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Sega's Arcade Giant Goes Console: An Interview with Yu Suzuki
by Steven Kent for Gamers Today
As the creator of Daytona, Space Harrier, Virtua Fighter, and Out Run, Yu Suzuki is Sega's biggest name. Along with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, Suzuki is one of the only game designers that is often recognized in public. While he is currently finishing Ferarri F355, a new arcade game, he is also working on a major Dreamcast project-Shenmue, an RPG. In fact, many consumers are looking to Shenmue as the "make-or-break" game for Sega's new console.
Gamers Today: Wasn't Shenmue going to be one exceptionally large game, originally? Why did you decide to break it up into several smaller games?
Yu Suzuki: You mean into chapters? The first Shenmue is only Chapter 1.
GT: And it fits on one GD? [Dreamcast plays double-density CDs called GD-ROMs that hold approximately 1.3 gigabytes of data.]
YS: Officially, yes.
GT: When we spoke in January, you were looking at a five-GD set for the entire game. Can I take this to mean that Shenmue will have five chapters?
YS: The number of discs in the game is getting smaller.
GT: The number per game is getting smaller, but it sounds like the number of sequels is getting larger.
[Suzuki laughed but offered no answer.]
At this point, Suzuki did a lengthy demonstration of Shenmue to show the game's two styles of combat. Most of the fighting sequences resemble a modified version of Virtua Fighter-fairly standard fighting controls with players hitting buttons to hit, punch, and block. Shenmue also has a second mode of combat which Suzuki refers to as "QT battles," meaning quick time battles.
The QT battles that Suzuki showed me took place in an alley. The goal of the scene was to find a suspicious character and talk to him. When you find your target, however, he bolts and you end up chasing him down the alley. As you run, people and objects get in your way. The game prompts you before this happens by showing you a button to push or a direction to take. You're only given a split second to react. If you move in time, you gain ground in the chase. If you react too slowly or hit the wrong button, you run into the object and fall further behind. Hit too many objects, and your mark gets away.
QT battles are not entirely new to video games. Sega used them to a much more limited extent in an arcade and Saturn game called Die Hard and an extremely Die Hard-esque Japanese Dreamcast game called D-KA2. The difference with Suzuki's game is that while the earlier games have single QT battles between fighting stages, Shenmue has entire strings of them.
GT: Why two fighting systems?
YS: It is to have both QT and also normal types of battles.
GT: It's been reported that the normal battles are a simplified version of Virtua Fighter.
YS: You learn more moves. There are scenes in which you will be dedicated or taught special attacks. In the game you encounter many new people. Some of those people will teach you special attacks, so as you go on in the story, you learn more ways to improve the way you fight. Your fighting style becomes broader and more realistic.
GT: Are they based on a real martial art?
YS: Yes. In the beginning it's karate, and then you learn a Chinese martial art from a Chinese man. The style you end up with depends on who teaches you. It's not like you choose your sensei, it's more about who you meet in the storyline.
GT: Does the game take place in China?
YS: Chapter 1 is in Yokahama, Japan, in 1986. Chapter 2 will be in China.
GT: OK. Have you begun work on Chapter 2 already?
YS: It's in progress.
GT: Can we talk about Dreamcast for a moment? Dreamcast is the most powerful home system ever made, for now. If the Sony Nintendo announcements are accurate, that's going to change next year.
YS: If you look at the software that's coming out for Dreamcast, it's very high quality. It'll be very difficult to make a game like Shenmue even on more powerful hardware. At least, it will be harder for other designers. [Joking]: If I made games for those others it would be different.
The new systems are coming out a year later than Dreamcast. Obviously newer hardware always has higher specs.
GT: Will Sony and Nintendo's higher polygon counts make a big difference?
YS: It depends on the game. If you were to make like a soccer game, it would have the same quality on all three systems. Nobody would be able to tell the difference because the characters are so small on the screen. For making something like Virtual Fighter, using that many polygons doesn't mean that much... over spec. It's too much. For making an RPG game where you see characters talking, having that many polygons would be very effective. It would be good to show a face with that kind of detail.
GT: Are you familiar with the Zeus 2 board from Midway? They're talking about generating 266 million polygons per second.
YS: Two hundred sixty-six million? I've heard of boards that punch out these huge numbers such as military simulators. They have very high polygons, but it really doesn't seem like that, when you see them running.
GT: We're hearing so much about the power of PlayStation 2. Will Dreamcast make it?
YS: There's no telling. It's tough to say -- no one can tell. Maybe you should ask them.
As he said this, Suzuki pointed to a team of communications executives whom Sega sent to observe the interview in case I asked obnoxious questions about Dreamcast's survival.
Observer: The answer is yes!
GT: The arcade business in America is in real trouble, and the Japanese arcade business is slowing down. Sega's game systems typically feature more arcade translations than Sony or Nintendo systems. Will the softness in the arcade market hurt Dreamcast more than other systems?
YS: You mean conversions of... The slowing down in the arcade business in Japan is very recent. If it had happened much earlier it would have had more effect on Dreamcast. There are still many good games that have not been converted to a console.
