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WORK I N P R O G R E S S (Below) Vivid Image's Mev Dinc has a cosy chat about royalties with a Mirrorsott employee earlier this year. PROJECT: The Second Samurai PUBLISHER: To Be Decided DEVELOPER: Vivid Image Design - Mev Dins (Design) Raffaele Gesso (Programming, design) Teoman Irmak (Graphics) INITIATED: Autumn 1991 RELEASE: December 1992 4:4\_1 1- ?\ deserve to. Others are destined S ome for greatness games fail but because fail due they to nothing more than good old-fashioned rotten bad luck - and there can be no doubt that Vivid Image Design's The First Samurai falls squarely into the latter category. Noone would dispute that it's one of the classiest arcade adventures in recent times - and it might well have been one of the most successful too, had a certain portly newspaper magnate not taken an unexpected nose-dive off his luxury yacht earlier this year. Cap'n Bob's untimely demise led to the collapse of The First Samurai publisher Mirrorsoft shortly after and sadly the game was only on the software shelves for a single week, Since then it's eked out a reasonable living as half of a UbiSoft double-pack with fellow Mirrorsoft casualty Mega-lo- Mania, but for the team that spent nearly two years creating the awardwinning arcade opus, it's scant recompense. "Even if you ignore the financial aspect, it was very, very disappointing for us," comments Vivid Image Design's director Mev Dinc. "After all the coverage and After the critical triumph - and undeserved commercial disaster - that was The First Samurai, creators Vivid Image Design are bouncing back with a sequel that they hope will earn them the success they missed the first time round. Gary Whitta braved the perils of an underground journey to North Narrow to investigate... response the game received, it was very sad not to see it on the shelves. The product literally died." Mov admits that it's partly the feeling of being short-changed with The First Samurai that has led to VID producing a sequel - the first they've ever done. "That's definitely got something to do with it. Hopefully it'll make up for the disappointment of the first one, I think we would have done a sequel anyway, but maybe not quite so soon." Mev goes further still, suggesting that The Second Samurai, despite the obvious title reference, isn't really a sequel at all. "The main character looks and controls pretty much the same but the rest of the game is completely different, The only real similarity is the name. We're still trying to use the good elements of the first game but from the outset we were determined that this one wouldn't be just the same game with new graphics, as so many sequels seem to be these days." As all game developers do when thinking about a follow-up, the boys at VID have spent a lot of time reflecting on the first game and trying to pin-point areas where it can be
Meanies killed in The Second Samurai can earn you more than just points. When these flying fish are killed they explode, dripping water on the floor that causes plants to grow. You can climb up them to reach higher platforms. improved, "Mainly, there's just one thing about The First Samurai that we were slightly disappointed with and that's the overall size of the game_ Maybe it was too big, each level was too long,'' says Mev, "Now we feel its important that the player is able to make progress as quickly as possible to keep the interest going, so though The Second Samurai will overall be just as big as the first game it will be broken down into more, smaller stages." op) The dcl l e r w a y first stage,. J n the Oround rota e plan the way. .(Lett middle) Standing on some en y's heads can be a useful mode of ensport in The Second Samurai, parularty across dangerous terrain is flame-covered area. The idea is at the game's, other characters w' much more involved than last ti und. eft bottom) The glowing sphere rely visible by the grandfather ck is a portal that leads to o game's many secret rooms. p along to collect a few bon ins or play a quick sub-game, hen you've had enough, pop the main action. As Mev explains, however, the reasons behind this new approach are only partly to do with rectifying the original game's faults. With The First Samurai soon to appear on the Super NES, VID are conscious that their sequel must be. if anything, even more 'console-friendly', i.e. it has to be the sort of game that's well suited to the Sega and Nintendo machines if it is ever to make it onto any of those formats at a later time. Hence the smaller levels - console WORK I N P R O G R E S S Just look at that speed blur! The first level at Ihe Second Samurai is pretty surreal stuff - note the giant pencil stubs. The telescopic arm thingy can be jumped on and used for transport. games are notorious for consisting more of bite-size stages than the sprawling levels that Amiga owners have become used to over the years. "In effect were designing this game for the Super NES on the Amiga." says Mev, "which is good for the Amiga, because hopefully you'll end up with a pure console game on the Amiga." "It's almost impossible to originate a product purely for consoles, because it's so expensive." he continues. "I think a lot of publishers are using the Amiga as a testing ground, doing their games on that machine first to see the reaction from the public before they take the plunge with the consoles." Mel/ reckons that VID is taking this ideology one step further by actually designing the game (Left) The ous end-of she's a Qui.' for consoles from the word go, and hopes ifs something that Amiga garners will welcome_ "I believe that most home computer games in the UK concentrate too much on the visu- al aspect and not enough on gameplay _ We're trying to break away from that and create something closer to the idea of console games, where the fun element is always the most important part." The Second Samurai follows on directly from where The First left off, Having chased the evil Demon across time from feudal Japan to the far future and vanquished him there, our hero realises that the Demon, though slain, is still very much alive. Now, to finish the job, the samurai has to pursue his foe back through the ages to his oriental homeland - the only place ial prepares for battle against one of the game's numer- ,- guardians - a big. bad Queen beet How do we know he's wearing a crown, of course! (Below) Bonus coins aplenty, but collecting them is tricky as they're protected by fire. Slicing up that flying fish might help.,.
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