This is the same Glory of Heracles series that has been so popular in Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Nintendo Entertainment System play. The newest installment, Glory of Heracles - is an RPG with a broad scope that inherits all the good points of the series and can be enjoyed by anyone. In this special feature interview, we asked the development staff members - all fans of the series themselves to tell us about the attractions of this new Glory of Heracles. "Just a Little More Effort" Makes a Game Unforgettable
Nintendo:

This RPG is set in ancient Greece, so are there aspects that emphasize its Greek qualities?
Saito:
Well, for instance, if you spread out the Field Map, you will see that the topography resembles that of Greece and the surrounding area. But when it comes to the graphics for the towns, etc., we realized that the actual kinds of buildings that appear in Greek myths would not reproduce well on a game screen. After talking it over with Mr. Kondo, we decided to leave in a hint of the symbolic architectural elements found in temples, etc., but for the ordinary houses, we went with a medieval design. Similarly with the clothing, if we had reproduced it faithfully we would be limited to cloth and leather, meaning that everyone would be dressed the same and the game screen would seem drab. So, we borrowed some elements from the Roman era and medieval times. We would like the player to understand that we were not creating an exact replica of the visual world of Greek mythology; instead, we were creating a world peculiar to the Glory of Heracles games.
Hirota: For the music, we sampled the sounds of a Greek folk instrument called the "bouzouki" to give the game a Grecian flavor. It looks something like a guitar, but it is strung with multiple strings that have the same sound, so it has a sharp, metallic timbre. We actually used a custom-built instrument that makes the same kind of sound as the bouzouki, but we gave it the feeling of a remix of Greek music by combining with it a drum machine, analog synthesizer, and other contemporary sounds.
Nintendo:

Did you have this instrument made expressly for this title?
Hirota:
No, it belonged to me. (Laughs) I just happened to have it, but it came in handy this time.
Nintendo:

Incidentally, the animation of the characters in the events is extremely complex. Did you set 3D models into motion?
Kondo: We converted 3D models into 2D dot pictures. As you might expect, we did so with a consciousness of the worldview of Glory of Heracles. A lot of recent RPGs show movies for the event scenes that have 3D characters moving around, but rather than represent this by a movie, we put effort into enabling the player to experience the scenario fully through the presentation.
Nishimura:
It was very difficult to put these scenes to motion. Even we marvel at the scenes where a character unsheathes a sword and then returns it to its scabbard. The scene that left a great impression upon me as an individual is the one in the beginning where the Main Character is kicked by the shoreline. It is very vivid and lifelike, and at first, I was a little shocked by it, but I think it was well produced.
Nintendo:

There are a lot of subtleties, or shall I say, a lot of funny scenes.
Saito: There are a lot of scenes where an ordinary game would only go so far, but we took it a little further to make something happen. For example, even in the scene where the Main Character is kicked by the shoreline, it isn't just that he is kicked, but the character himself has a proper reaction, falling backward with an "Urp." Mr. Kondo has always liked this concept, and he has been making games like this all along. You can see evidence of this idea of "always putting in a little more effort" in all parts of the events.
Kondo: We believed that a game could be changed by the effort that you put into making it. People might say, "One doesn't usually go to this kind of trouble," but we believed that by doing the things people don't usually bother to do, we would create a game that had a level of quality and artistic value that set it apart from others. Even this time, when I directed the staff to do such and such, they would come back at me with "You're kidding! Who ever heard of a game that lavished such effort on such a minor point?" but I would tell them, "That's the very reason why we are going to take pains to do it." Our guiding concept in production was that by doing so, we should be able to create a game unlike any that came before.
Hirota:
We were quite persnickety about the BGM (Background Music) as well, and we spent a lot of time selecting the music for each scene and how to present it. Ordinarily we will be instructed by the director to "use music with this kind of atmosphere in this scene," and we just create a piece of music that meets those requirements, but we took that a little further and the two of us in charge of music composition looked at all the scenes in minute detail to decide how best to present the music we had written. For instance, we'd decide to play the music with a certain timing and then stop, or we'd start the music one breath after the character had finished speaking a line. It's pretty much unheard of for a composer to specify the music to be played in every scene in the game, but thanks to that, I think we were able to express the characters' emotions aptly through the music as well.
Nintendo:

The lines in the speech balloons that appear during the Battle seem very fresh, too.
Han:
I would like the players to check out the dialog between characters. For instance, when one puts a Recovery Spell on the other, the one who casts the spell says, "Keep on trying," and the one that is magically assisted answers, "I know, I know." Actually, the lines in these balloon dialogs are randomly combined, but occasionally we encounter line combinations that were totally unanticipated by us but fit the situation perfectly.
Saito: There's also a line reading "Your attack is working!" that appears during the Boss Battle.
Nishimura: The rallying cries that appear during battles in the Glory of Heracles series are interesting and amusing, so we carried on that tradition in the new title by enclosing them in speech balloons. If you only show the damage incurred in the Boss Battle by a gauge, etc., the impression that the player gets is inorganic. The speech balloons improve the feel of the game.
Han: The lines that appear when the character is confused are interesting, too. You can get a glimpse of that character's true nature.
Kondo: Even in the earlier titles Glory of Heracles III and IV, there are many places where there's evidence of lavishing effort on certain aspects of the game, and I feel that this is one of the charms of these games. Don't you think that it's those very aspects that give you a sense of the developers' love for the game?