Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 112: Tetsuya Mizuguchi on Rez and SC5 - Metal Gear's 30th - Fire Pro

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

Jeremy speaks with legendary developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi on his start in games, the genesis of Space Channel 5 and Rez, and face-mounted Game Gears. Later, Kishi and Kim Justice join to discuss Metal Gear's anniversary and Fire Pro World, respectively.

This week in Retronauts, we're live from Japan. Woo! Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone, and welcome to an episode of Retronauts. I'm Jeremy Parrish hosting, and you may notice the sound quality is a little weird this week, and there's a reason for that. It's because I'm at the offices of Enhanced Games in Tokyo, and I'm here with the boss of Enhanced Games, Tutsu Miziguchi.

Hey, hey, Jeremy, and hey, everybody. All right, yeah, thanks for taking time to basically just come on and talk about your work. Yeah, it's my great pressure. Yeah, it's awesome for you to join us. I've been a fan of your games for a long time, and I know, you know, our podcast has a lot of focus on music, and your games have a lot of focus on music. So it seems like a kind of natural opportunity for us to come together and share our knowledge, I guess. Awesome. Great.

And also here on Skype, helping with interpretation, is... Kiyoko. Kiyoko will be chiming in from time to time. Well, I think this interview will be conduct. in a mix of English and Japanese, so when it goes to Japanese, she'll be here to help because I can't do that on my own. So anyway, yeah, it's a little bit of an unconventional podcast this week, but I hope at the end you will agree that it was totally worth it. Coffee is serious business.

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So, rather than dawdle anymore, I'd like to just jump in and basically start picking your brain, Miz. So, yeah, to begin with, I thought maybe you could just kind of talk about how you got into video games and sort of what interest you've taken in the medium over the years. So I had to go back in time a little bit in my head, but, you know, I think the birth and the sort of creations in the music video field for that business had a huge, huge influence on me back in the 80s when we were first introduced to music videos, it was all about there's this new form of expressing something. yes it's music but visually you know married with music there was a new form new kind of expression that was born and so I certainly received a lot of sort of inspiration from all of that whether it was an individual video or just a collection of it there was so much to kind of absorb and when it came time for me to basically you know you go do your

studies and then it's kind of your time to think about what your move or your career is going to be or your path is going to be, I kind of stick there and I said, you know, well, now it's my turn and I know I want to be able to express something, what form or shape it takes, I don't know, but I want to be able to express it. and obviously I could have gone down the music video route whether it be directing or producing but just in a short amount of time there were so many great music videos that were created

and so it felt like if I take a step now and enter this business or start from where there's already so many talented people working on it I felt like I don't know if, you know, that's the right timing or that's the right place for me. Not to say that that industry had already matured, but there was so much work that was already put out. That was really cool. And so I looked at games, and obviously back then, games were still in too deep.

We're talking about expressions very limited. They weren't gorgeous. They weren't as beautiful and gorgeous as we know as today, how games are sort of expressed. And so I knew that with, you know, the advancement of technology in the X years in the future, that I already saw this hope that expressing something in the media of games is going to be something that I can look forward to. And I know that if I start kind of, you know, set foot now, then it's only going to get better. In addition to that, where the music component comes in is that the music element or the component will also interact with the visuals, like married with visuals, it's going to be felt and heard and expressed in so much of a different way that that kind of motivated me to look into video games as kind of a career path. So that was probably the biggest sort of motivating factor or motivation that I got from watching all kinds of video videos and thinking where this is going to take us.

The second reason probably that is complementing that is that as a student, I was already doing research in VR or at that time. Everyone just says virtual reality, but no one really knew what that meant. and I was also studying or majored in media aesthetics. So I felt like the closest maybe, not a shortcut, but like the closest thing that is related to what I'm studying and what could maybe shape something that I could do in the future, it felt like maybe games was the right place. Like it felt like there was a connection already there.

So those two combined was probably what, You know, eventually kind of, it is my luck. We could talk about how he got the first job in games, but I think that kind of already was a factor in deciding that, you know, I should probably go and jump at the games. So were there any games that you saw, you know, before you got into the industry that you looked at and said, like, these people are on to something, you know,

like this is really great. I want to be part of this. probably maybe well I'm very very many

yeah so as a student as with anyone who probably had people around

you who either already owned games or we're playing games at home

or you just go hang out at the arcade in game centers in Japan

I went through that too there were plenty of friends that had games

I was introduced to a few titles that really inspired me and I bring this up a lot but Zavius is one of them. The biggest factor

when playing that game was like the more I played I just felt like all the sound effects was starting to make they were clicking but at the same time they were making music and it was an eye-opening sort of game experience from the very first time I played it and then it

even at that time for me I started thinking, well, if it already sounds like this right now, like, what is this, if I play this game X years from now and the future, how is the music going to sound or how does sound effects, you know, working games and like how beautifully can we hear this music while playing a game? So that was a, that was like an eye opener for me. And then the other title on Amiga was Zan 2 by the person. Bitmap Brothers.

And that came from a slightly different angle, but very music-related or music-driven, is that, you know, that was the first game that I felt like music artists, so the Bitmap Brothers and also Bombabase, they were artists essentially creating not music, not only music, but they were created, they developed a game. So to me it was like, oh, there's actually a, let's say, a career path, or there's an option.

There's a way for me to kind of not marry the two, but there's actually a career path in that field where you can kind of be your own artist, but also the output of your work is in a game. And so that was also a very sort of inspiring, I guess, story that I later. found out too but at the same time it's like oh okay well you don't have to have like a game making sort of career path already there to say that you're going to go ahead and make a game so it felt like something that I can kind of um naturally get into so when you got your starting games it was with Sega correct um so what what led you to Sega store exactly um um

So, at a day, that was continuing on the whole, like, hanging out at the game centers with the arcades and walking down the streets of wherever I was at that time. There was this one gigantic, fully rotating machine that caught my attention in one of the arcades. And it was the R360, the fully rotational, like, every. direction machine and I was like who is the maker of this thing and when I looked at it there was the Sega logo so I basically went from seeing that company logo finding out where they are going directly to their offices and without an appointment just basically said you know I want a job here um

trying to bypass this whole, like, interview process, which didn't work. So the person who was responding to me kindly directed me to the HR department and said, you know you really should go through HR and you have to go through this interview process. You can't just apply for a job here at the reception area. So one thing led to another at that time. There was a gentleman by the name of Suzuki-San. he was the development section manager and so he actually gave me an interview slot or time and during the interview I remember I told him all the ideas that I had in my head

and you know whether they were crazy or not what not we who's you know he's going to he's going to end up kind of reacting the way that I'm going to tell you the story but they said I want to do this I want to do that. And you know what? I'm also studying or doing research on virtual reality. And he looked and said, you know, no one knows about virtual reality. What are you talking about kind of thing? But, you know, you're a little sort of out there and might be a little crazy and you have all these crazy ideas.

But we can have someone like you around. Like one of you won't hurt. So why don't we take you? And so that's how I basically scored a job at Sega and that's my first job in the industry. So in a lot of ways, the work you're doing now with Res Infinite, that is kind of like the culmination of what got you into games in the first place. Just like you might be.

Like, now, now, now, like, recently released, the title of EZ Infinite, or so in a way so in a way now now that's not,

the way from from the middle of the time in the picture like it's like you can

be able to be able to be so so I'm like I think

you can say that it's correct and saying that it is kind of a culmination of all my

work and even prior to you know actually starting to work. and having a career, my studies also. So for the first couple of years, two or three years at Sega,

I was fortunate to kind of do a lot of experimenting in the virtual reality space. But in the end, the work that we were doing, the research and experimenting that we were doing was not, it was just not ready for public consumption. The technology wasn't there to kind of validate that, you know, this isn't ready for public release or for the world to, you know, get a chance to know what virtual reality is. So obviously from there, shifted gears went on to make arcade games and then console games. Res and Space Channel 5 are the two titles that kind of maybe stand out in terms of console. And I got to work in a way that, you know, I can marry the visuals and music.

But even for both titles, but especially for Res, you know, ultimately, even if you have these great ideas in your head, we had to kind of fit it into and drop it into this 2D real estate, the space that you were given on a screen. and but for res you know all I was thinking about in my head is that this is really supposed to live in a 3D world that was the image that was the vision that I had in my head so I knew even at that time that when you know the technology was there and it caught up to not caught up but was would make it so that virtual reality would be ready for public consumption that I would want to work on res or I want to bring res alive in VR. But to be honest, I think it came earlier than I expected back at that time. I didn't think it was going to come this soon. So it came earlier and expected, which is great. So in terms of a timeline, you can say that, you know, from the very first moment that I

started studying and doing research about VR in VR to now, it is sort of connected dot by dot. You can connect those dots and say that it is a culmination of everything that I've done. Yeah, you know, I remember seeing some sort of early VR experiments in the 90s like the Pac-Man VR, the toured around the U.S. And you're right, it wasn't quite there, it wasn't quite ready for the public. But I was wondering, can you talk at all about some of the experiments you tried with VR at Sega? Or is that something you can talk about publicly?

Yeah, I've done it, but, well, I've done it, you know? So, I, there are a few things that I can talk about, obviously, you just heard us. But so one thing is that Sega had, we partnered or basically teamed up with a company in the UK, virtuality, and the kind of gist of the project was that we wanted to create a virtual reality arcade machine. So we spent a significant amount of time working with them, but it didn't result in anything that was going to be made available. That was one. Another one is, at that time, Sega was working on or developing game gear. It was for handheld, I guess.

Related to that, I remember, thanks to someone actually tweeting a picture of a patent application that we had put out there, which I completely forgot about. But it was a head mount game gear, so basically a head mount display. It was probably around 1992, but the end goal for that was essentially a console VR headset in today's terms. And there is proof that we were working on that because someone dug up a patent application. Just recently, someone tweeted at me, and I totally forgot about it, but now I remember that, yes, we did spend a good amount of time working on that as well. That Game Gear head-mounted system sounds pretty amazing,

but I mean, I think if you look at Nintendo's Virtual Boy, you can also see that that technology just wasn't quite there at that time. Right. So, Nintendo's game. Yeah, no, you're right. You know, the Virtual Boy by Nintendo, their LEDs were red. I do remember the one that we were working on, a Game Gear, was multicolored.

And then if I think about, like, how it was working and how it felt, it's closer to AR. It's closer to an AR experience in that once you have the game gear on, there would be basically like a TV screen floating in front of you. And that's where you experience or play a game. So it felt probably more closer to AR. So obviously that didn't pan out, but you did begin working on some arcade games and develop some racing games and a few other kind of action games before Space Channel 5. There were a lot of racing games back then. So I'm curious, like, what did you bring to those projects that, you know, like, what personal touch did you put on them to make them stand out from competing games?

kind of kind of my, as you said, my touch or I guess my input for the racing games, you know, obviously even now, but even before at that time, trying to

pursue a real experience through games, through game, playing a game was important for everyone. But I think if I can say one thing, it was kind of the sensation that you felt, the reaction, the feeling that you got as you played this game is what was probably one of my ultimate goals and trying to pursue that and get it into the game as much as possible.

So, as you know, Sega Rally was the first title that I worked on. You know, in Rally, if you are, let's say, a real true rally driver, you go through so in different environments and actions, whether you're drifting or jumping or crashing or whatnot. And you want to get the most out of that feeling as if you're driving to the player. And so that was really ultimately my goal is to try to get as much as that in the game. Another aspect, which is not really about the sensation or the feeling, but it probably added a lot of value, is that Sega Rally was the first.

racing game that allowed or was able to use real cars. So we would go to all these automobile manufacturers and pitch the idea, present it. I'll just call out, you know, Toyota, for example, their marketing team, you know, we negotiated and they were accepting of the idea. They allowed, at that time, the champion car, the Selica was in that. there. And then what happened was, is, you know, prior to that time, because everything was in 2D, whenever you kind of knocked on the door of an automobile manufacturer, they really

didn't like the fact that, you know, your car was 2D, and it just didn't look at all, it just didn't come across, I guess, well enough for them to feel like, oh, yeah, that would really, really be cool for our brand to be associated with this video game. But once it was in 3D and they saw the textures and they saw that it could feel like you were actually, you know, in the race or as a driver, I think they got what we were going after. And so the value of our work and our ideas were recognized. And, you know, that wasn't limited to just Toyota, but other automobile manufacturers. So I eventually ended up negotiating and talking to all the car companies that you can think of that ultimately made it into the game, Mercedes, Opel, Alfa Romeo, et cetera. But the more and more this conversation, you know, took place, the more I felt like, you know what, there is a future path for this genre.

and it's all going to be not everything but the majority of the thing lies in in engineering and how great you're going to get that you know sensation and feeling of driving or racing into a game and when I realized that I realized not only just that that that was going to be the future racing games but that was not my future path. You know, pursuing the realness and racing games was not something that I was looking forward to or that wasn't my career goal. It was more on the entertainment side.

So in the middle of developing Sega Raleigh, too, I had already decided that this was going to be it for me in terms of making racing games. And I wanted to do something that wasn't in racing that provided more of a more of an entertaining entertainment element

to the creation so that's when I decided to go a different route I'm like, how do you know, the important thing that I the valuable lessons and the experiences that I think came out of working on those titles

is, you know, how do you get the, this adrenaline rush that you're feeling let's say as you're driving or that speed how do you get that sensation across and so that's an experience that you know I was able to take and carry over into my future work and when I say like feeling the rush and the speed I'm really saying that because we got to actually go up to the circuits and drift these cars and I remember I probably crash two or more cars and so you know I knew what that impact felt like I knew what going at full speed felt like and so I think I was able to try to put as much as that into the game

You know, I'm going to be able to be. So from there you went on to Space Channel 5. Can you talk about how that project came about and the process of getting the green light for it because it was such an unconventional game? Well, that is... Well, it's very simple, I'm just... So unconventional as...

think Jeremy the right word but the thought was quite simple it started out as a very simple thought you know when you imagine or think or go to let's say musicals or you're thinking about singing a song or you're singing in front of people or you're dancing or you're performing like they're all fun entertaining sort of things that you're doing whether you're on the receiving end of it or if you're the performer. And it makes the mood and the crowd and you happy. And so it's all about mixing the right lyrics to the right music, to the tune, and then having dance moves. And it's almost like a formula, like lyrics plus dance plus music equals happiness. And so it really was all that simple. And I felt like, you know what, I haven't played

anything like this before in a game, they don't exist. It's true that rhythm games were already out at that time, but it was, I would say, more or less a simple kind of, you know, tapping mechanism. Like you tap or press the buttons as they come to you, but musicals and dances had more of an expression element. And so I started to sort of think about, well, how do I get that part into the mix? and for the player to, you know, start sort of examining, not in a hard way, but like just take a look and then use your imagination and like the output of that is, you know, reflected in the game kind of thing. So it's essentially like, hmm, how do I break down a musical that's so fun and entertaining but make a game out of it?

And that was really the basic kind of idea or starting point of, you know, why and how Space Channel 5 came to be. Now that you mentioned musicals, I kind of see in my head where the sort of structure and the evolution of the game as it plays out reminds me of like the showstopper numbers where everyone sort of comes together in a musical. Is that kind of where you were going with that? But maybe we're team

in a lot of musical we've seen maybe Michael Jackson of video like that's no you're

exactly right Jeremy so we our team myself included we watched a ton of musicals

we did our best to like go out and watch a bunch of musicals and also lots of music videos too

but especially like the ones from Michael Jackson we kind of dissected it in our own way analyzed it

and there was kind of a I guess a consistent way of looking at these material the kind of materials that we're looking at which was like you know a lot of times it starts from nothing but a minute in or two minutes in there's a buildup that has already happened and so we you know our focus on kind of like how does it happen or like the research that we did was we would break it down and figure out what elements are making this build-up happen in such a, you know, quick sort of interactive way. And so one musical, obviously, in particular, that I think we learned and was inspired and gave us so much kind of inspiration is when I watched song. You know, it starts from just nothing, one dancer in the beat, and it builds up and builds up and builds up from there, whether it's the dancer inviting the next dancer or, you know, obviously you get the energy from the audience. So there's interaction with the audience too. And so I feel like there were a lot of hints that Stomp gave us in the end to kind of come up with the design ideas that we did for

Space Channel 5. So I said, you know, it's an unconventional game, but I think maybe the most in a way creatively daring thing about the game is that so much of it is built around a single piece of music, and not just any music, but a piece of music from the 1960s. Can you talk about how you seized on Mexican Flyer and the process of building basically an entire game around sort of the style and melody of that piece? You're right, it's from 1965, and it was actually there from the game, but, you know what, it was actually there from pretty much the beginning internally. So when we produced kind of like your image video or your concept video of, you know, what your product wants, your game wants to live like, you create this. internally

and one of our guys at that time when we created this conceptual video he put that in there that music was already in there and what we felt was like you know what this the game you're playing and the visuals and everything is so

futuristic but then this music piece of music that's old and classic and you know it's big band jazz music like somehow they really came together in an unexpectedly good way and so the more and more you know we're working on and listening to and watching our own video that we just produced the more we felt like you know what this actually is working like we want to use it so we looked it up found out that

Ken Woodman, a British artist had composed this piece of music, but surprisingly, no one had really claimed it or touched it or, you know, had asked for it for use in film or TV or anything like that. It was almost like clean, almost like too clean that we're like, you know what, let's go after it and see how far we can get. So eventually we were able to get a contract signed and for it to be used in the game. Obviously, we have, you know, remixes, other versions in the game, but I personally feel like the original piece of music is so, it has that feeling of that being very period or era-specific tone. and I think that is still probably my favorite version of it

I'm like, I want to I'd like to end up to the game when I'd like to meet and I'd like to, where in it's... So when we were done with the game, so this was 1999, I wanted to meet Ken Woodman, I wanted to say thank you.

And so I looked him up and, you know, try to find, locate him. He would have probably been, I believe, in his mid-70s at that time. And there was, like, I traced, you know, whatever information that I can find. And there was, I guess, rumors told me that, you know, he might be in Brazil somewhere. And so I try to find more information. But unfortunately, that search kind of came to an end.

So never got a chance to meet him. But, you know, if I were in his shoes and I created this piece of music in the 60s and then 30-something years later, my music is in a digital form and it's in a video game, you know, I would have probably been like, okay, this is not what I had ever imagined where my music would end up. So, yeah, I wanted to just kind of meet in person and, you know, say thanks, but unfortunately, that opportunity never came. So what I'm going to be. it about the, you know, this 1960s sort of retro, jazzy, almost acid, funk kind of music that you think pairs up so well with the futuristic vision of Space Channel 5, you know, shut on the moon, far in the future. How do those two things work together so well? I don't know. It's really just inspiration.

I don't know, I don't know. You know, I don't really have an answer except to say that it was, it's, it just started out of, you know, an inspiration moment.

And it was, it was a good pairing. It's very simple. The pairing doesn't necessarily, I'll just give you an example, you know, just because, say the story of a film or a game or the visuals is very sci-fi and futuristic or whatnot. That doesn't mean the music or the audio element that complements that is always going to be like techno, just because you feel like those two go well together.

I don't think there's a rule like that, and oftentimes that's not maybe the right pairing. So for me, there was no real set standard or rule that just because, because the story and the visuals and the characters are more futuristic, that the sound has to complement that in a futuristic way. However, I do think that one thing that the music ended up doing for the game is that it supported kind of the emotional aspect. it provided the emotional support while you played and just the entire experience

like going back to the whole musical topic you know it's not just you watching and hearing and clapping there's a story behind it there's an emotional sort of ride behind it and so I think that piece of music did that for for Space Channel 5 But just just a phrase

is very catchy yeah it's a ta-t-da ta-tada and obviously it was

such a catchy tune like that-ta-t like was said right now like

it's one of those things once you listen to it it's like you either like

play that back or like it's already in your head that you just kind of

memorize it instant sort of memory works right there and you don't forget and you

start, you want to start dancing to it. And so I feel like it was just such a catchy sort of tune right there, that there was something kind of instantly working for us. So you mentioned that you drew inspiration from Michael Jackson videos, and of course, Michael Jackson actually became involved in this project. Can you talk about how he got involved with Space Channel 5? My understanding is that he came to you rather than you seeking him out. Michael, like,

like, if Michael, like, when, he came to Sega to play to him. That's

he's a lot of us know that Michael Jackson was a huge fan of games,

and so when he traveled to Japan, he actually would come in business Sega pretty often. He loved

games enough to have them at his estate in Neverland. And so one time, there was,

we had an executive producer based on the U.S. office and he showed him something that was work in progress and you know we would give him a sneak peek in Tokyo too that's what he'd like he'd like to see stuff

that was being worked on and like you know just imagine what it would be like kind of thing so did the same thing and then showed Michael Jackson something that was still in development that was based on 5th and there was about a month to go um before we basically closed out um and got ready to ship it so we get this call

from our us executive producer saying my gosh you got to listen guys you know michael wants to be in your game your game special five and i'm like uh michael who he's like he's talking about it's michael jackson he wants to be in your game like what and so there's like a moment of like surprise and excitement and everyone sharing the news with the team

was like oh my gosh like this is really happening and then reality kicked in five seconds later we're like

we only have a month to go and so we can't really do much like what are we going to do shoot like it's great that he's interested

but we can't offer him so much and so you know when you think about Michael Jackson wanted to be in your game it's like you want to do something like

that's fully fleshed out and like he's you know obviously kind of a not an important character but someone who's going to play a really good role in a game but we did and and at the same time you feel like he can't do something like halfway so we thought that maybe we would come up with an idea that it would be easier for Michael Jackson to politely like refuse or decline to be in the game so that we didn't have to go through the process of actually having him be a part of the game. So we came up with this idea where, you know, Ula would save Michael,

and then Michael would end up standing behind Ula and you guys would march. And so it's like, yeah, well, it's a small enough role that maybe he won't like it as much. Like he's not going to be like, oh, yeah, you know, that's a great idea. It's like, oh, no, that's not good enough. I don't want to, you know, take part of this game. we thought that was going to work but it actually backfired on us and he's like

oh yeah that's cool I want to be in the game so we're like oh shoot we thought he was going to refuse and now he's accepted our offer to be in the game and so basically you know in a very

very very short amount of time we ended up going with that plan and therefore a Space Michael, you know, became Space Michael, we thought we would reserve kind of the opportunity for the sequel and kind of pass on the opportunity politely and with respect, politely pass on the opportunity to kind of like squeeze him in, but we ended up going the other way and, you know, making him as part of the original.

And then, you know, ultimately, yeah, he's still like, saved and then would become, or safe by aliens and whatnot. But he wanted to be in it so much even that a small role was good enough for him. Obviously, he played a much bigger role in the sequel. Was working with him a collaborative process, or did you pretty much just define a part for him? I'm curious to know what role he had in the creative development of Space Channel 5 Part 2. Which is, both of us, we're on the more than the more than less, it was mostly on our side, sort of developing and coming up with, like, specific lines. We would show in video or send material that we kind of supplement that.

And then we would also even put together kind of a list of like, you know, the acting and the performance that we wanted. And once that was delivered to him and his people, we were working, obviously, from far away, we're in Japan, and he's working. Most of the time, he was recording in his own studio in the U.S. So once I got delivered, the message got across, then they would record, and then they would send that to us. Obviously, there were some going back and forth in terms of, like, we wanted retakes here and there. but that was kind of the extent of it. There wasn't like a, I'd say it wasn't like more of a, it wasn't a true like creative collaboration.

It was more of us being able to actually ask him, you know, this is the mood that we want. This is the, these are the lines that we want you to record and they would just send it to us. And so that was the extent of like the work that we did together. So I'd like to move on to Rez. I know we don't have too much. time left.

But, you know, that was kind of developed a little after the Space Channel 5, the first one. And I kind of feel like, you know, you talked earlier about sort of your early inspirations. And if Space Channel 5 is drawn from Michael Jackson videos and musicals, I kind of feel like Res in a lot of ways goes back to, you know, what you talked about with Zetius, where you have, like, a musical loop and then the sound effects create. a melody out of that. Was that kind of where Rez came from and kind of how did you take the original

inspiration and build into the game that became Red? It's, uh, nez the idea of the inspiration was, well, the previous, I did mention like Sevious and Ziont to those titles from way back in the days, and you're right,

they have maybe like similar patterns or something, but I wouldn't call them, they're definitely like a lead into, or if I can say a leading inspiration into other inspirations or other direct experiences that really had more of a hard inspiration on the ideas for res. And what that is, the direct sort of inspiration was really an experience. Nothing to do with games, though. So in, I think it was around 1997.

I was traveling in Europe. This was when I was working on the other titles at Sega. I had a chance to experience the street parade in Zurich. And it's the, I think it's still the largest, but it was one of the largest street parades, probably about 100,000 people plus in this gigantic, on the streets, but also in this gigantic Coliseum or venue and you know yeah there's a DJ there's laser lights and sound and colors and everything going and there's human bodies there that are dancing but it just felt more like they're dancing but they're creating this movement and they were reacting

like everything was just reacting and bouncing off of each other so it almost felt like this movement waves of people that was you know married to the music of the music of lights and everything that was going on and when I saw that and felt it like I instantly thought about wow this has a very synesthesia like feeling and experience and I've been following you know the Bauhaus movement from many many decades almost a century ago and Kandinsky as you know um it had a huge I guess effect um um in terms of of, like, me honing in on the whole synesthesia concept. And so I was like, wow, you know, I'm here watching and feeling and listening and seeing all this

movement going on, but how can I turn this into an interactive experience? Like, how and, like, what would it look like? What would it feel like? And what would it play like? And around the same time, pretty much, you know, by the time I got back, Evizzo, who is our sound director on the project, he traveled back from Kenya. And we call it the Kenya music video internally, but he brought this video that was basically a very simple on the street side, you know, a family is dining or just, you know, talking

and having a nice meal on the streets. and one person starts or picks up his bottle and then he starts tapping on it. Then the other person is now using her or his plate and she is making music or making sound. And then, you know, someone starts saying humming. And so there was this groove without anything really telling them what to do. there was this groove that was born out of just one person starting a movement. And so there was this groove slash sort of chemistry between the human sort of senses that was happening in a very natural and gradual way.

And not only did that like feed me inspiration, but it just felt like, you know what, you're seeing the basic sort of human senses in what, does and how things react to each other, how people react to each other's movements and sound and everything. And so it was like, okay, these are like very core basics of music making and also core basics of like how humans react to each other and how your senses work. And so I was like, how can we combine those two and make a game out of it?

So that's really where the idea of res was bored. So how did that translate into, you know, basically, a shooter. I mean, well, you know, if you look at Space Channel 5, you play it almost like an observer. You're looking from the outside, watching Ulala and hitting the rhythms. In Res, you're, you know, kind of within the action and you're hitting the rhythms, but you're also aiming and, you know, like moving throughout the space. I'm just sort of curious, like, how did those inspirations translate into that sort of reversal of the Space Channel 5 concept and the I mean, well, I'm

saying it, I've got to think it's a lot of, Space Channel 5 is, so Jeremy, that was a sort of a good way of reminding me how different

these two games are. Like in Space Channel 5 I just said, you're more the observer, but then it was, you're taking control and you're aiming and moving throughout space, and it's like, you know what? Yeah, you're right, I just realized that. not that

I mean not in like a oh my gosh I didn't realize that at all all these years but it's like sometimes I have to kind of be reminded that they are quite different because yeah for spatial on five you're more in a sort of a third person

perspective you're watching what's going on in the game and so you are even though you're playing but you're also watching as an observer so there's this sort of magic happening where it's almost like you're watching like a TV show, but you're also, you know, playing a part of it too.

With Res, it's definitely you being in control and you're doing the directing and kind of the composing the entire time. So in that sense, musically, you are diving into a deeper and deeper and deeper experience. because it's all about you taking action and that action coming out, you know, in a way that is only meant for, not meant for, but it's only come back to you. So you're definitely probably diving in deeper in that sense.

Another sort of, I guess, tale that we've talked about, Jeremy, I don't know if you heard this story about there was really more of a, narrative behind the scenes for res and that the stage is set to where you're basically a lonesome sort

of sperm and the goal your mission is to find your way to the egg that will eventually make you into a human being a live person

and so it's all about like the path to being conceived. And we talk about it in a way that, you know, this is something that every person on earth has gone through, but you as yourself do not have memory of that because that takes place before you are born. And so it's a very kind of almost like a lonely experience in that sense, but it's also an adventure because at the end of the tunnel,

you know, you become a live human, being and I wanted to tell kind of the story in a way that doesn't explicitly tell you that but that is basically kind of the underlying story behind Rez and your journey in the game. We're going to be able to be. So how do your, the musical selections you built the game around, how does that underscore the story? Yeah, so the way, I'll just tell you, like, how we ended up selecting or how we ended up going with, you know, the artists that we were very fortunate to have on board. So we have the structures of the areas in the game. And once we had that, we pitched a bunch of artists and musicians.

And in the end, and we wanted them to really, you know, understand the story behind it and what kind of game. This is something new. No one has, you can't give an example. You know, if you want to pitch a manager or an artist say, oh, this game plays like this. Like, there was no example. So we wanted to make sure that they got the concept and that we got that message.

across to them. In the end, what happened was is we selected or decided to work with a lot of the techno DJ artists. And it became

clear, more clear, as kind of the days and the weeks went by, why we went with them is that with the music that these artists were going to produce and contribute to the game, we found out that we just didn't want too much, maybe this is not the correct or the perfect word, but we just didn't want too much

decor on the music that they were going to create for us, meaning we wanted the sound to be in its kind of purest form, and that that sound, combined with the visuals, would create the right balance of the chemical reaction that we wanted to have see and be heard in the game. And why we felt that is because that would then really directly impact

you, the player. The visuals and the audio is really, you know, almost like just, you know, nailing through your experience. And whether you hear that or see that or feel it, we just wanted that kind of really

sharpness to come through. And sharp, I don't mean like it has to always be sharp tone, but it was just that marriage of the pure sound and the visual being very clear to you. And so that was the reason why we ended up with, we decided to go with the artist that we did. Kolkut, Adam Freeland, Kenny Shea, Jojoka. You know, they all have their own distinct sort of unique sounds, but I needed the kind of the beats. that come out of their music to be the most effective. And so, you know, it ended up being more like club, like the big music, but that really worked well with the game.

Now, there are some artists that we pursued, and we did have conversations with, unfortunately, they didn't work out. Apex Twins is actually one that didn't, unfortunately. They worked on it, but they can't. give us or finish and complete the music in time so unfortunately that didn't work out we also were talking to that boy slam but there was potentially um that going into a lot of detail potentially there could have been some sort of legal sort of issues with the music that he was creating so we just couldn't pursue that route either um but you know all and all

a lot of the artists that we met with understood and they got the idea and in the end we were very lucky to have these artists contribute their music to the game. In a way, in Rez, the player is kind of helping to create the music with the actions they take and the way they perform. So in a sense, you were kind of asking the DJs and the composers to be more like collaborators with the player. Was that a difficult thing to convince them on to sort of step back

and allow people to sort of have dynamic creative control over the outcome of the music that they created? Res is two of the use of there. One of, I guess you can break down kind of the sound and music-making elements of the entire experience, the res into kind of two buckets. And the first one is more or less, you know, since I said earlier, like you're the one in control directing and basically composing and, you know, there's no one else that's doing that for you. So the first one is more in that vein where you are essentially kind of playing an instrument, whether it's you're a drummer and, you know, drumming or whether you have an instrument in your hand and you're playing with a different instrument.

instrument, like that brings joy, fun, and excitement in one way. The other bucket is more on the kind of imagine you if you were a DJ and you have an front of you, you start playing, you're DJing and then you can feel the change in kind of well, depending on, you know, the timing in the audience feel, you know when you're changing the right tracks, right? So there's this upward spiral that the DJ is kind of controlling to keep that feel-good sort of sensation alive. So imagine those two different ways of interacting or ways of experiencing musical elements. Now, with Rez, it was all about how do I combine those two?

Because they both, in the end, give you this very sensational feeling. And that's what I was aiding for. But there are two completely different ways to feel it or kind of input, output, feeling, right? So when you are shooting down enemies, that's more the former. The sound effects basically kind of act as an instrument, and you get this output sort of feeling of, oh, you're playing or strumming an instrument. And then when you capture the cube, when you go between layers and you get to work, that's more the latter sort of example of a bucket where the DJ is changing his tracks so that you can go to the next level. And so I think the combination of those two was ultimately the goal to make it work in one game. And that's how, you know, the structure, the design of the levels came to be.

Right. So it's my just kind of final question to wrap this up. In revisiting Res for Res Infinite, have you, like, how has that experience been for you? Have you been able to realize ideas or hopes that you had for the original game that just weren't available, you know, besides just VR implementation? I'm kind of curious to know what it's like to go back and revisit this game and what you've been able to bring to it with this new version. And as you know, res is sort of fundamental. And when we talk about, even though you're in control, you're on rail. So you cannot move. And it's basically kind of, you know, rushing or flying through a tunnel where notes are coming at you.

their enemies, but let's just assume from a musical standpoint, there are notes coming at you, so you shoot them down, and then that's how you, the sound effects start to create music. So what I wanted to do outside of, or besides the fact that we brought it into VR, and this

does have a huge sort of VR-driven component to it, but area and area X, you know, I wanted to undo that. So, I wanted to be able to freely move around in the space. And not that notes or enemies are flying at you, but you are actually approaching them.

However, whichever direction you wanted, because you're moving in all directions 360 degrees. But that the basic idea of shooting down the enemies, then creating the sound effects, then creating me. music, that feeling is something that I wanted to obviously retain and, you know, try to even make it better. And so I knew in my head that that's what I wanted to do. I also knew that this was going to be a huge challenge.

But for me, I also knew that I had to do it at this moment with this game, with this project. otherwise part of me was basically saying if you if you can't overcome this challenge then you won't be able to move forward onto the next thing and so having the avatar just fly or swim or dive or any one of those actions that you want to use whatever whichever one you feel most comfortable because some people like feel like it's like a sensational diving moment or like a flying moment in any case like to have that actually in the game and to be able to complete it and overcome a lot of the you know issues and problems that we saw but being able to resolve all that and for it to work in area X that was definitely a huge goal achieved and now that we've done it it has given me and us our confidence to move on to the next creation. We're going to carry you over a lot of the things that we're able to learn and experiment and achieve in Area X to hopefully the next creation.

And so it was definitely a tough challenge, but it was completely worth it. Can you talk it all about what's next for you, or is that still under wraps? I'm not, yeah, I think, sort of, I'm not going to be not, but... Yeah, so it is a little too early to talk about what's next, so I can't and won't say today here. But one thing about Res that I can say is that, you know, it's become my life work.

So my feeling and sort of investment and everything in Terez is, you know, it's not going to probably, and it's never ending. It's a life span work that I'm going to continue to do. So, you know, whatever the next experience is, my goal is to make it so that the people who, come into sort of play or interact with it is going to have this very big wow moment. That's something that will always continue to be a part of my goal with any sort of future creation. Well, I think that is all the time we have. And I just wanted to say thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much. And for your great answers, this has been really interesting. So I've really enjoyed it. And hopefully everyone listening will also enjoy it.

Kyoko, thank you very much for your help with this. And I will look forward to looking to see what you announce next. Fear is the mind killer. Technology Truth Brought to you by Geico Technology Truth You will certainly send any text About your supervisor

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And so here we are on to the second phase of this episode. I hope you enjoyed the live interview with Tetsuya Mizoguchi. And now we're on to our monthly call-in episode portion from Retronauts bloggers, including for this segment, none other than Kishi. Hi, it's me, Kishi. So Kishi, you haven't really told us. that much about yourself. I don't need to know lots of personal details, but

aside from the fact that you've been a retronauts listener for a long time, what kind of stuff are you into, like, video games? You seem to have a really great appreciation for the art of classic graphics, and especially for Konami games. So, yeah, before we get started

talking about this segment, which is relevant to what I just said, I'm kind of curious to know where you're coming from in terms of like the things you enjoy, the video game passions and classic gaming interests you have, just to kind of help, I guess, what do you call it, triangulate opinions. People have been listening to Me Jabber for years, so they know what I'm all about. But you're a new element here. So if you don't mind, I'd love to hear a little more about some of your interests,

and then we can roll on into the main topic of conversation. Certainly. I just, it would take too long to just name every genre I'm into. because I love so many of them, but I'm mostly into older games, which, you know, explains why I'm here on Retronauts. I have a great appreciation for super difficult, hardcore stuff, like shoot-em-ups, old beat-em-ups, all kind of M-Ups. Trap-em-Ups?

Are you a big fan of Hayankio Alien? Actually, I think that's in your contract for Retronaut, isn't it? Yes. I'm a big fan of a good trap-em-up. I wish there are more of them these days. But as you said, I'm a really big fan, in particular of pixel art. I guess, you know, like anyone who loves old games, loves some good pixel art.

But in the last 10 years or so in my life, I've just been really getting into it and sort of going into these games and emulators and looking at tile data and seeing how everything's broken down between backgrounds and objects and how it's programmed. It's really given me a greater appreciation for what goes into it. I've made some pixel art myself not as much as I'd like because it's so time-consuming,

but even knowing that gives me a greater appreciation for it when it's done well. And I love calling attention to it when discussing old games. So do you have any work online that people could check out, or do you just kind of do this for your own benefit? I've kind of been setting up sort of a repository for everything I've done with regards to capturing old graphics. But nothing I could really advertise at the moment. I'm hoping to bring some of that to the Retronauts blog as well down the line. So look forward to that.

I'm into that idea. All right. So this episode, I think you wanted to talk about the 30th anniversary of Metal Gear. And I don't know exactly what you have in mind for this discussion, but I'm always down to talk about Metal Gear. And, you know, it's a topic we've touched on quite a few times on the podcast. But I think, I think you probably have some different impressions or opinions of it than I do or like Shane Bettenhausen. So, yeah, take it away. Let's talk about Metal Gear and the fact that it's 30 freaking year old, 30 freaking years old now.

God, I can't even talk. Sure. Well, the series is 30 years old. I wish the series were in better shape, having reached that milestone, but the last couple years... You're not into Crystal Zombies? Not so much. So I thought for this we could talk specifically about the very first Metal Gear game specifically, which itself is 30 years old. And I believe you have more experience with the NES version.

Which I never played back in the day. Really? Yes, I totally missed it. What point did you get into Metal Gear? My first... This is kind of embarrassing to say, but my first Metal Gear game that I actually played was Metal Gear Solid, the Twin Snakes,

which is considered to be not a very good remake of Metal Gear Solid One. Yet somehow you're still a fan of the series. Yeah, the kernel of goodness in there was still strong enough for me to search out other games in the series. Cardle. And, you know, I went on to play every single game. And including going back and playing

the original MSX games on Emulator, before they were eventually officially re-released as part of the re-release of Metal Gear Solid 3, back in 06. So, like many people, I wasn't really too aware of the series

before Metal Gear Solid sort of revolutionized it with It's 3D graphics and voice-acted story and carefully directed cutscenes. But it's interesting to go back and look at those old games and see just how much of the seed was there, even that early on. You know, over 10 years before Metal Gear Solid, if you look at Metal Gear One, I think it's interesting just how much of what makes the experience unique. You know, Hideo Kojima's unique proclivity.

are all there right at the beginning. Yeah, I mean, it is really surprising how much of what we know as Metal Gear is present in the original Metal Gear. And like you said, some of Kojima's proclivities, you don't see a lot of some of the kind of weird stuff he puts into his game sometimes, but there is still sort of a questionable element

of how he kind of views women. And one of the sort of underground resistance people you can talk to on the radio is Diane. And she, like, she'll only, is she the one who only talks to you if you're high rank? That's Jennifer. Okay, Jennifer. Diane's the one who goes out shopping. Yeah. So you're, like, trying to stay alive and find your way through this fortress and Diane's out shopping.

And sometimes, it's kind of a funny joke, but. Well, the funniest thing is when you. you call up Diane sometimes, she'll be out and her boyfriend, Steve, will pick up and he'll be like, who is this? You stay away from Diane. Yes, exactly. You know, it's innocent enough. I think... It is. It is. But in, you know, kind of in the context of some of the places Kojima has gone with, like, basically, like, any female character in his most recent games, you're kind of like, I don't know. Yeah, you only need to look... It starts out innocent, but it just gets worse and worse. Yeah, you only need to look as far as his immediately next game

Snatcher before he gets into shower scenes and then police knots with the groping. Yeah, he didn't take long to get started off on that foot. But unfortunately, that's not really an issue in Metal Gear. I didn't mean to kind of go sidetracked there because that's such a small thing in the game and it doesn't really affect it one way or the other. It's just interesting, like you said, that you can kind of see like sort of, uh, little telltale signs of the direction some of his games and writing would go. But, you know, it's not just the kind of weird stuff, the uncomfortable stuff. It's also all the really good stuff. There's so much detail and so much really good solid gameplay and game design in the

original Metal Gear, especially on MSX. The NES version is shuffled around and kind of broken and it's a mess. Like going back and replaying it recently on a live stream, I was like, this game actually kind of sucks. How did I like Metal Gear? but the MSX version is really good. Yes, and I think one of the other things that Kojima is known for, that's much more flattering to him, is his focus on lateral thinking in terms of design and lateral solutions to problems,

even though the Metal Gear games were mostly very linear until very recently, there were usually multiple ways to solve a given predicament, or even if there was only one solution, it might not be the one you expect. Like in Metal Gear One, you can find a bomb blast suit, which is used for bomb disposal traditionally. But your actual application of it has nothing to do with that. It's just heavy enough for you to walk past some heavy winds up on the roof.

Right, yeah, that part really confused me as a kid, but then I got older than I realized, oh, the idea is just that you're like wading yourself down. Yeah. And of course, the iconic cardboard box is right there at the beginning, even though it's this absurd image of this, you know, hardened a secret agent commando going into an enemy

stronghold and evading notice by hiding in a cardboard box, you know, as long as it works, it's all good. Yeah, I actually, you know, I've been replaying Metal Gear for MSX with the intention of finally finishing it. I've made it like close to the end before

but never actually finished it, but I'm getting really close again and hope to finish it pretty soon. But I find myself using the cardboard box a lot, especially once you get to the second building and there are enemy patrols like all over the place and there it's really hard to sneak around without being seen like if you put on the box then you're fine and uh unlike the nes version if an enemy walks into you while you're wearing the box they don't they don't immediately discover you it just like slowly saps your

energy like you're smoking a cigarette uh which is much uh i don't know if that's necessarily realistic but it makes the game more playable than the nes version it should be said the nes version was not worked on in any capacity by Kojima. They basically said, well, you know, MSX is fine and dandy, but the NES and the Famicom, that's where the money is. So they had another team convert Metal Gear. I don't even know if it was, if it was an internal team at Konami. And they didn't do that good a job with it. Like they changed up locations of things, changed layouts. They changed some of the mechanics of the game. So like when an enemy changes shift, and walks off the screen, they don't actually leave the screen.

They just, like, hang out at the edge of the screen, and eventually they'll turn back around and see you. So it kind of breaks a lot of the elements that should make the game work. So the MSX game is actually really polished, and almost every screen is set up so that you can walk onto the screen and not immediately have to worry about being seen as soon as you step onto a screen. Whereas the NES version, like right away, you're in the desert or the jungle, and, like, on most screens,

it's impossible not to be seen by an enemy as soon as you walk onto the screen. So, yeah, it's just like the difference between a really great, well-crafted game and just a typical NES game with good ideas and poor execution. Yes. And Kojima, when working on the original MSX version,

really tried to play to that system's strength. I mean, it's been talked about before, but we might as well mention that the MSX could not handle scrolling very well. It could only scroll at about one tile, so eight pixels at a time. It looked very awkward. It wasn't smooth. And it couldn't handle that many sprites on screen at once. So Kojima was told to make a game on MSX, but he knew he wouldn't be able to make a traditional action game that you might find on the NES. Yeah, wasn't it supposed to be like a commando style game? I believe so, yes. He was told to make a war game. So yeah, he just totally rethought the

concept from the ground up, and he drew on his now infamous love of movies, specifically the Great Escape, I believe. So instead of just charging through wave after wave of enemies, gunning them all down, you're now trying to sneak through an enemy stronghold and not draw attention to yourself. So that way, you wouldn't need too many enemies on screen at the same time unless you got into the alert state. And also, each screen was its own little puzzle. and it would scroll one screen at a time, sort of like the Legend of Zelda. Yeah, that makes a really big difference

to how the game plays. Each screen is sort of a self-contained, as you said, like a puzzle. And as you get further into the game, the puzzles sort of start interacting and you have to travel around like a barrier or something on a different screen and then come back. So it starts to take on like a bigger state of affairs,

but it does feel a lot like the Legend of Zelda in a lot of ways. in that you never really break the screen boundaries. And everything that you can do and have to do is within that space. And so, yeah, like one thing it does that Zelda doesn't do is it gives you those binoculars. So if there's an opening between one screen and the next, you can glance ahead and see what lays in wait for you. So if there is a situation where you're worried, like, you might be spotted as soon as you step on the screen, you can look ahead with the binoculars. and you'll see, oh, there's an enemy standing there,

so I need to come in below to avoid his line of sight. And line of sight is something that hadn't really been done that well in video games before. Metal Gear was not the first game to have enemy line of sight, but it was the first game that really made it matter, where you can sneak around and avoid combat as long as an enemy no longer sees you. And, you know, the direction they're looking is the direction that they see. And so if you're directly in their line of sight, then they spot you and they go into alert mode. But otherwise, you can sneak around and avoid fighting or sneak up behind them and punch them into unconsciousness or death or whatever you're doing.

And it really does change the way you approach the game. Yes. And those binoculars you mentioned, those are placed right near the beginning of the game. So they're guaranteed to be one of the first items you'll find. So they definitely intended for you to use that as you get around. and the line of sight it's interesting because in the first game it was literally

like a line right in front of the enemy so even if you're just a little off center you could walk right up to them and take them out Metal Gear 2 the second MSX game actually had enemies able to see in like a sort of 45 degree cone in front of them and that was considered

a big advancement at the time yeah it is a big advancement it makes the game a lot harder too oh it sure does like there are there are times in Metal Gear where you're like I don't think he should have been able to see me because sometimes it is sort of inconsistent but usually yeah like you said

you can just walk up to a dude and as long as you're like if your head is lined up with his feet then he is completely incapable of seeing you but even with those limitations it's still pretty advanced yeah for the time especially no one had really ever done anything like this before

and no one really would until Metal Gear Solid was such a huge success that everyone wanted to imitate it Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there were a few other stealth games. Most notably, Tenchu, stealth assassins, showed up on PlayStation like a month before Metal Gear Solid. Yeah. At least, yeah, yeah, I think it launched actually even earlier in Japan than that.

So, you know, the idea was out there and people were doing stuff with it. But Tenshu, I like Tenshu, but it feels really sort of unfair. It's really hard to know how you're going to be spotted and where enemies are. And I guess that's realistic. Like, yeah, it's really hard to sneak around and not be seen and caught by a bad guy. But it kind of isn't all that fun. Yeah, I feel like that game would have had a better reception if it had come out further away from Metal Gear Solid. I think it just had really bad timing in that respect.

Yeah, it's a really unflattering. in comparison. Yeah, but going back to Metal Gear 1, another interesting thing, something that Kojima is known for is the way he's sort of, it's interesting because he's always known for sort of being obsessed with movies and trying to make his games more like movies, and sometimes it seems like he doesn't even want to be making games, he'd rather be making films. But at the same time, he's always putting these interesting concepts and situations into his games that would only be possible in the medium of games.

And that, too, is right there in Metal Gear 1. To sort of contextualize it, Metal Gear Solid 2, which came out, I think, 14 years later, after Metal Gear Solid had made everyone aware of the series, Metal Gear Solid 2, late in the game, has a moment where your increasingly flaky CO suddenly tells you to turn off the game console. And at the time, many articles were written about what a subversive and alienating moment this was, and rightly so, because it's right in the middle of all this tension and drama, and all of a sudden you're abruptly reminded that you're playing a game in such a way that the game itself seems to be commanding you to turn it off. It's a very strange moment.

It kind of takes you out of the game, but also sort of re-contextualizes it and makes it that much. more interesting. But when no one realized at the time was at that moment was lifted directly from Metal Gear 1 towards the end of that game, your commanding officer, Big Boss, his instructions and advice grow more and more unreliable as you close in on the end of the game. And as you get even closer, you eventually find out why that is, which is that Big Boss himself is the enemy ringleader, and he was intentionally trying to lead you astray once it looked like you were actually going to succeed in your mission. And as you approach Metal Gear, the walking battle tank, the object of the game is to destroy it. He gives you one last call on the radio, ordering you

the player, not solid snake, but ordering you the player to turn off your MSX. It's something you wouldn't expect a game to do, especially near the end when you're invested in the story. much. Metal Gear games are sort of infamous for acknowledging that they are games all the time. You know, whenever a character tells you how to do something, they'll tell you which button to press, you know, press the action button to climb ladders and that kind of thing. Once they started voicing the Metal Gear games, that became a lot more sort of conspicuous, I would guess, you'd say. Like, when you see it just written, it's, you know, okay, fine, it's video game tutorial. But when you have like a Hollywood caliber voice actor saying,

press the action button. You're like, what? Hit the analog stick and turn it in three directions. Wait, that's really weird. Like, why are you giving me these instructions out loud? But, yeah, like you say, there is this sort of gleeful acknowledgement of the medium

that runs all through the Metal Gear games. And it is something that, like, again, going back to what you said earlier, like, Kojima's ideas, this first Metal Gear game was really a testing ground for them. And it's kind of surprising that, you know, someone with so little experience was given so much of an opportunity to sort of put his fingerprints on his own game. Like, he'd only really worked on one game before that, Antarctic Adventure.

And then there was another game, I think, that was scrapped in development. Yes. And so this was like the second actual game he had worked on, the second project, that came to fruition. And it was Kojima's project. Like, he designed it. And designer back then usually meant, like, what we think of as director now. So that's a lot of, like, a pretty big opportunity for sort of a greenhorn. And I really feel like he made the most of it. I don't know if I'd call Metal Gear an Autour game. I know people like to call Kojima an Autour, but I don't know that there was quite that opportunity or depth available in the eight-based.

generation. But you could definitely see a move in that direction. I don't think anyone else would have created a game that worked exactly like this. Yes. I believe Kojima was in his early 20s when he made these games, which is just unthinkable, especially to be at the head of the project. It just goes to show how games were sort of much smaller back then. They had a lot a lot less overhead in terms of cost, a lot less cost to make. Yeah, it's not like Konami was some rinky-dink little company. They had been around for years, like decades, and they'd become a pretty major arcade power by that point.

Like, they'd had hits, Frogger, and Gradius, and things like that. So it's not like it was just, you know, some startup studio. This was a pretty big video games company. And yet they were like, hey, 22-year-old. who's only made one other video game that was a simple arcade adventure, why don't you create this war game that will turn out to be like military Zelda for us? Yeah, I guess it just goes to show you never know what's going to become a hit. I guess I'm assuming at the time they didn't think too much about it and what it would become.

But even I think in like the early 90s in Japan, Kojima already sort of had that aura building up of him as an author and having a unique personality and sort of putting, a personal mark on all his games from Metal Gear to Snatcher to Police Knots. Well, the sort of interesting, weird thing about all this is that even as he was building up this reputation, it was sort of independent from Metal Gear at the time. He wouldn't really become synonymous with Metal Gear until Metal Gear solid. But it seems like Metal Gear did become kind of a hit, but not really in Japan and not on MSX.

It became a hit in the US on the NES to the point where Konami was like, oh, we need to barf out another sequel to that. And they made, you know, Snake's Revenge, which I think had a much higher profile than the actual sequel to Metal Gear, which was an MSX only game and is extremely expensive and rare now. Like, it just wasn't produced in large quantities. I've heard that it was released outside of Japan, like with a European localization. but I've never been able to pinpoint if that's actually true or if it was just like a ROM hack that came out really early and people were like, oh, this game is, this is Metal Gear Solid 2 or Metal Gear 2 that came out in Europe. I never actually saw it, but I found the ROM. Just like I never actually saw the actual cartridge release for Mega Man 7 for NES, but I found it on a ROM site, so it must be true. Yes, I believe Metal Gear 1 had an official English localization for the UK Marm.

market on MSX in addition to the NES version Metal Gear 2 was only in Japan officially but it did have one of the

earliest fan translations for emulation or even not emulation because I believe it was done by two guys and they distributed the fan translation at cons in like

the late 90s. I want to say 97. Okay. Yeah, because when Metal Gear Solid came out, I immediately was able to find an English language version of the MSX version of Middle Gear 2. And so, yeah, like knowing that it was kind of done as like a, you know, a WERS group with actual physical releases, that explains a lot. Yeah, you would think it would be some fan translation group going back after Metal Gear Solid came out and trying to translate the lost sequel or the pre-execule. cool in this case. But apparently it came out like a year beforehand, which is interesting. I assume Metal Gear 2 didn't get an official localization on the MSX because it was a very late

MSX game. It came out in 1990, sort of around the time the Super NES was coming out. I don't know for a fact, but I assume the MSX market had kind of fallen out of Europe by then. Yeah, the MSX was never really that big in Europe. And by 1990, like even the local giants like the spectrum were really starting to fade away in favor of the Mega Drive. Like, you know, it was, we were right on the cusp of Windows 90

or Windows 3.1 and so the market was about to really split all over the world into Windows and consoles. And that affected the UK a lot, even though it was sort of like the local microcomputer stronghold.

So, yeah, I think Metal Gear 2 just sort of fell prey to poor timing, an inconvenient timing. So it was really obscure. Like, when I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than a proper sequel to Metal Gear. Like, even as a teenager, I was like, this Snake's Revenge, that is not it. I don't know what they're doing, but this is not, this is not the Metal Gear that I know in love. And, you know, the Metal Gear I knew in love was the NES version, which is still kind of a mess,

but Snake's Revenge was an even bigger mess. if I had known about Solid Snake, Metal Gear 2, when I was a kid, it would have driven me crazy. I'd have been like, how can I play this game? How do I get my hands on a computer from another country and play a game in a foreign language? It's probably just as well that I had no idea what import games and, you know, like the internet were at that point. Yes, we didn't know what we were missing. Thank God. But to go back to your point, though, it's true.

before Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear was kind of a one-off for Kojima. He wasn't really known for it specifically. He sort of moved on after the first game to snatch room police knots. In between those two, he did make Metal Gear too, but he might never have made that game, if not, for Snake's Revenge. Right. That's one of my favorite anecdotes. I know we told it on the show before, but go for it.

I love it. So the story goes, and Kojima himself has related this multiple. time. So it's definitely a real thing that happened. He was on the train with one of the developers of Snake's Revenge, and Kojima didn't even know they were making this game, and this developer said, yeah, we're making a sequel to Metal Gear for the American market, but we know it's not a true Metal Gear. It doesn't have your personal touch. It would be great if you would make the true Metal Gear, too, because we just, we don't have it in us. And so he did.

And the rest is history. It took them, you know, eight years to create a sequel to Metal Gear 2. But once that happened, all bets were off. I don't know. It seems like a lot of series kind of took a generation off. Sonic the Hedgehog, Metroid, Metal Gear. And it seemed to do most of them a world of good. Maybe not Sonic the Hedgehog.

But everyone else benefited from that time off. I think everyone needs to take a, you know, a generation away. Let the ideas freshen up. yeah i don't think a 16-bit metal gear would have been too much different from what they accomplished with metal gear too so it's just as well they sort of skip that generation and didn't return to it until they could really do something revolutionary with it with 3d graphics and metal gear solid well man now that you say that kind of be into a 16-bit metal gear i never really thought about it before but i wouldn't say no but yeah that's that's kind of weird like you know metal gear then have

had a sequel on Game Boy Color that was very similar to Metal Gear 2. So there's been quite a bit of 8-bit Metal Gear, like, four distinct Metal Gear games on 8-bit systems, and then 32-bit and beyond. But that whole 16-bit gap, I mean, I guess the closest

you get is Boktai. Bacti 1, 2, and 3 for Game Boy Advance. Not quite technically 16-bit, but 16-bit in spirit in most ways that count. They look the part. They're sort of isometric Metal Gear. Mm-hmm. man i forgot about bacti i need to go play some of that good time for it it's summer i can go melt

while playing bacti good times all right so any final thoughts on metal gear's 30th anniversary since you since you came to the series later like 15 years later i guess it doesn't feel quite as much of a reminder of mortality for you as it does for me whereas i'm like oh i was really end of the first Metal Gear when it was brand new on NES. Boy, how to do I feel old. Yeah, but for me,

as someone who has the experience of starting with the newer games and making the decision to go back and look back on those earlier games and finding that they're still just as good now as they were then, with some caveats, I would really recommend

the people seek them out now, because they were included in a Metal Gear Solid 3 subsistence on PS2 and they were also included with MGS3 in the Metal Gear Solid HD collection which is on PS3 and Vita so they're still pretty accessible.

And it's 360 isn't it? Isn't it also on 360? Yes it is. Thank you. That's okay. It's easy to forget that yes there are some Metal Gear games on Microsoft platforms. But yeah those are great versions. They have good localizations. They also have easy modes.

One of the major caveats with these older games is that they're pretty brutally difficult, but don't feel any shame in playing on easy. It makes it a lot smoother, and you can really enjoy what the game is doing. Actually, you know, I'm playing the first Metal Gear on normal mode, and I remember having tried it on Easy before, and I don't really know what the difference is. Is there a difference? Is it just like the damage that enemies do? I'm not finding that normal mode is actually all that difficult in the first game.

Maybe the second game would be a different story. I think your ammo capacity for all weapons goes up and you also take less damage. There's actually a sequence break you can do near the end where you need an oxygen tank to traverse this body of water because your health goes down if you don't have it. But on easy mode, you can just barely skip it without getting the oxygen tank. So that's fun. Yes, okay. I did do that. I did cheat that way. but you have to have like a higher level card to advance so don't you like isn't isn't it's still a dead end you have to have like card seven or eight I think you can still save time by not getting the oxygen tank okay tricky good to know I still need to find the oxygen tank that's actually where I am right now in the game but I'm on normal mode so I think you have to go you have to go all the way down to basement 100 in the final building and that's where the oxygen tank is and then you go all the way back up

up and then go all the way back down. So you can skip that part. Yeah, I still need to find Dr. Petrovich and his daughter and everything. But I'm at that point of the game where it's like in the final third and kind of all the endgame stuff is coming together and big boss is about to have an aneurism at me. Yes. Enjoy Metal Gear One and for everyone else, now this is a great year to do it. It's the 30th anniversary. Yeah, yeah. I definitely recommend picking up the anniversary, or the HD collection on Vita and playing the old games that way, it's such a good way to experience. It is so perfect, just like that little screen, those little tiny pixel men running around trying to kill you. It's such a great experience. It doesn't sound that way when

I describe it that way, but trust me, I swear to God, it's better than it sounds. It's really good. All right, thanks, Kishi. We will talk again, hopefully in a few weeks. Yes, thank you. See you next time. All right. It's good to have dreams, but life isn't always willing to cooperate. Sorry, but the reality is that not everyone can be a cool futuristic space dancing news reporter like Ulala from Space Channel 5. In fact, pretty much no one can't. But you can still find your other dream job with the help of Dice. Dice can help provide insight and guidance about new career directions

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And on the line, I have the one and only Kim Justice. How you doing, Jeremy? Good to be here. I'm doing okay. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. Just, you know, settling into a nice, posy weekend, hopefully. Great. So you said that you wanted to talk about FirePro Wrestling, which is great, because it's something that I can't really talk about. But it seems like you're quite a fan.

So hopefully this will be an opportunity to add some expertise to the show that I am lacking. Okay, hopefully anyway. So I assume this was precipitated by the recent release of Fire Pro Wrestling World for Steam, which is currently in early access. Indeed, it is. Yes, it's been in early access for about a month now, I believe. Has it been that long? Geez. I think so. It feels like it was just a couple of weeks ago. Okay, yeah. Well, that's what happens when you get old. Yeah.

You're just racing toward the grave. It's great. So you seem really impressed by FirePro Wrestling World. You posted your initial thoughts in video and text form when the game first came out. Yes, I did. I assume you've been playing it a lot since then. So how has it held up in the past month or so? What's changed with it? What's, I don't know, what are your thoughts?

Just fill us in. Well, it's been holding up pretty fine over the past months. They've been updating it pretty regularly. It has to be said, when it first came out, I mean, there was still a lot of bugs in it. It was still a really good version of Firepro right off the plate, but there's just some little things they had to tweak with the logic. And there still is some, and they want to change the UI of it in some ways, because it's all very basic at the moment.

moment. And but they've kept on, and not just like fixing bugs and that, but adding a new arenas, as well as new moves have been added. And hopefully, some point this month, Spike will be adding the ability to put in custom MP3s for wrestler entrances, which I'm really looking forward to. So I kind of feel like bugs and just the occasional sort of weirdness is sort of a fire pro, I wouldn't say trademark, but I feel like it kind of comes with a terror because the games are so complex and have so many moving parts and so much customization. It does a little, yes. I mean, especially when it comes to creating wrestlers and things like that, you do have to,

I mean, a lot of it is down to how you create the wrestler logic, for example. I mean, it's so easy if you kind of, like, you might just innocuously say, oh, I'm going to just make a wrestler do a chin lock near the end of the match, something like that. But then at the end of the match, if they do a chin lock due to the way he fire, Pro works as a wrestling game, that can end up actually winning the match, which I think is something they, it's not really something they can fix because that's just the way the FirePro engine works. I mean, people have said about it, but in the end, it just comes down to how

people create wrestlers, which has been a learning process for, I mean, not just people who have used FirePro before, but also the new people who have been attracted to the game and are creating their own edits. Yeah, so I interviewed the producer of the game, I think Tomoyuki Matsumoto, yeah, a couple of months ago. And he said that they were building an entirely new engine for this version of the game. It sounds like it still kind of uses, has some of the same foibles as the old fire pros. Oh yeah, it's still the same. I mean, basically I think that the old engine of the old engine of the game was basically,

it was still the same engine that had been, you know, worked on and upgraded for God knows how long. He said it was, yeah, he said it was the same engine that they started with on PC engine like 25 years ago. Yeah, exactly. That's a long time to keep tweaking the same kind of underpinning. But he said they started over. So I'm surprised, I guess, to hear that, you know, some of the quirks of just the workings of the series have remained the same. Do you think that they left those in deliberately? Yes, I think so. I mean, I think there's just some things like that essential to the way that the game works. That, you know, if they weren't there, then it wouldn't

really be fire pro. I mean, the thing with such a series, because it's such a niche series, even if you're building your new engine, that there's, I don't think you can really make drastic changes to it, because if those changes didn't come off, then people would just be, well, not very happy. Yeah, there's always the question when you kind of go back to a beloved series and start tweaking with it, like, what can you change? What do you need to change? And that seems to be something that has been, I would say, almost like an existential crisis. just in speaking to Mr. Matsumoto, you know, like they, he talked about how they've experimented with more modernized graphics, like a 3D engine and that sort of thing, but ultimately decided that the forest sort of isometric perspective is just what FirePro is. And that, if you change that, it stops being that series. But at the same time, like, you know, I wonder how much that look drives away people who just, you know, like would be interested in FirePro if they actually are.

understood it, what it was about, but they see it and are like, whoa, that looks like some old garbage. It's true. It's a fair point. It certainly is, you know, very fair to say. I mean, the funny thing is, I mean, Spike, I think about 2004 actually did do what was kind of a 3D spin-off of FirePro. They did a series called a Kin of Coliseum. Okay, I've heard of that, yeah. And, I mean, they were good to do this time. I mean, there was different from Firepro in many race, but it still had the sort of central timing-based grappling system emphasis on simulating matches as opposed to being an arcade-style game. And they did really well with that.

So they have proven, I mean, although we're talking, obviously, 14 years ago now, they've proven that they can do 3D wrestling games. But yeah, I mean, FirePro is just what people expect. I mean, I guess they still have to feel that, you know, with, I mean, Japanese wrestling as it's still been kind of a niche thing. I mean, it's on the rise from what it was, sort of back in the late 2000s when it was really in a hole, but it's still not something with a big audience,

that they're probably better off just keeping things as it is with the forced isometric, and maybe later we'll see the return of another spin-off depending on how well this game does. Because I don't think we'll see another fire pro again. They want to update this one. Yeah, this one seems to be sort of, of like an ongoing concern. I'm sure

eventually they'll do something different. I mean, Destiny was supposed to be like a 10-year project, but hey, here's Destiny 2, like four years later. So, you know, I think that only goes, those plans, you know, kind of have to come up against financial realities.

But there is a lot of potential with this game. You know, like I have zero interest in wrestling myself, but I look at the Fire Pro games and I've tinkered around with them and like there is so much depth to them. And when you add in the customization elements that they're really focusing on with FirePro

world, I feel like, you know, if they can get over that initial hump and sort of convince people like, hey, you know, if you like wrestling, there's something here that's really substantial and great. They can get kind of past that sort of the barrier to entry that the very dated visual style represents. I think this, you know, it has a lot of potential. It's just a question of, you know, people who just kind of casually watch wrestling every weekend, like, how do you communicate to them that this game kind of looks ugly and it doesn't have any characters you know, but it's still awesome. Yeah, it's a difficult one. I mean, because, I mean, yeah, it's not a looker. And that

is, and that is always going to be a big thing for some people. I mean, FirePro is never going to be a mainstream success. I mean, it's sort of biggest time for being a success was in Japan back in the early mid-90s when wrestling was so hot there and it was a big thing then because it had like kind of unofficial recreations of just about every famous wrestler there was in Japan and then some. I mean, it's never, it's never going to get to the stage where it can even come close to competing with a WWE game. But for those, of course, who are more, you know, bigger fans of wrestling I guess and in the wrestling world they tend

to be called smarts normally derisively like smart marks you're just always getting to that the actual critiquing of the matches and so forth that how well it was as a wrestling match as opposed to how it was in the storyline who won who lost I mean for those sort of people

FirePro has a lot to offer because it's the best actual simulation of how a wrestling match generally flows you know you've got your periods of offense and defense on both sides, periods of selling, as it's known, and then the sort of big finish where, you know, everyone's exchanging, you know, the moves. I mean, it's not a game that you really play to just to win. It's a game that you play to kind of put on a good show. That's the

best way to enjoy it. So does the new game, FirePro world, does that have like a heavy story element to speak of? I know that, you know, some of the FirePro games have had a sort of of narrative element and that was kind of how Goichi Suda got started in video games was writing narratives or FirePro. So does this, does this carry that forward or has it pretty much just gone for like, you know, build your own wrestler, make them do crazy stuff and that's pretty much the extent of it? Yeah, no, there hasn't really been much story mode for Firepro, I think, since the SNEST days. I mean, they used to have a Champions Road, which was a Suda's fin. What they do plan to do, which is kind of like

a build-your-own storyline thing, I guess, is they plan to put in a sort of management mode in which you get to sort of build up a federation of wrestlers and you sort of go from show to show. So it's kind of a start, but that's not really quite the same as like the drama that a lot of people like about wrestling. Yeah, I mean, it's more, yeah, it's kind of, yeah,

it's again something more for sort of smarter people, that smart people who, you know, are interested in dealing with, like, building their own federation and, you know, having to deal with that injuries and, you know, maybe a couple of, and you can build, like, feuds based on that, but, yeah, it's not really a storyline. I don't think that's something that's going to happen, unfortunately. So, Kim, what's your own history with the Fire Pro series? It seems like you're pretty knowledgeable about the games. Have you always been a follower? Or did you come in later and kind of travel back in time to pick up on the stuff you missed out on?

I've been a follower of the series for quite a while. I think the first time I played FirePro, it was back in the early 2000s. I played Super Fire Pro Wrestling and X Premium, which was released for the SNS in like 1995. And I kind of went back to that because I was watching a lot of Japanese wrestling at the time. And it was like, oh, here's a Japanese wrestling game. And I mean, for a long time I played it, and it took me a while to get to grips with it because it does have a, when you're so used to games that are button mashy, like wrestling games. it's very difficult to get used to the timing system

but I still used to play it quite a lot and then the main fire pro that I have a lot of experience with was the one before list which was a fire pro wrestling returns for the PS2 actually I've got that in thinking that 2005 and actually I got my PlayStation 2 modded or flip-topped solely for that game okay

and I must have played that game for a long time you won't even estimate on the number of hours i couldn't thousands wow okay so so you came into fire pro world with pretty high expectations i assume oh yes i mean especially because i mean it was such a surprise when the news of a new fire pro came out because for all that pretty much every known everyone knew fire pro returns was supposed to be the last fire pro and obviously spike had some financial difficulties japanese wrestling went into fireman financial difficulties itself. No one was expecting, I think, in the community a new fire pro

until the announcement was made. We were probably just content to just stick with returns, as good as it is. But, yeah, it was certainly something that was a shock, and yeah, expectations were very high. So as someone so steeply invested in the FirePro series, and especially the most recent game prior to this, how do you feel world holds up? I mean, you kind of commented on that a little bit,

but I'm curious, like, does it really, do you feel like it lives up to the series standards? What do you think it could do better? What would you like to see, you know, added to Fire Pro World? Okay. Do I think it holds up to the standard of the series? Yeah, definitely. I think that pretty much when I looked at a box,

I was like, oh, well, this is pretty much a lot like Fire Pro returns. It's, you know, it's still the same really good game and all the good things about FirePro returns are pretty much still there in my mind. As for things I would like to see added to it, I mean, I'd like to see sort of certain things in Fire Pro that haven't really been there before, maybe even some new match types and so on, because, I mean, generally Fire Pro is very focused on straight one-on-one tag team wrestling. You get a couple of things, like you get the sort of landmine death match and barbed wire stuff, but those are only two match types.

I mean, I'd like to see more things like, you know, maybe use some like foreign objects, like being able to break a table or maybe even have a ladder match or something like that. And certainly better cage matches as well, because that's never really worked out. So it's just little things. I mean, I just want them to keep on updating this for as long as they can. And, you know, making it as good a document of the wrestling world that's, you know, always been added to as people come in, as people innovate in wrestling. So are you actively participating in the FirePro community and sending these suggestions their way?

Because I know that they are really interested in picking up feedback and, you know, developing the game further based on kind of like requests and wish lists from players. And that, you know, they're going to get all of that in place before committing this to like a console version. Yeah. I mean, I do like to lurk around the Fire Pro community. I mean, I wouldn't consider myself a big part of it. I mean, I've posted on some places in the past. But, yeah, I mean, I know that those are suggestions that people have made. And, I mean, yeah, it's certainly something I'd like to add my voice to, just, you know, in my own channels, so to speak. Do you have any plans for further coverage of FirePro,

either through your own video channel or on Retronauts? Certainly on Retronauts. It's something that, especially when there's, like, major changes to the series that I'll definitely be covering. probably more on Retronauts now as opposed to my channel, although I imagine that whenever I do a live stream, it'll be one of the first games that gets picked up, because it's a fun game to just, you know,

chill back with a bunch of people and just watch play out, especially because, I mean, it's not just that there's so many, like, accurate representations of real-life wrestlers. There's a lot of silly stuff, too, that you can kind of have fun with, like, the whole federation of wrestlers that are just entirely based off a bears.

for example. Yeah, you get that Bam Bam Beggalow and CM bear John Cena bear and they're just all bare versions of like those wrestlers. Okay.

So, yeah, I guess that's probably about all I have in mind. Any final thoughts on FirePro world or just FirePro in general before we head off and call it an episode? Okay. My general thoughts on FirePro is that, you know, I always say to people who might be interested in it, you know, if you've ever, you know, been frustrated at kind of how stale the WWE games are that always come out

every year, just a series that just has no progression and probably looks like that's going to be the case list year as well, you know, give Fire Pro a chance, you know, it may not be the biggest looker, but if you like actually watching wrestling, it's the best way to actually simulate it without, you know, breaking your own bones or anything. Yeah, no backyard wrestling. No, no, nothing. All right, thanks a lot, Kim. Where can everyone find you on the internet

as we wrap up this episode? Okay, well, I can be found on the internet. If you search a Kim Justice on YouTube or go to YouTube.com slash Kimball Justice, you'll be able to find me there where I tend to release a video most weeks, usually a documentary of some sort, old videos about the UK European computer scene,

and of course you can find me on Retronauts where I tend to write articles most days of the week. All right. Great. And as for myself, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite. And of course, at Retronauts.com. Retronauts you can find on iTunes on Podcast One and in the Podcast One app. We are supported through Patreon. Patreon.com slash Retronauts. And I think that's about it. So thanks again, Kim. And I'm sure we'll be in touch again in a few weeks for more thoughts on your favorite games or not favorite games, as the case may be. kind of hit your whims at the time. Okay, no problem. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again.

Geico presents eyewitness interviews with inanimate objects. This is Brian Bruno live on the scene of a recent windstorm here to describe the event, a chest of drawers. There's a storm howling outside, so I thought I'd stay in and watch a rom-com. Minutes into the flick a tree branch slams to the window. Were you hurt? I just got a scratch on my chest Your chest of drawers can't help you in a windstorm, but the Geico Insurance Agency can help you get covered for personal property damage. Call Geico to see how affordable homeowner's insurance can be. And caller number nine for one million dollars. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10.

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Maine, Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder.

I'm Ed Donahue.