Oh, that's right! These two games are brothers!" He's about to make our brains melt, "First of all, Tsuchida-san created this, a strategy game. "Backing up a little bit!" interrupts Suzuki, grabbing copies of Leynos and a PC Engine game called Hisou Kihei X-Serd off the table. This seems straightforward enough, but the connection runs so much deeper. So far we've confirmed that Valken and Gun Hazard shared staff, and that the original Front Mission producer, Tsuchida, deliberately courted Omiya Soft to make an action game similar to Valken under the Front Mission label. There was a producer at Square, Toshirou Tsuchida, who had previously left Masaya." It was a unique entry in the Front Mission series. More generally, I wanted to create the sense of destroying things on a larger scale. Personally, I wanted to design something bigger, something more amazing that I wasn't able to do in Valken, like larger enemy characters. "We thought that some role-playing elements were needed to extend the play time. "We wanted to do a sequel to Valken, on a larger scale," admits Nakai, confirming what everyone knew. Our assumption being that Gun Hazard was inspired by his earlier work on Valken the main difference is that Valken was developed at NCS / Masaya, while Gun Hazard was developed at Omiya Soft. Masayuki Suzuki (in the green jacket) and Satoshi Nakai (in the suit) leaf through some artwork relating to their past titles - Images: Nico Datiche / John SzczepaniakĪt one point, we asked Nakai about his involvement with Gun Hazard since he did the graphics, also enemy, background, and level design. History was documented and made that day. Joseph Redon of the Japanese Game Preservation Society brought boxes filled with every title they'd worked on Nakai brought all of his original art Suzuki wore his rare Langrisser t-shirt. The careers of Suzuki and Nakai are too prolific to summarise, but they worked on the Leynos and Valken games, respectively Suzuki also created the Langrisser / Warsong series, while Nakai worked on Gynoug / Wings of Wor and Code Veronica. Please excuse us if we repeat ourselves.ĭisentangling these convoluted dynasties is possible thanks to a four-and-a-half-hour interview with Masayuki Suzuki and Satoshi Nakai for The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers Volume 2 (totalling 22,800 words spread over 40 pages). This gets a little complicated, so we're going to walk through it slowly, sticking to the original Japanese names. These are not coincidences, nor is it simply inspiration or a homage - the two series share a precursor. You probably know the Juusou Kihei series due to Assault Suit Leynos / Target Earth on Mega Drive (1990) and Assault Suits Valken / Cybernator on SNES (1992).įans of this series and Front Mission will have noticed similarities between Valken and Front Mission: Gun Hazard on Super Famicom (1996). You know how the Wonder Boy and Adventure Island series are both distinct, yet interlinked and extremely convoluted as a result? Well, it's a similar situation with the Juussou Kihei series (AKA: Assault Suits series) and the Front Mission series.
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