— It's been eight years since Golden Sun: The Lost Age, so what kicked off the development this time?
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
It just picked up momentum... (laughs)
Sato:
It was long-awaited, overseas and within Nintendo as well.
Takahashi (Shugo):
I often thought we should make a sequel.
— Did you consider if the series had already been completed?
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
No, not at all!
Takahashi (Shugo):
We had intended the first two to be more of a prologue! (laughs)
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
For example, there was a time in the West when alchemy was viewed
as science. I thought a story where the person opened the door to find
himself in such a world would be interesting. The first two series were
part of opening the door to that world. I myself wanted to see what
would happen after that. But to be honest, I used a lot of strength in
making the first two games.
Takahashi (Shugo):
The battles and other events all progress simultaneously in them, so I was
kicking for all I was worth to keep my head above water! (laughs) I used all my strength in the programming, graphics, planning, and scenarios.
Sato:
When we asked Camelot to develop them, we could expect you would push the hardware to the limit.
Takahashi (Shugo):
And when it comes to a sequel, it goes without saying that everyone expects something even more amazing than the first two games in all ways possible. We found it difficult to try meeting those expectations immediately after those two. Nintendo’s games are high performance, but they all share an element of approachability, like an F1 car that anyone can drive. So I thought we also need to make something with that characteristic.
— What kinds of games has Camelot worked on in the past?
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
The first game we made together with Nintendo was Mario Golf1 for the Nintendo 64, around 1998. At first, we wanted to make an RPG, but then we decided to make a golf game in order to gain developmental know-how for the Nintendo 64.
1. Mario Golf: A sports game released for the Nintendo 64 system in the US on June 11, 1999.
— After the Mario Golf series, you developed the Mario Tennis2 series, right?
2. Mario Tennis series: Mario Tennis (Nintendo 64), Mario Tennis (Game Boy Color), Mario Power Tennis (GameCube), Mario Tennis: Power Tour (Game Boy Advance), and New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis (Wii).
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
Right. I'd always thought that the most interesting sports for computer
games would be golf and tennis. For sports games with Mario as the
main character, I thought fathers would like golf and mothers would like
tennis, and everyone in the family could enjoy the games all together.
We made it easy to keep a rally going.
Takahashi (Shugo):
That way, players can focus on the strategic element in tennis, so I think
it was a good representation of the sport. Then the RPG, which had been
put off for so long, came to the light of day for the Game Boy Advance as the Golden Sun series.3
3. Golden Sun series: A fantasy role-playing series developed by Camelot. The previous two installments, Golden Sun (Nov. 2001) and Golden Sun: The Lost Age (April 2003), were both released for the Game Boy Advance. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is set 30 years after the previous games left off.
— You had always wanted to make an RPG, so you must have had high hopes.
Takahashi (Hiroyuki):
Yeah. There sure was a lot of pressure, but also a lot of motivation. We had been brewing some ideas for quite a long time, and the result was the Psynergy system, which appears again in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.
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