PREACHING OF THE CONVERTED

MINDWARE’S MIKITO ICHIKAWA TALKS ABOUT THE ART OF BRINGING ARCADE GAMES TO THE HOME

We understand that arcade games inspired you to begin developing games. Could you please tell us about that?

The first action game I played was Space Mouse for the PC-8001 at a PC shop. At the time, I was interested in computers because I wanted to make them do aerodynamic calculations. My first personal computer was a dead copy board of MZ-80. In the midst of all this, Namco’s Dig Dug started to catch on and I went to see it. I’d played Space Invaders and Asteroids before that, but the impact of Dig Dug was immense, and I’ve been making games ever since.

Were there any conversions of arcade games that you thought were impressive in the Eighties?

There are a lot of them. What I was particularly impressed with was Mappy for the PC-6001 MKII. The logic of the enemy was firmly based on the arcade version, the pattern of the map was made as similar as possible. There were many conversions that did not have bonus stages such as NES and MSX, but the bonus stage was also reproduced, and it was a conversion with a very high degree of completion.

When converting games like Slap Fight, how did your process differ from today?

Nowadays, it’s an emulation port. On the other hand, when it comes to Slap Fight, the Mega Drive is significantly

less capable than the original hardware, so it couldn’t be developed in the same way. The source code was very helpful in porting Slap Fight with detailed character movement logic and lots of hidden features. However, the source code was handed to me on a printed piece of paper, so I had to go through everything, which was a lot of work. […] As for the music, I was provided with a handwritten copy. Since it was a score, not data, it was only a reference and it took a lot of time to reproduce every detail.

You have now brought a number of classic arcade games to modern platforms. Why do you think players are still interested in playing arcade games from the Eighties?

Recently, the development budgets of the major publishers’ games have skyrocketed. This makes the graphics and sound gorgeous, but since players know that new games have more gorgeous graphics and sound than the old one, there aren’t that many surprises. I was shocked when Tetris appeared in the late Eighties and surprised when Minecraft appeared in the Noughties. I think there are a lot of surprises like this in Eighties games. Whenever I release a ported version of an old game, I always make a version that goes beyond the arrangement and can be called the ‘Ultimate Evolved Version’, and I do this because I want you to experience the surprises you experienced in the Eighties.