Hi everybody, it's Kobayashi here.
Looks like spring is here again, a season filled with ceremonies for entering universities and new jobs. Have you all got used to your new day-to-day life?

Two issues previously in Future Lab News Takahashi talked about the movies that play in Story Mode when a character appears on screen.
The Story 4 movie that he liked were actually made by me!
The characters' faces and the timing of the characters' lines were all meticulously planned out, and I think it really captures the feel of the original comic - what do you guys think?

Hmmm. I wonder. What's the most important thing about Story Mode...yup, that's right, the story.
In Wangan Maxi 3, all 80 stories develop along the same lines as they do in the original comics.
The most important thing when trying to do this in the game is trying to make scenarios that follow the original comic but fit perfectly into the three minutes of a Story Mode race.
I start by reading the original comics over and over again. Then, I think about how the story could be developed over the 10 stories in Story Mode. Once that is done, I can start choosing the rival characters, passenger characters, rival cars, the race location, characters' lines and expressions and so on in each story.
This work is done by the planning team - Uchida, Maeda, and me.
I worked on the stories for Devil-Z, Hiramoto, Masaki, Jojima, and Tomoya.
The one that I liked most out of these four was, naturally, Tomoya's story. (I really liked Jojima's compilation too, but that was just a recycled version of what I made for Wangan Maxi 2...)
I reckon the part where the "ACE32R-Activation", built by Akio and Tomoya after Tomoya's crash, shoots off down the metropolitan expressway is pretty cool. What do you think?

Next time you play Wangan Maxi 3, please have a little think about what went into the creation of the story!

OK, that's all for today, see you next time!!

(Original article in Japanese released on 4.16.2008)