Classic Treasure interview gives insight into Ikaruga's development

A portion of a 2001 interview with Treasure's Masato Maegawa...

Maegawa: Yes. Ikaruga began, in secret, as Radiant Silvergun 2. (laughs) Somewhere along the way it became its own unique game. It inherits the color (black and white polarity, this time) and combo system from Radiant Silvergun.

Of course we were also trying to make something unique and different from other companies. Even in action games there are certain fixed conventions, like you move with your left hand, and you jump and attack with your right. Our new game, Stretch Panic, also has tricky controls: you use the same stretching motion for movement, attacking, and everything… the first time people play it, they’re like, “what is this, what am I doing?”

Likewise, one criticism people may have of Ikaruga is that the polarity system makes the game too sluggish and ponderous. That was intentional, though, and part of our underlying concept: to create a fundamentally new kind of action and STG. We’ve also thought about doing a more traditional, mainstream game someday at Treasure, though.

—How about the difficulty in Ikaruga, how have you handled that?

Maegawa: Our games are often called difficult, so it’s something we pay special attention to. But take Sin and Punishment on the N64, as an example. People said “this is so hard!”, but the problem really is where the difficulty lies. We could just make the game stupid-simple, but for Sin and Punishment, at least, the problem was that some people couldn’t understand the controls. “I can’t fire and move at the same time!” Once I saw people saying that, I knew it was over for Sin and Punishment. (laughs) Many of Treasure’s games feature unique controls, though.