-Ace), how do they compare?
Thanks!

[IJustDontKnowAnymore]

Guess I'll vote for:

• Tetsuya Nomura Interview Collection
• Kazuma Kaneko Developer Interview

This is a really cool thing you're doing, thanks for it.

[_if]

I know neither of these will ever get enough votes, but:

1. Soukyuugurentai - Composer Interview
2. Battle Garegga Arrange Soundtrack - Composer Interview

[blackoak]

thanks for the kind words everyone! yeah, that list is dauntingly huge--really took me a long time to compile last year. and there's still much more to add to it! Below are some quick comments on the interviews mentioned so far. Also, please remember that you can edit/change your vote as many times as you'd like until next Friday, in case you'd like to throw your weight behind someone else's vote. Apologies for the big text dump:

Tetsuya Nomura - Developer Interview - very long, tons of content about his life, thoughts on games/hardware of the time, history of working with square

Kazuma Kaneko developer interview - very long, personal history/design philosophy, shin megami tensei series talk

Motoi Sakuraba - this one got selected for voting by patrons this month, and I'll be doing both the longer 2002 interview and the very short 2003 one, so please choose something else!

Hironobu Sakaguchi FF Retrospective - pretty long, goes over the history of the FF games and their development/influences one-by-one, up to 11. some cool anecdotes I haven't heard elsewhere

Assault Suits Valken - short, from the OST liner notes. A message more than an "interview", but has some cool info about how he composed the songs.

Toshiya Yamanaka - Composer interview- very, very long and detailed, from STG gameside, usually the gold standard in vg interviews

Ys IV interview - pretty lengthy, one shorter group interview followed two longer interviews with Yonemitsu and Katou

Langrisser V - composer - pretty short and fluffy, honestly one of the ones that barely made the cut when I was compiling this list. It probably makes sense to also do the longer voice actor interview, but most westerners probably aren't too excited about the lives/opinions of japanese VAs, hehe

Seiken Densetsu 3 - composer interview - from the SD3 liner notes. To my knowledge, these haven't been translated yet. Pretty long, reads like an essay.

Yasunori Mitsuda interview (Chrono Cross / Xenogears) - unfortunately short. a little bit about how he got into music, and his struggles with illness.

Front Mission - not too long, but some interesting comments about the design of the world and the collaboration between G-Craft and Square.

Zone of Enders: 2nd Runner - two interviews, neither particularly long. pre-release so slightly fluffy/promotional, but some interesting comments about themes/design.

Silent Hill - three interviews, combined for something decently long. a slight amount of promotional fluff but mostly game design musings (especially cool kojima-esque thoughts from Toyama)

Breath of Fire IV - midlength, two interviews. the usual design talk, comparisons with previous BoF games, thoughts on 2D/3D, etc.

Treasure Interviews - Unfortunately nothing in these about NON.

soukyuugurentai composer interview - liner notes, actually pretty long and detailed. One cool thing is that they include the original 96 liner notes and an updated "reflection" from 2011.

Battle Garegga arrange - this is a cool little Battle Garegga lovefest from some famous vgm composers. decent length, found it archived at the old Raizing homepage.

[blackoak]

About recommendations...

As far as composer interviews go, anything from STG Gameside or the book "sou da! game music wo kikou!" is going to be very in-depth and detailed.

(from "sou da!...)
Kimitaka Matsumae - Composer Interview
Manabu Namiki - Composer Interview
Hitoshi Sakimoto - Composer Interview
Shinji Hosoe x Yousuke Yasui x Ayako Saso - Composer Interview
Tatsuya Uemura x Masahiro Yuge - Composer Interview
Manami Matsumae - Composer Interview

(from stg gameside)
Yoshinori Kawamoto - Composer Interview
khdn - Composer Interview
Motoaki Furukawa - Composer Interview
Namco Arcade Music Composers - Round Table Interview
Yuriko Keino - Composer Interview
Zuntata - Twenty Years of Zuntata
Harumi Fujita - Composer Interview
Kenji Yoshida - Composer Interview
Yasuhito Saito - Composer Interview
Yusuke Takahama - Composer Interview
Takeaki Kunimoto - Composer Interview

if you want to go old school, the Beep! magazine stuff is nice
Konami - Sound Creation Secrets
Darius Sound Interview

Finally, there's a cool, very long interview with OGR (Hisayoshi Ogura) of Taito/Zuntata in a book I have called "Chou Arcade!"

[CHz]

Think I'll go with the same picks as Lunar in that case:

• Assault Suits Valken - Composer interview (Masanao Akahori)
• Toshiya Yamanaka - Composer Interview

[Blitz Lunar]

Originally Posted by _if

2. Battle Garegga Arrange Soundtrack - Composer Interview

I considered voting for that one, too. Would be interesting for sure.

[Datschge]

My picks for now:
- History of Nintendo Game Music (Koji Kondo; Kazumi Totaka) 2001
- Pocky and Rocky - Composer Interview (Hiroyuki Iwatsuki)


Others that sound interesting to me:
- Chrono Trigger - Developer Interview Collection (Masato Kato; Yasunori Mitsuda; Katsuhisa Higuchi; Yasuhiko Kamata; Akihiko Matsui; Hironobu Sakaguchi; Yoshinori Kitase, Kazuhiko Aoki; Takashi Tokita)
- F-Zero GX - Developer Interview (Hiroyuki Sakamoto; Takaya Imamura)
- Gunpey Yokoi x Morikawa Sachito - Console Gaming Then and Now
- Keiichi Suzuki - Composer Interview
- Masayasu Yamamoto - Developer Interview (Chunsoft; Nihon Telnet; Climax)
- Nihon Telnet Corp. (Yuji Fukushima; Takashi Fukushima)
- Panel de Pon (Tetris Attack) - Developer Interview (HItoshi Yamagami; Toshitaka Muramatsu)
- Seiken Densetsu 3 - Composer Interview (Hiroki Kikuta)
- Tales of Eternia - Developer Interview (Jun Toyoda; Sachiko Natori; Nobuyuki Sawadaishi; Aki Sawadaishi; Kazuhiro Koizumi)
- Tales of series - Developer Interview (Kazuya Ishizuka; Kenji Anabuki; Takashi Hasegawa; Tatsuro Udou)
- Tenshi no Uta 2 - Developer Interview (Akifumi Kaneko; Takashi Fukushima, the later Wild Arms developers)
- Manami Matsumae - Composer Interview (from "sou da!...)
- Hitoshi Sakimoto - Composer Interview (from "sou da!...)

[smartalex2014]

Mushihimesama Futari Superplay Interview-Dame K.K.
Senko No Ronde DUO Developer Interview-Hiroyuki Maruyama

[GoldfishX]

Ys IV Interview X 2

Thank you!

Edit: Did not see that I could double-vote. Removed a vote for SD3 (I have seen plenty of Kikuta coverage, especially on his SD work) and added one for Ys IV, because the circumstances of this excellent score have always been a tad confusing.

[Rhythmroo]

Yasunori Mitsuda Composer Interview 2003
Koichi Sugiyama - Dragon Quest Music Retrospective 2000

There are my two votes. Thanks for what you do.

[strugglepoo]

Two picks:
Gradius II and III - Composer Interviews
Gradius III - Composer Interview

Runner ups:
Capcom 1991 Retrospective
Capcom CPS1 - Developer Interview
Final Fantasy IV Sound - Composer Interview
Gradius II (X68000) - Developer Interview
History of Nintendo Game Music
Konami and the Gameboy - Developer Interviews
Legend of Zelda: Okarina of Time - Composer Interview
Streets of Rage III - Composer Interview
Taro Kudo - Developer Interview

[blackoak]

Here's some more info on some of the recent votes/inquiries. I'll try to get to the rest of datschge and strugglepoo's other inquiries later today!

----

Gradius III - Composer Interview - from the Gradius III liner notes. Actually pretty cool, with anecdotes and notes about several of the songs.

Gradius II and III - Composer Interviews - from a Gamest magazine issue. Not really the most in-depth piece unfortunately.

Koichi Sugiyama - Dragon Quest Music Retrospective - nice midlength interview, covers a lot of ground from the early days, composition, dq orchestra phenomenon

Mushihimesama Futari Superplay Interview-Dame K.K. - nice little superplay interview, though it actually focuses more on Deathsmiles than Mushi Futari, now that I'm looking at it more closely.

Senko No Ronde DUO Developer Interview-Hiroyuki Maruyama - this is from STG Gameside, which of course is a guarantee of quality.

Beyond Oasis - 1994 Developer Interview - fairly brief, and pre-release so there's some promotional fluff in there, "this is what you can do in our new game" type stuff. The scan I have is from Beep Megadrive I believe.

Chrono Trigger - Developer Interview Collection - very nice, long and neatly divided up into sections like battle/sound/graphics/square's development process

Gunpey Yokoi x Morikawa Sachito - Console Gaming Then and Now - midlength, lots of musing about games, game history, technology, etc.

History of Nintendo Game Music (Koji Kondo; Kazumi Totaka) 2001 - this one is really cool, was hosted at the official nintendo monthly site I believe.

Keiichi Suzuki - Composer Interview - good midlength/long interview, lots of substance

Koichi Sugiyama x Shigeru Miyamoto - Game Music Interview 1988 - very short unfortunately. probably something i'd append when publishing a longer sugiyama/miyamoto interview.

[Robert_Chrystian]

Wow!

Two votes for "Pocky and Rocky - Composer Interview (Hiroyuki Iwatsuki)"

Thank you very much for everything, your translations are great, just read some of them! I would like to add, if you don't mind, Michiru Yamane's interview made for "Akumajo Dracula Best Music Collections BOX". It's a video interview, which I believe that covers some ground about her work. It's featured on the box's DVD.

Also, if you're interested, I could translate some of your interviews to portuguese, to add more content to you site as well, and no, I'll not ask for money

Keep up the great work!

[Ramza]

Originally Posted by Teioh

I'm curious about the following:

• Seiken Densetsu 3 - Composer Interview
• Langrisser V - Composer Interview

I'm doubling Teioh's votes. I want these.

Your work is incredible. Thank you for doing this.

[waxattax]

Ah, looks like things are leaning Langrisser, even though Blackoak states this interview consists of "fluff" and barely made the cut.

I eat up everything I can find about PSO, Rez and Panzer Dragoon but each of those is covered at least fairly well in the West. I'd love to know more about the development of Ketsui, though the development of Skygunner is also intriguing since I know absolutely nothing about Pixel Arts beyond how much I enjoyed SG. An interview with Hiro about his work on Space Harrier and Out Run? Or perhaps one of the many interviews with Manabu Namiki?

Gosh, I am absolutely terrible at this. I knew I shouldn't have read the entire list. Hmm...

Since no one else is voting for any I've mentioned I'm going to have to go with:

Battle Garegga Arrange Soundtrack - Composer Interview
Battle Garegga Arrange Soundtrack - Composer Interview

The Madness Battle Garegga Perfect Soundtrack is one of my favorite pieces in my collection, so I'd especially enjoy learning more about it!

Hey, _if, let's do this!
Much appreciation to blackoak!

[Datschge]

Wait a minute...

Originally Posted by strugglepoo

Taro Kudo - Developer Interview

blackoak, does this interview mention any of his composing works at Konami?

[blackoak]

Originally Posted by Robert_Chrystian

Wow!
I would like to add, if you don't mind, Michiru Yamane's interview made for "Akumajo Dracula Best Music Collections BOX". It's a video interview, which I believe that covers some ground about her work. It's featured on the box's DVD.

Also, if you're interested, I could translate some of your interviews to portuguese, to add more content to you site as well, and no, I'll not ask for money

I can add the Yamane interview, but I'll need to get the source first (I don't own the box DVD myself). Is it on youtube or nico douga, perhaps?

You're welcome to translate the interview to portuguese! Right now I'm not really hosting other language versions at shmuplations (that could change), but there have been other people translating these into French, Spanish, and German and posting them at their own sites.

[blackoak]

Originally Posted by Datschge

Wait a minute...

blackoak, does this interview mention any of his composing works at Konami?

nope, unfortunately not! It's a very good interview though, covers the creation of Vanpool, UFO, and a lot of game design talk.

[blackoak]

Originally Posted by waxattax

Ah, looks like things are leaning Langrisser, even though Blackoak states this interview consists of "fluff" and barely made the cut.

Yeah, it's very light, but my policy if a short interview gets picked is just to do another interview (whatever is next highest in votes), so no worries there.

----

aaand here is the info on the remaining interview inquiries:

pocky and rocky composer interview - great long interview from an amazingly comprehensive kiki kaikai book. the dev interviews from that book are golden too

capcom cps1 - cool midlength interview, actually goes more over Capcom's CPS1 games than the hardware itself

FFIV sound - about the DS remakes. spends most of the time talking about the public contest that was held to find a singer for Rosa's Theme of Love.

Gradius II (X68000) - developer interview - from the dev commentary txt file on the X68000 disks themselves. Actually really long, and has comments from the original arcade dev team about the x68000 port, too.

Konami and the Gameboy - these are from the Konami DS-3 scans I've been meaning to upload in their entirety. they're very short though.

LoZ - Ocarina of Time - Composer interview - good content but very short

Streets of Rage III - Composer Interview - short, not a ton of content, from BEEP Megadrive magazine I believe.

F-Zero GX developer interview - great interview, very long, lots of depth. from nintendo monthly

Masayasu Yamamoto - Developer Interview - not that long, from the old archived gpara series of developer interviews

Nihon Telnet Corp - not too long. some comments about the differences between pc/console development, the megadrive, and the users they're trying to target

Panel de Pon - short, butttt i just found this awesome Panel de Pon interview that's much longer, so i'd do both if this were chosen: http://www.intsys.co.jp/game/panepon/p09/index.html

Tales of Eternia - not too long, the usual design details, comparisons with previous tales games

Tales of series - very in-depth, long interview

Tenshi no Uta 2 - short to midlength, comparisons with the previous game, design/theme details