Page 1 — The First Foreign Employee of Nintendo

Page 2 — Working on the N64

Page 3 — Snowboarding in 64 Bits

Page 4 — N64DD, Doshin and Prototypes

Page 5 — Rock n’ Roll Wii and VR

Page 6 — Undersea Adventures on the 3DS and Smash

Page 7 — Bringing Tanks Online and Missed Opportunities

Page 8 — The Future of Vitei

Page 9 — Giles, The Enabler

Page 10 — The Future of Vitei and VR

Page 7 — Bringing Tanks Online and Missed Opportunities

Let’s talk about Tank Troopers. It’s the latest game…how did that come about? Was it a contract by Nintendo…?

I think Tank Troopers was Imamura-san’s idea. We tried a lot of ideas based around the Steel Diver world…with the hope of combining them at some point…so it was quite a logical thing…going to tanks…coming from submarines, I think. They are kind of similar. They are both difficult to control, but once you master the controls it feels really good.

And they are both war machines…

Tank Troopers is probably my favorite out of the lot because it’s just fun. Especially in your local area, when you are actually sitting around the table with your friends. We were playing that for fun…even after it was finished. I only wish we were allowed to put in online multiplayer.

Yeah, that’s been the common criticism of Tank Troopers was the lack of online…

Yeah, we had it actually in there. But [Nintendo] decided to take it out.

File size?

I think they didn’t want to commit to testing and development time…I mean…it’s such an obvious thing to have. I’ve seen some people say ‘oh they are stupid for not putting it in’ but there’s obviously a reason it didn’t happen as it’s such an obvious thing to have in there.

Budget or time constraints?

I think the reason was time constraints, but then again we were ahead of schedule…we could have easily put it in. So I don’t know why.

Tank Troopers was revealed and released pretty quickly. It didn’t have a lot of marketing.

It didn’t have any marketing. I think there was 1 Tweet by NoA. Understandably. I think it was launched the same day, or almost the same day as they announced the Switch. So they probably didn’t want to put a lot of marketing into something that was old gen when they are about to release the new gen.

Did the Nintendo Wars series influence Tank Troopers at all?

Maybe a bit, but probably not. This was definitely the next step for the Sub Wars/ Steel Diver…it was all in the same world.

Do you think there will be an official crossover?

I hope so. There are some really cool ideas. I would really like to see an entire game with all those elements. One world, multiplayer.

Do you think the unique abilities system from Tank Troopers would be present in the next Steel Diver?

Oh yeah, definitely. I think that’s one of the most interesting parts of Tank Troopers was the ability system. Customizing your tank and choosing what crew you have and all that.

On the next page we discuss the future of Vitei.