MAJOR MINOR’S MAJESTIC MARCH

After various discussions, we arrived at the idea for a marching-band game for the Nintendo Wii. It was a difficult decision to make as we still didn’t really understand what kind of device the Wii Remote was, and what capacities it would have. In my opinion, the platform provider did not adequately explain to third parties the device’s functionality – there was a lack of transparency that hurt developers like us. The platform holder kept adding new and subtle features, and amending the design as time went on, which changed the scope for us.

Although I haven’t talked about this publicly before, my intention was to have young staff take the lead in developing this particular game. Partly it was because I was feeling older, and wanted to pass the baton to the younger generation. But allowing inexperienced staff to take the lead also had its issues, of course. My passion had always been to design games and write music, not run a company, so for Major Minor’s Majestic March I reduced the number of staff I was working with. I wanted to create a studio environment that was much more like a classic design office. To achieve this, the actual development of the game was outsourced.

By comparison to NanaOn-Sha’s previous games, Major Minor’s Majestic March was poorly received. On reflection, I don’t think it was complete enough as a game. I thought we did our best under the circumstances, but I fell short in various ways.

After this, I made four more games: Winta for iOS, Tamagotchi Corner Shop for Nintendo DS, Haunt for the Xbox Kinect, and Furusoma, which was a Unity project. Since then, I have focused on my music again. I never stopped being a musician all through my game-making years, so it didn’t feel like a switch. I always held onto the idea that people would get the same kind of feeling from playing my games that they get when they are listening to their favourite kind of music. Creating games or creating music, it’s all the same thing to me.

“IT WAS NEVER REALLY A BIG HIT IN JAPAN. I WONDER IF THAT MATTERS, REALLY?”

Major Minor’s Majestic March featured 30 marching band tunes. It blended ideas pioneered in both Tunin’Glue and PaRappa The Rapper: the performance would change depending on which of the 15 instruments the player included in their band

PaRappa 2 featured practice segments because Rodney Greenblat struggled to finish stages in Um Jammer Lammy