HIROMASA IWASAKI

A VETERAN PC ENGINE DEVELOPER OFFERS A JAPANESE PERSPECTIVE ON THE PC ENGINE AND ITS MINI COUNTERPART

You worked on two games that are included on PC Engine Mini, Ys Book I & II and Tengai Makyouu II. How do you feel about them being on the console?

I’m very happy that three of my favourite games, Tengai Makyouu II, Ys Book I & II and Ys I & II (Japan) are on sale again. Ys Book I & II is the only game for which I won a Game Of The Year award in 1990, so I am very proud of it. Ys Book I & II has a very different balance between the Japanese and English versions. I changed everything, but the story and gameplay are exactly the same, so I want you to play it in Japanese and see the difference.

The PC Engine was the first console to use CD-ROM, so you were using very new technology. How much did you enjoy working with this console? What was good or bad about it?

I enjoyed it, but the amount of RAM (64KB plus 64KB) was really low. Every day, code no longer fit in RAM and we shrank the code. Buddy [Hiroshi] Hasegawa said, ‘Ys is almost always out of memory.’ I used to build the CD-I development environment from 1985 to 1987 before using PC Engine CD-ROM. So I knew the strength and weakness of the CD at the time. The strength is disposable capacity and CD sound (ADPCM sound quality was very low at the beginning, so I didn’t want to use that). Weakness is access and loading time. At that time, users were accustomed to the speed of ROM directly connected to the computer (which is different nowadays), that meant everything ran instantaneously. So users had never seen loading times. Also, since the CD is a CLV [constant linear velocity], I knew that seeking time was slow in principle. If we compress data and avoid loading as long as possible, we can use CD audio for background music and since there is no loading, users do not feel it’s slow. So I had three policies at that time: use CD Audio and voice when the player boots the game; show animation when the player boots the game; do not load for as long as we possibly can. Because without loading, nobody thinks it’s slow [laughs].

PC Engine software came in many different formats – Hucard, CD-ROM, Super CD-ROM, etc. Other than the amount of storage space (or memory for CD/ Super CD), was there much difference in developing games of different types?

Yes and no. The difference between CD-ROM and Hucard was very large, but CD-ROM and Super CD-ROM difference was just amount of RAM. So programs didn’t have many differences. Some games did have minigames for the ‘this is a Super CD-ROM game’ warning screen.

The PC Engine was never officially released in the UK, so many people don’t know much about it. What do gamers in Japan think about the PC Engine today?

In Japan, PC Engine was the second best-selling game machine on the market at the time. Many people remember PC Engine as the first CD-ROM game machine in history.

Some games on the PC Engine Mini are the English Turbografx versions, like Bonk’s Revenge and Lords Of Thunder, even in Japan. How do you feel about this?

Most games don’t require good English reading skill, so I’m just looking forward to those games that I have never seen in English. In other words, I don’t care and I am looking forward to these games.

Apart from your own games, which games featured on the PC Engine Mini are your personal favourites?

Tokimeki Memorial and Blazing Lazers. Actually, I worked on part of the balancing for Blazing Lazers at that time.