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16
Chrono News / Re: Masato Kato returns to his roots
« on: September 23, 2011, 03:33:57 am »Quote from: FaustWolf
So, if he's re-tracing his steps in the industry, he has to make it back to Chrono sometime, right?We can only hope, FaustWolf. We can only hope.
Man, I'd forgotten how snazzy the cutscenes were for 8-bit games. Actually, the direction, scoring, editing, etc. is pretty good even by modern cutscene standards. There's a hell of a lot more craftsmanship in that video than any cinematic in the Team Ninja games.
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Chrono News / Masato Kato returns to his roots
« on: September 23, 2011, 02:35:22 am »
As some of you may know, Masato Kato's first gig in the game industry, prior to his involvement at Gainax and then Square, was at Tecmo, where he worked on the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy - games widely considered to be a milestone in video game storytelling for their use of cinematic cutscenes - as an artist and writer. As some of you may also know, when the series was rebooted in the 2000s under the stewardship of Team Ninja and legendarily deranged game designer Tomonobu Itagaki, Masato Kato was nowhere to be found, and while the games themselves were excellent, the storytelling components were - to put it kindly - not so impressive.
Well, according to Yosuke Hayashi, Itagaki's successor and current head of Team Ninja, Kato is back. The studio seems to be interested in making the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 3 more story-intensive than its predecessors (a move which I admit I was initially quite critical of), and to try and make sure they do it right they're going back to the source. According to Hayashi, there will be plenty of throwbacks to the NES games, including multiple characters making a comeback in for the first time in 3D. This is basically Kato's biggest gig since Final Fantasy XI, so I hope it goes well for him and he can get the opportunity to work on more high-profile titles instead of the DS and cellphone games that have comprised most of his career for the better part of the last decade.
For those curious, the Hayashi interview is here, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is currently scheduled to be released in the first quarter of next year for the PS3 and Xbox 360, with an enhanced port coming later in the year as a launch title for the Wii U. Anyone interested in checking out the previous Ninja Gaiden games can download all three of the original NES titles with which Kato was involved on the Wii's Virtual Console for five bucks a pop, and the 3D games (Ninja Gaiden/Black/Sigma for Xbox and PS3, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for DS, and Ninja Gaiden II/Sigma 2 for 360 and PS3) should all be easy to find in stores. If you like flashy, fast-paced action games and are up for a serious challenge, I highly suggest giving them a spin.
Well, according to Yosuke Hayashi, Itagaki's successor and current head of Team Ninja, Kato is back. The studio seems to be interested in making the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 3 more story-intensive than its predecessors (a move which I admit I was initially quite critical of), and to try and make sure they do it right they're going back to the source. According to Hayashi, there will be plenty of throwbacks to the NES games, including multiple characters making a comeback in for the first time in 3D. This is basically Kato's biggest gig since Final Fantasy XI, so I hope it goes well for him and he can get the opportunity to work on more high-profile titles instead of the DS and cellphone games that have comprised most of his career for the better part of the last decade.
For those curious, the Hayashi interview is here, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is currently scheduled to be released in the first quarter of next year for the PS3 and Xbox 360, with an enhanced port coming later in the year as a launch title for the Wii U. Anyone interested in checking out the previous Ninja Gaiden games can download all three of the original NES titles with which Kato was involved on the Wii's Virtual Console for five bucks a pop, and the 3D games (Ninja Gaiden/Black/Sigma for Xbox and PS3, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for DS, and Ninja Gaiden II/Sigma 2 for 360 and PS3) should all be easy to find in stores. If you like flashy, fast-paced action games and are up for a serious challenge, I highly suggest giving them a spin.
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: If you ever met Masato Kato, what would you ask him ?
« on: August 18, 2011, 12:34:34 am »
Why he is no longer working on large-scale, ambitious games, whether he wants to go back to doing so, and if so how he plans on making it happen.
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« on: July 22, 2011, 01:29:46 am »
Elaborating on Dragon Quest, I think after playing a bit you will come to appreciate Yuji Horii's influence on Chrono Trigger. It's hard to pin down, but much of the tone and style of the game (apart from the Toriyama character designs) were clearly influenced by him, in ways that are much easier to appreciate if one has played a bit of Dragon Quest.
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Chrono News / Re: Chrono Cross Soundtrack released on Itunes
« on: July 19, 2011, 11:16:20 pm »
I was going to post this here a few days ago; looks like I was beaten to the punch. Anyone who doesn't already own this soundtrack needs to buy it now or forever forfeit their claim to being a fan of video game music.
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Games which are similar to Chrono Trigger
« on: July 19, 2011, 11:14:28 pm »
Good to see they've been mentioned already, but Xenogears and Radiant Historia are probably good places to start. I'd also recommend checking out Secret of Mana and the Dragon Quest series, too.
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Chrono News / Play For Japan: The Album (featuring Mitsuda!)
« on: July 11, 2011, 01:48:22 am »
Developer Grasshopper Manufacture has just facilitated the release of Play For Japan: The Album, a charity album featuring contributions from 18 great video game composers, including Akira "Silent Hill" Yamaoka, Nobuo "Final Fantasy" Uematsu, Koji "Super Mario Bros." Kondo, and of course, the one and only Yasunori Mitsuda, who contributes an arrangement of the track "Dimension Break" from Chrono Cross. It's available now on iTunes for $10, and 100% of proceeds will go to disaster relief for earthquake victims in Japan. It's great music for a great cause, so everyone out there is advised to buy, buy, buy, and tell all your friends to do the same!
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Site Updates / Re: The Doors of Destiny (could not be broken)
« on: July 06, 2011, 01:19:25 am »It's too bad that not even Mitsuda himself condoned the interview. Hmm. If not Mitsuda, perhaps some other Chrono Trigger/Cross artists would be more willing? Perhaps Masato Kato or Yasuki Honne?On a related topic, Masato Kato seems to have closed his old Twitter account, and if he has a new one, I haven't found it yet. I've found another account that I think is Yasuyuki Honne (he identifies himself as Honne and follows Monolith Soft, Nintendo and Soraya Saga) though, not knowing Japanese, I can't confirm it.
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Site Updates / Re: Breaking Down the Doors of Destiny, Vol. 1: Outreach to Mitsuda
« on: June 20, 2011, 02:28:14 am »
While we're on the topic of underappreciated Mitsuda songs, here is a gem I just recently discovered, entirely by accident. He wrote it for a CD of childrens' songs, but I can totally imagine it being an ending theme to some lost RPG epic that never was:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsqWwmhcp_Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsqWwmhcp_Y
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Site Updates / Re: Breaking Down the Doors of Destiny, Vol. 1: Outreach to Mitsuda
« on: June 16, 2011, 02:27:19 am »
How are you planning to contact him? Facebook, Twitter, business email, or what?
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Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion / Re: Was Chrono Cross too easy ?
« on: June 16, 2011, 01:26:31 am »
Yes. The battle system has marvelous nuances and complexities that most players will never get to experience because they'll never be required to incorporate any strategy more complex than "1, 2, 3, Element". Someone ought to make a modded version of the game that ups the difficulty level, like they did for Final Fantasy Tactics.
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Site Updates / Re: Breaking Down the Doors of Destiny, Vol. 1: Outreach to Mitsuda
« on: June 14, 2011, 01:25:29 am »
So, uh, wha's happening with this? Have the questions been translated and sent to Mitsuda yet?
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Chrono News / Re: French Chrono TV Special, Current Price of Radical Dreamers Cartridge
« on: May 27, 2011, 11:55:45 pm »
Which of those cartridges is Radical Dreamers? I can't spot it.
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Polling / Re: If Chrono Cross were to be remade, which system would you want it on?
« on: May 15, 2011, 03:30:39 pm »
3DS would probably be the most practical and the most enjoyable. It would be easy for SquEnix to translate the assets and interface over to the 3DS with moderate improvements, and those beautiful Yasuyuki Honne backgrounds could look breathtaking retooled for stereoscopic 3D. Also being on a Nintendo system would open up the possibility that they could collaborate with Monolith Soft, a.k.a. where much of the Cross staff (Honne included) are now.
Hm... I wonder, with it's mixed ratings and views, would CC be remade?Mixed ratings? Chrono Cross may have divided fans, but not critics; the game got high scores across the board and has a 94 on Metacritic.
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General Discussion / Re: Video Game Discussion Thread
« on: April 30, 2011, 05:57:02 pm »
If anyone still cared about Final Fantasy XV, this might be big news! [/ohsnap]