Interview | Ikaruga

Infogrames recently held a little press event in an even smaller San Francisco sushi bar to celebrate the company's upcoming release of Ikaruga, the highly anticipated new shoot-'em-up game from ace action game developer Treasure. Ikaruga is only Treasure's second shooter, but fan excitement has run high since the company's first "shmup" was the incredible Radiant Silvergun. Read below for the interview.

GameSpy: What did you do as the American producer of Ikaruga?

Michael Gjere: Most of what I did as producer was manage the relationship with Treasure. Working with a Japanese developer is different than working with an American developer. You really have to establish a rapport with them before they'll trust you and before they'll listen to you. That's the main thing, establishing a rapport. So I really managed a relationship, not necessarily adding to the game because Treasure already had a very significant portion of the game -- what they wanted to do -- laid out before ever brought it to us.

GameSpy: So there wasn't really any back-and-forth with Treasure about the game's content?

Michael Gjere: Really not about the content, we were very pleased about the content so there wasn't much we would have changed. We asked for a few of the functionality parts of it, menu functionality issues, to be updated and changed a little bit -- more to Nintendo of America standards. Wouldn't you agree, Arthur?

Arthur Long: Yeah. Normally in Q/A, what we try to do as far as changing a game is to try to get the game to comply with Nintendo of America's standards -- what they want to see in their games over here. It took a lot of getting used to, working with Treasure. A lot of the developers that we're used to working with in America ... we're used to developers sending out information to the players and whatnot. Treasure chose to keep a lot of the information and a lot of the tidbits and the tricks of Ikaruga a secret to let the players find them out for themselves.

GameSpy: Are there any differences between the U.S. and Japanese versions of