Using Sega As A ‘License’
“There is one key phrase in the original game design document that introduces the project: ‘To do a game with one hundredth of Shenmue’s budget and sell one hundred times more!’ You have to remember that at that time the entire company was focused on Shenmue; the entire building #3 of the company was used for the army developing the game. Now, on a more serious matter, I’m a man of ideas. I mean that I really like thinking and imagining new ideas. Sega is not a company of ideas, it is a company of technologies, centered on amusement machines and certain quests – like simulating the human body, for instance. We were hardware-driven since the beginning. When a guy like me steps in, it is most uneasy. Imagine that I come to a meeting and say: ‘Guys! I have a new idea that…’ The reply to me would be: ‘Please, we are busy with Shenmue at the moment’.

“SGGG was a ‘one simple idea’ project that anybody could make a game out of. I always thought that licenses were a great way of getting people’s attention, especially with popular licenses. But they are very expensive – it’s hard to make any money out of them. Then I realized that Sega had many popular names that were virtually free for us to use. Sega was to me a very popular name that required no additional cost but offered lots of potential in terms of content. Now, if I was given the extra money and manpower, I could have come out with a huge game like Panzer Dragoon! Well, who knows?”

Sales Success
“To be honest, I don’t remember how many we sold, exactly. But I recall the game doing quite well. At first we decided to sell the game only through our online store, Sega Direct, which is closed now. There were also talks to sell the game at the Comike [a large Japanese amateur comic event]. When we started to sell the game on our online store, it was instantly popular. That convinced us to go with a normal store release as well. Later, it was even turned into a Dorikore [budget Dreamcast Collection] release. Following the release, I have to admit that I did not follow sales, but I was told it did quite well. When you know that our development costs were low, this turned out to be a very good release. But I realized one thing with SGGG: a game should not be made with limited resources. It is far better to put in the resources and have bigger ambitions.”

Using Sega As Inspiration
“The development started at a time when the Dreamcast was doing relatively well. I love the genre of ‘metafiction’: to use yourself as the base content of a game was an appealing idea. I work and live in the game industry. There are tons of interesting and fun things in this world. I also believed that, if Sega was going to be the base content for a game, putting the company in a favorable light would seem a bit cheap. So bringing some of our weaknesses or some of our not-so-favorable elements towards a positive conclusion would be fun.”

Using Sega’s Star Designers
“Using my colleagues in the game was difficult, of course! That is where I had to deploy my ingenuity in masking my true intention – pretending this was for a project based on Sega’s history and so on. I remember going to see Mr [Yuji] Naka. He is really someone who is very passionate about gaming, and he is very open-minded, so he gave me positive feedback about the game. But I remember he asked me not to use Sonic in certain weird ways. So Sonic appears at the end of the game in quite a positive way, and it was the renewed version of the character!”