Part 4 of an English translation of the 2016 EXE developers’ interview from inside-games.
- The excitement brought about by events, and the shocking combo
A lot of effort was put into events for the EXE series, wasn’t there?
Eguchi: Without tournaments, you don’t have a clear goal to aim for. So we continuously ran regional tournaments and fed info out through magazines and the like.
Come to think of it, there was a comment that said: “I wanted a handshake, but instead got my cheek stroked.”
Eguchi: I’m glad they even remember that. I got to meet all sorts of players, but when I went to Kyushu, there was an event in Fukuoka. I talked with fans after the show and one boy came to me and said “Ya talk a lot Meijin, guys that talk a lot ain’t so cool!!”. (laugh) Ah, that was really fun.
You were pretty popular, after all.
Eguchi: This sounds arrogant of me, but when it came time for autographs, tickets sold out right away. But since everyone took my advice and brought the battery covers of their Advances, signing was tough. (laugh)
Ishihara: I think I recommended that you sign the back of the battery cover instead.
Eguchi: Right. At first I was doing the front, but it would just get rubbed off and faded, right? So I started signing the back instead. (laugh)
Was there anything you had to watch out for when managing events back then?
Eguchi: I was fumbling around back then, and chip distributions were like that as well. I hadn’t managed events before, so things were really chaotic. At first we distributed Forte, but there were too many people. So there were parents getting mad at me and yelling: “Hey, you! Where do we line up!?”
But from there, we improved things bit by bit, and gradually made events into something good.
Thanks to that, tournaments got exciting too. By the way, there sure were a lot of amazing combos. Like the Prism Combo.
Eguchi: …Ah. Yes.
That’s not a bug, right?
Eguchi: It’s the proper… behavior?
But it wipes out Gospel in an instant, doesn’t it?
Eguchi: But the behavior is still correct. Right? Right??
Matsuda: In theory, it’s correct. But the way it was used was certainly unexpected. (laugh)
Eguchi: As the one commentating the tournament, I was shocked. Originally, it was a combo intended to make chips difficult to hit with easier to land. You’d reflect things off the Prism, but to think that something like that would happen when you combine it with a continuously attacking chip… [1]
Ah, so players found that combo.
Eguchi: That’s right. I trembled the first time I saw it. But remarkably, when it was found, everyone made countermeasures. Standing in the middle against the Prism Combo and stuff like that. Really, everyone was so eager to learn, they were amazing. The Area Steal > Area Steal > Area Steal > Poison Anubis combo was outside of my expectations, too.
But as a result of that discovery, we placed a restriction on Area Steal’s effective range. [2]
Ishihara: Later, since combos like that and summoning chips were used so frequently; we made the cut-in mechanic as a result, didn’t we? [3]
Eguchi: That was great…
Matsuda: It was tough to make though… Back then, I remember being told “the pixels are off if you do consecutive cut-ins”. (laugh) But that’s how things evolved.
I think there’s a charm making a system that’s worth studying like this.
Matsuda: Well, there was the data modding incident, too.
Eguchi: Oh, you’re going there. (laugh)
It was quite frequent back then, wasn’t it?
Eguchi: It was a conflict against modified data back then. Actually, there was a time where someone used the undistributed Gospel chip in the finals of a tournament event.
There was no helping it at that point. Fans were next to me while I was commentating, constantly shouting “Meijin! What’s that!? Meijin!!!” so I responded with “Gospel was used just now!”. (laugh) Geez… It showed up on the big monitor, so I couldn’t avoid it.
What happened then?
Eguchi: I told everyone they were dreaming or something, and avoided talking about it as much as I could. (laugh)
Matsuda: After that, we checked the ROMs of participants before we let them join. Later on, there were too many people to check individually; so when it was time to battle, we had set up a message that would show up and say “ready”. However, if you had modified your game, it would change to say “ready,” instead. [4]
Translated by Jumi.
Edited by MidniteW.
Japanese to English names:
Area Steal = Steal/AreaGrab
Poison Anubis = Anubis
Notes:
[1] Refers to the notorious insta-kill Prism combo, usually paired with the TreeBom chip series. TreeBom was fixed in the English version, but a similar effect can be seen from VarSword’s Sonic Boom still in the game.
[2] Refers to Battle Network 4’s AreaGrab change to being unable to steal the opponent’s last column.
[3] Refers to a multiplayer-only mechanic introduced in Battle Network 4 known as “cut in” — the act of interrupting an opponent’s screen-dimming chip with your own. Known in some English communities as “Time Freeze Counter”.
[4] The original interview’s wording isn’t exactly how it appeared in the game, but this function does exist. An example from EXE6: When selecting the connection option, the text that would appear is 「つうしんケーブルをつかって つうしんするよ」. But if the data is modified, it would show up as「つうしんケーブルをつかって､ つうしんするよ」instead. This nuance doesn’t seem to appear in the localized games. Example of Japanese game: https://twitter.com/capkobun/status/973960179774504966?s=21