Tanaka Interview #2 Full Transcript

[Chrono'99]

As stated in a recent piece of news, Cubed3 has interviewed Hiromichi Tanaka, Chrono Cross's producer. Cubed3 has now put the full transcript online. Tanaka elaborated on the difficulty of making a new Chrono game or a Chrono Trigger port on the Wii Virtual Console...

[hidden=Here is the part of the interview concerning the Chrono series]

AR: *Ahem* Recently Chrono Cross was mentioned in an interview with you and you stated there would not be a sequel to Chrono Cross because it would be too difficult to get the original team together again…? Does this rule out any possibility for the Chrono series in the future at all? Because Nintendo fans are always asking about a Chrono Trigger remake…

HT: There’s still a possibility, but since the main director is not working for Square Enix now – he’s working on other titles in a different company, Namco Bandai, it’s a bit difficult to ask him to come back and be the head of a team again. And also, Kato-san is working on the fourth game in the Mana series. So there’s still a possibility that he might think he might want to make it again…

AR: It seems to be…the Chrono series seems to have a huge following across the Internet. People are always asking about Chrono Trigger, maybe it will appear on the Virtual Console for the Wii…?

HT: It’s a 50-50 possibility – we’re not sure yet. It contains a really difficult problem of copyright issues, such as Akira Toriyama’s artwork. We’re discussing with Nintendo, but haven’t really come to any conclusion.

[/hidden]

[ZeaLitY]

Aw, what the hell? Who the hell is the "main director"?

[Brohaz]

A guy whose name I can't pronounce

Seriously, that's an interesting article. Bookmarked.

[Chrono'99]

Yeah, weird thing about the main director. The only logical explanation I can think of is that it's simply Kato, since he's the only Chrono director who has worked for Namco/Monolith Soft. If Kato is still a freelancer, he can work for both Monolith Soft and Square Enix's World of Mana. I think we just need to replace "And also" in the sentence with "Besides" or maybe "However" or some other conjunction. There were some little mixups in the French interviews too, so I think it's probably what they meant.

Basically, Tanaka's explanation was probably something like: "The main director, Kato, has left Square Enix to be a freelancer and he usually works with Namco/Monolith Soft now. However, he is also working on the fourth game in the Mana series, so there's still a possibility that he wants to do a new Chrono..."

Anyway, hell yeah I hope he still wants to do it!

[Kyronea]

EDIT: Please ignore my previous information in this post as I just realized that article I posted appears to be about the same interview, though with a more negative tone.

As for Kato, I would not be too surprised to see him up to either porting Chrono Trigger or creating a new game. The main issue I still see is the copyrights of Akira Toriyama's artwork and whether that can be resolved or not.

[Ruby Raider]

Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!

Its mean that Chrono Break is not (so) dead, but I think Toryama will not agreed with that....

[Romana]

So, I wonder how Toriyama will react to this? Will he easily agree, perhaps?

[Kyronea]

So, I wonder how Toriyama will react to this? Will he easily agree, perhaps?

Well, that depends. Does he own a copyright on the art for the various Dragon Ball series? If so, I think we may be able to judge a possible response by taking a look at how easily companies obtain a license for Dragon Ball games. If, judging by the numerous amounts of them, a company gains a license easily, then he may agree easily to this as well, especially since the art for this game is limited compared to the amount he did for the Dragon Ball series.

On the other hand, if he doesn't own a copyright for the art for those series, I don't think we can judge beforehand how he'll react.

[Geiger]

Or they could redo the artwork and rightfully put Toriyama out to pasture. 

---T.Geiger

[Lena Andreia]

 That'd be blasphemous. Burn, buuuuurn! XD

 Anyway, I think that there's a good chance they could give the copyrights for the designs--after all, Toryiama works on the DQ games, and since Enix is under Square's umbrella now, they'd have closer ties to Toryiama.

[Dirtie]

Or they could redo the artwork and rightfully put Toriyama out to pasture. 

---T.Geiger

-_- Toriyama is part of what made CT great - I wouldn't want a CT with a different art style

To be honest, I don't think he'd have any issue with the use of his artwork - he still has close ties with Squenix thanks to DQ, and furthermore the relationship between Squenix and Nintendo hasn't been this good since the SNES days.