Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 88: Lumines (feat. Tetsuya Mizuguchi)

Episode Date: June 1, 2018

Jeremy follows up on last year's interview with Enhance Games boss and all-around video game design savant Tetsuya Mizuguchi, this time exploring the origins of musical PSP puzzle masterpiece Lumines. Just in time for the new remaster!

This week in Retronauts, we're shining. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm Jeremy Parrish, and I am in Kyoto, Japan, getting ready to. for Bit Summit. And before the show begins, I was able to talk Tetsuya Miziguchi to meet with me again and finish up the interview. We started last year when I was at Bit Summit. So, Ms. Thank you very much for taking time right before a busy show. Thank you for coming again. My pleasure. There's still a lot of great games that you've worked on that I'd like to talk about. And some of them are freshly relevant, actually. We didn't make it to games like Luminous in our conversation last year. And now that's

you know, that's become part of the conversation again, thanks to the new version you're working on. So I'm excited to try out that game, but I'm also excited to talk to you about the creative process for the original version. So, yeah, instead of wasting time on a setup, let's just jump straight into the conversation. You know, I'm going to be able to be. So, yeah, last year when we spoke, we covered a lot of the work you did with Sega pretty much up through the Dreamcast era. And, you know, before we move on from that, I was just kind of curious to hear your take on what it was like working at Sega during the Dreamcast year. Because from my perspective, you know, as an outsider looking in, I feel like it was just a period of complete creativity and freedom. And I don't know if that is really like the experience you had during the Dreamcast era.

but it really seems like, you know, if people had a great idea, they could pursue it and publish it, and the result was just all these really great games on a very, very unique platform. But then, you know, it's true that, you know, Sega having this new platform and the name itself had carried some way,

you know, it was called the Dreamcast. It, in order for this new platform, to succeed, we were tasked with new challenges. Content had to goals and seek out sort of new, unique, and even sort of try to widen that audience. So myself included, we challenged ourselves to come up with very unique and original games, such as Res and Space Channel 5. And I hope that uniqueness really came through and shined, you know, on that console.

So you can say that there is definitely a push towards the out of us, the developers, the teams. But quickly, sort of, to fast forward to when it was decided that Dreamcast was no more and that Sega was going to become a third-party publisher. You know, there could have been an option to perhaps stay, but where I stood was that I wanted to challenge myself to sort of newer area of creativity or challenge my own creativity, not within an organization, but really my own.

And so it was a decision that I made at that time to leave Sega and start my own company at that time. Was that a difficult choice to make? You'd been with Sega for nearly a decade and really kind of gotten your starting games that way. So I feel like it must have been, you know, a tough choice to leave the company and start out on your own.

Well, of course, you're just so, yes. course. It was not an easy decision. I believe at that time I had already put in 12 or so years at the company at Sega and to think that I was to kind of start all over again and not just start all over in terms of creating games, but really almost from scratch from zero. And so probably a lot more sort of nervousness surrounding what that was going to be like. Having made that decision, I knew that that was the way that I was, you know, going to pursue. As you went out and started your own studio, what were your goals with Q entertainment? Like, what did you hope to accomplish besides, you know, obviously just making video games?

If I look back at that time, what I was hoping to accomplish was that I wanted to challenge myself to creating or conceptualizing the games. Kind of all kinds as to maybe a wide of a choice of words, but really just wanted to see what other games I wanted to challenge myself. But at the root of it, there was definitely an audio-visual sort of core to what I was thinking. So if I take res as an example, it would have been to the strategic concept forward, you know, what it would be like to push that forward. That was an aspect that I knew I wanted to work on. I didn't know exactly what kind of shape or form it would take. It wasn't in that sense. And I also knew that important element of technology was going to come into play

and that it was going to help shape what to go into. And so if you were to kind of put a compass on the table in front of me like I knew which direction I was headed and I had a sense or feeling that there was something as long as I faced that direction and pursued it and continue to explore it um that was the direction that I was headed so it was a little bit of a um adventure for me so yeah you mentioned that uh you know your games uh you have a very strong audio visual component to them and you wanted to focus on new technology and I really feel like Luminous, the first game that you published under Q,

really does embody that. It's a very audio-visual-focused game, and it really showed off the appeal of the PSP hardware. Was that, I don't know, like, when you were working on the project, was that the first game concept that you came up with a Q? Or was that something that came along later? Like, how, what was the creative process in coming up with Luminous and developing it?

So when I was working on Rez and Space Channel 5, so this is, we're talking about the PS2 Dreamcast days, it's sort of hard to think about it now because it's there and we don't even think twice about it, but there was really no way for you to plug in your headphones. and to have a real deep sort of connection with the music element that was in any video game. And I felt that the power of music in games was not being or expressed in the way that it should. The technology wasn't there.

And looking back, I think it's okay to say that. because of the lack of you being able to listen to, you know, putting on a good set of headphones and really being sort of intimate with the audio quality and the audio output that you're getting out of the game experience, that that wasn't there. I think it's okay to say that the PlayStation two days and the Dreamcast days in terms of audio experience was kind of on the poor side. the environment just wasn't there and so when the PSP was announced and Sony themselves sort of positioned it as this is the new sub-walkman it's an interactive walkman and you can basically take it anywhere listen to music it was the anywhere everywhere you can play and so that

of this um was a huge inspiration coming up with this concept for luminous uh that's a definite yes the handheld itself really pushed the sort of concept and the idea forward for me as i said earlier i wanted to really focus on the audio visual experience and while i had something like res in mind when I was presented with the PSP, I can take it into a direction where you can still have that audio visual experience, but something that anyone can maybe play. It's not as intimidating and anyone can play you could carry it around pull it out of your pocket

and play any time and the more you play the more you sort of feel good is what we say a lot with the games that I've been making but you're as if you're listening to music but also playing a game at the same time so from there

in terms of coming up with the poor con concept for luminous. At the Luminous, you went with a puzzle game style, which is something that I don't think you had, you'd worked on before, you know, you look at Space Channel 5 and it's a rhythm game, you look at Res, and it's really kind of a shooter. cigarette championship rally is a racing game so this was a new approach why did you go with a puzzle game

when you were kind of making your debut on PSP with Luminous kind of, you know, puzzle game to make sure. So believe it or not, I always wanted to at some point in my

career I felt like I wanted to creating a puzzle game. So it was a isn't a brand new idea or something that just popped in front of me. And the reason for that is that, you know, puzzle games are simple. It is not simple, easy to make. It's a very complex in trying to perfect a puzzle game.

Perhaps a shooter or some other games, not to say that they're but it feels like there is a path to how you would make a shooter or a different kind of game. What I'm trying to say is that with a puzzle game, start creating the rules from zero from scratch. And so it's a very tedious, very complex, and very complicated process in trying to come. up with the right set of rules for a great puzzle game. And I've always wanted to challenge myself at some point in doing that. So it was just kind of the right opportunity to make that happen. Yeah. And in terms of simplicity, there was also an interest, if I were to bring in that whole synesthesia sort of element, is that

Well, puzzle games seem, like I said, easy to play. There is an intersect that I wanted to challenge myself and see how best we can achieve this. And what that intersect is, is that you feel like you're playing or creating music, so you feel that rhythm. But on the other hand, you have this achievement in your clearing these blocks, where you basically you're progressing in the game, right? And so really simply and almost like purely, I wanted to see how we can, you know, two elements and how we can perfectly sort of balance it

and perfectly intersect and how they were intertwined together as one game. So I think it really started from that thought. Yeah, at this point, You've worked on quite a few puzzlers, and I think it's interesting that you say puzzle games, you know, are simple to play, but not simple to create. And I've played many puzzle games that just don't work. In your opinion, what is the secret to finding that balance? Like, in your mind, what makes a good puzzle game? Well, I don't know how many ways, you know, what's the secret?

I don't think there is a right or maybe a wrong or answer, but for me, at least, the sort of thought process or the way that I view or maybe approach puzzle games and how I personally kind of went through the process is it's how a human's right brain, and left brain may function. So let's just say one side takes the more logical side. The other side takes the more sensibilities, sense, and maybe the emotions and everything that is not sort of written. So if I were to sort of replace the logical and the sensibility and emotional sides, they would come out to.

One side is the brain that thinks, and the other side is the brain that feels. And so when it comes to how do we marry these two, how can I marry these two elements, but at the same time enhance the experience, what you're experiencing, what you're doing and what you're feeling, And I felt that that was a very important element when we were just designing these puzzle games.

And so going back to logic, logic is a set of rules, and they don't change, even if the output on a screen or a handheld console, TV monitor, even if the resolution increases, the logic doesn't necessarily change. But if resolution changes and you're sort of feeling or sensing something from that output, then the experience itself is enhanced and maybe you feel better or you are seeing and feeling and, yeah, the entire sort of experience enhances. So I was just trying to really think of like, how can we marry the think side and the feel side and trying to marry those two, but having a sort of enhanced experience by marrying those two sides and two elements together.

Yeah, I really see that marriage you're talking about of left and right brain in luminous because there is the very sort of left brain satisfaction of clearing away those blocks and organizing things, but at the same time, the game almost turns you into a DJ where you're you're creating music and creating almost like, you know, transitions between songs. And so there's this kind of creative element to it that is also very satisfying. So with that in mind, you know, music is so critical to luminous and to the experience.

And in my mind, like the track list itself, the song selections are so integral to that game. What was the chicken and egg relationship there? Like, did you come up with the mechanics first and then choose songs to fit into that? Or, you know, were you inspired by the music? Like, were there song selections that you were really driven to incorporate into the game that then shaped the mechanics and the direction of the game? First, it's, you know, the mechanics is, you know? The chicken and the egg, which came first.

So I would definitely have to say that the game mechanics came first. We're designing the game mechanics. What we do, or what we did, is that we started experimenting with very, very simple sounds. Why we do that is that we're testing out the game mechanics, layering in some very simple sounds. and we have to first confirm that the element of fun is there without sort of dressing it up. We have to make sure that the potential and the possibility can be confirmed.

And then from that point moving forward, once we confirm that this is fun, then we maybe add more sounds, but at the same time, then we start increasing the resolution. As we're doing that in the process, we are, you know, a lot of these are floating in our heads and we have these sort of images of what kind of songs, what kind of music would really go well with the mechanics that we're building. In the case of luminous, as I think everyone knows very well, the first. first skin or the first song, Shining.

I think that that was a great choice for the opening. It's very emotional. It's very sort of representative of what luminous is as an experience. But how we sort of met or came across shining is that while we were still working on the game mechanics and, you know, adding in the sounds and testing, we would sort of think about what should come in the, let's say, the first phase, what about the middle part of the game and what about maybe towards the end of the experience? And as we were talking about these things, we came across and quote-unquote met this training by Mondagrosso. And so we started

talking, you know, approached them and started talking about how we can best sort of fit or welcome the song into the game. And so that was really the process of trying to music that would go well with the game mechanics. Thank you. From the player perspective, Luminous is one of the few games I've played where I played, and I just can't imagine adding anything to it. It just feels very complete, very whole. So I'm sure as a creator, your perspective varies, differs, because when you create something, you can always.

see, like, ways, oh, I wish I had done this. So I'm curious, like, what have you tried to change and improve on when you've revisited Luminus for sequels and online editions and that sort of thing? You know, years after we've released all these different versions, I can say this now, but I think at those moments that we were working on a sequel or the next one, And what we were really doing is we were experimenting for what we can do at that time or experimenting really for the future. And what I mean by that is, for example, for Luminous 2, we were like, okay, well, here are these music videos. can we really synthesize these with the game mechanics?

How is that going to work out? And so we experimented that. You can call it as maybe just trials of what we were doing. We didn't know exactly how it was going to turn out when we were doing it, but we were really just trying to push the limit as sort of core forward by integrating different elements. So for, let's say, electronic symphony, we had a brand new hardware, the PSPEDA, with high resolution. So we wanted to see what the output of a luminous experience would look like on the new handheld. But going back to luminous, as you sort of said, and I tend to agree that the original luminous, had all the sort of basic ingredients in there. It was very sort of perfected way for waste.

I guess that's kind of the easiest way for me to put it in or say that how luminous was presented. And so I have really strong feelings towards the original luminous and how. we were able to execute and deliver on those core concepts that we came up with. And so I think that sort of naturally led to a desire to bring the original luminous back in a way that we are, we have announced that luminous remastered is coming out in June. So what I really hope for is that there is a brand new audience that gets to, play and experience Luminous for the first time,

but also for those fans and players who had played it on previous consoles, previous releases, that they get to play it on a current Chen system. So I'm really looking forward to the release of Luminous remastered. Yeah, I had prepared a lot of questions about many of your other games

that came after Luminous, but were running low on time and I know we both need to get over to Bit Summit. So I guess this is just going to be a luminous interview and we'll kind of wrap up here. But before we end this, I did want to talk a little bit about the remaster. You said that, you know, the sequels that you created, those were experiments

and that you're going back to the original luminous with the luminous remastered. So, you know, with that in mind, like how have those experiments with the sequels informed the work you're doing with Luminous remastered. Like going back, you know, what is it now, 13 years to that first game. Like, how are you able to bring your experiences with the follow-ups to remaking the game that started it all for new platforms?

Yes, it's obviously were a lot of, I think, there are obviously were a lot of, I think, learnings and trials and experiments that we did post the original luminous. But there are a few things that kind of informed me around this time recently that helped me decide to bring back. the original reminisce. One is actually, it's gone by, but I have always kept on hearing from the original women's fans that they still want to play it in the way that they did, and the way that it was very familiar to them, but they either don't carry around or play anything on their

PSP anymore, or they don't have their PSP anymore, or it's broken. I'm not going to buy a PSP key just to play lumeness and so I kept on hearing that from sort of the fan community side and then I always wanted to I was telling

myself that if I were to kind of bring back the original luminous there's got to be something new maybe not in the form of content or skins or music but like there's got to be some sort of new element to it

and that would help me create that opportunity you know for myself to bring it back and so when the switch was announced and we were presented with the HD Rumble

the haptics I just felt like this was the right time to see what we can do if we brought back the original luminous and by that what I mean is like very obviously important

And if you could feel the sound, and I tend to say that there's like texture to sounds. And so if you could really feel that while you're playing and the higher the sort of, you know, experience or the enhanced experience you get, the better sort of feeling and overall experience you get by playing luminous, that's fast for. And so I had a good sense that it would work with the switch. So that was kind of a decision. And for the other consoles, like I said earlier, I wanted to obviously bring it back for those who had played it back in the days, but also presented to a new audience. Obviously, all the consoles are running out 4K now.

And so just seeing, being able to visually see how sort of beautifully Luminous can be displayed on the screen and having that rich audio-visual experience means a lot to the game. So it didn't take me very long to make that decision to bring a Luminous remaster to all the consoles at this time. Thank you. With Switch there, you know, a big part of the system's appeal is how easy it is to, you know, take off the joycons and have a bunch of people play together all at once. Are you taking advantage of that, or do you really see, you know, luminous, the original luminous, as a handheld experience, first and foremost, for a single player?

Well, first of the, that's, that's true to say that the, Fundamental core experience that we designed for luminous, the original luminous, doesn't change. Even though we're bringing it back and you have versus two-player, you can play it on table-top mode or TV mode, you can have people watching it behind you, your friends or family, as you play, yes, there are different. ways to now enjoy it, the output, but I think the core sort of fundamental spot that luminous is at, is that it's a single player experience that was originally meant to be, you know, played as a handheld experience. So that really doesn't change, but it is true that now bring it to the to these consoles and being able to have people around your friends around you. And maybe, you know, some of your friends are just feeling like they're listening to music

that you're playing or one of your other friends is really just getting this very visual experience with music just coming in from the background. Anyone can sort of have their own way of this. So that is an added sort of bonus that we can. didn't have before, whether it's that or playing versus two player against a friend or having online leaderboards. You know, there are various ways to enjoy the sort of competitive aspect of the game. But at its core, at its root, I think it's, I think it's okay to say that it was born

to be a single player sort of handheld experience first and foremost. And so Luminus Remastered is out in June for Switch. Yes, it's coming out. Sorry, I'm answering this, but just so you know, it's coming out June 26. Okay. All right. Well, I'll look forward to it. So I think we'll end here.

Thank you very much for your time, Ms. And Kyoko, thank you for interpreting again. Hopefully, I've got all these other questions to ask about your other games and the other, you know, the creative process there. So hopefully we can meet up again sometime and work through those as well. but I'll we'll wrap here maybe next time to be continued exactly okay okay thanks again thank you John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John it, John and John it, John it, John it, John and Johnny. And caller number nine for $1 million. 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. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Oh, gosh.

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