According to a 2001 developer interview published in V-Jump magazine, the game's composer Nobuo Uematsu stated his team started including theme songs in the Final Fantasy games since Final Fantasy VIII, and that each time, Uematsu & Yoshinori Kitase would hold a meeting to decide who would sing the theme song. The developers brought in various music CDs of singers they liked to listen to and would share their opinions. At some point during the meeting for Final Fantasy X's theme song, they could not decide on who to pick. Around the same time, a member from their staff happened to buy one of Rikki’s independent releases at a CD shop, and showed it to Uematsu. He loved it after listening to it, and said in a excited mood "This is great!", leading the team to contact Rikki right away to perform the song, called "Suteki Da Ne", for the game. Uematsu considered it a memorable song for FFX, and that from the beginning the music would be a central part of the soundtrack.
According to a 1999 E.G.G. Complete Guide interview with the game's scenario writer/planner/supervisor Hiroaki Hara, he was asked what made him go for a fully illustrated 2D style for the maps. He responded:
"Hmmm… probably just our personal taste. Now that we’re firmly in the era of 3DCG, perhaps some of us may have wanted to go against that current. But in terms of what visual style would most fit the gameplay, for EGG we felt this was the best. This is a unique world that I don’t think can be rendered in polygons. Yet the Dreamcast is a polygon machine, isn’t it? We wanted to take advantage of that strength too, which is why the boss battles switch to 3D. The one thing we didn’t want, though, was for players to have to learn a whole new control scheme for the 3D fights, and we spent a lot of effort adjusting and revising it to feel right.
I would have personally loved to have more time to work on the game. But you know, we’d already spent 3 years… and if you consider the work we did before the initial pitch presentations, it’s even longer. I’ve never spent this much time on a game development before."
In a 1999 developer interview published in Gamest magazine, the concept art for Ibuki's "Yami Shigure" move was originally going to be a normal special attack, but was changed to Super Art after many people complained.
In a 1999 interview featured in the Giga Wing OST's liner notes, the game's planner Ikuo Satou stated that in his team's early planning documents, Giga Wing was a "surprisingly orthodox" shooter game, but the game's developers at Takumi Corporation had a habit of always wanting to do something different:
"Thus with [Capcom and the] development team at Takumi, every meeting became a search for new things to improve.
“We should focus on the 1P experience, right?!” “I know, let’s have the character profiles cut in every time you use a bomb!”
And so on and so forth. In the eruption of ideas and opinions from these meetings, the revisions piled up. By and by the gameplay system was transformed, until before we knew it, the score had 16 digits, the enemy bullets could be reflected, characters were created, and a whole story was added to boot."
According to a 1994 Gamest magazine interview with the game's planner Junichi Ohno, he was asked what made him want to make a fighting game where every character was a monster? He responded:
"One reason, as you can probably guess, is that we wanted to create a new, different style of versus fighting game. In the midst of our brainstorming, someone proposed, well, why not make it all about monsters then? With monsters, we wouldn’t have to create brand new characters from wholecloth, and we could use famous monster characters that people would already be familiar with."
As Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors was a brand new fighting game, Ohno and his team also wanted to create brand new special moves for the monsters that were different from those from the Street Fighter II series.
In a 1994 interview with the game's planner Junichi Ohno & Capcom producer Noritaka Funamizu published in Gamest magazine, they stated that they considered putting monsters from all regions in the series. From the beginning, there were lots of yōkai (traditional Japanese monsters), but they cut the number of them down due to the team realizing that most international players would not recognize them.
Some "weird" characters from the beginning of Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors' development that were rejected include: •An old man who was dressed head-to-toe in a salaryman’s suit. •A nurikabe yōkai that could not move and was always in a guard state, which the game's planners mentioned would be easy to finish due to there being little about the character to animate. •An Invisible Man where the only thing about it the player would be able to see was his floating gloves, which was done so the development team could draw fewer graphics.
In an interview with the game's producer/scenario writer Hiroyuki Takahashi and director Shugo Takahashi published in the 1993 Megadrive Fan Attack Special book, they stated that the enemy "Paste" (called "Bubbling Ooze" in the English localization) was originally going to be named "Slime". Its name was not included due to copyright issues, so they tried other options to name it like "Ooze" or "Gel", neither of which got picked. They later came up with the name Paste, while the English release gave the enemies the unused name "Ooze". It's possible that 'Slime' couldn't be used due to a copyright for the iconic Dragon Quest enemy of the same name.
According to a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's designer Fumi Nakashima, she stated that her inspiration for the Al Bhed’s clothing came from bondage fashion. She recalled having various bondage books and magazines on her desks at work and her co-workers giving her "weird looks" in response to seeing them.
In a 1991 interview with the game's composer Yoko Shimomura published in vol. 62 of Gamest magazine, she stated that her idea for Dhalsim’s theme was inspired by a CD she owned of Indian and Pakistani music, and that she "may have gone a little too far" in selling the idea to the development team. She also thought using tsuzumi drums in the music would make it sound more Japanese, and more akin to "that fusion sound, the king of music that's great to listen to when you're driving around."
In a 1991 interview with the game's composer Yoko Shimomura published in vol. 62 of Gamest magazine interview, she was asked about the in-game music speeding up when the fighter's health gets low, and if the tempo of the songs themselves was actually speeding up. She responded:
"Ah, yeah, actually I wrote them all as separate compositions for that purpose. At first they only asked me to write one song for each stage, but later I said “it would be cool if the tempo got faster during the fight” and they liked the idea. Unfortunately it meant writing twice as many songs for me."
In a 1991 interview with Yoshiki Okamoto published in vol. 62 of Gamest magazine, he was asked how development on the game started. He responded:
"We started out wanting to make a fighting game. The game we finished then, however, was not Steet Fighter II. It was Final Fight. We originally titled it Street Fighter 89, but then all of the players complained that this wasn’t Street Fighter. So ultimately SF89 became Final Fight, and we started working on a separate sequel to Street Fighter. In that sense, Street Fighter II is a game that was made by the players."
Akira Nishitani was then asked if he played the first Street Fighter, and stated:
"It would be impossible to make a sequel if you didn’t understand the appeal of the original, so yeah, I played it quite a bit."
In a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's art director Yusuke Naora, he was asked where the idea for an "asian" themed world came from? He responded:
"Let’s see… after the cyberpunk and “near-future” settings of VII and VIII, we returned to our roots with FFIX. So the question became, what should we do next…? And to be honest, that question vexed us. Around that time, I happened to be looking through some books and travel pamphlets and randomly thought to myself, “you know, Asia is really nice too…” There haven’t been many fantasy games in that kind of setting. There have been games set in China, or with a Chinese atmosphere, but nothing with a Southeast Asian or similar setting. So I thought I’d try drawing some pictures to flesh out this vision I had, when lo and behold, I read Kazushige Nojima’s script and by chance it turned out to have the same feeling. Then it was like, OK, now we’ve got to do this. We all brainstorm ideas on our own, but when we meet up and share them, the ideas that happen to be similar to each other are always good ones."
In a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's character designer Tetsuya Nomura, he said that when designing Tidus' emblem, he thought of various things related to the ocean, like fishing hooks, fishbones, whale fins, and based his designs about them. He mentioned that Tidus' necklace is the emblem for his blitzball team, the Zanarkand Abes. And also stated that he came up with the idea before the Al Bhed language was written, but the shape design of the necklace is actually the combined letters of "T" + "J" from the start of Tidus & Jecht's names.
In a 2019 IGN Japan interview with the game's creator Tonnor, he was asked why he chose to release the game's soundtrack as DLC on Steam? He responded:
"The publisher was pushing hard for it (and there were requests from the testplayers too) so it was something I looked into after considering the need both for additional content for the Steam release, and as a nod to existing players who have been dedicated of fans of Hellsinker for a while now. I also managed to dig up a utility to extract the music resources from my old development machine, which allowed me to release the music in a lossless format."
According to the game's illustrator Mikael Leger, Elijah Kamski was originally going to own a pet android cat, but for unknown reasons, it was scrapped.
According to game's director Chihiro Fujioka in a 1995 Family Computer Magazine and Haou interview, he was asked about how the development of the game started. He responded:
"We started around the beginning of last year. During a business meeting with Nintendo, the topic came up of us working on something together. Nintendo has Mario, and Square has RPGs… well, why not simply stick the two together? Being entirely different things, we had no idea how this would turn out… but that’s actually what made it so exciting."
"Getting everything straight during that first phase of the development really took a long time. Mario is Nintendo’s character, so there was a lot of back and forth with them, searching for a way forward that would satisfy both Square and Nintendo. Miyamoto is also on the main team, so yeah, I mean it just took a really long time before we could get down to brass tacks."
The interviewer followed up on this, asking if Square handled the basic ideas and development, with Nintendo checking on Fujioka's work progress. He responded:
"Yeah. With regard to the graphics, Nintendo has a certain style they like. It was the kind of thing where you think you’d get it perfect, only to realize, “oh, wait, this is wrong…” Our graphics team cried a lot. (laughs)"
In a 1995 Game-on! magazine interview, the game's composer Yoko Shimomura stated that she loved the music of Mario series, and that Super Mario Bros. was her first encounter of the series and video games in general. After she got the job to write the music for Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, she "let her imagination run wild" as she composed the game's music, trying to get the sounds that fit with "Mario walking around a town chatting people up, Mario sleeping, Mario just living his life…" and described the writing process as "SOOO fun!".
According to the game's development team in an interview published in the Megadrive Fan Attack Special book in 1993, originally the Achilles Sword could cast Bolt, but if it was used against Talos, he would absorb all the damage and it would not hit the surrounding enemies. The team later changed this so Talos could not be targeted with magic at all.
During the motion-capture scene where David Anderson knocked out Donnel Udina by punching him in the face so that Commander Shepard and his crew can go after Saren Arterius in the Normandy SR-2, the game's cinematic lead Shane Welbourn (suited up as Anderson), accidentally clocked the actor who played Udina in the jaw.
In a 1999 interview in E.G.G.'s Complete Guide, according to the game's scenario writer, planner and supervisor Hiroaki Hara, and game designer (and designer of the titular E.G.G. mech) Hidetsugi Watanabe, they were asked when and why the mech was named the "Elemental Gimmick Gear"? Watanabe stated that he didn't give it any particular name, when he was working on the model. But Hara stated:
"That was something we started thinking about after the planning phase began. It looks like an egg—so the “EGG” was a simple association. Alone, the name “Egg” felt too simple and boring though. This unique powered suit runs from some mysterious combination of human energy and natural energy, so “Elemental Gimmick Gear”, abbreviated as E.G.G., seemed to fit perfectly."
In a 1999 developer interview published in Gamest magazine, the concept art for Ibuki's "Yami Shigure" move was originally going to be a normal special attack, but was changed to Super Art after many people complained.
In a 1994 interview with the game's planner Junichi Ohno & Capcom producer Noritaka Funamizu published in Gamest magazine, they stated that they considered putting monsters from all regions in the series. From the beginning, there were lots of yōkai (traditional Japanese monsters), but they cut the number of them down due to the team realizing that most international players would not recognize them.
According to a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's designer Fumi Nakashima, she stated that her inspiration for the Al Bhed’s clothing came from bondage fashion. She recalled having various bondage books and magazines on her desks at work and her co-workers giving her "weird looks" in response to seeing them.
In a 2001 V-Jump magazine interview with the game's character designer Tetsuya Nomura, he said that when designing Tidus' emblem, he thought of various things related to the ocean, like fishing hooks, fishbones, whale fins, and based his designs about them. He mentioned that Tidus' necklace is the emblem for his blitzball team, the Zanarkand Abes. And also stated that he came up with the idea before the Al Bhed language was written, but the shape design of the necklace is actually the combined letters of "T" + "J" from the start of Tidus & Jecht's names.
According to the game's illustrator Mikael Leger, Elijah Kamski was originally going to own a pet android cat, but for unknown reasons, it was scrapped.
