Enter: Shin-chan
NL: With Shin-chan, I thought it was pretty cool because it seems like such a natural fit, right? It's such a classic, beloved character in Japan — a 5-year-old boy on vacation — which fits your style of game. Your game formula could fit a broad range of IPs, actually. It could be Shin-chan, it could be something else, like Peter Pan, like what happens if the Lost Boys are stuck on an island with a pirate cove? Your formula would work on a lot of different IPs, and Shin-chan is a great example. How did you come to work on this franchise?
KA: I was originally approached by Mr. [Akira] Nagashima, a producer at NEOS. They were looking to make a Shin-chan summer vacation game. Mr. Nagashima was a fan of the Bokunatsu games and they figured instead of making something like Bokunatsu, they should just have me make it. I also had an affinity for Shin-chan, as well, so I agreed to make the game.
There’s actually a funny backstory. While we were making the Shin-chan game, I was approached by a different party with a bigger budget to make a Shin-chan summer vacation title. [laughs] Which only affirmed my suspicion that this was a good idea if there were multiple parties coming up with the same idea.
So, the original idea was brought to me by NEOS, but I came up with the game content. But it wasn't a game with a huge budget and I had to work with a limited staff, but considering the budget and considering the limited staff, I think we were able to really make a fun game, so I am really happy about that.
When I first started, I was uncertain how it would turn out because I had to assume the audience would be different from my Bokunatsu fans. But I tried to make it as close to the original animation or the original manga to appeal to Shin-chan fans. An example of that is that we decreased the frame rates to match the anime so that it looks like it hopped right out of the anime. So we made changes like that and it seems to have been received well, so I'm happy about that, too.
NL: Did you find it restrictive or difficult to work with somebody else's IP, or did you somehow find a lot of interesting creative potential trying to apply your style of game design to the Shin-chan universe?
KA: It was refreshing. At first, I thought it would be difficult, but since Crayon Shin-chan was originally a manga, and now it's a franchise, and they make anime and movie releases every year, the producers of the anime were involved in the game in the same way.
For example, they've been working with anime creators and adapting it to movies and putting together the scripts for many years. They were involved in the game development in the same way, and I learned a lot about collaborating with anime producers. It was eye-opening to see how it works and that there’s already a tried and true process.
NL: So you get the support you need, and they’re used to working with external creators.
KA: And not only were they excellent at making sure that it was true to the character and whatnot, their advice also considered my expertise. So they'd say things like, “You know, I think because you do things this way, for you, it'd be better to do it this way,” and not just in terms of what their needs were and forcing it on me. It was more collaborative and with mutual understanding of each other's strengths.
NL: It’s really nice that they actually took the time to learn what your history is and what you’re known for producing. They came to you with an equal understanding, which is really rare.
KA: I think that the people in charge are doing the same thing with the manga artists since they’re originally manga publishers. They know how to support the artists in a way that helps pull out their best work. So, in Japan, when you make manga, you have the manga artist and the editor. I think they handled the game development in the same way the editor handles manga artists.
NL: Were there any particular things that they, knowing your background, felt like, “Oh, we absolutely have to have this,” but with Shin-chan running around doing it?
KA: Personally, I call the summer vacation games a “stay-at-home” simulator. I feel like my games could be applied to things outside of summer vacation. So I was interested in making games that are not necessarily set during summer vacation. But the only request that NEOS gave to me was that it be a summer vacation game. [laughs]
NL: You're kind of a victim of your own success. It's like being David Bowie. He wanted to stop playing the hits, but everybody wanted to hear Let's Dance.
So, can you explain, how big is Millennium Kitchen? Do you have a persistent core staff that you always keep on hand for these projects? Or are you primarily Millennium Kitchen? When somebody wants to make a summer game, do they basically get you as the designer that comes on board the project?
KA: Millennium Kitchen is basically just me. My wife does get involved sometimes, but mostly it's myself. And then I also have seasonal staff that come on when there's a project or something that I’ve worked with for many years or sometimes I’ll work with a new team. For Natsu-Mon, the programming team and graphic artists came from APPCI Corporation. I work mostly remote and hand them the scenario and script and design direction to develop the game.
NL: For Natsu-Mon, you worked with Toybox. And for Shin-chan, you worked with the developer h.a.n.d.?
KA: Ah, for the Shin-chan games, the developer for Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town was h.a.n.d., and Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation -The Endless Seven-Day Journey- was developed by Star Factory, a company created by former Level-5 staff.
NL: Oh, interesting to hear about the former Level-5 staff. And Attack of the Friday Monsters was made with AQURIA?
KA: Ah, well... Natsu-Mon was developed by APPCI and AQURIA. AQURIA mainly created the game events. The reason why AQURIA was involved is they’ve been working with me on the Bokunatsu series for about 25 years. It's the main company behind Bokunatsu. So, if AQURIA is involved, we can make events with the same structure. More specifically, they know how best to work with me so we got them to join us.
NL: Okay, so where I was going with that is that I was wondering how hard it is to train a new team in making the kind of games that you make. How do you condition a team to understand how to build the systems your way so that the team doesn't have to develop a bug-catching system that's completely inefficient compared to what you've done over the past 20 years?
KA: That [scenario was] true for Natsu-Mon. But AQURIA wasn’t involved in the development of the Shin-chan games. But everyone knows Bokunatsu, so even when I work with a different team, they already have a good idea of what it's like. When I work with a new team, I have them play a lot of the games I've made; that's the first thing. Also, when I first joined the industry, I was a programmer for about five years. So I have a basic understanding of the code and I’ve also actually written a lot of the code myself, so I think that [knowledge] contributes to the consistency found in my games.
NL: Shin-chan: Me and the Professor — just like Natsu-Mon — has a routine for the day. Shin-chan gets up in the morning, does morning exercises, eats breakfast, and then plays all day. At night, everyone gathers for a meal, takes a bath, etc., that's the routine. As a game player, that routine could be boring, but it's also very comfortable.
Another attribute that makes the game enjoyable and breaks from the routine of the gameplay are the snapshot images between scenes; these are very beautiful and capture the essence of summer vacation. Do you think the scenery in the game is an important part of the experience?
KA: I think it's important. But because it's a daily routine, there are times when it becomes monotonous, and I don't think the in-between images solve it. There are features that I wanted to include to help break up the monotony but wasn’t able to due to the game’s capacity. So I don't think I can give the game a perfect score.
As an example, there’s a character reading a different book to the children every night. I try to make the game more realistic by adding those routine elements that help the player relax while playing the game. I use the transition scenes as a way to conjure a sense of comfort in the game. It’s an abstract thing that can’t be calculated or programmed.
NL: Nowadays we're raising kids in an age where they have devices all of the time. But various studies have shown that it's actually good for kids to be bored, to give their brains time to recuperate, because they don't need to have constant stimulation. So boring and repetitious elements or the passing of time just seems realistic. You're basically gamifying childhood, and the things that you might have done as a child. You might have grown up catching bugs in the summertime but, ironically, kids today might not be outside catching bugs — instead they're inside playing your game on a Switch.
Do you feel that putting these sorts of classic games and classic activities of your childhood in a video game might help kids discover things like, “Wow, I can catch bugs?” Are you trying to inspire people to get up off the couch and go do those things?
KA: So, yeah, I've actually had a first-hand experience with this. My nephew, who doesn't really like playing outside, played my game and then he learned all the bugs' names through the game and that sparked his interest in bugs. When we went to a temple, he found this bug and he's like, “Oh, that's so-and-so,” because he knew it from the game. So I have first-hand experience of that being the case. And, actually, ironically, I wasn't a kid who went out and collected bugs as a kid.
...ironically, I wasn't a kid who went out and collected bugs...
I spent a lot of time indoors and in middle school I was into animation and writing music so I actually stayed indoors a lot. But, I think my admiration for people who did do that is the root of why I wanted to make this game. Once I joined game development, and [the idea] came to me of collecting bugs at my relative's place one summer and it made me nostalgic for this nice summer vacation. It was so much fun and that became the spark of inspiration for the Bokunatsu series. So, ironically, it's not that I did a lot of bug collecting as a child, but that the memory stood out as a really fun time.
NL: I can relate. I didn't have Japanese summers in my childhood, but I had parallel experiences going to a lake during the summer and doing those kind of things in New York. So I kind of wish somebody would make a New York summer game for me. [laughs] When playing the Shin-chan games, I was reminded of the Doraemon and Shin-chan summer movies. The movies have more fantastical or sci-fi elements with time travel and dinosaurs than their regular weekly episodes.
KA: When coming up with the gameplay and story for the Shin-chan games I thought about the original manga series and how the anime takes quite a bit of liberty and takes a more sci-fi or fantasy approach — there’s even a movie where it’s set in feudal Japan. I thought it was necessary to step outside the boundaries of the scope of the manga [when designing the game] and I used the movies as a guideline for how far I could take liberties.
When creating the first Shin-chan game, the reason why there’s a dinosaur in that game is that I found it to be so much fun to run around with a huge dinosaur walking the streets and I wanted to create a scenario where we could make that a reality.