![]() How much freedom did you have in making design decisions back then?Īyano Koshiro: Usually, I could just do what I wanted. He would always ask me to play Guile because he had the most trouble against him. Sometimes we went to the game centres to play against each other. My big brother really liked Street Fighter II, too, he liked playing Zangief. You had a Street Fighter II machine in the office, didn't you?Īyano Koshiro: We sure did! Guile was my favourite character. If you find something you like, you just put it on. Every manga I liked kind of flowed into my games – again, especially with Streets of Rage 2. It controlled great, and that's why it was important to us that Streets of Rage 2 did the same. For example, I loved Street Fighter II back then. Mostly I did it all on my own, and basically, every game I worked on at the time reflected the media I was consuming at the time. But even then, she was usually still working after the last train left that night.Īyano Koshiro: I was extremely focused on my work. Hitoshi Ariga: I often joined her in the afternoon to help. I was often only finished sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning. Then around 22:00 in the evening, I usually treat myself to a late-night snack. ![]() I wake up in the morning, and at 10:00, work starts. basically, I worked on my games from the morning until the evening. we are now in 1991 now, what does an average day look like for you?Īyano Koshiro: At that time, I was 21 years old. I think it shows in the games I worked on. I bought two anime magazines every month. Later, Neon Genesis Evangelion was also a very important thing, of course. Many anime and manga that somehow had a military background. Space Battleship Yamato I liked very much. Many games from the '80s and '90s have a lot in common with the manga and anime that were popular at the time did that influence you as well?Īyano Koshiro: Yes, I read and collected a lot, too, of course. I cut them out and made scrapbooks out of them. There also were a lot of magazines and books about games back then, and they often had artwork of the games. Hitoshi Ariga: At that time there were no schools for game design or anything.Īyano Koshiro: I never went to a classical art school or anything like that, either. It's not that I necessarily wanted to work in this industry, I just came along because it interested me.Īnd did you go on to study design or something like that?Īyano Koshiro: No, I taught myself all that, I never went to a design school or anything like that. I often went there with him just for fun. My big brother was already working there part-time. At that time, there was a game company called Nihon Falcom in Tachikawa, not so far from here. I don't think I ever worked with drawing paper. Hitoshi Ariga: Wow, you really had a lot of money back then! Image: Damien McFerran / Time ExtensionĪnd then, what were the first practical steps you took?Īyano Koshiro: I started directly on a PC. And some of the graphics on that system were really beautiful and complex. I owned a PC at the time, I think it was a PC-88, and it could do a full eight colours. That's a beautifully designed boss, and I wanted to draw that myself. And one thing I also always wanted to trace, or rather pixelate, was the Big Core, this iconic boss from Gradius. So part of me always wanted to draw in that style, that typical look of the home computer games of the time. I really liked the look of PC games at the time, and I just loved games. Time Extension: You took your first steps into game development at the age of 16 – how did that come about?Īyano Koshiro: I think I just started because I wanted to draw. Sitting down with Ayano and her husband Hitoshi in a small restaurant near the office of the family-founded company Ancient, we have a long, relaxed talk over delicious food – and in the process, we get a glimpse of how games we consider absolute classics nowadays came to be.Īyano Koshiro has left a deep mark in the gaming world and effortlessly joins the upper echelons of game developers in the golden '90s – and here's her story, in her own words. Needless to say, we were pretty excited to meet a creator with such a pedigree to her name. Alongside this glittering career, Ayano has often worked together with her (now) husband Hitoshi Ariga, who has also had a hand in many a classic game and today works as a designer and mangaka, mainly for the Rockman / Mega Man and Pokémon series. ![]() Then there is Story of Thor (known as Beyond Oasis in North America), in which she combined a Zelda-style action adventure with spectacular combat. ![]()
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