"I wrote some behind-the-scenes information about the King's Fields series and the Shadow Tower series for a Chinese gaming magazine, especially Shinichiro Nishida, the main creator of the both series（Ongoing)" -via r*ddit, currently ends with the beginning of KF3's development.
"On the first day of [King's Field's] debut, chat room discussions echoed the magazine's sentiment that the game was too hard to play."
this is a fairly long, but worthwhile read. please play king's field. all four of them. if it's "too slow for you" well You're Too Fast For King's Field, sorry. might be worth your while to slow yourself down from time to time. the 8 seconds it takes to make a full 360 degree turn is absolutely an intentional design decision. please play king's field. the closest parallel in layout and progression is looking glass' system shock, which released just a few months before the first king's field, but uses like 40 digital inputs + mouse as opposed to king's field's 8 inputs.
things i consider noteworthy
-
the team did not have access to memory cards during development of KF1, so the testing was through saveless trial and error.
-
from software succeeded in their intent to create one of the first, if not the very first, fully 3D game in the first person perspective. (i've looked into it, it very likely is. released around the same time as descent's shareware demo)
-
the credits FMV for king's field was completed mere hours before the deadline.
-
king's field 2 is also one of the earliest examples of seamless streaming of the entire playable world off the disc, with only one preliminary loading screen. the (recently remastered) texas-made King's Field-Like "Metroid Prime" also used such "loading hallways" to great effect.
-
the single, repeated, wall textures for most areas, as well the distinct "kaleido-walls", are an intentional design decision, despite having the ability to do otherwise starting with KF2's development. this was done to "let the mind fill in the blanks", a beauty i noticed and appreciated, but hadn't even considered to be purposeful.
-
KF1 and KF2's development, combined, was just over a year. from pre-production in march 1994 to december 1994 for KF1. and from december 1994 to june 1995 for KF2.
pour one out (green tea) for ZAMS-K3
all hidetaka miyazaki know is Armored Core For Answer and dodgeroll.
(and not related, i want to know who the fuck paid 2 million yen to be able to make Cosmic Race)