Keichi-Yano
Latest
Audio interview with Keiichi Yano is a gas, gas, gas
Nintendo World Report's reporters are the envy of Elite Beat Agents-loving, homebound bloggers everywhere, because they got to chat with EBA, Ouendan, and (best PS2 game ever) Gitaroo-Man creator Keiichi Yano at GDC. They've provided the audio from the interview with a promise to transcribe it later, but why wait when you can hear it all from Yano himself? Some of the topics covered include: Ouendan sales (not as bad as we heard!), why Gitaroo-Man is so awesome, choosing music for iNiS games, and hangin' with Mr. Mizuguchi. The ambient GDC din is noticeable, but the audio quality is more than good enough to make for a pleasant listen. And if you make it to the end, you get an EBA gameplay tip!
Creating Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and its recreation as Elite Beat Agents
Keiichi Yano, VP of development for iNiS Corporation created Gitaroo-man and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Americans know him most recently for the conversion of the latter title to Elite Beat Agents. But since the original Japanese rhythm game centered on the rousing Ouendan, at his GDC seminar, Yano explained the process of rebuilding the title for a more American approach with "The Agents." With two Ouendan helpers occasionally chiming in, but mostly standing at attention during the presentation, Yano described the history of his company's titles. He was the game designer and also lead programmer for the company's first game, Gitaroo-man -- "[my ambitious role] was the stupidest thing ever." He hadn't created a game before, saying, "[I] studied pretty hard, read all the books, [and] came to GDC. At the end of the development cycle, we thought we had a really good game. ... We gained a fair amount of confidence." But Gitaroo-man was a retail disappointment. "It sold, like, nothing," Yano continued. "Any confidence that we had built was completely crushed like a fly. At this point, we had kind of lost all confidence in the music genre. ... We really did a lot of soul-searching back then." iNiS went on to prototype a new game and show it off to Nintendo. Yano said, "To make a long story short, they thought our idea sucked. ... We went on and we kept pitching this game [elsewhere]." %Gallery-1974%
