From Gitaroo Man to Ouendan to Elite Beat Agents to Ouendan 2, the talk covered the history behind the games, including plenty of concept art and video.
Keiichi Yano, Vice President of development and co-founder iNiS and one of the main men behind rhythm games such as Gitaroo Man, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents, gave a talk at GDC discussing the history behind Elite Beat Agents, and the transition from the very culturally distinct Ouendan. In his talk, Yano traced all the way back to iNiS’s first game, Gitaroo Man for the Sony PlayStation. Though apologizing that it was only his second talk in English, you wouldn’t have even guessed that it wasn’t his first language. Yano was accompanied by two ouendan, who stood behind him occasionally yelling out “Osu!" at appropriate points during the presentation. Overall, his presentation was the most enjoyable out of all of the presentations I attended at GDC.
iNiS’s beginnings were rocky. Their first game, Gitaroo Man, didn’t sell well, very nearly causing iNiS to stop developing games. They didn’t, however, and began looking for a different way to approach the music game genre. They came up with an action-oriented music game, an idea which they pitched to Nintendo. Though they liked some of the concepts, Nintendo thought the game sucked (his words). However, this initial contact would prove fruitful when the idea for Ouendan came around. The action game idea was then pitched to several other publishers. One company actually picked it up, but the publisher later backed out and the project fizzled.
At E3 2004, the two new portable game systems, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP were unveiled. It was at this time that Yano thought of two game ideas, one for each system. For PSP, he thought Gitaroo Man would work well on it, and indeed, Gitaroo Man Lives was eventually released. For DS, he came up with the touch-screen idea used in Ouendan and Elite Beat Agents.
