Hitoshi Iizawa, a programmer credited with Ryu ga Gotoku Studio's Sega Model 2 / Model 3 emulation efforts across the Yakuza / Like A Dragon series and Lost Judgment, is set to receive an excellence award for engineering at CEDEC β Japan's largest conference for computer entertainment developers.
The Lost Judgement director Yutaka Ito shared the news yesterday on Twitter (where it was later brought to our attention via Gosokkyu).
On the website, CEDEC praised "the expertise and uniqueness of the efforts to reproduce games for dedicated arcade hardware at the dawn of 3DCG games" and commended the programmer for bringing these titles to the attention of today's gamers.
To coincide with the announcement, Ito shared a brief insight into the process behind the selection and inclusion of these games.
In a thread posted on Twitter, he claimed that these titles are typically decided on based on factors such as whether they have an existing fanbase, whether the team has a personal attachment to them, or if they've never been ported before.
Because it won't be released as a standalone title, the team doesn't have to worry about sales potential, but they do have to worry about how much it will cost to include. As a result, games that contain extensive licensing like sports games/racing games are typically discounted. For everything else, the team still has to do some extensive research to ensure there are no legal obstacles or disputes that prevent a game from being included β a task that typically involves reaching out to the licensing department and developers of the original title.
Besides the contractual aspects and costs, the team also conducts research into how the game will run on the Dragon engine across multiple platforms, and if it is possible to modify the data, and even goes to the lengths of extracting the ROM from the original arcade machine to ensure it is the same as the version played and not a later development build.
When all of the above is complete, that is when the team begins recreating the cabinet as a 3D model, using photos and reference material from the original machine to try and ensure it is as accurate as possible.
The last step is then testing the finished game with modern controller setups and making sure there are no problems with difficulty. It is here that Ito slipped in an apology for not being able to get the controls for Sega Bass Fishing quite right in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.