5/16/2023 0 Comments Hal laboratory![]() Kirby can really do anything now, so that's how the character has evolved over the years.” Like in the newer games, Kirby can now copy abilities and change shape to fit that. “Seeing Kirby evolve from being a round character that can only inhale and spit to now becoming a character that can be almost anything. So this was more of a behind the scenes kind of work and not directly coding the game on the Famicom. “On Kirby’s Adventure for Famicom, my role was to create the map tool and support that with the team. I then worked Kirby’s Adventure for Famicom or NES after that. Unfortunately, I cannot talk about this game though. However, this was not the first Kirby game but an unpublished title. “As soon as Ponkotsu Tank was finished, I moved onto another game. ![]() 'Totsugeki! Ponkotsu Tank' was released in the West as 'Trax'. That meant I was programming for the connections between two and four players. There was someone else to deal with the main programming on this, so I was only involved with the network side of things. “After Ghostbusters II, I moved onto Totsugeki! Ponkotsu Tank (known abroad as Trax) again on the Game Boy. “If I look back on it, I don't think I actually worked on a game from start to finish, I always tended to jump in during production. So all of the enemies in the game had to be coded by me. “In terms of my work on the game, I did some of the system coding but I mostly did the enemy programming. The total production was something like one year. When I joined the company, the game was already in production and after that, it took around 7 months to finish it. So plus a sound guy, there were seven of us I think. On the team, there were three programmers, maybe two artists and one game designer. “The first game I worked on when I joined HAL Laboratory was Ghostbusters II on the Game Boy. Joining HAL Laboratory And Making Game Boy Games It was a bit like one of those "wanted!" adverts if I remember correctly.” One day though, I read a computer magazine and inside there was an advert from HAL Laboratory, saying something along the lines of "why don't you become a programmer?" and that's how I got to know about this company. Although, I was obviously interested in working in that field. “As I mentioned, I lived in the countryside, so there weren't really many that jobs available related to things like computers. In fact, I didn't really play games that much. ![]() I would also be one of the people behind the arcade machines, wondering how the program had been made. I was interested in programming, so if I went to the arcade I was more interested in watching people play the games. “In terms of how I got into working in video games, that's a bit of a tough one. This is how I’ve shifted my attention to software. Not to mention that you can test software over and over again without it breaking through fatigue. I also learned that when hardware fails, software is more resilient and less likely to break. This also brought me to the realization that when there is hardware like this, there is also software. So as I progressed, I began to follow more of how the hardware worked and started to make my own things, such as clocks. In order to understand that, I began to realize it was run mostly by electronics. So eventually I became more interested in the structure, or the mechanism, of how the radio-controlled cars would work. However, in terms of operating these radio-controlled cars I wasn't particularly good at it. I enjoyed working with those cars and the fact that I could control them remotely was really interesting. “I used to really enjoy playing with radio-controlled cars when I was younger, so I think that lead up to working with computers in a way.
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