Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Gyakuten Saiban Blog Entry 8: Adverse Trial (2001)

Title: Adverse Trial / 「逆境裁判」
Source: Gyakuten Saiban official site (down)

Summary: Just before it became the year of 2000, the Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney 1 GBA) team was facing its greatest crisis: not only was the game the target of harsh criticism within the company, the small development team of seven was about to turn into one of six. This developer's blog post, originally posted in 2001, is a continuation of the seventh post and details the direct aftermath of having 1/7 of the team leave suddenly. Did you know that Gyakuten Saiban was actually canceled for a short while?

Adverse Trial

“One person is leaving the team”

Writing it simply down like that probably doesn’t convey the absolute feeling of dread. Some might even think: “But there are still six of them.” But! This was a fatal disaster we encountered.

A team consists of various parts.
  • Scenario.
  • Character animation.
  • Background graphics.
  • System graphics.
  • Music.
  • Sound effects.
  • Programming.
…This is seven already. When one person leaves, it means one part is completely gone. This was completely bad news.

An unlucky day in January. We had been called to a small room, and were given the worst possible sentence:

Development was canceled

Back then, and even now actually, there were no extra people around in Production Studio 4. So if you don’t have enough members, the team will be disbanded… This is a big trap you won’t notice unless you’re in a very small team. This turned everything upside down and had our heads spinning.

Being cut up in parts in mid-air, while we didn’t even know what direction to go with the game. That helpless sense of apathy. The ones who finally showed this down-and-out team the way to salvation, were the producer and the division head. Would you believe it, someone from the Biohazard (Resident Evil) team has been added to our team to work an extra job. What he had done to deserve that…? I was too afraid to ask.

..January. This was the turning point for Gyakuten Saiban. This incident had let us really feel the “weight” of each single team member, and we all started to focus at one point.

“…We’re going to finish this!”

And so everyone in the team faced forwards intent to redesign the game.

No comments:

Post a Comment