Phantasy Star IV – 1993 Developer Interviews - shmuplations.com

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Phantasy Star IV – 1993 Developer Interviews

This lengthy Phantasy Star IV interview was compiled from several shorter pre-release magazine interviews conducted in 1993. It covers the usual bases, exploring the origin of the development and its relation to other Phantasy Star games. I've also included a commentary from Rieko Kodama, and a full interview from the World of Phantasy Star book conducted just before the game's release.

Sega | Rieko Kodama | Toru Yoshida | Akinori Nishiyama | Phantasy Star IV

Rieko Kodama – Director / Designer<br>Toru Yoshida – Director, Story Plan, Graphic Designer<br>Kazuyoshi Tsugawa – Battle Planner, Graphic Designer<br>Akinori Nishiyama – Designer, Scriptwriter

—Please share your feelings with us now that the development of PSIV is nearly complete.

Kodama: There was a lot of chatter around the office that we weren’t going to finish by the end of the year (laughs), but we somehow just made it.

Everything has calmed down now, mostly. The instruction booklet is finished too. It was a really long development. Now that we can finally relax, my brain is kind of a mush. (laughs) At this point a lot of the pressure is off our shoulders, but as we now move toward the actual release date, there’s a new kind of stress. I saw the commercial for PSIV and was like, “is this really ok…?” (laughs)

Yoshida: For me, at the halfway point, a lot of the visual cutscene work still remained to be completed. I really thought it might never end. I actually started to think of an escape plan to bail out. (laughs) But now that we’ve safely crossed the finish line, I’m glad I didn’t. All that remains now is the release date… though I am a little worried about all the other big titles coming out around the same time. To be honest I’m just hoping it will sell ok. But yeah, either way I’m really relieved right now.

Nishiyama: The large size of the ROM made it harder.

Tsugawa: (laughs) It was a lot to handle, but I don’t think it made things harder, exactly.

Kodama: The hardest period was definitely transitioning the development from a 16Mbit cart to a 24Mbit. We were very worried whether Sega would approve the change. However, once they gave the go-sign, the pace got a lot more aggressive. (laughs) By the end, we weren’t even sure that 24Mbit was going to be enough! (laughs) But we made the game we really wanted to make, and I’m very thankful for that.

—What was it like being team leader for PSIV?

Kodama: Well, I’m the “team leader”, but it’s not really a big deal. I continued to work on graphics for PSIV, just as I had before. But I also coordinated with the sound team, the graphics designers, and the programmers.

Top to bottom: Rieko Kodama (director), Yoshiaki Endo (main programmer), Daisuke Yamamoto (field / event programmer), and Kazuyoshi Tsugawa (graphic designer).

—How did the PSIV development get started?

Yoshida: It was some really good timing: right as we were thinking about doing another Phantasy Star, Sega asked if we would make another. After that I went around the office asking people if they’d like to work together on it, and so the development officially got underway.

Kodama: That’s also partly why this development was a lot of fun, I think: we (the developers) started the project on our own initiative, and many people on the team had worked on PSII and were able to address the shortcomings and unfinished ideas they had from that game in PSIV.

—How is PSIV connected to the other games in the series?

Yoshida: It’s a direct continuation of the first two games. PSIII was like a collection of side-stories, but with PSIV, we’re returning to the main storyline, with PSI and PSII forming the historical backdrop. I wanted to make one more game where you get to explore the whole solar system and travel from planet to planet.

When our team made PSII, we were stretched pretty thin, and we couldn’t include all that we had imagined. We felt that leaving the story at PSII, therefore, would have been a real waste, and that’s how the idea for PSIV got started.

Also, PSII’s battle animation system still stands out today, I think. It allowed for really great visual presentation, and again, we thought it would be a huge waste to not revisit it. But PSII and PSIII also had a lot of flaws, and we wanted to fix all that and make a game which players would consider the definitive Phantasy Star. So in that sense, we also saw PSIV as a sort of remake of the best elements of the series.

Toru Yoshida, like most of the PSIV devs, worked in a variety of roles: co-director, graphic designer, and story writer.

—What were some of the things you wanted to improve or fix?

Yoshida: In our design plans, we really wanted to include the vehicle battles that we had been unable to do in PSII.

Kodama: When we began the PSIV development, I said we have to do vehicle battles this time! I really just wanted to make moving around the...