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Samurai Shodown sits on a throne of lies
Longtime developer Gregg Tavares recently appeared on the 8-4 Play podcast, where he revealed an interesting tidbit about 1993 fighting game Samurai Shodown. Prior to his development team getting code for the game to port it to the Neo Geo, a member of the team noticed something odd about the sword-clashing mini-game that prompts players to mash buttons: the buttons don't actually do anything.When the team picked up the contract, they checked the code to find that the mini-game, while displaying a command encouraging players to press buttons to win the sword dual, actually "picks a random number" to determine the winner. The surprise of the other panelists at finding out about this quirky Samurai Shodown nugget of information makes listening in at the 1:36:05 mark worthwhile.
Akira Yamaoka 'tag-teaming with Suda 51' on game development
Akira Yamaoka's business card may identify him as Grasshopper Manufacture's "Chief Sound Officer," but the leather-bound composer's new job embodies more than just audio. During an interview at the 8-4 Play podcast, Yamaoka detailed his role. "At Grasshopper, I'm creating sound, but not only sound," he said. "I'm the leader of the development team, so I'm tag-teaming with Suda 51, and I'm actually involved with game creation as well as sound." He then went on to tease "a few titles we're going to announce soon, so stay tuned." Listen to the whole podcast to learn more about Yamaoka and his career -- including why he planned to quit Konami after his first week.
Report: Rez 2 prototype was in the works, Project LMNO canned
According to industry vet Jake Kazdal, immediately following the completion of Rez, a small group of developers at United Game Artists worked on a prototype for Rez 2. Kazdal -- a man who's worked everywhere from Nintendo to Irem to Sega, and is currently developing Skulls of the Shogun -- also explained on the latest 8-4 Play podcast that another game he worked on, Steven Spielberg's now mythic "Project LMNO," has been cancelled. EA confirmed as much, telling Joystiq this afternoon, "While EA maintains its relationship with Steven Spielberg, we ceased development of LMNO." We pushed EA for clarification about the status of any projects in development with Spielberg and were told again, "EA maintains its relationship with Steven Spielberg. EA has ceased development of LMNO. EA continually monitors development resources and adjusts resources as appropriate. No new title announcements."
