2d moe robot girl just tryin' to survive in a 3d world, beep boop! ^.^~

Founder and Director of DemureSoft


gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

I just idly clicked the latest Sakurai/GCCX collab video and was not expecting Arino to lead with a question about friggin' Densen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfh0oq-_nJQ

for context, Densen was a game announced by SCEJ as a PS2 launch title that never came out and barely existed beyond the little public footage that's out there—it was being led by Kiyoshi Sakai, creator of the Umihara Kawase series, and when I asked him about it years ago, he told me that Sony forced the team to show it off way before they were ready and that they were never able to figure out what it was they were actually trying to make or how it'd work, hence why it never released.

Even so, despite basically living and dying as a single demo reel, it's a game I've seen cited more than a few times as being influential or inspiring to those who saw with, most notably by Keita Takahashi, who says it was a direct inspiration behind Katamari Damacy... not because he played it or knew how it'd work or who was behind it, but just because it looked neat.

(spoiler: Sakurai had no idea what he was talking about)


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in reply to @gosokkyu's post:

Damn now that's a title I haven't thought about in a minute. That was one of the games you had me translate questions about to send him for that interview way back in the day, didn't you? Like my first ever gig with you? The one where the publisher got real huffy on us?

I think it may have been, yeah! I'm trying to remember... did the rep straight change some of the questions on us for that one? I had a few people helping me back then and I remember feeling aggro from multiple liaisons at once and second-guessing whether I was being too bullish or whatever.

I definitely remember that publisher rep trying to translate a bunch of store listings for them, and pushing me to cover some game they were making on the side...

I think that might have been part of it, but the more I think about it, I think they also insisted on seeing your original English to just translate directly for whatever reason. Like somehow I translated them in a way that made them leery which, with less experience, I was genuinely worried about, but looking back now, I'm pretty sure they were just exceptionally weird, even by Japanese publisher PR standards. 🤷

What a time to be alive that was in many ways, truly, ahaha. Though I'll always appreciate you taking the time to reach out back then regardless; you legit helped give me some translated material to point to for those early applications so those doors could be opened. You were a great first client to have. :eggbug-relieved: