Brazilian Piracy and a Nod to Shoot ‘Em Up Culture
“I remember finding a pirate version in Brazil! Why the hell would such a version be made and sold, especially when you think about all the Japanese text? The Dreamcast used GD-ROMs – if the GD-ROM was used to its full capacity you could not make a copy of it on CD-ROM, so I bought one of these Brazilian CD-ROM copies and brought it back to Sega to analyze it. I realized that the content had been edited to fit the format; many things were missing or changed. But this pirate version had an interesting role afterwards as we were thinking about adapting the game for the mobile phones. We were lacking the source code and there was no possibility at the time to take it from the retail version: I recall thinking about trying to get it from the pirate version. But in the end we didn’t because the project didn’t happen.

“We did, however, release a mobile phone version of the R720 shooting game from SGGG. That is really one part of the game I love, and it’s very popular. It’s from the very end of the game – the hero experiences the greatest shooting game of all time. R720 goes beyond [pioneering cockpit-based Sega coin-op] R360 by sending the player into space for just ¥500. There, the shooting starts. We made a tribute to our hardware history and to shoot ’em up culture. I’m fan of the Thunder Force series that was created by Technosoft – after the demise of that company, I managed to get the necessary authorization to get the Thunder Force V soundtrack included in SGGG, and even a video of Thunder Force VI that the original Technosoft team was making at that time.

“Anyway, in this sequence at the end of SGGG you experience parts of Thunder Force IV and V. As the game goes on you are asked if you are really good enough to defeat Sega’s history. It goes crazy from that point – the SG-1000 system arrives, with all the popular characters of that time flying around. Defeated, the SG-1000 turns into a Mark III and gets reinforced with the FM Pack. Then comes the Mega Drive with Super 32X and Mega CD! Of course, next is Saturn. That was how excited we were about our company, our achievements, our industry’s history and culture.”

The Not-So-Big Release
“As I said, I didn’t have much money to promote the game. But, again, some great people stepped in. Our star PR, Mr [Tadashi] Takezaki, and Mr [Taku] Sasahara of AM3 really invested their energy and creativity in promoting the game in any ways they could. This really influenced the popularity of the title and ultimately its sales. For example, they even managed to get the game a full-page story in the newspapers! It was uneasy for me trying to keep secrets on this game while also asking for help in promoting it. But Mr Takezaki and Mr Sasahara both found the idea of the game very fun and wanted to help make it a success. Their efforts, combined with the official end of the Dreamcast, made the game some kind of a symbol, and that made it sell quite well.

“The greatest memory I have from the release was the tour we made in Akihabara. Normally you would invite a celebrity to sign copies on a tour that would go via Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, for instance, and players would get their copy singed at launch events. But, hey, we didn’t have any money for that so we thought up the Akihabara tour! With my mask, I was of course the guy who would sign the copies of the game! So we had a four-location tour throughout this one district of Tokyo! I was amazed that fans went through the four locations, buying a copy at each one and getting me to sign them. We had the Sega Shinja, the ‘Sega believers’, and they loved the company so much they would buy every single title we released. For fun, we made the four locations sacred Sega places, and gave the Shinja ranks – from Master System Shinja to Dream Shinja. This created a unique relationship between us and our fans.”

The Actual Budget
“How much did the game cost to make? That’s the kind of information I can’t really tell. But we did not have much, that’s for sure! Like I said, probably less than a hundredth of Shenmue’s! But I really benefited from the goodwill and cooperation of some great people and names like [animation studio] Toei, which offered some incredible price cuts to do the animations for the game. There was also a lot of creativity in our team – for example, we had six minutes of animation made, but after working on them manually we managed to get almost 26 minutes out of them!”