-The Wonderful 101: Remastered was recently announced to be coming to various platforms, as well as being self-published,
 can you first tell us about that?

Inaba: The Wonderful 101 first came out on the Wii U six years ago, but in terms of business it would be hard to say it performed well.
Since it was a game we did have a lot of confidence in, it left us feeling bad about that ever since and every since we've been talking
about the possiblities of putting the game out again, on different platforms.
That said, porting an unsuccessful game to other platforms is never easy, and on top of that with this title was a second-party game
for Nintendo, and if it wasn't for the kindness of Nintendo, work on this remaster could never have proceeded. We owe the success of
this production to Nintendo for listening to our continued requests.

-So you're saying it was a 6-year long negotiation process?

Yes. Even at other events we'd have, people would be asking if we could re-release The Wonderful 101. That enthusiasm affected us
and we started thinking what if we could self-publish the game, which we were later allowed to do.

-I see.

At the time, when we asked Nintendo if we could not only self-publish the game but also release it on other platfors, surprisingly
Nintendo found it in their big hearts to allow even that.

-Really? That's great!

Kamiya: The Wonderful 101 being rereleased after 6 six years is due to the diligence and negotiation skills of Inaba-san.

Inaba: Platinum Games are just a developer, as a company there are things that we structurally can't do. So in order to get it out
in the best way, as one last push we asked for the assistance of players and fans through crowdfunding.

Kamiya: Having the Switch port of the game as the initial goal seemed reasonable, but as stretch goals as have been mentioned before
we also put in releases for platforms other than Nintendos.

-The potential of The Wonderful 101 Remaster being available on PS4 and Steam as well is exciting, isn't it. Because this is a title
with strong fan support, it seems like a good fit for crowdfunding.

Kamiya: The support of the long-time fans is of course important, but we'd also like to expand the fanbase and get the game out to more people.

-By the way Kamiya-san, looking back on The Wonderful 101, what did you think of it?

Kamiya: For good or bad it was a very unique game, I think. For me personally I got very into the game, but I regret that I couldn't quite
figure out how to convey that to the players originally. The game was one where you couldn't really "get it" just by looking at it,
but I felt strongly that if you just played it, you would. That's why I want more people to play it, I still feel that way.

-Even when it first game out it was held in very high esteem.

Inaba: I think the people who played it liked it, it's too bad not more people did. Even though it was possible to describe the game in
words to an extent, describing how it really -feels- to play is difficult.
Because it's a game that the more you play it the more layers you discover, you can't convey the whole thing to people easily and so
word of mouth probably didn't travel in ideal ways. This time we want to rethink the ways you convey that.

-It's definitely a game with a lot of elements.

Inaba: Actually we think a lot about how much we've put into the game. You can't ask people to do the same things over and over, linear
action games have a limit to how much stuff you can cram into them. For us, we take pride in the quality of our games.
Having said that, the unbalance of not having success with a game business-wise, even 6 years after that dissappointment doesn't
go away. It's not so simple that a great game will sell great, but ever since that we kept the feeling that given the opportunity
we would want to let people play this game again.

-Being that the Switch has a lot of momentum now, how do you think The Wonderful 101 will fare? That's very interesting.

Kamiya: Yes it is. That was one of the reasons we were wishing for another chance to port the game. On the Switch you also get
the opportunity to easily take the game with you which is good. It's a game full of content so being able to bring that along
and play it anywhere and anytime is alluring.

-By the way, will anything change in the game?

On the whole, the game won't change much. But there were a lot of spots we wanted to correct or polish. For instance when you'd
pick up an enemys weapon, when the lever(?) shakes you'd drop that weapon, and because the controls there weren't displayed
it became hard to understand. That kind of unfairness was something we wanted to look over.
Moreover, because the Wii U was based around 2 screens, if we were going to be able to port it to platforms other than Switch,
we needed to change it to a one-screen game. In the Wii U-game there was a one-screen mode, but there was an issue with the
screen size and alignment that we needed to adjust.

-Because it's been 6 years I'm sure you had a long list of little things you wanted to fix.

Inaba: Yeah, even though we've been negotiating for 6 years, even so we've also been doing some preparations secretly over the
years just in case, and the improvements were part of that.

Kamiya: Of course over 6 years there's a gradual build-up of things we would have liked to polish, but the truth is that
already after the original release there were stuff we wanted to fix, and other things...
In this era of so many players doing Let's Plays and the like, it feels like we could count the players of The Wonderful 101
on two hands (strained laughter).
I indulged in watching some of that, and when I did I heard a lot of things like "It's not really clear what the controls
are here so I don't know what to do" or "This looks like a beginners game but it's actually difficult" and I realized
some things about the game then, that there were some stuff that could use a looking over.

-Well that's one way to hear the opinions of gamers(laughs). Have there been adjustments to the difficulty level too?

Kamiya: Yes. A certain point of adjustment has been the Easy Mode. Because of some lax efforts, it didn't turn out very easy.

Inaba: It wasn't easy at all, was it(laughs). This time we're really going to make it be easy.

-I'm looking forward to it. Well then, the crowdfunding campaign has only started, but do you have a message to the fans
 that are already looking forward to the games re-release?

Kamiya: I'm always saying on Twitter than "on earth there are only 13 people playing The Wonderful 101"(laughs)

-I don't think that's really true(laughs)

Kamiya: Even though I joke about that, I do think it's a fact that there are very very many who still haven't played the game.
I hope people take this opportunity to look up details about the game. It's a very unique game, a game that you can't really
compare to other games, so when The Wonderful 101 Remastered is released, please go ahead and get it and play for yourself.

Inaba: At Platinum we've actually wanted to publish our own games since forever, so depending on the result of this
crowdfunding campaign, I think the futurue of our company might change. I think it is an important crossroads for us
and I would much like it if people participated in this campaign in a festive manner, and continue to support us in general.

-This is of course important in terms of the crowdfunding but also important in terms of Platinum Games self-publishing games.

Inaba: Yes it is. We have no intention of ceasing to cooperate with various clients for big projects, but we also feel
strongly about bringing out games ourselves that we made ourselves. This game is a first step in that direction.

Kamiya: One day we would like to fully create our own IPs, so it would be great if this turns into one such project.

Inaba: With a company on the scale of ours, we can't expand in the same way that big-time companies can, which I think is
why it's important to have a lot of fan participation.  We would be very happy if you would go on this new journey with us.
Everyone, keep supporting Platinum Games. Thank you.