keronparts.blogg.se

• BOSCONIAN ONLINE MOVIE

BOSCONIAN ONLINE MOVIE

So then I was watching a movie (I can’t seem to remember the name of that movie) and in that movie I saw beams being fired. That’s when I came up with an idea of having the enemies conduct a different method of attack. Again, that was already available then, but it wouldn’t differentiate the game from Galaxian.

The appeal of Galaxian is that you could maneuver through enemy fire to defeat the enemies. You could already play the game then, but in honesty, it really lacked any appeal. During Prototype 1, we created the game where the enemies populated the screen by flying in on a different route than what was used in Galaxian. ― If so, were you inspired or tipped that motivated that design? Yokoyama – Back then, our Prototype Stage had a Prototype 1 and a Prototype 2 stage. ― Was the idea of having the enemy capture your spacefighter which could then be used to combine with later made from the beginning of design? Yokoyama – Not really. In fact, the moment the Section Chief or Director says “let’s do it,” things were put to motion. Back then, we didn’t have something like an evaluation committee, so it was a bit easier to come up with all sorts of plans and designs. First I come up with a design document that the programmer could follow. ― Did you create Galaga by coming up with a design yourself, and in tandem with the programmer (*8)? Yokoyama – That’s right. Yokoyama – Well, we didn’t really set Galaxian to be some sort of benchmark for the game, but back then, other companies were creating games similar to Galaxian, whereas we (Namco) were creating games such as “Pac-man” and “Rally X” (*7), so our Marketing group commented saying that we should at least make 1 more space themed game, so then we just followed through with that. ― You mentioned that the direction was to create something related to space, but that seems to imply that the game to be created wasn’t planned to become a sequel to Galaxian. In fact, I wrote the first draft of a design document in a little less than 2 months after the completion of the previous game I worked on. Even if we were in planning for a while, the development span was very short. ― That means the planning was in motion for a long while. When we heard that, we decided to go back to the drawing board, and this marked the beginning of Galaga. This ultimately led to the creation of “Galaga.” ― So, Galaxian was created using the same hardware? Yokoyama – At first, we based our development off of the Galaxian board and developed some prototypes, but Ishimura-san, the hardware expert at the R&D Center, mentioned that they were going to develop a new board. Even after that release, there were a lot of boards left from Galaxian and King & Balloon, so next we focused our attention on the game concept of Galaxian, and decided to follow the direction of creating something related to space. With that, we created “King & Balloon” (*5). I recall we had a load of boards (*4) created under the guise of “Galaxian.” That way, we could create different games using those boards.

― How was Galaga born? Yokoyama – Back then, Namco first released a video game called “Gee Bee,” (*1) and immediately after, we released “Galaxian” (*2).