Hi there Wangan Midnight fans, it's Tetsuo here. To be honest, I'm doing my best to kill off Tetsuo so I can work on Tetsuo-R, but that's kind of a secret...
Whenever I get some free time these days, I head down the arcade to play as many people as I can at Ghost Battle, but instead of being able to leave a challenge, I just keep getting beaten.
I HATE getting beaten, even by people I don't know.
And when I come across someone who I think I can just about beat, I can't leave the arcade until I beat them.
I always see the names "Shooting Striker" and "Lalabi with...".

Lots of things are different in Wangan Maximum Tune 3 from the last game - did you notice the extra production when rivals appear on screen at the start and in the middle of playing story mode? (That grumbling when an enemy character appears.)

We added specialized production to almost all the stories, so we had to split the recording work between a few people.
That was one of the most enjoyable things about making this game.
We put ourselves in the position of director, actor and cameraman when creating the movement of the cars, doing the camera work, and working out when to insert the cut-ins.

Especially when we were doing the delicate camerawork, the important thing was to make the cars look as cool as possible.
We were always looking for the most stunning angle for the cars and the angle that would appeal most to car fanatics when the cars appeared. Even the people doing the recording got worked up about different things about the cars and had different opinions about the best angles to shoot the cars from...after a while, we could tell just by looking at the footage who had taken it.

I'm going to show you a few of my favorite screen shots now.

Story 4 Hakone

This is the opening part of the story where Akio gives his teacher a ride around Hakone.
I thought that maybe the city would suit the Devil Z better than Hakone...but then I saw the unforgettable look of the car taken with a long distance camera shot as it hurtled through the gaps between the trees.
It was quite a relaxed scene about a date between Akio and his teacher in the original story, but in the game it has become a scene with hardcore BGM and the appearance of the tough guy Devil Z.

Story 26 Gatchan with Celsior

The only thing more riveting than Gatchan's afro (is that an afro?) has got to be the scene where he appears in his beloved purple Celsior.
Gatchan suddenly starts swinging the car from side to side, acting like a boy racer. Grr!
Grr! Graaaaaagh! What's that noise?
When leaves the scene, you can even see him smashing his car off the wall.
After that, in the main episode, he starts pushing the limits of violence again. If you're going to copy this guy, make sure you only copy his hair style.

Story 74 The blackbird approaching Makoto's Z32

Blackbird slips past Makoto with blistering speed on C1.
Makoto is stunned by the overwhelming speed of the Blackbird. The emperor of Wangan sure has plenty power.

Story 80 ??

The final story. What kind of surprise encounter is this?? Errr, beats me.

It's amazing when you see some cool tough guy appear, right?
This is the climax where you hope to see something really cool happen.
Right now we're working on (for the next game, perhaps?) a camera angle that is guaranteed to make people excited...

That's all for now, see you later!!

(Original article in Japanese released on 4.2.2008)