Artist Kamui Fujiwara talks about Terranigma amid push to resurrect SNES classic RPG – Feature

Terranigma is a SNES title that holds a special place in the hearts of many RPG fans, which is remarkable when you consider that it only released in Japan and Europe, and bypassed North America entirely. Part of Quintet’s loose RPG trilogy (which also includes Soul blazer Y Gaia illusion), Terranigma has become a cult classic in modern times, so much so that fans are petitioning Square Enix for some form of relaunch on modern systems.

Manga artist Kamui Fujiwara – author of Dragon Quest: Emblem of Broken the genius behind Terranigma’s character design – has recently been participating in the “Hero Resurrection Festival” (or “Heroes Easter”), an online event that Terranigma fans celebrate each year on Twitter. He has been tweeting a new piece of art every day. to promote the terranigma-themed art show that will take place from September 3 to 13 at ACG_Labo. For the occasion, Miyoko Takaoka (maiden name Kobayashi, composer of Terranigma) is also creating a new song.

Before these events took place, Italian game developer and superfan from Terranigma @b_layDEV I was lucky enough to speak with Fujiwara-san about the game, and you can find the exclusive interview below.

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Do you remember how you were first approached to work at Terranigma?

Fujiwara: Terranigma was distributed by ENIX (now Square Enix). At the time, ENIX was publishing the manga (Dragon Quest) “Emblem of Roto”, so it was easy for Quintet to contact me for work. It wasn’t a job I wanted, but I enjoyed working at it. Above all, I love action RPGs.

What guidelines did you follow when creating the art of the game?

After Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, we had Terranigma as “a third game”. They told me they wanted a change from the visuals in the previous two games, so there were no particular restrictions on character design. I actually had a lot of freedom [in] how I designed the characters. He was free to design whatever he wanted.

Which Terranigma character do you like the most? How did you come up with its design?

He had no particular preference for characters. I designed them before playing the game. Only when you play the game do you get emotionally involved with the characters. After playing, I really liked Meilin. I think the complex way he expresses his emotions is really good. The main character was the only one that I had to redraw many times, but the rest of the characters were done quite smoothly.

How involved were you with the mechanics of the game and the development of the story?

I couldn’t work on the game for a long time because I was working on a manga series. I was involved from the early stages. In general, I provided the images that served as the framework for the project. After the launch of the game, my [design note] The material for Terranigma was published at the end of the picture book. Dragon Quest Retsuden: Roto no Monshō – Kamui Fujiwara II Illustration Collection.

Did you try to play long before its official release? If yes, are you aware of any important content that was removed during development from initial planning to final game?

I played the game once before its release. It was almost done, but there was still a debug mode, so I remember being able to move around and explore different locations (via the locker at the beginning of the game).

There is data in the game that points to a third battle phase for the final boss (Dark Gaia). Did you know?

I’m not sure, I don’t know.

[Later, Mr. Fujiwara was able to recover and publish the original (lost) Design Note of the game. In this document, we can see some never-seen-before sketches showing some discarded ideas for the final boss fight. You can also notice how one Dark Gaia discarded form got recycled to create another boss in the final release (Stormkeeper).

We translated the notes from the sketches: the first one says that in that battle phase, Dark Gaia was supposed to be an overlay of three identical sprites of the boss, with three different % of transparency. Each pair of arms moves/attacks independently.

The second one says that, if you tried to go behind the boss, he would have smashed the columns.]