Commemorating the release of "Game Gear Mikro! The story behind the birth of this gem of an item filled with Sega's love and attention to detail! A long interview with Yosuke Okunari, Content Manager!

Amidst the whirlwind of anticipation among game fans, Sega announced the "Game Gear Mikro," a new mini-game hardware system that follows on the heels of the "Mega Drive Mini," which was released to great acclaim last year.

The "Game Gear," released in 1990, was the only handheld hardware from Sega that was released at the same time as the Mega Drive, and it was loved by many. We interviewed Mr. Yosuke Okunari of Sega, who was involved in the planning of the "Mega Drive Mini" and is also a key person in this product, about the development process.

He was also transferred from one department to another to develop the "Game Gear Micro!

───First of all, please tell us how you started the Game Gear Mikro project.

Okunari: The year 2020 marks the 60th anniversary of SEGA's establishment, and we are developing various projects under the catchphrase "GO SEGA. While each department was discussing ideas on how to celebrate SEGA's 60th anniversary, the "Game Gear Mikro" was proposed by the Product Sales Team of the Sales Department, which is in charge of planning and producing products to be sold at events and the SEGA Store.

─ So it was a project that was launched in the department that produces goods rather than in the department that develops game hardware?

Okunari That's right. Incidentally, the Game Gear was released in 1990, so 2020 is its 30th anniversary. So we decided what kind of project would be best to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Game Gear with Sega's 60th anniversary, and we came up with the idea of creating a miniature mascot that could actually be played with, while still being a regular merchandise item.

The "Mega Drive Mini" was particularly well received by Sega fans, so we thought that they would accept a miniature project called "Game Gear Mikro" and the project began.

─ ─ However, I understand that Mr. Okunari was not a member of the "Sales Department" where the "Game Gear Mikro" project was launched. ......

Okunari That's right. Incidentally, the Mega Drive Mini was an irregular job for me, but after it was over, I was working back in my original department when I was told, "We are starting up a project for the Game Gear Mikro and would like to borrow Okunari's wisdom again," to which I replied, "I'll get into the swing of things if that's what it takes! But then I found myself being told, "Okunari, you'll be transferred to the sales department in April," and I became fully involved in the project (laughs).

─ So you even transferred to a different department in order to get involved in Game Gear Micros?

Okunari: Although the work had already started before I was transferred. The development of the Game Gear Micro itself started in 2019, and had already been completed when we announced it. After all, it takes almost half a year to manufacture. At the time of development, we were preparing for the Game Gear Mikro with information on the PC Engine mini (Konami) by our side (laughs).

─ Come to think of it, you once said, "Sega has no plans to make a mini hardware in the future.

Okunari: While saying that, I was thinking, "We are making a Game Gear "Micro", not a mini, and Sega Toys is developing an Astro City mini. ......" (laughs).

──Now, this is a bit off topic, but many Sega fans have the impression that Okunari-san is a Mega Drive fan, and I'm curious about his relationship with Game Gear. I would like to ask you about your involvement with the Game Gear when you were a user.

Okunari: I was a college student when the Game Gear was released, and I mainly played on the Mega Drive, which was the main home hardware at the time, and I actually had very little experience with the Game Gear itself. I had actually never touched the Game Gear itself. It wasn't until after I graduated from college and joined Sega in 1994 that I was able to properly experience the Game Gear.

─ ─ That's surprising!

Okunari Around that time, I was thinking that if I could play the continuation of the "Shining Force" series, I would like to play the Game Gear as well. However, the Game Gear was mainly targeted at a younger age group than the Mega Drive, so I didn't think I would actively play it. Besides, when I was a student, I had limited money to spend, and when it came to choosing which hardware to focus on, I chose the Mega Drive. After I became an employee, I played it to make up for the delay.

If I could read the RPG text, I was OK with this screen size.

─ ─ When I saw the actual Game Gear Mikro, I thought, "It's much smaller than I expected! I thought, "It's even smaller than I expected! The size of the screen suggests that a lot of trial and error went into it.

Okunari: As I mentioned earlier, the concept of Game Gear Mikro was to make it more of a product than a piece of game hardware. As for the size, I think we could have made it smaller if we wanted to, but we settled on the size we have today as a result of our pursuit for the best possible operability and game screen size for actual playability. Incidentally, the hardware development was handled by Sega Toys, the same company that developed the "Mega Drive Mini," and Sega supervised the development.

───I just had a chance to play with it and although it is small, once I started playing the game, I was so immersed in it that I didn't care much about its size.

Okunari Thank you very much. As for the hardware design, if we were to make a complete miniature, the various buttons should really be smaller. However, we prioritized playing the game, and as a result, we made the buttons larger and deformed.

─ ─ Mr. Okunari, what were your impressions when you first played the definitive version of the game Gear Micros for the first time?

Okunari: At first, I displayed the screen of "Dragon Crystal" as a test program in the hardware under development, and I thought, "It's readable as usual! We had talked about how it would be with RPGs and other games that require reading text, but we decided that if we could read the text in "Dragon Crystal" on this screen size, we could play other RPGs on it as well.

───We could read the text of "The Last Bible" and "Shining Force Gaiden" very well.

Okunari: If you add the "Big Window Micro" (a bonus for purchasing all four colors at the same time, as described below), it will be even easier to read (laughs).

─ ─ What were your requests in terms of the hardware configuration?

Okunari: First of all, the headphone jack, which was in the original, was not in the original plan, so I made sure it was included. I also asked for the possibility of supplying power via USB instead of the AC adapter. I think there are people who want to play the game while leaving the power on in their rooms.

─ By the way, the Game Gear Micro can be used without a power supply by inserting two AAA batteries, but how many hours of continuous use can it be used with batteries alone?

Okunari: This is about the same as the actual Game Gear, or a little longer, about 3 hours (laughs).

(Laughter) .

Okunari However, the time may vary depending on the temperature, volume of the sound, brightness, and other factors. We wanted to preserve the "battery-operated" nature of Game Gear.

Outrun" Play Movie

Sonic & Tails" Play Movie

The two or three different titles and configurations

─ ─ How did you decide on the selection of software to be included in the game?

Okunari: In the initial stages of the project, we had the specification that only one title would be included in each console. For example, if a game contained "Sonic the Hedgehog," the game would start up when you turned it on. The idea was that you could collect as many as you wanted.

─ So you are thinking of them as game goods, or rather as accessories.

Okunari That's right. It would be fun to collect many of them, but when we realized that the price would be around 4,980 yen, we thought that if only one game could be played for that price, ordinary game fans would probably buy only one unit at most. I thought about how many titles would be included in the package, and finally decided that four titles would be enough to convince people to buy more than one console.

─ I can see that there must have been a lot of changes even before the titles were chosen.

Okunari Of course, there was a lot of trial and error, but in the beginning, we had the idea of grouping the titles by series, such as Blue for only the "Sonic" series and Black for only the "Puyopuyo" series. But that would be a bit of a hassle if, for example, you were playing "Sonic" on the train and wanted to play another game, you had to take out a different colored Micro from your bag and replace the batteries. We thought it would be better to have a variety of games from different genres on one device to avoid this problem, so we decided on the titles to be included in the final product.

───However, the titles included in the yellow version seem to be a bit special.

Okunari: For "Shining Force Gaiden" included in the yellow version, "Shining Force Gaiden: Expedition to the Land of Evil Gods" and "Shining Force Gaiden II: Evil Gods Awakening" are part of the same series, so we combined the three parts, including "Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict," into one game. The four titles were actually combined into a single unit. Actually, before we decided to include four titles, there was a phase in which three titles were to be included in one machine, and at that time, only these three titles were included.

But when we were just about ready to include four titles, we shuffled the titles around and decided that it would be a good idea to include "Nazopuyo Aruru no Roux" as a chopstick rest for Yellow, which includes the "Shining Force Gaiden" series, so we settled on these four titles. ...... and I also thought that yellow would be curry (laughs).

──There is a standard story in Sentai Mono that the person in charge of yellow likes curry (laughs).

Okunari: There is a story that only those who are older than 60 years old can understand (laughs). When deciding on the titles to be included in the game, I made a multifaceted selection based on a variety of data, such as whether to use arcade port titles, popular titles of the time, and popular titles distributed through the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. We made our decisions based on past, present, and public reputation.

─ ─ I think there were some titles that you wanted to include but were unable to do so. ......

Okunari: Of course, there were many titles that we had a hard time deciding on, but the one that was particularly disappointing was "Pengo. Pengo" was a launch title for Game Gear, so I wanted to include it for its monumental significance, but I was disappointed that "Popcorn" (a song released in 1969 by Gershon Kingsley; the title was "Pengo"), used as the main background music, was not included. There was an idea to replace the BGM, but I thought that would go against the aesthetic of "Pengo. There was a suggestion to replace the background music, but I thought that would go against the aesthetics of "Pengo." There was also a suggestion to use a different background music for the overseas version of "Pengo" on Game Gear, but I personally wanted "Popcorn" to be played in "Pengo," so I was sadly forced to leave it out of the recording this time.

───It is true that many users would have been happy if "Pengo" had been included, but the original BGM would have been more pleasing, and I think many fans may share the sentiment that they would have rather ...... than have that part of the BGM changed.

Some of the games also feature new specifications made for the micro version.

───Almost all of the titles included in this release are Sega titles, but did you have any ideas to include titles from other companies?

Okunari: This project was only part of Sega's 60th anniversary project, so we didn't have that idea. Personally, I think it would be great if, after this project is over, we could make a separate project for Game Gear Mikro that includes only titles from Taito and Namco, for example.

─ ─ In that sense, Atlus' "Megami Tensei Gaiden: The Last Bible" and "Megami Tensei Gaiden: The Last Bible Special" are two titles that are a bit unique.

Okunari: I think that is true. However, Atlus is also an important manufacturer in the history of Sega's 60th anniversary. So we wanted to take this opportunity to include this title. And the development and release of the Game Gear version of the software itself was done by Sega at the time. I had actually wanted to release the Game Gear version of "The Last Bible" on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, but I was unable to realize it at the time. What I couldn't achieve then, I was able to achieve this time.

─ ─ I didn't realize that. Generally speaking, most people have played the Game Boy version of "The Last Bible," so I thought it was a surprising choice to have the Game Gear version of "The Last Bible" included in the game.

Okunari: Actually, I am particular about the two "Last Bible" games. The original version can be quite challenging when played now, so we included an "easy version" of the "Last Bible" with specifications that allow for three times the normal amount of experience and money, and double each for the "Last Bible Special". Since many people may find it hard to play the old, highly difficult RPGs over time now, we wanted the game to be easy to play with a quick progression, so it is included as a separate software from the original version.

─ ─ This is a very nice feature. I'm going to play on easy mode when I buy it myself (laughs). Incidentally, two other RPG/SLG titles, "Sylvan Tale" and "Loyal Stone: The Door of Time," are quite popular with the general public.

Okunari: We released "Shadam Crusader" and "Aryel" on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, but the response to both games was less than we expected. At the time, I wanted to release "Sylvan Tail" and "Royale Stone" on the Virtual Console if the response had been positive, but I was unable to make it happen. So, like "The Last Bible," they are titles that we were able to achieve with Game Gear Micro that we were not able to achieve at the time.

Loyal Stone" play movie

─ So this title was selected based on a variety of factors, including past achievements?

Okunari That's right. Mega Drive" to "SEGA SATURN MAGAZINE," which was a specialized magazine at the time, there was a project called the "Readers' Race," in which the readers were given scores for the most popular Game Gear titles. Mega Drive" to "SEGA SATURN MAGAZINE," and it was the title that won first place in the final episode of the project. Because of this episode, we decided to put the title that Game Gear users at the time chose as the last place winner in the most well-known Game Gear color, black.

(Editor's note: ...... "BEEP! Mega Drive" was a Mega Drive magazine launched in 1989 as a renewal from its predecessor "Beep" magazine. In 1994, the magazine was relaunched as "SEGA SATURN MAGAZINE," specializing in the Sega Saturn. After that, the magazine continued to be renewed as "Dreamcast Magazine," "Dorimaga," and "GEMAGA," before ceasing publication in 2012. (Publisher is SB Creative).

─ ─ Are there any other examples of modifications to the original "The Last Bible"?

Okunari: Another example would be "Puyo Puyo Dori. The original version allowed communication battles, but in this micro version, it is no longer possible. The screen for selecting a mode was originally divided into four parts because there were four different modes, but now there are two fewer modes because you can't play against each other. We felt that this would be a bit sad, so we redesigned the screen to have two modes.

Furthermore, when we were analyzing the data at that time, we found that there were unused carbuncle "eye-pachi" graphics in the game, so we restored them and used them.

So the "Puyo Puyo Dori" menu screen is the one that Compile was trying to create at the time, but this is the first time it will actually be released to the public.