This is the second part of my retrospective article series about the Sega Saturn exclusive game Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari.
You can read the first part here:
Part One
I ended Part One by explaining a bit about Iho Kembunroku, a series of illustrations by Keita Amemiya involving his character Professor Garp, a small but portly dragon who will go on to become the playable character of Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari in late 1997. I will now explain the concept of Iho Kembunroku in more detail.
My Nanatsu Kaze collection
In Keita Amemiya's Iho Kembunroku illustration series, protagonist Garp decides to travel the world of the Seven Winds to gain inspiration for his writings. Through these illustrations depicting Garp's journey, the viewer will gain insight into this mysterious, unique world setting populated with weird little - and sometimes not so little - critters.
Iho Kembunroku art by Keita Amemiya. Photographs from my personal collection.
Most likely Garp is a literature professor or something of this sort - or at least that is what is implied by his "professor" title and his desire to write. Basically, the illustrations and text of Iho Kembunroku represent a travelogue or memoir written by Garp to memorialize the strange sights he sees on his somewhat silly - but often oddly endearing - journey in the land of the Seven Winds.
And this record, this memoir, is an early chapter in the formation of the story that will eventually become Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari for the Sega Saturn.
The first Iho Kembunroku illustration, titled "The Peddler of Zagore", was published in issue 73 of Bandai's B-Club magazine in 1991. B-Club was a magazine that focused on model kits, mecha, anime, tokusatsu, etc. - a magazine where Amemiya's artwork was often featured. But not all of the Iho Kembunroku artworks appear in issues of B-Club.
Amemiya continued Iho Kembunroku beyond the B-Club publication out of a desire to "create and draw" what he wanted - "without thinking at all about current trends or popularity." And definitely the art of Iho Kembunroku has a different style compared to his more commercial works of the era. As I mentioned earlier, it is a "storybook-esque style" with less focus on "cool" demonic creatures and more on "creepy cute" ones - which probably was not in vogue at the time, hence Amemiya's comments about trends and popularity. Is it even in vogue now?
In Amemiya's 1992 artbook collection - the sadly out-of-print Kiba/Fang, which collects the Iho Kembunroku series into one book - Amemiya states:
Although this drawing style appears smooth at first glance, it actually takes me more time than any other artwork I create. And since the standard of quality is something I set for myself, it can be the most troublesome...
Amemiya put a lot of work into this series of very precise illustrations - precise in contrast to the bold-lined calligraphic style he is most known for - and each Iho Kembunroku illustration has text accompanying it to help paint a larger picture of the world of the Seven Winds. Take "The Peddler of Zagore", or "The Merchant of Zagore", for example - the first Iho Kembunroku artwork.
The text accompanying it reads:
From the notes of Professor Garp:
That day, I set out for the forest of Zagore. Today, on the day when the third wind blows, Old Tam from Daichi-sen would come to sell her goods. As usual, Old Tam was a skilled merchant, and even though I, a dragon person, didn’t need them, she managed to sell me some Raki seeds. I couldn’t get the oil-free lantern I wanted, but I was fortunate to buy a strong mouthpiece resistant to the fourth wind. This was lucky because, in twenty days, when the fourth spring wind blows, I will set out on a journey. Traveling in this land of Seven Winds is a challenging task, but there is a sight I simply must imprint on my eyes. When I told Old Tam about my journey, she suggested I take along Kisuke, the “hedgehog tailor” who was helping her with her trade. Perhaps she was worried about losing one of her good customers while I was away…?
(Of course, I didn’t pay for Kisuke.)
This first installment in the series gives glimpses of what is to come, mentioning the "third wind" and impending "fourth wind" - and introduces not just Garp but also Old Tam, who will appear in Nanatsu Kaze as a merchant...
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
...and Kisuke, the "hedgehog tailor".
Kisuke is described in the June 6th 1997 issue of Sega Saturn Magazine as:
The curious and energetic mouse child, Kisuke, who is always full of energy, darting around the island. Truly elusive, he uses his scissor-like hands to cut anything he comes across, making him quite the mischievous character.
Kisuke is a stand-out character not just in the Iho Kembunroku stories, but also in Nanatsu Kaze, where he is one of three helpers that...help...Garp traverse the island of Seven Winds. He is also a bit of a favorite character of Amemiya's. Amemiya actually created Kisuke much earlier than 1991, though Kisuke's early design looked...a bit different.
Here is what Kisuke looked like when Amemiya drew him in 1983:
Amemiya's notes on this version of Kisuke in his 1992 Kiba artbook collection explains:
You could call this the “real version” of Kisuke (although this character was created earlier, so technically speaking, it would be more accurate to describe Kisuke as the “cute version” of this character). These characters are part of a world I’ve envisioned since my early 20s, one that I’ve always dreamed of someday turning into a visual production, possibly a film.
Similarly, there are also images of Garp reproduced in the Kiba artbook originally created by Amemiya in 1983.
So you can see, Amemiya had the idea of using these characters for quite some time before implementing them into Iho Kembunroku and later on into Nanatsu Kaze.
Further evidence of this is presented in an interview in the Nanatsu Kaze Picture Imagination Book, where Amemiya reveals:
When I was in high school, I became really interested in working on picture books, and I thought that Garp's world could one day be put together into fairy tales or something like that when I grew up. I was expanding on it in various ways. However, at that time, there was a band boom, and music and sports figures were really popular. Wanting to become a picture book author felt kind of uncool...I only showed my drawings to my very close friends.
In total, there are nine Iho Kembunroku stories collected in the Kiba artbook, and seven of the nine are Garp's travel notes - one of which is a fun story of him fishing (a feature that is later implemented as a game mechanic in Nanatsu Kaze) while overhearing a twin-headed crab (a character...or rather, characters...that also appear in Nanatsu Kaze) argue with itself/one another over a game of "Bushin Shogi". These travel notes sometimes mention Garp's writer's block, and the journey helps him overcome that.
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
The final two Iho Kembunroku tales are actually excerpts of Garp's fiction writings inspired by his journey, with the titles "The Hare Who Become A Lion" and "The One-Winged Dragon Knight".
The One-Winged Dragon Knight
I have no concrete proof of this, so the following is all baseless speculation - which as I said earlier, is the best kind - but I believe that Professor Garp is potentially named after John Irving's novel The World According to Garp. The book was first published in English in 1978, which was later adapted into a movie starring Robin Williams in 1982.
The protagonist in The World According to Garp is a writer named...Garp...and some of this character's writing excerpts are presented throughout the novel - sort of like how two of the nine Iho Kembunroku stories are excerpts of dragon Garp's own writings. Also, Garp in the Robin Williams movie wishes he could fly, and dragon Garp also has trouble flying. In the Irving novel, Garp moves to Vienna to gain inspiration to write, and dragon Garp travels to other locations to do the same. Though the book and movie were apparently not big sellers or anything over in Japan, the movie was dubbed into Japanese in 1988, and the book was first released in Japanese in 1983 - and, if the Japanese Wikipedia article is to be believed, the novel caught the attention of well known Japanese writers Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami, so it is not like it would be inconceivable that Amemiya would know of Irving's book title. Still, none of this is proven, it is just an idea I have been entertaining in my head.
Well, I won't explain what happens in all nine stories (unless someone out there is really interested), but you get the idea. Before Nanatsu Kaze, first there existed Iho Kembunroku...and then a few years later Enix came calling.
In Sega Saturn Magazine, Amemiya states:
Enix first approached me with the idea of making a game. They told me that they would leave the content entirely up to me and wanted me to make the game I most wanted to create. That’s when I realized that if I were to take responsibility for something all the way to the end, it had to be a world centered around Professor Garp and the others.
The world that is depicted in Nanatsu Kaze was always an important one to Amemiya - a world he carried with him and expressed in his un-commercial "fairy tale" style art for many years before getting involved with Enix to create it in game form. Thus, it makes sense that quality work was a big concern for him, and that whoever programmed the game, whoever did the sprite work for the game, would need to get it just right. It also explains why Amemiya was the only logical choice for game director in this instance - because it is his world, his characters, his story, his art.
To present this "picture book" fairy tale world as accurately as possible, to match the amazingly detailed work Amemiya had already put into the world of Seven Winds with the Iho Kembunroku series, the programmers would need to be able to convey that smoothness, that detail oriented world, in a way that cut no corners - and naturally Amemiya needed to be there to oversee the entire project. This is why Givro was so intent on using the multi-joint sprite style and put such focus on smooth movements, and why Amemiya was chosen as the game's director over anyone from Givro who had more experience. I hope this in-depth explanation makes everything clear.
Basically, everything I've written about up to this point is to show that Nanatsu Kaze was not created in a vacuum - it did not just hatch from an egg fully-formed into our world. First it existed in another world: in the creative mind of Keita Amemiya - being built up and refined and strengthened over many years before reaching its final form.
The seed was planted as a high-school "picture book" dream, then sprouted and shown to the public in the '80s when Amemiya entered his early fairy tail work into an art contest (he did not win, but did receive an honorable mention), before flowering into the impressive Iho Kembunroku in 1991, and finally bearing the fruit that is Nanatsu Kaze - copies of which were dispersed, as if scattered by the wind, in late 1997 to unsuspecting Japanese gamers simply hoping for another Dragon Quest title. Nanatsu Kaze's creation was quite the journey.
And similarly, concerning the programmers and designers and artists at Givro...they took what they learned from their previous games, improved their multi-joint sprite skills, and honed their knack for creating offbeat, ambitious games and applied it all to Nanatsu Kaze to create what is their "swan song" of sorts: an un-commercial but quite pleasing, soothing but emotional experience - provided that you are attuned to its admittedly niche wavelength.
Hopefully all of this gives context, so you can see the intent of the game - that it was never meant to be Dragon Quest. It was never meant to compete with top selling game titles and was always going to be a sort of under-the-radar game - yet I contend that it is a game of high quality nevertheless. Now, finally, let us behold...
The end-product wasn’t something exaggerated, like defeating a demon lord or anything grand. It was actually a rather simple story. - Keita Amemiya, Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari Picture Imagination Book interview
Now that everyone reading (if anyone still is) understands who Keita Amemiya is, what Givro was, has seen the world of Iho Kembunroku and been introduced to the rotund Professor Garp and the Mischief Maker Kisuke - it is now time for the "main event": Nanatsu Kaze. I may have mentioned earlier that Nanatsu Kaze is an adventure* game, but it is probably more apt to call it an "exploration game", if there is such a distinction. I would say there is. An adventure sort of implies a glorious journey, but the journey in Nanatsu Kaze is often more...low-key.
In the Sega Saturn Magazine interview I have been referencing this entire article, which I will shorten to SSM from now on, Amemiya states:
I still don’t really think of it as an adventure game. I said adventure just for convenience because it’s easier for game magazines to understand. Originally, I was thinking of a completely non-combat RPG. Instead of showing the story, the idea was for the game to be like a small world where the player becomes one with a character and lives in that world. In this world, you could catch bugs, make insect specimens, fish, collect parts to build a car, and even race once the car was ready. You could also play music by blowing a whistle. It was a world where everything I wanted to do could be included.
Basically Amemiya wanted to make Animal Crossing before Animal Crossing was a thing.
And yes, you can collect parts to build and race a "car" (of sorts) in Nanatsu Kaze.
Oh, and you know how in Animal Crossing the characters have funny voices? Nanatsu Kaze does something kind of similar (and so does Moon RPG Remix Adventure, another quite special 1997 video game and one Amemiya has mentioned before). The villagers of the Seven Winds Island make weird sounds or gestures to converse, and then a sort of storybook text box will pop up and, according to the SSM interview, a "third-party narrator" will provide "subtitles to convey what the character might be saying, like a translator".
The game is likened to a "Box Garden" by Tomiyama in SSM:
This is Amemiya’s world, compressed into a “box garden.” Every time you power on the game, these characters come to life and show their presence in front of you. When the power is turned off, they fall asleep. Even though the characters are born from fantasy, they feel as though they have real life, and there’s a sense that they exist in this world.
Amemiya also elaborates on why he chose a low-key storytelling style in the Picture Imagination Book:
There aren’t really any clear stories with a beginning, middle, and end. What I usually imagine is more like my everyday life, for example, going to the tobacco shop because I ran out of cigarettes, only to find they didn’t have any, or hearing a rumor from someone about a delicious wine...and then they went to the town and bought two bottles… That’s the kind of world it is, where Garp and strange creatures appear in these small, everyday scenes. So, there’s no rising action, climax, or huge events happening at all…
So, rather than "adventure game", let's say Nanatsu Kaze is an "exploration game" on a 2D plane - and behind that plane you will see quite lush, beautiful backgrounds (initially drawn by Amemiya, likely with his assistants at CROWD, and then translated to the game with the help of Yasuo Wakatsuki). Backgrounds painstakingly detailed to complement the equally impressive character spritework.
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
Givro's Tomiyama explained that "the ability to display multiple layers of backgrounds...really helped us out" in the 1997 SSM interview - a background layer feature he said was, at the time, unique to the Saturn hardware.
But enough about box gardens and Saturn specs for now - in the next part of this article series, I will instead focus on the game's...gameplay.
Please insert Disc Three to continue reading...
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
You can read the first part here:
Part One
I ended Part One by explaining a bit about Iho Kembunroku, a series of illustrations by Keita Amemiya involving his character Professor Garp, a small but portly dragon who will go on to become the playable character of Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari in late 1997. I will now explain the concept of Iho Kembunroku in more detail.
My Nanatsu Kaze collection
IHO KEMBUNROKU continued...
In Keita Amemiya's Iho Kembunroku illustration series, protagonist Garp decides to travel the world of the Seven Winds to gain inspiration for his writings. Through these illustrations depicting Garp's journey, the viewer will gain insight into this mysterious, unique world setting populated with weird little - and sometimes not so little - critters.
Iho Kembunroku art by Keita Amemiya. Photographs from my personal collection.
Most likely Garp is a literature professor or something of this sort - or at least that is what is implied by his "professor" title and his desire to write. Basically, the illustrations and text of Iho Kembunroku represent a travelogue or memoir written by Garp to memorialize the strange sights he sees on his somewhat silly - but often oddly endearing - journey in the land of the Seven Winds.
And this record, this memoir, is an early chapter in the formation of the story that will eventually become Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari for the Sega Saturn.
The first Iho Kembunroku illustration, titled "The Peddler of Zagore", was published in issue 73 of Bandai's B-Club magazine in 1991. B-Club was a magazine that focused on model kits, mecha, anime, tokusatsu, etc. - a magazine where Amemiya's artwork was often featured. But not all of the Iho Kembunroku artworks appear in issues of B-Club.
Amemiya continued Iho Kembunroku beyond the B-Club publication out of a desire to "create and draw" what he wanted - "without thinking at all about current trends or popularity." And definitely the art of Iho Kembunroku has a different style compared to his more commercial works of the era. As I mentioned earlier, it is a "storybook-esque style" with less focus on "cool" demonic creatures and more on "creepy cute" ones - which probably was not in vogue at the time, hence Amemiya's comments about trends and popularity. Is it even in vogue now?
In Amemiya's 1992 artbook collection - the sadly out-of-print Kiba/Fang, which collects the Iho Kembunroku series into one book - Amemiya states:
Although this drawing style appears smooth at first glance, it actually takes me more time than any other artwork I create. And since the standard of quality is something I set for myself, it can be the most troublesome...
Amemiya put a lot of work into this series of very precise illustrations - precise in contrast to the bold-lined calligraphic style he is most known for - and each Iho Kembunroku illustration has text accompanying it to help paint a larger picture of the world of the Seven Winds. Take "The Peddler of Zagore", or "The Merchant of Zagore", for example - the first Iho Kembunroku artwork.
The text accompanying it reads:
From the notes of Professor Garp:
That day, I set out for the forest of Zagore. Today, on the day when the third wind blows, Old Tam from Daichi-sen would come to sell her goods. As usual, Old Tam was a skilled merchant, and even though I, a dragon person, didn’t need them, she managed to sell me some Raki seeds. I couldn’t get the oil-free lantern I wanted, but I was fortunate to buy a strong mouthpiece resistant to the fourth wind. This was lucky because, in twenty days, when the fourth spring wind blows, I will set out on a journey. Traveling in this land of Seven Winds is a challenging task, but there is a sight I simply must imprint on my eyes. When I told Old Tam about my journey, she suggested I take along Kisuke, the “hedgehog tailor” who was helping her with her trade. Perhaps she was worried about losing one of her good customers while I was away…?
(Of course, I didn’t pay for Kisuke.)
This first installment in the series gives glimpses of what is to come, mentioning the "third wind" and impending "fourth wind" - and introduces not just Garp but also Old Tam, who will appear in Nanatsu Kaze as a merchant...
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
...and Kisuke, the "hedgehog tailor".
Kisuke is described in the June 6th 1997 issue of Sega Saturn Magazine as:
The curious and energetic mouse child, Kisuke, who is always full of energy, darting around the island. Truly elusive, he uses his scissor-like hands to cut anything he comes across, making him quite the mischievous character.
Kisuke is a stand-out character not just in the Iho Kembunroku stories, but also in Nanatsu Kaze, where he is one of three helpers that...help...Garp traverse the island of Seven Winds. He is also a bit of a favorite character of Amemiya's. Amemiya actually created Kisuke much earlier than 1991, though Kisuke's early design looked...a bit different.
Here is what Kisuke looked like when Amemiya drew him in 1983:
Amemiya's notes on this version of Kisuke in his 1992 Kiba artbook collection explains:
You could call this the “real version” of Kisuke (although this character was created earlier, so technically speaking, it would be more accurate to describe Kisuke as the “cute version” of this character). These characters are part of a world I’ve envisioned since my early 20s, one that I’ve always dreamed of someday turning into a visual production, possibly a film.
Similarly, there are also images of Garp reproduced in the Kiba artbook originally created by Amemiya in 1983.
So you can see, Amemiya had the idea of using these characters for quite some time before implementing them into Iho Kembunroku and later on into Nanatsu Kaze.
Further evidence of this is presented in an interview in the Nanatsu Kaze Picture Imagination Book, where Amemiya reveals:
When I was in high school, I became really interested in working on picture books, and I thought that Garp's world could one day be put together into fairy tales or something like that when I grew up. I was expanding on it in various ways. However, at that time, there was a band boom, and music and sports figures were really popular. Wanting to become a picture book author felt kind of uncool...I only showed my drawings to my very close friends.
In total, there are nine Iho Kembunroku stories collected in the Kiba artbook, and seven of the nine are Garp's travel notes - one of which is a fun story of him fishing (a feature that is later implemented as a game mechanic in Nanatsu Kaze) while overhearing a twin-headed crab (a character...or rather, characters...that also appear in Nanatsu Kaze) argue with itself/one another over a game of "Bushin Shogi". These travel notes sometimes mention Garp's writer's block, and the journey helps him overcome that.
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
The final two Iho Kembunroku tales are actually excerpts of Garp's fiction writings inspired by his journey, with the titles "The Hare Who Become A Lion" and "The One-Winged Dragon Knight".
The One-Winged Dragon Knight
Side Quest/Side Note
I have no concrete proof of this, so the following is all baseless speculation - which as I said earlier, is the best kind - but I believe that Professor Garp is potentially named after John Irving's novel The World According to Garp. The book was first published in English in 1978, which was later adapted into a movie starring Robin Williams in 1982.
The protagonist in The World According to Garp is a writer named...Garp...and some of this character's writing excerpts are presented throughout the novel - sort of like how two of the nine Iho Kembunroku stories are excerpts of dragon Garp's own writings. Also, Garp in the Robin Williams movie wishes he could fly, and dragon Garp also has trouble flying. In the Irving novel, Garp moves to Vienna to gain inspiration to write, and dragon Garp travels to other locations to do the same. Though the book and movie were apparently not big sellers or anything over in Japan, the movie was dubbed into Japanese in 1988, and the book was first released in Japanese in 1983 - and, if the Japanese Wikipedia article is to be believed, the novel caught the attention of well known Japanese writers Kenzaburo Oe and Haruki Murakami, so it is not like it would be inconceivable that Amemiya would know of Irving's book title. Still, none of this is proven, it is just an idea I have been entertaining in my head.
Side Quest End/Side Note End
Well, I won't explain what happens in all nine stories (unless someone out there is really interested), but you get the idea. Before Nanatsu Kaze, first there existed Iho Kembunroku...and then a few years later Enix came calling.
In Sega Saturn Magazine, Amemiya states:
Enix first approached me with the idea of making a game. They told me that they would leave the content entirely up to me and wanted me to make the game I most wanted to create. That’s when I realized that if I were to take responsibility for something all the way to the end, it had to be a world centered around Professor Garp and the others.
The world that is depicted in Nanatsu Kaze was always an important one to Amemiya - a world he carried with him and expressed in his un-commercial "fairy tale" style art for many years before getting involved with Enix to create it in game form. Thus, it makes sense that quality work was a big concern for him, and that whoever programmed the game, whoever did the sprite work for the game, would need to get it just right. It also explains why Amemiya was the only logical choice for game director in this instance - because it is his world, his characters, his story, his art.
To present this "picture book" fairy tale world as accurately as possible, to match the amazingly detailed work Amemiya had already put into the world of Seven Winds with the Iho Kembunroku series, the programmers would need to be able to convey that smoothness, that detail oriented world, in a way that cut no corners - and naturally Amemiya needed to be there to oversee the entire project. This is why Givro was so intent on using the multi-joint sprite style and put such focus on smooth movements, and why Amemiya was chosen as the game's director over anyone from Givro who had more experience. I hope this in-depth explanation makes everything clear.
Basically, everything I've written about up to this point is to show that Nanatsu Kaze was not created in a vacuum - it did not just hatch from an egg fully-formed into our world. First it existed in another world: in the creative mind of Keita Amemiya - being built up and refined and strengthened over many years before reaching its final form.
The seed was planted as a high-school "picture book" dream, then sprouted and shown to the public in the '80s when Amemiya entered his early fairy tail work into an art contest (he did not win, but did receive an honorable mention), before flowering into the impressive Iho Kembunroku in 1991, and finally bearing the fruit that is Nanatsu Kaze - copies of which were dispersed, as if scattered by the wind, in late 1997 to unsuspecting Japanese gamers simply hoping for another Dragon Quest title. Nanatsu Kaze's creation was quite the journey.
And similarly, concerning the programmers and designers and artists at Givro...they took what they learned from their previous games, improved their multi-joint sprite skills, and honed their knack for creating offbeat, ambitious games and applied it all to Nanatsu Kaze to create what is their "swan song" of sorts: an un-commercial but quite pleasing, soothing but emotional experience - provided that you are attuned to its admittedly niche wavelength.
Hopefully all of this gives context, so you can see the intent of the game - that it was never meant to be Dragon Quest. It was never meant to compete with top selling game titles and was always going to be a sort of under-the-radar game - yet I contend that it is a game of high quality nevertheless. Now, finally, let us behold...
NANATSU KAZE NO SHIMA MONOGATARI
The end-product wasn’t something exaggerated, like defeating a demon lord or anything grand. It was actually a rather simple story. - Keita Amemiya, Nanatsu Kaze no Shima Monogatari Picture Imagination Book interview
Now that everyone reading (if anyone still is) understands who Keita Amemiya is, what Givro was, has seen the world of Iho Kembunroku and been introduced to the rotund Professor Garp and the Mischief Maker Kisuke - it is now time for the "main event": Nanatsu Kaze. I may have mentioned earlier that Nanatsu Kaze is an adventure* game, but it is probably more apt to call it an "exploration game", if there is such a distinction. I would say there is. An adventure sort of implies a glorious journey, but the journey in Nanatsu Kaze is often more...low-key.
In the Sega Saturn Magazine interview I have been referencing this entire article, which I will shorten to SSM from now on, Amemiya states:
I still don’t really think of it as an adventure game. I said adventure just for convenience because it’s easier for game magazines to understand. Originally, I was thinking of a completely non-combat RPG. Instead of showing the story, the idea was for the game to be like a small world where the player becomes one with a character and lives in that world. In this world, you could catch bugs, make insect specimens, fish, collect parts to build a car, and even race once the car was ready. You could also play music by blowing a whistle. It was a world where everything I wanted to do could be included.
Basically Amemiya wanted to make Animal Crossing before Animal Crossing was a thing.
And yes, you can collect parts to build and race a "car" (of sorts) in Nanatsu Kaze.
Oh, and you know how in Animal Crossing the characters have funny voices? Nanatsu Kaze does something kind of similar (and so does Moon RPG Remix Adventure, another quite special 1997 video game and one Amemiya has mentioned before). The villagers of the Seven Winds Island make weird sounds or gestures to converse, and then a sort of storybook text box will pop up and, according to the SSM interview, a "third-party narrator" will provide "subtitles to convey what the character might be saying, like a translator".
The game is likened to a "Box Garden" by Tomiyama in SSM:
This is Amemiya’s world, compressed into a “box garden.” Every time you power on the game, these characters come to life and show their presence in front of you. When the power is turned off, they fall asleep. Even though the characters are born from fantasy, they feel as though they have real life, and there’s a sense that they exist in this world.
Amemiya also elaborates on why he chose a low-key storytelling style in the Picture Imagination Book:
There aren’t really any clear stories with a beginning, middle, and end. What I usually imagine is more like my everyday life, for example, going to the tobacco shop because I ran out of cigarettes, only to find they didn’t have any, or hearing a rumor from someone about a delicious wine...and then they went to the town and bought two bottles… That’s the kind of world it is, where Garp and strange creatures appear in these small, everyday scenes. So, there’s no rising action, climax, or huge events happening at all…
So, rather than "adventure game", let's say Nanatsu Kaze is an "exploration game" on a 2D plane - and behind that plane you will see quite lush, beautiful backgrounds (initially drawn by Amemiya, likely with his assistants at CROWD, and then translated to the game with the help of Yasuo Wakatsuki). Backgrounds painstakingly detailed to complement the equally impressive character spritework.
To fit the animated gifs into small enough sizes, some color quality is lost.
Givro's Tomiyama explained that "the ability to display multiple layers of backgrounds...really helped us out" in the 1997 SSM interview - a background layer feature he said was, at the time, unique to the Saturn hardware.
But enough about box gardens and Saturn specs for now - in the next part of this article series, I will instead focus on the game's...gameplay.
Please insert Disc Three to continue reading...
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Last edited:
, so i can enjoy the game again :)
