maybe this screenshots will help you ))

Yu Suzuki interview - Strana Igr (Gameland), November 2013

http://i.imgur.com/PtMZ1qb.jpg
Available from a Russian newsagent near you.

Original Magazine Scans: Download

Introduction

This interview with Yu Suzuki is a worldwide exclusive of Strana Igr, the second after many years since the first. Here we will try to focus on interesting questions, and find out things which the designer has never told anyone about so far.

We are on the top floor of the New Otani hotel, near the Makuhari Messe Exposition Center. The tables are occupied by Akira Yamaoka and Yosinori Ono from the Tokyo Game Show. We are going to go further to the main lobby to meet the CEO of YS Net. You may know him for his long-time job at Sega. He directed Space Harrier, Out Run, After Burner, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter and Shenmue. Yu Suzuki is one of the last old-school game designers who I haven’t had a chance to talk to yet (although Valerij Korneev took an interview with him 12 years ago). Now I’m ordering coffee and snacks (which by the way cost more than the income I got for this article) for me and Evgenij Daviduk, our old friend and reliable Japanese translator and news reporter in Tokyo. Behind me are Evgenij Zakirov and Natalja Odintsova. A man who funded our interview calls us to ask if we have already arrived. We did come a little early, while Yu Suzuki entered just on time.

The translator lady asked me to compose a welcome letter for Yu Suzuki. I didn’t have any ideas of what to say, other than something like, “We really like your games and would appreciate the talk.” The lady sighed at my incompetence. She has been living in Japan since 2005, and currently works as a voice actor in many major anime series. So she decided to make a speech by herself in perfect Japanese. I only understand some of the formal phrases of Japanese. Yu Suzuki is glad to answer our questions directly, and not how the Japanese developers usually do.

I ask how development of Virtua Fighter began, and what it was like to make the world's first 3D fighting game.

Back then, 2D fighting games like Street Fighter II were popular. 3D graphics in games were very primitive. You could only make models from triangles, which didn't even have textures. And because of that 3D characters resembled robots. There wasn't the opportunity to make graphics that were really beautiful, and because of that I decided to spend all my efforts to make character movements correct and realistic. Yes, Street Fighter had nice sprites, but we had the advantage of very smooth movements and 60 frames per second. To make all animations look right, I made all my designers take lessons in martial arts. Because if they can't imagine what it looks like in real life, they won't be able to draw and model it into a game! And it's important not only for designers. We gathered all our workers at the office and created a real martial arts tournament. We gave a job to people who showed a good side to themselves, and others were left with paperwork. I myself went to China, to learn martial arts, and tried all these punches and kicks myself. So because Street Fighter was a very beautiful game, I decided to concentrate all my efforts on realism.

This answer will probably amaze a lot people in Russia, because we have 3D, technologically cool graphics – this is good; whereas simple sprites are all in the past century. Remember how people criticized Duke 3D compared to Quake. But from Yu Suzuki's point of view, polygonal graphics aren't the main advantage. Rather, they created additional problems.

Yu Suzuki continued: We were making something new, something that nobody had tried before, and because of that we had a lot of troubles. For example, programmers had never worked on 3D games before. And even graphic designers, for different requests, answered, “It's not part of my job!” So I had no other choice but to teach and explain everything to people I had at the company and were willing to work. And by the way telling them, that right now maybe it's not part of your job, but in future there will be more and more work with 3D, and because of that, just for yourself it would be useful to know how it works. Because anyway, sooner or later you will have to. And as you can see, back then I was right.

There was also one more problem: dedicated 3D processors didn’t exist yet, and so I had to manually write a 3D graphics engine that would compress and process things faster. Just using assembly language. Now, of course, everyone writes in C++, but back then there was no other choice than machine code, otherwise we wouldn't be able to make everything fast enough.

http://i.imgur.com/IfweI98.jpg
Yu made his staff train and compete in martial arts

There's Evgenij Zakirov sitting at the table, our main fighting games fan. He is interested in how Virtua Fighter's battle system was created, and we got an answer that we didn't expect.

Back then, the standard was Street Fighter II with 6 buttons, but I decided to simplify it. In my opinion, it is indeed convenient for the developer when more buttons are available; it's like, “Let the gamer suffer with it and make him remember all their combinations.” So I decided to limit it to 3 buttons: Punch, Kick and Block. . To understand which ones would be the easiest to control, I collected a group of people who weren’t very familiar with gaming, and asked them to press any random buttons they wished. Then I collected the stats and found the most popular patterns. Starting with simple ones, like “Punch-Punch” and “Kick-Kick”. And so based on that, I built a battle system. I wanted to make people, who saw this game for the first time, theoretically, win, just by smashing buttons.

It's interesting that Virtua Fighter is considered an example of technical fighting, where winning just by “smashing buttons” is quite hard. But now we know how it really is...

Anyway, there's already been enough talk about Virtua Fighter, so we decided to ask Yu Suzuki about his old “forgotten” hits, for example Space Harrier – a shooter with very strange visual settings, a surrealistic fantasy. Why did he decide to make a game that looks like this?

At first, we wanted to make a game where a jet could fly and shoot. But then we realized that it's gonna be difficult to draw in all projections, and it will take a lot of free space in the memory of an arcade machine. Drawing a human is much easier, and it's not necessary to make him fully realistic, and it doesn't require much free space. Also back than I liked the manga "Space Cobra," a movie called "Neverending Story", and works of the artist Roger Dean, based on which Cameron created his “Avatar” world. From all three of these sources I got my inspiration when I worked on “Space Harrier.”

About Roger Dean, Yu Suzuki spoke for a long time with admiration – his influence can even be found in Final Fantasy design, yet fans of the series haven't even heard of him.

Another two of his old hits, racing game "Out Run" and flight game "After Burner," are not so exotic. We're trying to understand how real they are, and for the first time Yu Suzuki takes out his laptop. We're looking at pictures and video clips from his two games for mobile platforms; the first resembles Out Run, the second, After Burner. The titles are different but the visual styles are the same. Sega should be upset.

http://i.imgur.com/CdcR936.jpg
Yu pioneered in the driving genre with Out Run, Hang On, Virtua Racing, etc

OK, let's get back to fighting games. In one interview Evgenij Zakirov read that there was a time when Yu Suzuki helped the famous Tomonobu Itagaki with his Dead or Alive. How did that happen?

When I worked on Virtua Fighter 3, Itagaki-san came by for advice about Dead or Alive. I helped him a little. The fact is, Itagaki had never worked with 3D fighting games before, and he wanted to clarify a couple of things with me about 3D graphics. And I'm really glad that he was able to make a hit!

By herself, Jenya Davidyuk (the translator) asked: Did he even invite you for dinner later, in gratitude?

Yu Suzuki throws up his hands: No... somehow no!

I wonder how it is even possible - to take advice from a rival company employee, especially in Japan!?

Yu Suzuki proudly answered: With pleasure, I'll discuss games, and give advice for anyone – even for a newbie in my company, or even for an employee from a rival company. Even for a person on the street.

Fighting games were created for the arcade machines market, which is generally recognized as on its last legs. But even so, it hasn't disappeared and is still able to bring millions of dollars to authors of successful games. For example, even now Tekken firstly starts on arcade and only then ports to consoles. What does Yu Suzuki think about all that?

In the past, arcades were probably the only way for electronic entertainment, but now you can have a game with cool graphics on your mobile phone. So, now arcades – it's a place where you can go to relax with friends, something like live entertainment. It's like a music concert. Because you know, you can listen to music at home, or you can attend a performance. So it's the same here: you are playing and others are watching and cheering for you. This is a role, a niche of today's arcade games.

Yu suzuki doesn't have prejudices about mobile or trial MMO games.

It's nice when people have a choice – they can go to the arcade, play at home, or have fun on a mobile phone.

We understand what he's trying to say, because for now, the resources of his own studio are only enough to make these kinds of projects. Not so long ago he created a social game called Shenmue City.

http://i.imgur.com/YASu1s8.jpg
Bow-chicka bow-wow

We go back to fighting games again and ask him about the future of genre. What does Yu Suzuki think should be changed? And again, he gave us an unexpected answer.

Modern fighting games are too complicated, too “hardcore”, overly attracting. Those factors definitely limit the audience, because even fewer people are playing them, and at this rate the genre can sink into oblivion. That’s why I support a more simple approach to gaming.

Evgenij Zakirov wonders: Don’t you think that hardcore games are especially interesting for multiplayer gaming, and multiplayer is what attracts many people to the genre and gains the audience?

Now it would be appropriate to recall, for example, MOBA games, which became one of the most popular genres in exactly that way.

Yu Suzuki insists that fighting games should become simpler and not only that, but they should also change ideologically: Difficulty in fighting games is usually based on the requirements for accurate reaction and memorization of combinations. Which means that you need to accurately calculate the timing, and flawlessly press buttons. But I would like to make a win dependant on how a gamer thinks. To make him think, like, “If I hit with an arm now, and then kick with a leg, I could win.”

I want to make a win based on making the right decisions. And because of that the battle system in fighting games is still imperfect. Even in Virtua Fighter. If you're not able to press a button in the exact moment, and because of that you lose, the problem is not in your wrong decision. The game just set the task of reaction for you. Did you accomplish or fail the combination – this is on what a win depends. It would be better to attach a sensor on the gamer, so all his thoughts could be instantly and flawlessly implemented by the character on screen. That would definitely be a battle of decisions and be true fighting action in a good sense, not thanks to blood and violence. For example, suitable for this could be sensors that measure alpha waves in the brain. And it's not a distant future, people have already been working successfully in such a direction for a long time. There are people, for example, who have microchips that can control heart function. Of course, I doubt that someone will insert something inside of them for games, but if they can stick something temporarily onto them – why not? Another example in this direction is Kinect from Xbox 360. So we don't have to wait much longer and there'll be a time for new realistic fighting games.

I recall that this idea about alpha waves is what Yu Suzuki described to Valerij Korneev in an interview long ago. And also a couple of E3's ago I saw an indie game, where you would wear an alpha wave sensor that allowed you to move a character in the game with the power of thought. Unfortunately, only orders like move forward and back, left and right, were recognized, and nothing more.

Yu Suzuki continued: People still need to work on how to show fights. Imagine, what if TV sets disappeared and instead you looked at holograms of fighters. In the past, processors weren't powerful enough to draw everything nicely on screen. But now you can model characters that won't be different from real people.

Sounds cool. While we digest Yu Suzuki's answer, he is again searching for something on his laptop, and shows us a photo of himself in his youth, working on punches.

Do you know why, in most fighting games, when you press one button the character makes a double blow?

Now he's asking us. We have no idea.

The real strikes of a master are so fast, that you almost can't see them. If in a game you were to show them realistically, then the gamer just won't be able to recognize a move, he won't be able to understand that he is being attacked, he just won't be able to react. So this is why one strike became a double blow. Only then will you be able to see it.

http://i.imgur.com/4SiGlkj.jpg
The designer of Shenmue and Virtua Fighter certainly did his homework

We are looking at photos of Yu Suzuki from China, where he studied, and I ask how he became interested in martial arts.

I watched Bruce Lee's films all over again a thousand times. And my Sensei, who strikes as fast as Lee, is really tough too. I watched movies with Bruce Lee frame by frame to make Jacky, and my Sensei was a prototype for Akira.

Evgenij Zakirov remembered the question that had plagued him all his life: Is Pai somehow related to Chun Li? They really look alike. Even now Yu Suzuki is ready to answer frankly:

I, personally, am not a fan of Chun Li, but I thought about users who liked Chun Li. I personally prefer Sarah, but I created Pai so that fans who expected to see something similar in our game wouldn't be disappointed either. I thought that nobody would like Sarah. That is, I conducted market research and realized that a character like Pai is exactly what gamers need, while Sarah is my personal favorite “child”. So this is why there are two girls in the game. By the way, I personally thought through the background of all the characters. For example, Sarah never looking back when she closes the door. Sarah smokes. Sarah likes to drink tequila. And she drinks tequila with shots in one gulp. In the game, such details are not mentioned, but just for myself I thought through all that. When the anime got released, I tried to implement most of that there as well, but not the drinking and smoking behavior, unfortunately.

Natalja Odintsova asks what Yu Suzuki thinks about fighting games with weapons.

The game designer doesn't like them much: With weapons everyone can win. Only in fights without weapons can you see the real strength of the warrior. It is not interesting, when the winner is whoever has a bigger gun, is it? In a fighting game with weapons, there will be a problem with realism. If a man was sliced with a katana, but he's still alive and can fight – how so? I don't like that. I wanted to make everything realistically, and in fights with bare hands, fighters can indeed withstand some hits before getting knocked out.

Moving to probably the most popular subject related to Yu Suzuki, and starting with a question about how Shenmue was developed. And here we heard details that nobody ever talked about before outside of Sega!

It was at the time of the Sega Saturn. Sega wanted a “killer title” for a new console, ie, for the upcoming Sega Dreamcast. The company management asked for a new epic RPG. And I made a prototype for a console that we already had, ie, the Saturn. It was another game, not like Shenmue, but in an open world too. In my opinion, it was even more interesting than Shenmue. That is, in Shenmue, the father of the protagonist was killed and he is seeking revenge, but the prototype was fun, without heavy thoughts.

Just imagine: an open world, where there are growing apples and peaches, that you can collect. An old man is sitting on a bench. You ask him questions but he ignores them and whines that he wants a peach. If you bring him an apple or mandarin, he gets angry and yells that he doesn't eat those. Another old man is fishing, and there are kids playing around him. But in fact he is a great master of martial arts. And he is so cool that he throws a pebble in the water and kills three fishes with the ricochet, which float belly-up. The kids are happy. He is such a professional, and not only in martial arts.

Here's another example: you are travelling from one city to another, and you see a man standing by a bridge. You want to pass through and the old man throws his sandals into the river. Then he says to the protagonist, "Oh, I lost them somehow, can you bring them for me?" He also is a master in martial arts, and this request is a goal, which you need to complete. Even if you manage to find the items he demands, he would throw things into the water again and beg you to bring them back. You would need to do it three times for him to make sure you are patient enough, so he would then give you valuable information. Don't you agree that it's not such a gloomy game as Shenmue?

We're laughing like wild horses, and through our laughter ask him: Why wasn’t this game released? Why did Sega decide to develop an entirely different game? And Yu Suzuki explains:

This was just a test do demonstrate the concept of an open world game. Eventually, all the work was directed to the Shenmue we know today. And by the way, about that test, you are the first ones to hear about it!

I proceed to ask for details: Shenmue in its present form existed for the Saturn in the form of a prototype, right?

Yu Suzuki confirms: Yes, there were a lot of prototypes, and in the end, the more promising one was chosen, which was already in development for the Dreamcast. Specifically, we hadn't yet decided whether to release Shenmue on the Saturn yet, it was just a playground for us to test different things on.

The next question is probably the most important for Yu Suzuki's fans. We ask: What would Yu Suzuki like to do with Shenmue, if he had the freedom to make everything as he wants?

Actually, I'm making what I want right now. I took all the best that was in Shenmue, all that “know-how”, dropped everything that I didn't like and was not interesting for me, and I'm making a new project. It will be a fantasy. Not China and not Japan, but a new fantasy world.

Fantasy can mean different things, so we specify: Is it gonna be something medieval-like, or something more exotic? Yu Suzuki shows us illustrations.

Here, I've already drawn characters for the game. I've drawn them myself. There are the protagonists, there is the sea, and there is a mountain and on the very top of it is a castle. It stands so high, to be able to see far away and watch for pirate ships that could attack the city. I like an artist Alphonse Mucha, and I decided to work in his style. Usually, designers are making all the illustrations for me, but this time I decided to draw them myself. This game already has a script, even the music.

We ask, when is the announcement? And this is where Yu Suzuki becomes sad.

It's too soon for an announcement. I have a lot of different projects, and every one of them needs a sponsor.

He shows us a folder with projects on his laptop. There are about fifteen sub-folders, one of them is clearly labelled Shenmue 3 .

I need investment.

We understand that the direct sequel of Shenmue has the same problem, and we suggest to him to use crowdfunding, which is so popular nowadays. Yu Suzuki is confused a little, but he promises us to think about it. We tell him that once we see his project on Kickstarter, we will invest as much money as we can. He is happy and shows us another of his projects, with pets and flying houses. Its development has progressed much further; there is a video clip with gameplay, and it looks like even a demo version. But unfortunately, we can't talk about that. So we're going back to interview questions.

http://i.imgur.com/lKZdsSc.jpg
"I need investment." Hear that, Uncle Sony?

What's the difference between modern game designers and game designers from the 90's?

Yu Suzuki explains: In the 90's games were made from scratch. Nobody knew how to make them properly. But now games are business, industry; all the basic techniques and technologies are already known. And the next step is to think of how to sell them. Now you don't need to think as much about games as about their sales. There are so many series. Trying something new is always a huge risk.

Now Japanese companies are afraid of risks. In this sense, American companies are more open, and more often take risks. In a case where you want to create something new, game designers will more likely find support in the USA, rather than in Japan. I'd like to see Japanese companies, too, support people who want to create something new. Take the Cannes Film Festival as an example. The judges don’t look at the sales, but the ideas. And I want the same to happen in Japan, to support authors' ideas and encourage originality. It’s not really interesting when there aren't many completely new things.

Another typical question to Japanese developers: Have you ever taken into account the interests of the Western audience when you've developed a game, to make them like the game even more? If yes, then how? The answers of Yu Suzuki are not typical.

I came to Sega in 1983, and in 1992-1993 Sega really grew up and expanded more. At that time Sega's business was aimed 60% at the West. And the biggest market was the USA. And because of that, all games like Out Run, in the first place, were made for the American market.

How did it affect the development? For example, we thought about car colors, we wanted to make them more common for American people. Similar to what was actually in use in their country. Or for example, the color of the sky. The Japanese sky was not the same as in California. So we made the color of the sky as it was in California. From the other side, people all around the world understand what a car is, so you don't need to adapt it for them. But to make everything else interesting for American people, you need to delve into the culture - Broadway, Hollywood movies, etc... Ideally, of course, you should create a game that would be interesting to people all around the world, but this is not so simple. But we can, say, pick a Ferrari - everybody loves Ferrari, right?

Our next question is what I ask all Japanese people: What happened to your industry? In the past, most of the coolest games were created by it. And now it's not the same.

Yu Suzuki explains: Yes, 10 years ago Japanese games occupied 80% of the market, but now only 20%. The fact is, that Japanese games were the pioneers in the market. All technologies, ideas, and principles were invented [in Japan] and distributed all over the world. The Japanese like to do everything with their hands and their heads, but Americans built a system, a conveyor, so that you could press buttons, push a bar code into a reader, and get your product as the output. Americans absorbed ideas, realized what works and what doesn't. They established processes, and created the powerful system of game development. A factory. They created game engines, like "Unity". As a result, their system works very effectively. Europe is also very strong in game development, thanks to this system.

I specify: People say, that especially in Japan it's difficult to work on big projects in big companies.

Yu Suzuki explains: It's easier to make decisions in small companies, but with less money available. Big companies have funding, but their management are afraid to take risks. I think the best way is to work in companies of medium capacity. My dream is a small company with a huge business investment. Then we have both the money and the liberty to decide on things.

http://i.imgur.com/1W5uDsZ.jpg
Suzuki has designed a fantasy world for a vivid new project

We proceed to Yu Suzuki's personal interests and we discover that he doesn't own a Virtua Fighter arcade cabinet at home. In fact, he's not a gamer.

It's not like I'm playing a lot. For example, I like to play real billiards. And real cars for me are more interesting than a car in a game.

Also he often plays the Wii with his kids. He endlessly loves games, but differently than we do.

My concept is to transfer what's interesting for me in real life into a game format. For example, I like to drive a car – and I want to convey this feeling through a racing simulator.

I ask: And this probably relates to martial arts too?

Yu Suzuki agrees and continues: I have many interests. You know, actually, I personally piloted a real jet aircraft and participated in air combat.

We were surprised... very surprised!

Yu Suzuki recalls: Once I was in the USA, in Florida. At first, after reading all the appropriate guides, they lectured us for a couple of hours, explaining everything. Afterwards, I got into a jet aircraft, and flew around with an instructor. The aircraft was equipped with a laser gun and smoke bombs. And there were two of us. If you hit the opponent, a smoke bomb activates, and that means he was shot. And we were flying around for about two hours shooting each other. For safety we agreed that ground was 800 feet, so if you forced your opponent to descend to that level, that meant he died. Or the same if his speed dropped below a certain limit. All this, along with the different techniques for air combat, they explained to us in training. And terms, like “check six”...

We're looking at Yu Suzuki with admiration. To be honest, I didn't know that such a form of entertainment even existed.

The game designer continues: After that, I realized that all games about aircraft aren't interesting enough. Those that were in arcades. Because in those it was much more difficult to control the aircraft than in real life. Seriously! And I realized something: all those flight simulators were created by people who hadn't even flown a real aircraft!

So, we can be sure that if Yu Suzuki decides to make a game about astronauts, he will surely buy a tourist ticket on the first suborbital spaceship and will test himself in weightlessness. Too bad we weren't able to ask how many other favorite artists a fan of Mucha and Dean has.

Strana Igr credits: Interview by Konstantin Govorun, Evgenij Zakirov, Natalia Odintsova and Jenya Davidyuk as translator.

Fan translation credits: Radar, shenhaZ, Mike (@YPwn), Team Yu, Jay-El Romeu and his wife.

Hi, I’ve made a simple lucky hit browser game. That is my project, I’ve been making it for the last three months with the help of several people. The name is « Lucky Hit Challenge » and your goal is to play lucky hit all the day long to earn money and spend them on Shenmue III Kickstarter, competing with each other who will donate more. You can play it here http://goo.gl/eG2aoj

Our goal is to earn $25,000,000 for Shenmue III development with the power of shenmue community. I’ve included some viral instruments for you, so you can share your donation amount on twitter and spam «Do you want to play a game of Lucky Hit?» to all of your friends everyday. I hope you'll like it.

I think we can do it before the new year… or not. It depends on you!

Concerning the future of the project: for now we have only one board and I need your feedback to improve ball physics and to know how to proceed after. Maybe we could make lucky hit game of our dreams for steam? Or we can go mobile…I don’t know yet. But it would be kinda cool to have a really good lucky hit game, not that crap on the market now.

Follow Nagai Industries on twitter for updates and feel free to write me about any bugs you will find.

Link http://nagaiindustries.itch.io/lucky-hit-challenge

UPDATE 1.1
Stand-alone version for PC
Download it here https://goo.gl/LfzZDm

https://twitter.com/NagaiIndustries/status/623712696345718784

will appreciate any feedback

I played 2 without npc's voice because cd-r is only 700mb. It was ok.

T-shirt

new 1.1 update with in game chat for you guys
now lucky hit is more social
http://nagaiindustries.itch.io/lucky-hit-challenge

please report any bugs, will fix them tomorrow

I'll probably drink some milk for schoolboys

Hey, 27 february was a big day for shenmue news and also my birthday, so I decided to make a cake dedicated to shenmue
this is a loading screen which I have seen in my mother's womb :)

feel free to use this idea on your birthday!

http://i.imgur.com/vkM2CON.jpg

more details )

http://i.imgur.com/B5g6GLR.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/DCVZEut.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/npw2CD5.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7vX5BkR.jpg

PSD file https://mega.nz/#!DooGiCYD

Hello, everyone

Previously, I've made Lucky Hit Challenge, a small lucky hit browser game for pc, that impressively predicted Shenmue 3 Kickstarter 6 month prior the actual announcement lol http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47336

But I've always dreamed of portable lucky hit to play on the road, so I decided to make a new version for android with some changes and improvements.

We are using Unity 5.4 and targeting hi-end smartphones (like galaxy note 3), so we want to try to make a step in direction of the graphic quality.

One of the impovements is a new authentic location where the game takes place.
To reach this goal I inspire myself by Michael Wolf's photos, I've contacted him, unfortunately he's not interested in the game.

As I've never been in Hong Kong, I want to find a person, who was there or is familiar with mid-century chinese architecture (like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_lau) and who could provide us his feedback.

Also, we are looking for a concept/texture artist who can reimagine these references and help us to create a unique location which could exist in the real Honk Kong.

If you want help us to create the best lucky hit game with shenmue quality and the same attention to details, please contact me by pm.

Great podcast, it deserves more views

I recently raised my tier to 250$.