Originally published in the November 2002 issue of Nintendo Dream
——What was the original development concept of “Kirby: Dream Spring Story DX”?
Masahiro Sakurai: Frankly, I was very resistant to doing a remake at first.
——There are a lot of remakes on the GBA.
Masahiro Sakurai: The hardware performance of the GBA is close to that of the Super Nintendo, so we can directly port the Kirby games from the Super Nintendo. Although this approach can meet the needs of some players, after all, the game is a few years old, and I think the art style may not meet the expectations of current players. The original transplant may look good in the short term, but in the long run, it may make people feel a little bad… Looking at the control, the button layout of the Super Ren and GBA is also different.
– That’s it.
Masahiro Sakurai: So I have reservations about any remakes. I think it’s better to just do a new work directly.
– In the end, you still remade Kirby’s Adventure on the red and white machine.
Masahiro Sakurai: There are several reasons for this. When the “Kirby Star” animation started last year, no team was working on a Kirby game. It’s kind of bad to have a game that doesn’t come out at the same time after you’ve worked so hard to get an animation done, so we wanted to develop a game quickly. We’ve considered Kirby Star games that aren’t side-scrolling, like Kirby Bowl, but could do something new as well. Finally, someone came up with the idea of a remake of Dream Fountain. I always feel that the difficulty of today’s games is too high. When I made the first “Kirby Star” for the Game Boy, I deliberately lowered the difficulty, limited by the capacity, and the levels were relatively short, so even novice players can easily get started .
——The “Dream Fountain Story” on the red and white machine was released later, which is not only very friendly to novice players, but also has enough depth for hardcore players to enjoy.
Masahiro Sakurai: This is our goal. I think the video game industry today is very similar to when we made the first Kirby… For example, if you found the auntie in the neighborhood and asked her to play a new game, I guess she would find it very difficult. So many keystrokes, you have to keep them all in your head…I don’t think she can keep up. “Dream Fountain Story” has found a good balance – players with no experience at all can enjoy it, but as an action game, there are certain challenges and depth. Picking an enemy ability that suits your playstyle and making it your own is something I think even today’s players will have a lot of fun with.
– After playing this game, I completely agree that this game is suitable for today’s players. It’s easy to pick up to play with and put down at any time. The art style is very different from the red and white machine version, what other adjustments have you made?
Masahiro Sakurai: We adjusted Kirby’s movement speed, as well as his strength. Compared with the red and white machine version, he is actually a bit stronger. We’ve kept the enemy’s strength the same, so it’s a little easier to play than the original. It’s been nine years since the original release, so people’s understanding of the game, and the way they play it, has completely changed. We also made a lot of fine-tuning, such as some bosses’ sprites are bigger, but Kirby’s attack box is smaller.
——Mr. Nakamura, you have been working at the HAL Institute for the third year. What challenges do you see in this development effort?
Eitaro Nakamura: I was in charge of the programming part, but the biggest challenge was definitely the four-player online game. This is a new element, we have to work within the constraints of the original game on the red and white machine, so it is very difficult. It’s not easy to keep four GBAs in sync. Other scrolling platform action games should not have online cooperative gameplay, right?
– This work is the first to do it. Are you trying to adapt to multiplayer gameplay by tweaking your enemy configuration?
Eitaro Nakamura: Yes, we will adjust the location and type of enemies based on the number of players.
——It sounds like a “nightmare” to adjust the balance.
Eitaro Nakamura: Leave it all to Mr. Suzuki. (laugh)
Teruhiko Suzuki: The biggest problem is not balance, but ensuring that there are no problems with the connection.
Eitaro Nakamura: Even a month or two before the release, there are often problems. So, at a meeting one day, Mr. Sakurai asked us, “Guys…does it work?” It wasn’t my job to play online games at the time, so I also said, “Yeah, I’m worried too.” About A week later, Mr. Sakurai said to me, “Nakamura, you can do it.” (laughs)
— (laughs) Don’t you feel that the situation is not very optimistic?
Eitaro Nakamura: (with a painful expression) Yes, to be honest, I want to cut this feature.
(the crowd laughs)
Eitaro Nakamura: But there has never been such a four-player action game before, so I thought if it could be made, it would be very interesting, so I persevered.
Masahiro Sakurai: If this game had taken four-player connection into consideration from the very beginning, it should have been better, but we had to work within the framework of the original version of Dream Spring. Hopefully next time I have plenty of time, I have many new ideas ready.
——Mr. Suzuki, you are the artist of this work. Compared to the red and white machine version, the Kirby looks a little softer and fluffy.
Teruhiko Suzuki: Thank you.
– What challenges have you encountered?
Teruhiko Suzuki: I used the sprite data of “Kirby Star Super Deluxe Edition” as a reference to make Kirby’s actions and animations. But the animation data in that game is really neat and efficient, and frankly…I don’t think my skills are good enough to match it. So I can only draw a lot of animation frames. (laugh)
– Win by quantity. (laugh)
Teruhiko Suzuki: Yes, they were mad at me.
– Who is angry? (laugh)
Teruhiko Suzuki: (Looking in the direction of Masahiro Sakurai) Mainly to supervise adults.
(the crowd laughs)
Masahiro Sakurai: Let’s talk about the work of supervision later. The problem is that if there are too many frames, the character animation will appear sluggish. In addition, it affects the controls and makes the player feel unnatural. These tricks can only be learned after playing the game for a while. So I always say to the artist, “Don’t worry about the animation not looking smooth enough, the player doesn’t care. We have to make the character movement better.”
–I see. Mr. Nakamura, did anything interesting happen during the development of this game?
Eitaro Nakamura: …interesting?
Teruhiko Suzuki: It should be said “everything is interesting”!
–(laugh)
Nakamura Eitaro: Speaking of which, since this is a “Kirby of the Stars”, many people will definitely play it.
——How about you, Mr. Suzuki?
Teruhiko Suzuki: I didn’t adjust Kirby’s basic movements very much, but adding various animation frames to his copying ability actually really enjoyed me. (laughs) Take the action of the sword ability as an example, there are only three frames in the red and white machine version, but my goal in this work is to double it, so it is almost crazy to draw.
Masahiro Sakurai: So I got mad again. (laugh)
Teruhiko Suzuki: I should draw fast.
Masahiro Sakurai: It’s true, Suzuki draws very quickly. Besides, no matter what I say to him, it will not discourage him. (laugh)
——When did the development of “Kirby: Dream Spring Story DX” start?
Teruhiko Suzuki: Last summer. We started to determine the basic question of how large Kirby’s sprite should be. Should I make him bigger? Or is it the same size as the red and white machine version? We made some prototypes to experiment with.
Masahiro Sakurai: As I mentioned earlier, I was very resistant to remakes, so I wanted all the graphics, including the backgrounds, to be enhanced so that they wouldn’t feel too polished for today’s players. We recreated all the background images in CG. I think Kirby’s sprites look as good as they do in other games these days.
– Kirby’s movements are even cuter!
Masahiro Sakurai: Frankly speaking, we can not make too many changes to the original version, so that the game can be launched faster. But I don’t want to do that.
– This work looks like a brand new game.
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes. We also planned to add new replication capabilities, but we didn’t have enough capacity and we didn’t have enough time, so we had to cut them down. When it comes to capacity, we packed the cassette to the brim, thanks to Suzuki.
——Mr. Suzuki, please take a bow. (laugh)
Teruhiko Suzuki: Even so, there are still 500k data that could not be inserted. In order to make these data, we have spent a lot of effort.
Masahiro Sakurai: Readers may not understand what “500k” refers to.
Teruhiko Suzuki: I definitely don’t know. (laughs) We made dance moves for each of Kirby’s clone abilities.
–Oh.
Teruhiko Suzuki: There are also some other content, such as a small game that I led myself. Finally had to cut it off.
Masahiro Sakurai: Of course, this ratio is already very low compared to the ideas that were cut off in a new game. At least in this respect, it confirms my previous idea that remake games are easier to make.
– When I started playing Dream Springs DX, I felt that the game was influenced by Super Smash Bros Melee.
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes, I feel that way too.
——Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto is sometimes called “the father of jumping, Miyamoto”… What should you call Mr. Sakurai? (laugh)
Masahiro Sakurai: Mr. Miyamoto is so self-proclaimed, right? (laugh)
– It seems so. (laughs) But in your opinion, what are the commonalities between Dream Springs DX and Smash Bros. Melee?
Masahiro Sakurai: It should be that both are aimed at a fairly broad audience.
– When you made Dream Springs DX, was there anything in the original that you were particularly proud of, and thought, “Look at what I made nine years ago!”
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes. When I replayed the original, there were a lot of things that made me think, “This is really good.” But there were also a lot of things that made me feel, “If it were me, I wouldn’t do this… wait, wait…” (laugh)
(the crowd laughs)
– As you mentioned before, when you play someone else’s game, you always imagine what different designs you could make.
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes. Of course, I also notice the parts that I dealt with well, and I think having a critical mind while playing games is a great way to train, and it’s those experiences that make me who I am today.
– Yes, you said earlier that you’ve played over 2,000 games. In addition, the description text in Dream Spring Story DX is colorful, especially the description text of the copy ability. Did you write it?
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes, these are all written by me.
–I knew it. The description of the reproduction ability in the museum reads, “Free!” It must be Mr. Sakurai’s handwriting at a glance. (laugh)
Masahiro Sakurai: Of course, the graphic work is done by the artist. As for the compliments we get from the captions, it does feel a little funny and a little confusing. No one thought that pausing the game to read these words became one of the selling points of the game. (laughs) A lot of people told us that they liked it.
—Because that’s not the usual old-fashioned caption.
Masahiro Sakurai: There is no problem with just using the description text of the original version of the red and white machine, but considering the tastes of current players, it is not appropriate to do so. Kirby has never been more than a “children’s game”, so I used a little more color when writing these words. It’s a bit of a challenge actually, after all the characters need to be easy to understand in the first place, so I don’t use any complicated Chinese characters – but at the same time, it’s fun enough to read – every time I get a new copy ability, Hope players can get excited and read the description carefully.
– Was it fun to write?
Masahiro Sakurai: I can’t talk about it, I wrote it in half an hour.
– Oh, so fast. Would you like to join the Nintendo Dream editorial team? (laughs) I’ve always liked the title of this work, “The Fountain of Dreams.”
Sakurai Masahiro: Thank you.
– After all, there’s a “Dream” in it. (laugh)
Masahiro Sakurai: That’s true. (laugh)
——You also played word games in “Insane Slash”.
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes, it will make you realize it? “Eh…” (laughs) When I wrote these words, I knew very well that words themselves are also a trend. Foreigners will always wear t-shirts with Japanese on them…they don’t know what Japanese means but still find it cool. I love this feeling.
– That’s right, it’s going to be pretty cool if you’re wearing a t-shirt that says “I see it in an instant” at E3. (laugh)
Masahiro Sakurai: So I guess simplifying everything to something even kids can understand doesn’t mean they’ll like it, right? Kids used to speak English well enough to understand what “Push Start Button” meant, but even if you couldn’t read it, it didn’t affect the game. But if the developers change this sentence to “スタートボタンをおしてね!” that children can understand, it will probably make older players feel awkward.
As hardware evolves, there will be new ways of expressing it, but at the same time you will lose something. Taking “Dream Fountain DX” as an example, I think it is the dubbing that best reflects this. Did you know that Kirby has voice acting in this game. We even visited Ms. Makiko Omoto specifically to record her voiceover.
– Oh, I didn’t realize it at all.
Masahiro Sakurai: However, we use very little dubbing material in the game. Kirby only speaks when he’s hurt, and beyond that, there’s very little voice acting. It’s also understandable, since a pixel sprite-based character like Kirby starts to speak clearly, it always feels unnatural. But that’s not the only reason. After adding voice, Kirby will be stereotyped as a certain character. For these reasons, we’ve only included his voice in five places…three in the mic duplication ability, and two in the damage.
——You came all the way to Ms. Big Ben’s house just to record these few dubbing sentences!
Masahiro Sakurai: It’s not too much trouble. (laughs) But there are more and more games with dubbing these days, which is actually kind of boring, right?
——I think it would be fine if it matches the character setting. But there are indeed many situations where dubbing is unnecessary or extremely annoying.
Masahiro Sakurai: Some games will have a child shout out the title at the title screen! Every time I hear it, a kid practicing karate comes to my mind.
–(laugh)
Masahiro Sakurai: If this situation continues, the games we used to love will only end up with a narrower and narrower audience.
——There are quite a few games that, although the underlying gameplay is very solid, try to attract children with childish cutscenes.
Masahiro Sakurai: Of course I wouldn’t mind if a game was suitable for dubbing and cutscenes.
The unforgettable opening of Kirby’s charge.
——I also like the opening scene of Dream Spring Story DX, where the endless amount of Kirby fills the screen.
Teruhiko Suzuki: This animation uses all of Kirby’s sprites in the game. Mr. Nakamura helped us do this opening… How many sprites were used in total?
Eitaro Nakamura: I think it took about 120 sheets.
– Let’s count together! (laughs) Where did this opening idea come from?
Masahiro Sakurai: During the development process, the title screen appeared suddenly, and everyone felt that the effect was not good enough to capture the player’s attention. But like an arcade game, it’s a little weird to do a traditional gameplay demonstration. GBA games will not be displayed at the storefront. We still wanted to do something impactful, but not take up too much capacity. I suddenly thought of Kirby’s sprint idea and gave it to a colleague to implement it.
—Is it your idea?
Masahiro Sakurai: Yes. After all, displaying a large number of sprites at the same time happens to be the strength of GBA hardware. (laugh)
——What other strengths do you think GBA has?
Eitaro Nakamura: Definitely four-player co-op, and multiplayer with just one cassette. There are also mini-games in Dream Springs DX, but we hope that even if you only play these mini-games, it’s worth buying a game. So hopefully everyone can try it out with friends.
Masahiro Sakurai: From the era of red and white machines to today, our concept and method of making small games have not changed much. I think simpler games are more fun. Or to put it this way, if the game is not simple enough, it means that the player is likely to not know what to do. Even for Kirby, the various copying abilities change his appearance, which alone can make it difficult for many to get started. Therefore, a small game with only one button is our countermeasure.
– What was the happiest moment in the development process?
Teruhiko Suzuki: You mean, except now?
(the crowd laughs)
—Well, what was your second happiest moment?
Teruhiko Suzuki: For me, it was the moment when the two replication abilities of freezing and burning were completed. These two were originally ice and fire abilities, but in the end – really at the end of development – Mr. Sakurai said to me “We can’t add ice and fire separately anymore.” But I insisted, “Please let me do it over the weekend!” he replied. “Okay, if you insist on that, just do it.” It made me especially happy. Frankly speaking, I didn’t insist on the art design I did before, but I don’t know why I decided to stick to it in the end. I’m glad that these two abilities can enter the final version.
– The story is really good. Mr. Nakamura, how about you?
Eitaro Nakamura: On the day of the release, I got a call from my mother, and she said, “I got it!” It really made me happy.
– This is so heartwarming. (laugh)
Eitaro Nakamura: My mother doesn’t play games much. I don’t know if she’s going to play or not, but two or three days later, she called again and told me, “It’s fun!” I was really relieved to hear this.
– Longevity of the hall?
Nakamura Eitaro: She is forty-five years old.
Masahiro Sakurai: She’s really young.
– She is the same year as me… Please give my regards to her. (laughs) Finally, Mr. Sakurai, what was your happiest moment in development?
Masahiro Sakurai: No doubt, it was the moment when I heard players say they enjoyed the game. For me, more than the creative process, hearing the voices of players who like Kirby and knowing that they bought the game makes me happiest. I don’t know why, but I’ve heard they all love captions. (laughs) But it’s true, when you’ve created something, it’s the happiest moment when you get positive feedback.
In addition, the “Kirby Star” animation has been launched for one year. From animators to voice actors, more than 200 people who participated in the production held an internal commemorative party together. This also makes me very happy. Meeting these animators rekindled my enthusiasm and we will continue to do our best to make these games.
translate: @RED Rhyme
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