Alpine Racer Interview Collection

This short but fun series of interviews come from the booklet in the album "Namco Game Sound Express Vol. 25: Alpine Racer" (1995). Mainly discussing the creation of the album itself, it provides some interesting tidbits from the game's development team and many of the hurdles they had to overcome while making it, including the notorious Time Trial modes.

Ishika

This is my third album CD (the other two are NebulasRay and Great Sluggers), but Alpine Racer is my first assignment alone, so I am very fond of this game. If you're crowding around this game in the busy city game center and you think there's a suspicious person standing beside you, that might be me. Despite the game being released in mid-July and completely ignoring the sense of season, I'm glad that so many are playing it. By the way, the CD was released on-season to make up for the game not being released by then. There's a variety of content here, like orthodox fusion, low-key pops and Shibuya-style imitation sounds, so music fans who likely never even play games I hope will enjoy this. Also, since parts of the music that were cut-down for the game have been re-recorded and remastered, even those who grew tired of the music in the game will find new discoveries here. Of course, you can lie down at home and listen to it, but I'd love if you listen to this CD in the car when you decide to go skiing. Please have this as an essential item for the coming ski season.

Mr. Bee

Young and old, men and women, gamers and the general public, Alpine Racers all around the country, do you enjoy this? By the way, this is the annual CD "secret story", so what should I talk about? I remember all the hardships.....well, I remember the hard work of building the course. Anyway, it was good until I grew eager to make a variation and try to instead make it three different courses, but as I was working on it I was short on hardware capacity. "Eh, it doesn't fit?" No, I can't stop. There's no other way but to increase the common part of the three courses". Furthermore, at the time another challenge awaited: how to do the rules for the time trial mode (hereinafter, refering to as T.T. mode). At the time, there were no gates or penalty rules, so there were many players who finished without passing through the gate. "But it's uncomfortable to give a blatant penalty....Yoshi, let's increase the time by one second every time they you pass the gate. If you don't pass the gate, the game will be over on the way." The rules for T.T. mode were then added.

Meanwhile, the first location test had started with all the staff watching players. The results were more successful than we expected. However, "it's winter now, so it's natural for skiers to take to it, but it's likely the game will be released around summer, so what will happen...." The development staff's anxiety never stopped. Speaking of which, Suzuki (at the game center) said "What's that? Um....a skiing game? Why is there a skiing game in midsummer!" When spring came, cherry blossoms fell, Golden Week collapsed, and the deadline was approaching. "Well, how do you suppose we simplify the difficulty for the advanced T.T. Mode? It's bad that you can't physically clear it, but it's painful that you're able to clear it so easily. If that happens, help Tako straighten and adjust the difficulty!"