Recently, we spoke to Tetsu "Tez" Okano, a former SEGA employee and the director of games like SEGAGAGA and Astro Boy: Omega Factor.
During this chat, Okano spoke about various games he's worked on over the years, sharing some incredible insights into some of the projects he has been involved with. This includes the challenges of working on Gunstar Super Heroes — the 2005 Game Boy Advance sequel to Treasure and Sega's 1993 Mega Drive / Genesis classic.
We originally got onto the subject as we wanted to know more about who was behind the classic Sega references featured in the game — the developer Treasure or Sega itself. But, the answer to our question proved to be a little more complicated and nuanced than we were initially anticipating.
In case you're unaware and are in need of a little background, in Gunstar Super Heroes, the main game features references to the Sega arcade game Flicky and the helicopter title Thunder Blade, but more were reportedly planned with the website The Cutting Room Floor finding unused graphics and music related to various other Sega titles like Eswat, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, and Afterburner II in its files.
This made us curious if Okano had encouraged the developers to include these, or whether Treasure had added and removed them of their own volition, and what had eventually resulted in these other references eventually being scrapped.
In response, Okano ended up telling us the story of how he was first assigned to the project, informing us that he was originally brought on board as Sega "was scared of not recuperating all the money they put into the project". He went on to state that his role as the person responsible for keeping the game within its limited budget and on schedule made him an unpopular character with Treasure's development team, particularly [the game's graphic designer/programmer Hideyuki "NAMI" Suganami], who he said put "his heart into making" the sequel.
Here's what he told us:
"So basically, the references were Treasure's idea. This may be a little difficult to follow, so I'm going to go into more detail.
Because NAMI is such a unique prodigy, the controls were somewhat difficult. For Sega, who picked it up from Treasure (I think that's why it was already packed with Sega references), the game was great but was going to be really hard to finish. They were scared of not recuperating all the money they put into it. I was approached to be the lead on it within Sega, and I was a fan of the previous game, so I took up the challenge of managing it while trying to use as much of the already completed game as possible.
In the end, as a part of Sega's staff, I kept the limited budget and schedule given to me and succeeded in putting the game out into the world. We edited the story to make it easier for younger players to understand, what with all the ambiguities between friend and foe, and appointed Shinya Kaneko to unify the character images. But the fact that we messed with it like that was probably disappointing to NAMI, who put his heart into making it. My first priority was getting it done and out the door, but as a result, a lot of people hated me for that job.
I desperately tried to stop NAMI who wanted to cut all the Sega references he'd gone to the trouble of making. It's hard to explain the nuance of this, but I remember discovering awesome half-finished-then-abandoned bosses and rejected stages from Alien Soldier after the fact. I never ended up working with Treasure again after that.
Because of everything that happened, I'm not really in a position to speak all that much about the game. I'm sure the other developers, Treasure, NAMI, and even others have their own opinions, so please keep in mind that this is all only from my perspective."
As Okano suggests, the answer he gave is "a little difficult to follow" and are his own personal recollections that may differ from the rest of the team, but at the very least, he appears to confirm that the idea of adding the references to Sega's history was not his idea, but Treasure's.
What is a little more confusing to parse is the latter part of his answer regarding the removal of these references, with two possible readings being available to us.
The first is that NAMI removed the Sega references because he was unhappy with the changes Okano was implementing to get the game out of the door, but we don't believe this is the correct one.
Instead, it seems more likely that what Okano is suggesting here is that when it came time to cut various features to keep within the game's limited budget and schedule, NAMI offered up many of the Sega scenarios as things that could be added to the cutting room floor. Following that, he then discovered the extent of what had been removed and was shocked at some of the "awesome" ideas that had been put aside from the original vision for the game.
If you want to read more of our interview with Okano, you can do so here.