Wii

I must say, the resort in Go Vacation is an amazing one. It's the middle of summer on one side, yet it's the middle of winter on the other, and there are 50 different ways to play to choose from.

To put it bluntly, at the outset, no one said, "You have to make 50 activities."

Was that something you announced, Kobayashi-san?

Yes, that's right. We decided to go with 50 after discussing it with the team.

The whole time I said, "Maybe we should just stick to 30 or so." And Kobayashi-kun would be saying, "But 50 seems like a better number!" (laughs)

Better?

That's right. (laughs) At the time, most titles in similar genre generally included about 10 to 15 activities, but we wanted to make the ultimate game for families. We really wanted to land on the number 50 because that's where we felt it would be possible to make happen if we all put our best effort into it. We thought with that number we'd be able to surprise our players. To surprise them means we were able to leave an impression on them. So I decided that we should just do 50 because it was a better number to stop at. Only it was such a perfect number to stop at, I had to deliberately cram 50 activities into the final version of the game.

So your stubbornness got 50 activities in the game? (laughs)

It was the stubbornness of the entire team! (laughs) Given the timing of Go Vacation's release, the competition would be lined up, and I thought we would have a difficult time if we didn't make a game with that kind of potential. That's why I was adamant that we try hard to have 50 activities.

But "trying hard" is really a mental state. (laughs) And one field is equivalent to a square that has approximately 5 kilometers on each side, which is extremely large. So I said, "Maybe you should just make it 3 kilometers on each side" But Kobayashi-kun wouldn't change his mind. He just said, "But if you go to an actual resort, they're really big!"

(laughs)

And that's how you kept making more work for yourselves, and it kept taking longer to make the game.

Yes. To put it in a positive light, they didn't compromise. Of course, the game did take longer to make than our initial plan. Right?

Yes. I had no idea when I started it would all be so much work…

But you really get a sense even just from the videos of just how much energy went into the game. I feel like this game won't just sell temporarily, it will continue to be a staple title throughout the Wii console's life cycle.

Yes. We're also hoping that the game will be picked up every season.

Also, there are various vehicles that appear in the resort. Are the team members into vehicles?

That's right. For the most part the main staff was the same staff that made Ridge Racer, so you could say that the movements for vehicles are second nature for them. There are a lot of vehicles that you would love to ride, but you've never gotten the chance, like water bikes or buggies. So we wanted to include the different kinds of vehicles that you might find at a resort.

Even so, not all vehicles have four wheels, so I'm sure it wasn't really like you could just use exactly the know-how you took from Ridge Racer.

Exactly. We couldn't use it at all for a lot of them! (laughs)

We had a lot of programmers to work on that, of course, but a lot of the action design comes down to your knowledge in physics and your taste.

We had to brush up every single one.

That's right.

Kobayashi-san, you get smaller and smaller every time we talk about how you didn't think it would be this difficult. (laughs)

(laughs) The moment I first heard about what the content would be, I thought, "This will take four years." But he just said, "We'll make it in a year and a half!" It ended up taking two years, but personally, I'm okay with that because I feel like, "Well, we got it done about a year and a half earlier than I'd originally expected." (laughs)

When you think about the size of what you were making, you basically got something that would take four years done in two and a half.

That's true.

You were really sure about that, weren't you? You declared, "We can do it!" (laughs)

(wiping sweat from his brow) Yes.

There's such a variety of leisure games and sports in the game, but what would you say is the poster game for Go Vacation?

We created it with the hope that everyone in the family can find their favorite game in it. We created it with the hope that everyone in the family can find their favorite games in it. Those who love competition, and I can personally think of boys in particular, will find games like racing and water guns attractive. There are also more relaxing games like redecorating the vacation house or buying clothing for your characters that I think moms and girls may like, as well as scuba diving and sea walking. If the whole family is going to play together, we've also got ball sports like beach volleyball and miniature golf. There are really so many different games you can play.

I never thought I'd hear the team that made Ridge Racer talk about redecorating vacation houses or changing outfits! (laughs)

Actually, we had a lot of fun making it. (laughs) In that way, I feel like there are a lot of things packed in with Go Vacation of things that we want to experience or things fond to our memories. For example, there are a lot of things that we've always wanted to do but could never really go through with, like scuba diving or bungee jumping.

The game combines things that you've experienced and things you've always wanted to do, so I can imagine it must have been very exciting to make.

The two things people dream about when they imagine spending time at a resort are a vacation house and a pet dog. So we wanted to put in as many breeds of dog as we could, everything from large dogs to toy dogs.

The more you want to do, the more work you make for yourselves.

The dogs are really cute, and they will follow you everywhere. Even when you're skiing down the slopes, your dog will come running after you at an insane speed. (laughs)

That's right. Dogs are man's best friend, after all. (laughs)

It's the kind of project that should have programmers weeping, but the programmers said that they wanted to do it. It's amazing. Once you strike a chord in people, they work together to make it happen.

That said, from beginning to end of development, our biggest problem was how to make something that was so huge. Our in-house staff wasn't going to be enough, so we asked for help from four outside game production companies.

That means you had a really large team. Wasn't it hard to create a sense of unity and consistency?

Yes! It was really difficult. It was a first for my team to work with people from another company. And we had to combine their work with what was made in-house to make one final product. We ran into all kinds of small issues that we hadn't expected which brought a lot of first-time internal challenges to us.

Were you able to keep moving forward without any hesitation during those two and a half years?

No, I wavered every single day. But it was something I really wanted to make, and there were so many new challenges that looking back now, those two and a half years went by really quickly. Although, when I remember that I did the planning, it makes my blood run cold. (laughs)

After all, you were the one who said, "We're doing 50 because that's a better number!" and "We'll make it in a year and a half!"

I did! (laughs) But it was a really meaningful two and a half years.

When you think of the sheer quantity that you got done, it's really amazing that you were able to do it in two and a half years.

The debugging was a lot of work, too.

It's a big game. We had the most bugs of any other games in the company.

The debug team said, "This is never ending!" When I got a look at 10,000 items on the debug list, even I felt a little nauseous. (laughs)

The number of bugs usually doesn't decrease too quickly when you start debugging because people keep finding new bugs faster than what can be fixed. But I bet you were really happy when that list shrunk.

I thought, "Oh wow, our goal is finally within sight!"

What was the total number of people who made the game?

100 people in house and including out of house…I think the total number was about 200.

Wow. That's amazing! When I watched those videos, I thought, "This is really something!" and you just keep proving me right.

(laughs)