{"id":63703,"date":"2018-11-20T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-20T22:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/331150"},"modified":"2018-11-20T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T22:48:00","slug":"how-umihara-kawase-began-as-two-separate-prototypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/11\/20\/how-umihara-kawase-began-as-two-separate-prototypes\/","title":{"rendered":"How Umihara Kawase began as two separate prototypes"},"content":{"rendered":"

An original Umihara Kawase<\/em>\u00a0(a Japanese platforming game developed by Studio Saizensen for the Super Famicom) developer has released video of the first two prototypes of the game, showcase drastic differences between early versions of the game and its final release.<\/p>\n

While the YouTube video\u00a0of the prototypes is in\u00a0Japanese, the auto-translated English subtitles are actually pretty accurate and gives enough information to be useful for curious developers.<\/p>\n

It’s always fun to see what changes throughout\u00a0development, especially for games published outside of America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Twitter thread<\/a> by developer Brandon Sheffield (and Gamasutra\u00a0contributor) explains how the\u00a0design and name of the main character\u00a0was decided from the start, but because of uncertainty around what\u00a0kind<\/em>\u00a0of game it would be, two prototypes were developed first\u00a0on the X68000\u00a0(a computer exclusive to Japan).\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the first prototype, players\u00a0could dig trenches and connect them to water and\u00a0flood enemies out. There was\u00a0also a pump used to attack them, but it was never implemented due to trouble with the water\/trench system. After lots of\u00a0trial and error the developers\u00a0realized it\u00a0wouldn’t work.<\/p>\n

Instead, the team\u00a0moved on to prototype two, which went in a completely\u00a0different direction. Rather than digging and draining water, players would\u00a0connect and break open doors in order to flood certain areas.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The way you attack enemies in this version is to jump on their heads, stun them, and then throw them out of the level. But killing enemies right away (and I presume so simply) wasn’t so interesting, so they threw that idea away. pic.twitter.com\/sC5xxS0Ayj<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\u2014 brandon sheffield (@necrosofty) November 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was an issue in prototype two where enemies were too easy to defeat, so in an attempt to figure out a more technically interesting way to attack enemies, the developers tossed around the idea of shooting something out of a wire to capture them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

They had the sudden realization – what if you could attach that wire to everything? So it’s from all that trial and error – water, gates, and ultimately “what’s an interesting way to attack and capture enemies,” that the final unique physics-based design of Umihara Kawase sprung. pic.twitter.com\/r5WgeCoe1J<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\u2014 brandon sheffield (@necrosofty) November 20, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, the final version of\u00a0Umihara\u00a0Kawase\u00a0<\/em>was born.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An original Umihara Kawase\u00a0(a Japanese platforming game developed by Studio Saizensen for the Super Famicom) developer has released video of the first two prototypes of the game, showcase drastic differences between early versions of the game and its final release. While the YouTube video\u00a0of the prototypes is in\u00a0Japanese, the auto-translated English subtitles are actually pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}