Retronauts - 686: Sigma Star Saga DX

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

Sigma Start listening to this Saga of sound as Stuart Gipp chats to WayForward’s Matt Bozon and Adam Tierney about a GBA gem. Psyme me up! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

Hello, I'm Stuart Jip, welcome to Retronauts, the podcast in which which sometimes I interview people, but a lot of the time, just sort of a bunch of people talking about retro games, just for I left my fan on. I'll turn that off now. A more professional podcaster would have turned that off before, but no, with me, you get the whole hog. You get the lot, mate. This is just me doing a little intro for an interview that I've done. I spoke to Matt Boson and Adam Tierney at Wayforward about the upcoming reissue of Sigma Star Saga which is named Sigma Star Saga DX

It's a game that I enjoyed back in the day on Game Boy Advance And I wish I'd held on to my copy of it Because I think it's probably worth quite a lot of money now And also, you know, it's a great game And I would quite like to replay it Thankfully with the re-release, I will be able to It's having a limited run games release on a GBA cartridge, but it's also getting a digital re-release and other platforms a little bit

later on. I don't think there's a date for that yet, but it's coming, I'm assured. We got into the game, and we got into a bunch of other Way Forward stuff. A lot of my typical sort of hobby horse interest did come to the fore because I really, there are certain questions. I really can't resist asking when I get the opportunities. So we talk about Way Forward history all the way back to Game Boy Color Roots and Further. Hopefully you'll enjoy it. I had certainly enjoyed having fun. I enjoyed having fun talking to them.

You know, don't we all enjoy having fun? I don't think there's anyone out there who doesn't, but I know that I do, and I did hear. So hopefully you will also enjoy having fun with Retronauts. Hello, my name's Matt Bozon. I'm the creative director at Way Forward, and I'm the director of the Sigma Star Saga. And I'm Adam Tierney. I'm head of Biz Dev and publishing at Way Forward, and I was assistant director on Sigma Star Saga. And yeah, thanks very much both of you for coming on. It's great.

I played this myself back in the day. I had the GBA cartridge, which I wish I still had. I can't pretend I don't have it anymore. Oh, wow. I wish I still had it. I had one of those maniacal ideas of selling my GBA games, presumably to buy DS games, but

thankfully they will now have the opportunity to once again own this game. So, thanks for that. That's grand. I wanted to sort of talk about this because obviously with the new version coming out the Sigma Star Saga, DX, that's going to be making a few changes to this, to the GBA game. So I guess the first thing to ask would be how did that come back, how does this sort of come back around again?

How did this come about? Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, we have, we work with a lot with limited run games and, you know, they have been dabbling in reproduction carts. And so, you know, since they've been doing that and since we've been working with them on the physical front of all. a lot of the games that we publish. We have just really been looking at Bat Catalog.

I think a lot of people are just interested in nostalgia. So, you know, recently through a variety of publishers, we've courted our titles such as Blood Rain Betrayal, the first Chante game, Extreme Sports, Boyana's Blab, Double Dragon Neon. And so Sigma Star Saga was just one of those games that, I think, you know, because we created it, because Matt directed it, it was something that a lot of people wanted to play, but because, you know, it was released 20 years ago

it was largely inaccessible nowadays. So it has made a lot of sense to try and get the rights to that one and reproduce it as well as port it to modern console. And that was, that was it, was it, NAMCO published that in North America? Yeah, I think, and it was NAMCO pre-Bandine NAMCO. I think it was just NAMCO at the time. Yeah, Namco HomeTech was the U.S. side of thing. So, yeah, I think we were contracted with NAMCO Home Tech,

which was like a subgroup. So back when this was first being mooted, because you were working on, Way Forward was working on a lot of sort of license games, such as Scorpion King a few years earlier, and all sorts of things. I won't list them because there's so many diverse games there. But how did Signa Star Saga sort of come about at all?

Where was the origin of that? Was it, I have to ask, was it something where the characters in the world sort of existed before the game, or would they create it for the game? They were, yeah, they were creative for the game. So, yeah, you're right. Most of our things before that were licensed. So, yeah, so it was Scorpion King.

It was Barbie games, SpongeBob games, Rescue Heroes, Billy Blazes, you know, a lot of stuff that, you know, kids' toy lines had companion games. It was very common to try to have, you know, your brand identity down the Game Boy Advance aisle. So we did a lot of games that were kind of like that. For original games, we were, yeah, we only on GBA. I think we only had Shantae Advance, which was the one that was canceled. And then Sigma Star Saga. So, yeah, Sigma Star Saga was a completely, like, basically a completely original way forward game with a little bit of disclaimer there is it, it was really unusual. The way that one came about was, it was Phil Cohen, who is the producer over at Namco.

He was given an opportunity that it seems, it seems fairly open to interpretation. and the way that I remember being described was Namco was allowing him where he had pursued in some way a sequel to Star Exeum. Star Xium, I didn't know I had to learn all of this back then, but Star Exium was kind of like a space RPG type game, almost like a simulator. Almost looks a little like a, what would it be, like a Star Command or something? But, yeah, basically that was a Dreamcast game.

It's somehow very distant, in a distant way, connected to Bosconian and Galaxian and Starluster. So it's Starluster, and then way back on the Famicom, then it's Star-Ixium on the Dreamcast. And then they're like, you could do something with it, but don't do something super close. Like, do something that's different. Like, you can kind of bring some of it along, but don't directly homage those games. So it's like it's, I don't quite know how to describe it. It's almost like somehow somebody was okay with, let's bring this back, sort of, but don't make it too connected to the originals. And so, yeah, we were, Phil gave us some general guidelines of what he wanted to do.

He was very excited. He was like, I want to do something with, like, you know, the hero going undercover and doing something like a cool, a cool story and some like really neat new gameplay and more action-packed. And, you know, so he had these ideas and directives. And then we kind of ran with it and created all. those original characters and scenarios and world and kind of built a brand for them. Yeah, super unusual. I don't think we've had quite a situation like that. Maybe Adam River City Girls is kind of similar.

Yeah, except that on River City Girls, we pitched it as the reimagining. I think this is the only one I can think of where it shifted after the game was already greenlit. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. But yeah, very, very interesting. And after that, I mean, I think once Phil had kind of set things in motion, he sort of backed off and let us just run with all these new ideas and characters. So if it feels like a completely original way forward game, it largely is. But the origins come from Namco and Phil over there. Right.

So out of curiosity, it's going back a little bit around this sort of time when this game sort of kicked into gear, what sort of structured the way forward, that I'm like how big was way forward. I'm just kind of curious how it works with, because I assume you're developing more than one game at a time here. Rather than just, or maybe I'm mistaken. Yeah. No, let's see. At this time, oh, boy, let me think here.

Were we maybe 30 people, I'm guessing? So we had the main company, which in years leading up to this, was kind of focused on PC, shifting a little bit into experimenting with console. but then there was a handheld group which was that was my kind of little group within Way Forward that was just a few people that evolved it was all the Game Boy Color stuff and then when we got into Game Boy Advance

that was kind of a continuation of that and this was before it grew and kind of melded into all of Way Forward a few years later would become focused on Nintendo DS and kind of that was kind of a bread and butter for a while but at this point it was still kind of in a pocket

Yeah, so, yeah, I think, I don't know, Adam, I feel like at this point we had, this was the one game, and then towards the end of this production, I think we started overlapping, there might have been a SpongeBob game going on at the same time, and there was usually one Barbie game happening, and then towards the end of Sigma Star Saga, I think that's when we started to, Nintendo DS was on the horizon, we started, I think we were working on that American Dragon Game Boy Advance game. Yeah. There may have been some overlap there. I think this one was we were doing Barbie and TAC and a spongewop at the same time as this. Yeah, it was TAC was the other one, right? So, yeah, I think it might have started, you know, we're starting to split up and have multiple teams, I suppose, yeah. And this was 2005, well, the game released in 2005, I should say. So the DS was already out by this point?

So was that sort of an unusual sort of situation at all? Because there were other games that had been made by way forward for DS by then, presumably. Let's see. So this was 2003 that we were in development, I think. Right, right. Adam, I'm thinking for some reason I'm picturing us not having Nintendo DS kits yet. We did have Nintendo DS kits for American Dragon because we're working on that and one of the Barbie games was where there was a Game Boy Advance game and a Nintendo DS game, but we had in production at the same time.

One of them, the Barbie game was kind of the same game, experimentally trying. Can you launch the same game on both platforms? And then the American Dragon game was two distinctly different products with zero crossover at all. I think

Sigma Star Saga was done at that time because I seem to recall the team from Sigma Star Saga, people shifting over to work on those new products. So I think we were aware, of Nintendo DS, but I don't remember if we were in development yet. But this was also when it was that still that whole thing of Nintendo DS was like the third

frog, right? Yeah, I remember. So there was never any sort of DS turns up and there's never any, oh, maybe, could we use this? Like, could we use the second screen? This was always GBA just back to the core the whole time. For sure, yeah. Yeah. And I must ask as well.

if you were approached by Namco for this game was there like an existing deal in place or was it something that was pitched to them or I'm just kind of curious how this which way around this goes. We pitched things to them pretty frequently. We had kind of a list like go-to list of partners that we liked working with

and that we were trying to establish working relationships with. So yeah, we had talked to them regularly and I think there were a couple of other projects that were floated like, hey, maybe it could be this or this or that. And then they came back knowing we were an available team that was interested in working with them and said, hey, what about this opportunity?

So we didn't pitch this one cold. I could probably figure out what we were talking about because other Namco titles that came out right around the same time are probably the ones that we were in the process of talking to them about and they might have gone with, hey, this developer is good for that project, but we've got, I think I made a good choice of here's a different one we want to do, but it's very open to interpretation and needs a creative vision. And so I think that was good of them to send this project our way. Thank you.

So the, we talked about sort of, not sort of the influences, but the kind of the DNA of this game. But I have to mention it because it gets, it does seem to get mentioned every time Sigma Star Saga gets discussed, which is the Guardian legend, which is assimilarily. Was that something that was in your in your minds at the time? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because that's one where I think when a lot of times we're just talking about like, hey, what are your, what games do you think are cool and then influence you and you'd want to see come back? That's one. I think Phil knew that we liked that game also. So there were a lot of ones being thrown around.

He's got favorite games. You know, we'd actually get chances to sit and talk and just, you know, Like, hey, what's your favorite game? What do you like? That one came up quite a bit. I suspect, since this game was not pitched as, hey, there's two modes walking around on foot and space shoot them up, it was really more open than that. It was, well, can we just make a more accessible space action game? Maybe not a core shooter, maybe something with some characters in it, maybe something a little different.

And I think that was kind of an example that, that, you know, I'm guessing I probably brought that one up because I've been kind of a fan of that game for a long time. Yeah. I like those compile, shoot-em-ups and stuff from the NES days and things at Super Nintendo. So, yeah, that's probably where that came from. But, you know, there were also, I think the little spark was that Star Ixium had some unusual combinations of gameplay. And I think Phil was looking for, like at Namco, was hoping that we could do something similarly inspired, but different. So, yeah, alternating between Top View and shoot them up, you know, just, yeah, like the Guardian legend. as makes a lot of sense.

And it also was a good fit for the tech we had going on at the time. So, Adam, prior to Sigma Star Saga, what was it you were working on? And how did you end up on this project? So I had joined way forward not too long before the project. I had done freelance animation. And Matt and I had kind of met on the IGN boards and chatted a little bit. But I was kind of freelancing all over the place. And yeah, this was the first big project that I joined.

And it was interesting because I joined as an animator, and really my background is more writing and, you know, direction and stuff like that. But I somehow just kind of became an animator way forward. And I think Matt realized that I wanted to kind of, you know, try out different hats. And slowly over the course of the game, he gave me more and more responsibilities until by the end I was assistant director. So this is going to sound like a very basic question, but I genuinely don't know. What does it sort of mean to direct a video game? Obviously, as opposed to any other kind of media, there must be so many more variables to keep an eye on.

That's a good question. So it means different things at different studios, too, which can be a little confusing. Right. So way forward at that time, director was basically just an all-in-one project lead, really. So it was, nowadays, I think you'd probably, you know, it's the designer, you're the designer, you're the director, and in the case of Sigma Star Saga, also the producer.

So I have the budget responsibility for the team. I want to make sure the game, you know, earns out. But I'm also designing it. So I'm like, hey, I can design this feature, but it might get too expensive or, hey, we're running behind on schedule. I could bring another person in, but that's going to hit my budget. So I was aware of all of these things, which is a bit unusual. it's more common to have a producer who's kind of like a producer and project manager over here, which is someone watching the schedule and the budget and

coordinating efforts. And a director who usually blends into, over here it can blend into depending on the individual. Maybe they're the art director. They might have the creative vision for the project. They might even be building the brand from scratch. And then

they're designing the game and then directing others. So working with leads so lead programmer working with the producer or project manager and maybe if there's an art director working with their director if there's a lead animator working with them but the smaller the games and the further you go back in time the more it was like an all in one role

you might have had someone who was designing and directing the game and doing all the art and doing all the animation that was more common on game boy color by game boy advanced it had started to break up into more people so like instead of two or three people on a game It was starting to be more like, you know, seven, eight, nine people on a game. Often, we're also level designing the games, too. So, Sigma Star Saga, what?

I probably designed half of the levels in that game. And Adam, you probably designed half of them. I did all the shooter stages. Right. I was doing the top view stuff. But I had someone, a couple of people helping with those tile sets where it's before I used to make them myself. So, yeah, it's kind of, we were in a growth phase. But, yeah, when we talk about directing, it's,

It still can be like that, even at modern day way forward, depending on how small the project is, because, you know, the smaller it is, the more hats, the smaller the project and team sizes, you know, you wear more hats, which is fun. You know, you get to do more of the, more of the game development and less of the overseeing, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I think direction as a general role is basically who has the vision for the game. So, you know, on this, whether or not you're writing the script, in this case, Matt, was what, is the vision for the game? How does it play? Like all the particulars, what is the user interface, what is the camera view? How do the characters move? What are their personalities? What's the game flow? All that stuff is usually held by the director. And then assistant director, which was my role on this, is essentially just helping with, partly kind of helping the director

with overflow in terms of, you know, it's a big RPG game with dual systems. So Matt could offload some of the tasks on to me. But also the idea was to raise up new potential directors at company and sort of a training ground so for those who don't know i i imagine listeners to this podcast would be at the very least partially familiar with the game but for those who don't know well sort of the gameplay goals for this game like what's um what's the sort of experience of sigma star saga um let's see so it's uh so it's like a it's a hybrid game so it's got two main game modes, which is a top view exploration game, kind of like a 16-bit Zelda type game. Top-view, sprites, walking around and overworld.

And then there are random battles, which is like your old school RPGs where it's like, well, okay, you're attacked, you're pulled into an abstract fighting situation where you've got to survive. But in this case, those are side-scrolling shoot-em-up sections, and it's similar to Gradius R-type side-scrolling shoot-em-ups of that era. that's the back and forth. So you're on foot, walking around, oops, random battle time.

And it's like, okay, what's the random battle going to be? It will pick a random level, put you in a random spaceship with different capabilities, different mobility. Each ship is just a little different. And then you've got a wave of bad guys you have to destroy. And once the threat is eliminated, you're transported back to the ground

and you can continue your ground exploration. And then at the end of each, and it's kind of story driven and objective driven like hey try to try to locate this spot on this on this alien planet when you find a spot that kind of concludes the chapter

then it puts you into more of a proper side scrolling level which it's sort of a test of like hey did you are you at the appropriate level like you're leveling up it is an RPG and have you found

the right weapons that are going to allow you to survive this kind of traditional space shooter stage. And I guess to kind of bring into that or like kind of help explain that a little more is as you're walking around in your top view areas, you're finding these objects called weapon data, which are various components that kind of snap together to create custom weapons. So the more of these you find, the more kind of combinations you can build. And so you build those things. And when you're in your side scrolling random battles, that's where you get to see the effects of what you built. So the systems kind of play back and forth. You, you know, the things you find in top view mode augments what happens in your shoot-em-up mode, and completing shoot-em-up mode sections advances the major chapters in the story. So that's how the two components play with each other. And I think, Matt, the gun data, I think there was, wasn't it 27,000 combinations, I believe,

for some reason that number stuck in my head? I think so. That was written on all the, yeah, all the press of the day. I think that was the deal. And so you basically, you had like, and I had to kind of oversee a lot of that. But yeah, it was really interesting because the overworld is, you know, where most of the story takes place. But it's a fairly straightforward in terms of kind of the progression of what you're getting in terms of weapons and special gadgets and meeting characters. The Schmop section like Matt said, you are getting all these gun data, which would affect three parameters.

It would be how you fire the weapons, what the bullets are, and then what they do on impact. Plus, so that's about, you know, by the time you got all of them, it's around 27,000 different possibilities. And then you had, I think, upwards of a dozen individual ships that you could also get. So, like, really, really tons of stuff to collect and experiment with in the shooter mode. Yeah, it's something that I know has been addressed to some extent in the DX version, because I remember having 27,000 combinations, and I'd always at least once or twice per map end up in, like, this enormous drop ship.

in a sort of small cave which was hugely challenging and you can take more than one loadout per so you can switch between loadouts while you're flying as well away yeah you've got each ship so yeah just for so imagine you know for people who haven't seen the game you picture you're in a side-scrolling space shoot them up and you're pulled into a random battle well you might be loaded into effectively a transport-looking spaceship

like a big box with a cockpit on it. And yes, your custom weapons fire out of it by default. And if you want, you can, let's say you just made some ridiculous weapon that is just not suitable for the situation. You can swap to the default for that ship. So every ship has a default. So

it's like, okay, you're in the giant box car spaceship. Maybe switch over to its base weapons if you don't like a custom one that you built. Or you might launch, you might be loaded into this little speedy one that's like, much faster zips around and um there's one that's just by default is a bomb dropping ship so you've always got your um oh and a couple surprise ones like you mentioned there's one uh there's actually

one enormous ship towards the end of the game that fills almost the whole screen that you might just find yourself piloting um but yeah it's it's funny because the the combinations are are the door is wide open for making really weird things like if you're like i want a spread like my cannon is a spread gun, right? So the bullets are going to come out in a spread formation. But the ammo I want firing out of it, the bullet type, is the bouncing ball. So it's like, okay, so it's a spread gun that fires like rubber bouncing balls. And when those bouncing balls contact a bad guy and are destroyed, the impact type you could

select is something like, well, I want it to grant me health every time it makes contact with an enemy, or I want it to create fireballs, or I want it to blow bubbles, or I wanted to create giant stone heads that fall and spawn and fall and land on other spaceships. So it's extremely, you can make really serious custom expected types of weapons and you can also make some really goofy stuff. It's funny in a way, Matt, it's actually very similar. I've been playing a lot of Bellotro, the card game. And it's kind of similar to that in a lot of ways in that you're just trying different

combinations and some of them pay off and some of them you try. And it's like, oh, that was bad. I'm never doing that again. But, yeah, the same kind of just, like, playing with the different elements, but in a schmop perspective rather than a poker perspective. Yeah, you can make some weird things that are failed experiments, basically, if you wanted to. Like, if you just go into battle against a boss and you made a gun that only fires backwards, you could do that.

And then at that point, you're like, ah, this is not working. So switch to that gun's default weapons just to get through the battle and then, you know, rethink what you're building when you get back out. So it's also not heavy hand It's very light Like you could just say Well I like forward firing weapons And I'm happy with that And then treat it like more of a normal shoot-em-up game

If you don't want to go deep on that system You don't have to It's just plopping Three different icons on the screen Like you know Your cannon, your bullet, your impact And if you like what you got You could just leave it alone

And you could lean into the level up system And to say look I'm just going to do a few extra Random Battles, boost my experience points up until I'm tougher, and then that will carry over to your weapons, too, so that you could stick with a gun that you like. So you don't have to lean into the weapon accommodation system if you don't want to. No, I remember playing it back in the day and just finding a sort of a nice combination of you'll stumble across,

you'll locate the gun data out in the field, but in the meantime you might be thinking, well, I could just, I could explore a bit more, and in the meantime, I'll keep getting into battles, I'll keep leveling the ship up,

I'll keep improving. And it's, I liked how dynamic it was. In an RPG, generally, you're thrown into a battle, the only real variable is going to be the enemy and how effective they are against you, whereas here it would be much more,

almost, when your character freezes and starts to get beamed up into the krill, into the ship. Yeah. It would almost be this kind of moment of, oh, please be something I can, please be usable, please. It can sometimes it would throw you a bone. And other times it were just like, this one, you have to work for this one. This is a dog fight. Right.

And I thought that was a very cool sort of dynamic idea. And the DX version, there's been some changes made to how that works, right? Or at least had small sort of tweaks to the quality of life and things like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So there's a few, there's a few things. One, I was looking through, I was looking through credits on the other day just to, you know, I guess reminisce and also just sort of make sure, you know, everything was accounted for in there. And I'm like, man, this was before Way Forward had a QA. So I'm like with all these tons of combinations, not just the weapons, like the thousands of them that Adam mentioned, there's also every random battle puts you at a random ship, I mean a grab bag of randomness,

They're predefined chips, but it picks one of those, and then it picks from a slew of side-scrolling skirmish locations that are all custom-built, and the combinations of those, the ones you're talking about, there's some legacy bugs, like the one that we remember from years ago, 20 years ago, we'd see these reports, and, you know, it's just like a forehead slap moment. It's like, oh, my gosh, there's a, you can get spawned from the big, the biggest ship can be spawned into the smallest corridor. Like, there's a side-scrolling section with the skinny corridor, and if you get that bad luck. It's just going to, you're just, you spawn into the scene and you explode. So in things like

that, yeah, we, we, for this release, we went in and we're like, all right, all the corridors need to make sure they're at least wide enough to support the big ship, or those levels should be excluded from a lookup table that would, you know, spawn the big ship. So hopefully we got that fixed. And some of the balancing too, Matt, right? Because I remember the original version, the complaint we would get is that you would get constantly pulled into battles. And that, That's tweaked a little bit now, right? Yeah, the low end of that. It was kind of like playing Pokemon red and blue and walking through the tall grass, right?

It's like you're expecting to get pulled into battles in a game like that. I forgot what it is. Someone will correct me, but it feels like every seven to ten seconds or so you could get a random battle. And that's how Sigma Star Saga in 2000, the original release, 2004, 2005 era. This new one, there's, it's a much, wider gap. So you can, in other words, you're not getting constantly distracted. They're still happening.

The random battles are still occurring. But you're not feeling like you're constantly being interrupted. In other words, they feel the timing of it now, it feels a bit more welcome. Like, oh, here we go, I'm in a battle. Whereas in the original version,

I think the original version was generally fine, but it really was of its era. It's like, hey, you buy one game. You're hoping to get, like many, many hours out of it, and that's just the one game you own, and you're wanting, you know, the value is how long is the game, right? So these days, I think it's more of a, you know, respect my time.

I want a good experience. I don't want to, you want to relive the best parts of your retro games, but maybe you don't want the part where it would just like suck up the hours out of your life. So this new version feels a little, I don't know, I guess more respectful of your time. You're still getting all the fun stuff. It's just a bit more condensed. Like, if I look at a playthrough, I'm like, okay, the new version seems like it's clocking in it, maybe 20% shorter overall, even though it's the exact same content. So I'm like, ah, so that was kind of like time wasted.

I think that players back in the day could sense that and feel it. And that's what the comments, you know, they bring this up. And, you know, we couldn't patch the game back then. Game Boy Advance didn't have that. But it's kind of like if that game was now, you know, listening to player feedback, this is, I think, what we do. do. It's like, okay, people generally don't like that frequency. And then there's other tweaks, knock on effects.

We also, a lot of people would say, hey, you know, it's brutal on my thumb, like I've got to be mashing. You know, a space shooter, I play a lot of shoot-em-ups and enjoy them, and they're really intense, very focused, you know, experiences, but

they're not 12 hours long, generally, unless you're like so hardcore that you're playing at 12 hours long, 12 hours back to back of shoot-em-ups or something. But, you know, this kind of game. Yeah, yeah. But if you're just, you know, to play a game that kind of looks like an adventure game, like, hey, this kind of looks like a Zelda game, sort of maybe, and you're playing it,

you're like, oh, my gosh, my poor thumb, my poor thumb. To address that, you can still tap like crazy to fire bullets as fast as the cap will allow. But the auto fire is far friendlier now. So the auto fire gets you almost to the fullest rapid. that you could manually do, but, you know, much, much easier. Whereas before, it'd be like, pew, pew, pew, now it's like, you know, it's like you're getting actual, you know, it's saving your thumb.

So that does sound like a tremendous, I mean, every visit of the game for this. And I had a great time. Just want to say that first, because it's still awesome. But I did think, yeah, I think I would like this. I would like it if the auto fire were great to say. When I looked at the details, I was very pleased to see that. But if you're holding the button to sort of speed your shit-up up as well, then you're being able to lean across both just seems like a great change.

So, yeah. It's very helpful. Yeah. And then you can imagine, like, this was going into it with the good intentions of, hey, let's address some of that player feedback. The part that was a bit unexpected after getting in was like, hey, this feels good. And other things with the character's walk speed, too, we were getting some feedback. Like, man, he kind of just takes his time walking around, doesn't he?

And midgame, you get a thing that lets you be able to move a little bit faster. So that was another easy one to just, you know, it's just a number value in code. And this is all, we're still operating in the same code, by the way. This was still, we haven't enough of the original team members still here that we're like, hey, we're just pulling the code up again, excuse me, making some tweaks, same stuff, recompiling it, making a new build exactly the same as we would have in 2003, 2004. So once we have the player walk speed a little bit faster, the random battles a bit less frequent and the ability to save your thumb with faster firing, you can imagine what starts happening is

it affects your experience curve. So it's like, okay, got to go back in and rebalance that. So it started to be more of a house of cards. You mess with one bit and you're like, oh, hang on, or almost like tucking in the bed sheet corners, right? It's like, oh, yeah, you tuck in two out of the four and one pops out. So we finally did, I think, strike a balance. That's pretty good.

So, yeah, I think I do think if someone still owns their original cartridge, they probably enjoy comparing them. Because I think they both have value in their place in time. Like, this one, I think, is right for players now who want to play something that's basically, like, you know, kind of unplugged from the world. it's kind of nice to go back and play a game that's a all-in-one this is the game it's nothing more or less than this it's just in its moment and time kind of game

you know it's not going to get changed drastically and there's no what am I saying I mean it's really saying it doesn't have the modern game trappings that a lot of games have these days there's no like it's not going to upsell you while you're playing the game

but yeah I'm sorry I'm kind of going on here but I don't know. So making these changes to the code, to the GBA code as well, is this something that came about through working on risky, oh, what, risky revolution? Oh, yeah, kind of. Yeah, originally, so Adam, this was going to be a re-release, like, hey, just take the cart, you know, get the game, re-release it, and let people enjoy it.

But when things like that happen, there's a couple of approaches to going in and fixing bugs or, you know, sometimes for when re-releasing a game, you've got to remove some legal line or somebody's logo or something because properties change ownership, whatever, you know, things like that. But in this case, it was, I think it was just going to be that. But Adam, if I'm remembering correctly, I think it was Mike and I were in the middle of risky revolution and basically we had the engine open and we're like, yeah, it's me and me and him,

we're still here. We got the tools and everything is operating. Why not just go back to the Sigma Star Saga code? We could make the changes directly in code. Yeah, when we signed up with limited run for it and Bandai Namco, our original idea was that it was just going to be the ROM, and we would essentially treat it the same way that we did when we did Clock Tower recently and River City Girl Zero,

which is you have the ROM, but if you need any changes, you're basically hacking the ROM. But like Matt said, we had the, the benefit of working directly with Mike, the lead programmer on that game. So rather than using the original ROM, we were basically able to crack the whole thing back open and have a lot more flexibility with it

than we would have in the original plan. Thank you. So something else I'm going to talk about is, the sort of visual direction of the game, because it's a very revisiting it recently. It's quite a cinematic game, especially, I mean, it opens up with a very dynamic sort of shooter sequence that's reminded me of, honestly, a nemesis 2 on the Game Boy. Sure, I'm a huge fan of that game. I love that game.

Honestly, that just shines through. Immediately the explosions all around you. I was just kind of like, oh, this is very nemesis too. This is cool. Yeah. But as well as that, there's also sort of the character designs and the sort of the, the, sort of, the, espionagey storyline and sort of forgive me for saying

the tension between the characters and sort of the sex appeal of the characters as well. Yeah, yeah. Which is quite rare to see in a game on Game Boy Advance. So, yeah, so where does this that direction, I guess, this is the silliest question, but where about, where does that sort of originate from? Like, your credit is the writer on this one, right?

Oh, for me? Yeah, the whole brand, like all that stuff kind of, that's, that's just me being creative in that in in in 20 years ago so I think a lot of it was you know the the well I can tell you a few things just to for like funny origins of this so you know clearly like the shanty art style is like that's like my default personal kind of drawing style that me and my and my wife Aaron both draw that character very similarly there's a lot of that DNA in these character designs so if you see some of that like originally I think all the key art and portrait art, I was going to draw that myself.

So older concepts, they look like not super different from, it looks like if you took those character designs from like a Chante game and put them in space. That's kind of how some of the earlier concepts looked. But then as the team got larger, and I kind of gave up some of those pieces and we're like, okay, we'll have other artists come in and draw and reinterpret the characters. But the early stuff, the designs, kind of the setup, yeah, that came from just me out of sketchbooks and things. The kind of espionage stuff, I recall someone at Namco being a huge alias fan, the Jennifer Gardner show. That's an interesting connection I wouldn't have made.

I remember that constantly, hey, there was a new episode, they did this, it was really clever. Yeah, that was a lot of the double agent aspects, right? Yeah, and, you know, and there was a lot of that, her character and, like, when you get, yeah, when you get to, like, the, the love triangle or love interest stuff, I think there's some of that, and I think there's also sort of a sub-goal of, like, let's do sci-fi space opera, like, kind of hokey. It's a little deliberately hokey, like, I want to say, like, sci-a sort of thing, yeah. Yeah, almost like B-movie schlock kind of. These, I'm not sure if these are right. Well, that's awesome. B-movie Sluck rules.

It knows it's being kind of dumb, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. So, yeah, if you're seeing this for the first time, don't take it too seriously. It knows what it's a, you know, it's very much like, hey, you're a space man. You know, go go undercover and meet your true love in space or maybe on Earth, you know. And depending on who you date, maybe the planet will blow up. so it's uh you know it's like completely ridiculous fantasy the highest stakes ever kind of completely implausible right so it's it's meant to be a bit silly the drama tries to get get a little intense just for the sake of taking itself seriously when it needs to but it's also very

silly and funny at times so yeah that's where that stuff comes from i think there's if you look at i don't know there's different i'd have to get into like what are the when it's to think of other shows or anime or things we were watching at the time that might have I think, you know, I always just took most of it as just like pure boson. And I think that that'll be something that will be me interesting to fans because, you know, you have worked on so many Shantay games, six Shantay games at this point, almost back to back. And, you know, the times that you've directed other games on console and handheld, it's been, you know, a clearly defined world like a contra or something like that. So I think, I think fans will find

this interesting because this is probably like the most shanty adjacent brand that that is not from that world that that you know is a little bit more serious a little bit more high stakes a little less goofy but i think it still has that you know very mat boson sensibilities in terms of storytelling and dialogue yeah thanks i think yeah there's a handful of examples of those in way forward's catalog like uh those those games and then what like like Mighty Switch Force and Mighty Flipchamps, those are where I kind of get silly and get more fun, more fun chance to do original character designs and build some original stuff. But yeah, this one having an actual story. And also, Adam, I don't know if you do this, but looking back at it, I'm like, I don't think, I think this was the most dialogue that I'd attempted in a game at that point.

Yeah, so this is almost like, oh, wow. So kind of this was a warm up after that. It was like, okay, now I feel like I can write more ambitious things like Risky's Revenge, right? Like the right, Nintendo DSI game. Yeah, most of the animation that I did on the game was scripted cinematic sequences. So when you see Rekker and Sime and Scarlet like, you know, acting with each other, you know, doing cinematic moments, a lot of that was me. And, yeah, it was really ambitious cinematically. You had mentioned in the beginning kind of the machinima stuff with like the opening sequence.

But even just all the little cutscenes, we had a dedicated cinematics group on this that was three programmers. And that's all they did. Almost half of the games programming team was just dedicated to doing character scripting and walking around and acting and dialogue and stuff like that. So very, very story heavy for us, especially for back then. Yeah. I don't think we had done much in the way of full screen illustrated scenes either. Like our Game Boy Color games would have something. like, hey, here's three or four, you know,

full screen images just to set up whatever the situation was for the game. And then maybe you get one at the end to sort of pay off. Like, hey, you beat the game. Here's a picture, right? But yeah, this one had a lot more. And we should probably give a shout out to Petera over at Voodoo Berry, who worked on a lot of the illustrations. That was something, especially on GBA, you know, you're still very, very limited on

palate counts. Like, even when we, you know, first couple of games on Nintendo DS, you're still pretty restricted in the colors you could do. So the fact that all of the illustrations, full screen are so high color and even the little portraits when you're speaking are, you know, very blended. They're not like flat color. I think that was something that was really quite a bit of evolution for way forward. Yeah, and Petera did the box art. So when you see that, that's, that's what the specific art that Adam's talking about is that. And then, yeah, all the character portraits. Yeah, super cool.

And that was fun, too. Because that was also kind of a next, for me, at least, like almost like growth, like evolutionary stuff in the studio was like, hey, we can start putting more images on screen. We can start working with talent outside of just ourselves. Like, this is pretty cool. and you have to forgive me for doing so, but just the sort of impact moment for me with this game in terms of its aesthetic as we talked about sort of character designs and the, it's the

Sue, forgive me, I'm sorry. Oh, here we go. I remember this so vividly. It's playing this game on my little Game Boy, and it's the sequence where you first meet Syme and there's kind of a pan up, and then you realize what is actually happening. She's got like a, yeah.

And it's just, it's so good. Like, I cannot stress that enough. It's so, it's just like audacious and just, wow, like, you don't see that on a Game Boy. You don't see that on a Game Boy, so well done to you for that. Yeah, we're trying to figure out at that time, like, hey, what's, you know, I guess it's trying to find balance. How much, excuse me, how much can you push something to make it like, oh my gosh, I've never seen something like this before and get, I don't know, get players or the viewer interested, but hopefully not so far that someone is offended. Like, make, make them have a, like, a big reaction. But big reactions are dangerous because they quickly can turn into, oh, man, you took it too far.

That's with writing jokes, with visuals, character designs. Like, for me, I most character design concepts, and a lot of times with animations, too, I'll sometimes go, all right, let's push it as far as we feel as comfortable, then dial it back a little bit. Or, hey, this seems like it's at the line. Okay, I think we're on the line. let's back it off a little bit. Let's not go that far. So it's tricky, but to do that, you have to, I think, sometimes take some risks.

And in that case, yeah, go ahead. On that topic, yeah, on that topic, Matt, this new version of the game is the first time people are seeing the slightly uncensored cover as well, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, because if you don't know what I'm talking about, too, just to be real clear about it, is the space suits, I'm going to put big air quotes

around the spacesuits, the alien costumes, and this is, we're mostly talking about the main alien character is this woman named Syme. She's kind of like, I mean, probably the most eye-catching aspect of the game, as far as character design goes, is it's basically just a, hey, here's just, like, I don't even know, there's not even armor, it's that it's a parasitic bug monster that's just wrapped around a humanoid person. So you're basically, no one's wearing clothes, really. They're just covered in bug parts that are like all wrapped around them. I think it strikes, I think it strikes the, you know, Star Trek. It's the sort of thing Captain Kirk would, you know, or a pulp sci-fi.

I mean, for me personally, I think it's, I think it's something that's impressive to see on Game Boy Advance, but not anything that I would say would offend anyone or shouldn't offend anyone, really. and you can't account for everyone's taste, obviously. Sure. With sort of bold character designs, that's how you get people on board and bold decisions outside of that as well, obviously. Yeah, I think there's a bit of...

Oh, go ahead, please. I don't know, see, I don't want to... I feel like by bringing it up, I've put too much focus on it, but that's because it did make an impact on me when I played it, so I just remember thinking, okay, I've never seen this in a Game Boy advanced game. That's remarkable.

And it's also funny as well. it's almost like I don't even know how to describe it you've got to see it. It's great. It's just it's a great moment. It's also highly integrated. I know you guys you've probably heard us say things like this before but a lot of times character designs

I like this is the personal goal for me is I like them to have a purpose like I like them to be driven from something to do when it's in a video game have something to do with well what is the actual gameplay the concept of this like the whole thing of

these aliens, they're called krill, and they wear parasites, and the parasites are everything to them. It's their clothing, it's their technology. Their spaceships are also basically giant bioorganic, wow, watch it, creatures, bioorganisms, is what I'm trying to say.

Giant spaceships, and everything is communicating telepathically, it is, like you said, it's like kind of, I mean, I was basically raised on Star Trek stuff too as a kid, like original Star Trek show. So that whole thing is like when designing the game, it's how are we going to rationalize that you're going into random battles, you're leveling up the guy on the ground.

The guy is undercover. He's an Earth guy. He doesn't have special abilities. What is it that these aliens have that the whole concept of he gets alien armor that can level, level up and communicate with other ships, is the kind of rationale for why you can get teleported, why you can pilot other ships, why when you become the pilot of a living spaceship,

how does it get amplified by your ability? They're all kind of these interconnected things. And it's like, well, okay, so here's the deal. He's going to get a weird space parasite, too, just like these other characters have. So the character design for Assam predated most of the concepts because it was just an outlandish, and that's probably the best word.

An outlandish eye-catching character design, that was the whole purpose behind that design. It's like, let's come up with something just weird that no one's ever seen before. But then in trying to figure out the gameplay, it's, well, how do we get this to make sense to the player? How do they understand that the ship, that they are leveling up

and that every ship they fly is somehow also leveling up, even though they've never been in the spaceship before? It's, oh, well, we're bringing that same parasitic armor concept. He will get that ability. And then she'll be kind of the one who, her personality actually evolved out of that. Well, who's going to explain this to the player? Oh, well, she will. She'll be basically his boss in the game explaining to him how things work and kind of, you know, kind of bossing him around.

And he's a punching bag for a lot of the storyline. You know, and their characters evolve over time. But the, yeah, I mean, this is kind of, it all kind of comes together. It's character design and how does it affect the gameplay. And there's actually a connection. there. And then in addition to that, it's also fun and completely outlandish. Yeah,

the box art that, that Adam, that you were referring to, the, I guess, censored box art. I don't know if censored, I don't know, that's maybe too strong a word. Barely. We had to add like a little tiny ring on the parasite bra at the last minute, as I recall. Yeah, this was for... Does that be a really cool, reasonable doubt? Yeah, it was for, it was for big box

retailer stores. I totally understand this. the way. It was like, hey, you know, this is, people are just walking by doing their shopping and they don't want to be offended by an image that's just at their eye level. And so put more clothes on that. And so the explanation of like what doesn't work too well is saying, oh, that character's not wearing clothes. That's a, that's a parasite that's latched onto their body and is like fused with them. That's one being, right? They're like, we don't get it. Please. put some, something on it. It's like, well, it's not a bathing suit.

Like, that doesn't, like, well, it looks like a bathing suit to us. Okay, well, how about this? And then start giving them, um, versions like, is this acceptable? Is this acceptable? And so once there was a, an image that worked for retailers, it's like, well, yeah, but it kind of doesn't make sense for the conceit of the world. And it's funny. We're talking about tiny little details, like how does the costume fit on their character's body?

But it's, um, so the new version, yeah, if you buy it. today, or if you look at any of the modern key art, that was the intention. It's a very minor difference, but, yeah, you're seeing, you're seeing the original intended art for the first time. Right. The illusion of it being a creature on somebody else that is a little bit lost on the 2004 box where it's like, oh, that's just like clothing. It's like, no, it's supposed to be a monster.

It's like, but okay. So, yeah, that's kind of the story of that, yeah. You know, And so I should ask about sound. My understanding, and this is a limited understanding, I apologize, is that the Game Boy Advance doesn't have really dedicated sound hardware or sound chip of its own. It's a lot of samples mostly, is that correct?

Let's see, so there's multiple audio. It has, on board, it still has the Game Boy Color chip, right? So you could, if you remember, I know one that people like to use this example is the two Castlevania games, the first two, is Circle of the Moon. and then harmony of dissonance? Thank you. So you get, because the Game Boy Advance has a Game Boy effectively inside of it,

those sound channels are available. So you can, not just for playing Game Boy and Game Boy Color, but you can also use it simultaneously for audio. I'm not an audio expert, but I just remember some of the things that the composers were explaining, like, hey, you know, here's your limitations. you can get more sound effects back, let's say, if you swap some of these sound channels over to, like, use the Game Boy synthesis instead, free up a little space, right?

So, like, okay, so in the, in the Castlevania, like, examples, yeah, I think Circle of the Moon, it was a launch title. I think they were really pushing as many samples as they could, but I think for harmony of dissonance, they wanted more performance. And if I remember correctly, I think they shifted some of the audio over to the Game Boy, Game Boy, not Game Boy Advance, but the Game Boy, simple synthesis for some of it and then you layer on top other sounds but you don't hit the you don't do as much like kind of you know

what am I saying take as much memory or maybe as many cycles away from the main the Game Boy advances computing so I think Matt you probably saw the same thing I did at the time which was somebody from Konami it might have even be Ega but somebody like said

something to the effect of like sorry the music won't be as good in this one but it's because we were putting the resources elsewhere. You remember something like that. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And what's funny is if you go back and listen to it now, because it's all, like,

chip tunes is, like, you don't have to be impressed technologically. You don't have to go, hey, this doesn't seem better than my previous handheld system. You just take it for what it is now. I actually find that it's really, really pleasing that music.

Yeah. But I do remember at the time going, hey, it's more crunchy and old sounding, just because you're, used to, I don't know, I guess you bought a Game Boy Advance, so you're kind of expecting things to always just improve technologically. But once you get to a point where you're like, you know what, I actually really miss the nice, clean sounds of that, like, Game Boy synthesis, like some of those waveforms that just are so pleasing to listen to.

But I'm a bit off topic. But yeah, but for the audio for this game, it was Shinnon. So Shinnon, who did, they did it, Eridion 1 and 2. Do you remember those for Game Boy Advance? I do. I do. Well, it's interesting because I sort of think of, when I think of like GBA licensed, or GBA and DS in fact, licensed games that were sort of a cut above kind of a chaff, I think of, well, I think of three really. I think of vicarious visions. I think of, well, Shinnon and I think of Way Forward. So it's interesting that Shinnon worked on the sound for this, because that seems like a bit of a dream team. Yeah. Yeah, they were just awesome. Yeah, Manfred over there did our sound effects and music on a lot of our

GBA stuff. And because I think a lot of people, especially early on, associate way forward with Jake Kaufman, Jake Kaufman did the music for the original Chante, but then he kind of went away for a little bit, didn't come back until Contra, I believe, right, Matt. And so we did a lot of work with Manfred at Shinn. And, yeah, they did a fantastic job. They worked on X-Men. They worked on this. They worked on, I think, I don't know if they did American Dragon. I believe they did Justice League as well. But yeah, lots of work for us. Oh, was that the Justice League Heroes, The Flash. I love that game.

That game is great. That, Adam, that's like your baby. Nobody, not enough people talk about that. Go and play it right now. Go and play it right now. It's really good. Dashing around everywhere. Oh, that's a probably good game.

That one's good. Yeah, Adam, one of my favorite games that you directed was that Flash game. I'd love it. Yeah, it's so fun. Yeah. So, but yeah, Shindon is amazing. Yeah, I was a fan of their games. I remember we'd, somehow, we ended up just talking back and forth.

I think because, you know, the number of developers back then weren't huge. Like, there weren't huge numbers of developers. So you kind of get to know everybody who's working on similar tech. You end up at similar, you know, Nintendo conferences and things and just running into it and talking and building rapport. Yeah, so we have a ton of respect for them. So how long was the development for the original Sigma Saga? Okay. So I want to say it was like eight.

To 10 months? That's what I remember. Is that typical or at a typical for? That was typical at the time. So now we're a little bit more expanded, even when we're doing handheld. Now we're usually in like the 12 to 18 months. But yeah, I think it was the same because we did that one. And then afterwards I helped out on X-Men and Justice League.

And I think all those games were around like the eight and change in terms of dev time. Yeah, that was a lot longer than what we'd been dealing with before that. So if you go back to Game Boy Color, those were oftentimes two, two and a half to three months. Whoa. Yeah. I mean, really, like everything was always scaled to whatever the situation called for or sometimes whatever the budget could afford. But yeah, we had a couple that were really short. Let's see here.

Trying to think of a couple of other examples. Yeah, the second Sabrina. I mean, Ping Pals is always one of the shortest ones. That one was two weeks, and then it went over by two more weeks. Okay, so you got a 100% extension on the... Yes, and that is the longest hours I've ever worked in my life, was trying to hit the two-week deadline. Yeah, and if I...

Yeah, I think that was just a, you know... Yeah, sometimes some of the smaller experiments, like flip champs and stuff like that, Some of them are very, very micro-sized developments. I think the shortest I've ever been on is when we did the mobile adaptation of Lit, our little horror game. And I remember it being so short because we pitched it to Voldy and Matt at the beginning of October. We said, hey, can we make this game? And then we got the green light. And then we released it before Halloween.

So sometimes we will spend even less than a month on these games, like Matt said. Yeah, it's like it's uncommon, but it's kind of like a modern-day game jam. What's another one? Yeah, Flipchamps, you mentioned. I think that was somewhere around. That was two months, I think, right? Yeah, I think the main game was 30 days. And then there was like a, hey, let's wrap it up, make sure it's nice and clean.

And bug free was like another 30 days. Yeah, I want to say. And then, yeah, that Ping Pals one was kind of a tradeoff of that situation. I don't know we're off topic a little bit, but it's kind of semi-related. This was right after Sigma Star Saga, really. was, hey, we can get, we really want a dev kits so we could be a DS developer and we did not have them yet. And this was an opportunity to say, hey, you know, we can get a dev kit on everybody's desk. We can keep them.

This will set us up for the next round of like future projects. But the catch is there's this game. The place providing the kits needs a game and they need it in two weeks. And they had already redesigned the game. It was not known at the time that PictoChat. was within the DS system. Yeah, we had some interesting conversations with them. This was, yeah, I am told that was a huge success, by the way, as a launch game.

Yeah. But, yeah, at that time, yeah, as far as that one goes, that one came to us pre-packaged. The assets, the game design was there, and they're like, we need a dev to assemble this. If you guys will do it, you've got dev kits for a Nintendo DS. We're like, well, we want them. So, yeah, let's give it a shot. So, yeah, and I've heard it did really well for them. But what a weird.

What a weird. Sometimes, I guess the whole thing of, like, when you're talking dev cycles and how long does it take, it's like, man, it really has a ton to do with what your goals are, what the publisher's goal is, and what your, I feel like that's why I always want to measure it in potential. It's what's the potential of this game development? Like, we're going to go on a journey. What's the best possible outcome or what's the goal? And yeah, sometimes they're back then, a lot of times you get this stuff like, hey, there's a, Adam, you probably remember the, there was a happy meal.

And it was like, hey, you got to get this game out for the happy meal. Oh, yeah. Or, Nintendo, well, McDonald's, sorry, McDonald's doing a promotion. There's a happy meal. The game comes out that same summer. It's got to be on shelves when the happy meal launches. Because if you don't, well, there's no point. The whole thing was built around that.

So, yeah, a lot of. a lot of inflexibility with kids games. And back then, you know, even though Sigma Star is definitely not a kid's game, most of what Wayford did, was still in the, you know, game in a box, find it on the shelves of Target, you know, Barbies and SpongeBob's and stuff like that. I feel like the work was there because, I mean, one of my, Fonda, honestly, DS, one of the games I was happiest to stumble across on sort of secondhand later was where the wild things are. Oh, I had a great, I had a really good time with that one, okay?

I really liked that. That's a pretty cool game. I think there was Hank Nebog looking game. Is that he pronounced the name? Oh, Hank? The background art? Hank, yeah. Yeah, that was, so that was, so Rob Buchanan directed that game. That was one where

you jumped between background layers. I directly lit, like, not, I don't mean lifted, like borrowed, I mean, actually went to that team and said, can we build Risky's revenge, the Ashante sequel, off of that tech, because it was so good. They built that, so if you, if anyone

doesn't know that one, where the wild things are a game, man it's fantastic like running around yeah jumping layers and layers and layers deep into space yeah I think I think it was Hank

on the backgrounds Hank did quite a few of our backgrounds around that time you know you you're on that time you

you know you and It's a slightly pointless personal tangent Because people expect this from me now, I apologize Because I can, I played back in the day Lomax, Adventures of Lomax on PC And as a result, I can spot a Hague-Naborg game at like 20 paces

As soon as I saw, like I thaw on the D-S, I think it was And I remember seeing that and just been like, that's Hank Yep, same. And you probably just noticed his thought. Contra 4, Contra 4, that's Hank. There's got to be some Hank in there. Yeah, and I believe he was credited in the upcoming Terminator game as well, not by us, but we were watching the trailer, and yeah, instantly Matt and I were like, oh, that's Hank are. Yeah, same with his Zeno Crisis game, I think it was.

Oh, yeah, a bit like earlier. Yeah, yeah. And we, you know, we had him on Contra 4 also. So, and interesting, you mentioned that Lomax in Leamingland, that's PS1 that I played it, that was my introduction to him. So I'm like, hey, this is amazing. and this was this all relates to our our growth phase so sigma star saga as we're starting to do you know it actually does tie back in we're growing our teams we're starting to have a need for more more talent and also like hey budgets are going to expand we're about to move into the next phase um we can actually now bring in just like we're talking with patera who did the sigma star saga box art we start bringing in more people that's what actually was the like hey if you could get anybody to work work on the next round of projects, who would it be? I'm like, oh, well, there's, I don't know who it is, but whoever made that Lomax and Lemmingland game turned out, you know, after doing some digging and reaching out and, you know, these things didn't happen right away, but after like a few years of

establishing a rapport, I'm like, it's Hank, right? So that's why we started reaching out and bringing him into future productions. So, yeah, it's funny. But, yeah, Hank did the backgrounds for even Mighty Switch Force, the first one. Oh, really? Yeah, and actually number two, I think. Yeah, so he, yeah, he started to be much more part of just the general look and feel of things. So you'll see, you'll see that all over the place.

You'll see a lot of combination in the Nintendo DS era and 3DS. You'll see a lot of things that look like the way forward sprite designs that you might be more familiar with from our legacy of Game Boy Color to Game Boy Advance. And then you'll see like, oh, and then the backgrounds and environments seem like they're Hank, Hank style, or a hybrid Hank style. Sometimes a few other artists coming in work in compatible art style. So, yeah, that's what's going on. I mean, you're getting a lot of like a patchwork of what was happening

at Way Forward at the time just because of your questions. These are great questions, by the way. Oh, thank you. They're prompting a lot of talk. Any opportunity to mention Lomax. That's the thing. Yeah. I do think that there's like, even in like the sound from Shinnon,

There is kind of, with Hank who's got, you know, Amiga bones from like Lionheart and Shinnan, I think have demo seen bones as well. That does seem like it feeds into this nice, excellent aesthetic for these games in this era and, you know, and today. Although, of course, with the way forward, I think there's kind of, I don't know how to use the word phases because it implies that it's leaving something behind, but there's kind of transitions as, I mean, with River City Girls, that's KU, right? We discovered Kay just from doing animation auditions at the beginning of River City Girls and found him. Funny enough, though, one of the lead background artists on River City 1 and 2 and a lot of our products now, and now he's a full-time way forward employee is a gentleman named Nick Lee, and he was our main illustrator of the backgrounds on Flash, which I remember at the time were just mind-blowingly good in terms of the limitations

we had, like the way that he was able to get so much level variety out. So it's, it's, you know, we had not worked with him for almost 20 years, 15 years or so before he came back into the fold. So, yeah, we're always, you know, they're definitely our phases, but we are always looking for opportunities like, oh, it'd be great to work with Hank again. It'd be great to work with Manfred again, Patera, all these people. Yeah. And hey, if anyone's trying to figure out what games we're talking about specifically, the Flash

is Game Boy Advance, where the wild things are, that was the Nintendo DS one. The Risky's Revenge was the DSIware game. What's the other one we just mentioned? Mighty Flipchamps was Nintendo DSIware. Switch Force was 3DS. You mentioned Thor. That was Nintendo DS. And I already said the Flash, right, for Game Boy Advance?

If you want to find any of these games, that's how you'd look them up and know you're looking at the right one. Because it's kind of messy when you go back because the developers were typically we were getting the handheld games which are not versions of the same game that you play on console. So you look at our Godzilla domination game. Atari had Godzilla domination

for console by a completely different team. Our version on Game Boy Advance was the way forward Godzilla domination. Totally different game. Totally different. Same thing with X-Men. Same thing with Justice League, yeah. For the longest time, we were basically like the Little Brother. And that was X-Men, the Game Boy Advance game based on the first live-action movie, correct?

It was bridging between part two and part three in the movies. I didn't know that you'd worked on that, so I'll seek that out now. That's one of the few that I haven't played, I think. So I will seek that one out. Yeah, there's some, oh, in Game, I'm sorry, and I also mentioned American Dragon. We did two of them that were totally different. One was Nintendo DS that was all 3D, spline scroller, and then we did American Dragon Game Boy Advance, which is more of a beat-em-up.

That one, that's actually a funny one because that one did not have Hank on it. That was Paul Robertson, um, Sprites. And so, uh, different style. But really funny because it's like a very, I guess I'd say lighthearted side scrolling beat him up. Like not a Z space. Wait, did it have Z space or was it pure side scrolling? Pure side scrolling. I think it was pure side scrolling like, like the like the, uh, TMNT follow the foot clan on Game Boy Color or Game Boy. Kind of like that. Like a little bit brawlery. Um, yeah, but I I think Pierce Sidescroll, if I'm remembering correctly, is a lot of games. We've made a lot of games.

Yeah. Paul Robertson, Mercenary King's Copelgram. Yeah. Yeah. I'll mention it because we're talking about other way forward games, but I think I remember the first time I became aware, I think, of Way Forward sort of as a thing, was, and this is, I think this is a pretty obscure one, so forgive me. Go for it.

Is Wendy every which way? Oh, nice. Because back in the UK, it got a really strong review, and I think it was like Planet Game Boy magazine. And they're like, no, it's really good. It's really good. And if you put it in a GBA, there's a bunch of more levels. They didn't need to do that. It's like, and then later I revisited it, and I discovered that it's sort of a take on Metal Storm for the other things, which is fantastic.

It's an homage to, at that time, a lost and forgotten game, Metal Storm. Now people recognize that it's been rediscovered, right? But back then, I'm like, you know, it's sad that no one remembers these old games. We're making these licensed games. Let's kind of homage one of them. and Adam the Wendy every which way is such a funny one because for me that's kind of like a family game because that was me and my wife Aaron and my brother Mark and then programmer Jimmy who was kind of like heck I was practically family by this point on Game Boy Color but that was like the core team and but this was before you were at way forward correct yeah correct yeah I remember at that time you were you were at a different place that actually had this some connection to us having worked on that game, right? Yeah, I bounced around as a freelancer for about two years.

I did a lot of work with Helix, who was a contemporary at the time, and they also did lots of kids games in a box. And then my first technical way forward project was Paul Robertson and I split animations on a leapfrog Batman game called Divide and Conquer. So, yeah, we did a lot. We used to do a lot of edutainment titles. Wow. Yeah, that game is like sitting down.

behind me in a box that's so funny the dividing conquer yeah but yeah but the wendy the wendy part was I think that I don't know

you had you had heard of Way Forward and I think it's another one you kind of like hey this is a good depth you gave us a like soft endorsement oh that was that was funny

so like years before I worked at Way Forward I happened to work at Hearst Entertainment which did the licensing on that and I was the biggest Way Forward fan

I mean I won a Way Forward poetry contest I visited the studio a few times. And Matt and I were kind of friends from the IGN boards. But, yeah, I got to help greenlight that game long before I worked for you guys because the licensing department at Hearst Entertainment didn't really know that much about video games. So I was the mailroom clerk, and they would kick proposals to me. And I saw your pitch, Matt, for Wendy the Witch.

And I said, oh, you got to go with them. Like, they're so good. And, of course, the game ended up getting made and came out fantastic. And really was, yeah, one of the early way forward. Nintendo handheld games that I think sort of established that sort of boson-esque, shantay-esque kind of art style. Yeah, that game, that game is so, so funny, too. It's a, yeah, that's Game Boy Color.

That's another fun one to just pick up and play if anyone's curious. So I think, I think there's, like, a lot of scope for sort of way forward talk, because you've put out a lot of games that I would like to talk about. But I am, as we have a sort of a time limitation, I think it's a good place to wrap it up, actually. Sure, yeah. So thank you for coming on. It's been really enjoyable,

and thank you for letting me get into the weeds with my weird sort of obsessions with, like, Lomax and things like that. So I guess the best thing to say would be, I've got to ask this because I always do. Is there anything, obviously that you can tell us about that's incoming from Wayford? I mean, the Sigma Star Saga, DX, will have been available on cartridge,

and it's coming later to sort of, modern systems as well in the same manner as Risky's Revolution? Yes. Yeah. So it is strange times because we are working on some of the best IPs we've ever gotten access to. We're working on some of the most exciting games we've ever worked on. Unfortunately, we're publishing very little in this year.

So far, the only announced publications from way forward are Risky Revolution and Sigma Star Saga DX, the Madonna. majority of titles we're working on are for other existing publishers and existing IPs, and most of those come out beginning in 2026. So unless something small pops up, I think, I think it's mostly just going to be those two titles coming out from way forward this year, but 2026 is going to be massive in terms of the brands we're working with, I think, are going to blow some people's minds, both old and new and retro and very recent. Matt is overseeing the development of all of them.

But yeah, it's it. I mean, I feel like we're always saying this, but this might be the coolest round of way forward projects in terms of just the IPs that we're dealing with all at once. I'll, in that case, I will try and bug you again to come back because we must talk about these things. Definitely. I assume they're all unannounced at this point.

All unannounced other than the two, then risky revolution and Sigma Starry. I shall speculate wildly. You're more than welcome to. Yeah. Thanks very much. Yeah. For me, the risky revolution console port's a big one because, you know, that's just such a, that was a, that was a dream situation.

Having a canceled game years ago is just a huge bummer. And knowing that we never had that, it's just sitting around waiting to be done. So having that thing finally done and the console version, and console PC, like modern, adapted version, is beautiful. So I'm excited. So this is, yeah, it's going to be a, that'll be, that'll be definitely,

I guess something I can, I'll be doing a lot of like, hey, look, go look at the, look at the game, go get it. As soon as that's available. So, yeah, that's a big one for me. I guess that's what this year kind of has the spotlight on. Yeah, we should be popping up at a couple of trade shows.

We try to get out to like some of the paxes and stuff like that, comma, commas, things like that. So look for us there. we're hopefully we'll have another anime expo panel if we can the last two years went fantastic and last year we announced sigma star saga dx so if we do have the panel this year um we will definitely look for something that we can announce during that time as well that's awesome we'll all look forward to it and thanks very much and i'll be sure like i say i'll be sure to um has to you again in the future yeah thank you

Hello again, it's me, Stuart Jett, I'm back to do the outro. Hopefully you've enjoyed that interview as much as I enjoyed doing it. Remember, we all enjoy having fun, and that's what we did there. But if you want to enjoy having even more fun, then perhaps you'd consider supporting Retronauts on Patreon. That's patreon.com forward slash Retronauts. where for a mere $5 a month, you can get all sorts of excellent bonuses. You'll get the weekly episodes a full week earlier than anyone else who's not supporting

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Not even a penny chew. Even they cost $6 now. It's absurd. Anyway, thank you very much for listening, and I shall certainly return, as will the rest of the Retronauts, with many fantastic episodes covering many excellent games,

some games that are just kind of good. And, you know, we may even talk about some bad games, too, because even they're valid here. The whole breadth of retro gaming history is at our fingertips. And as time goes on, more and more things become retro, which means retronauts never needs to end. It's the infinite podcast. Why would you even need to listen to any other podcasts at all? I just don't know.

So thanks again, and goodbye. Thank you.