Why do you think the genre of the arcade shooter is struggling so much nowadays and selling so little?

The reason is very simple, and similar to the situation with fighting games. They became too maniac. There is no way you can enjoy those games as they are done today. I see people ready to buy Rhythm Tengoku Gold on DS but very few that would go for Dodonpachi. We are very far from the time people wouldn’t hesitate to buy something like Star Fox and enjoy it: most developers who used to make arcade shooters strangled themselves gradually by going too complicated, becoming too maniac oriented. Many people enjoyed Street Fighter II but less and less enjoyed Street Fighter Alpha or Street Fighter III.
 
Did you consider an arcade version?

That was something I wanted to do, but in our arcade board line-up you have the Lindbergh or the Naomi, nothing in between. The Lindbergh is too expensive, and the Naomi doesn’t have sufficient power I’m afraid. If we’d had something in the middle, I would of course have insisted on an arcade version!

You’ve said that today there are fewer options for Japanese game makers to develop their creativity on the world stage. Why do you think so?

Let’s consider the Japanese animation industry. It became what it is today because at one point in time it had very limited options for survival, which forced them to change, rethink, evolve and become the very successful industry we know today. That animation industry started as a copy of Walt Disney. After about 15 years it reached a limit because only Japanese people would buy those animations, and there was little meaning investing the same amount of money for something that would sell only in Japan. I mean, there were better forms of investment in comparison. But the demand was still important so this made the studios rethink their approach: some decided to focus on character design, others on developing original techniques and so on… now consider the games industry in Japan. It is actually quite similar: in the past, our games were selling all around the world, titles like Super Mario Bros. or Biohazard. But as time passed, those games could be made by other than Japanese developers: and they could be made cheaper, or the western input would make those games fit the overseas markets better. Those specific areas of Japanese creativity faded and we were left with fewer opportunities to shine. However, I do believe only the Japanese can deliver a great arcade shooter. Take the way we used to only show planes flat from the side in our shooting games, no changes in perspective or showing the other wing. It might seem weird now but I think that’s a visual idea that only Japanese developers could have come up with. From an overseas perspective it may have looked like nonsense but for us, it looks cool!