Hashimoto: I’m mainly involved with game production, discussions and configuration. Please tell us about your involvement with “Rune Factory 4 Special”, Hashimoto. I was really surprised by the fans – their reaction has been incredible! So much so, in fact, that I’m a little scared. Maekawa: We announced both “Rune Factory 5” and “Rune Factory 4 Special” at the same time, and I feel very grateful but also very bad for all of our fans who have waited for news for so long. How was the response to your recent game announcements? After letting those kinds of sentiments slip, my staff all said to me, “We’re with you, no matter what!” So I decided not to go on this journey alone, but together with many people as a company. And since I had become part of an organization, I always thought about how I wanted to work earnestly to make good games, and how I should appreciate everything that I’ve done in my career. Hashimoto: I would see other people of the same generation working in the video game industry and challenging themselves in various aspects, and it made me think about how much I wanted to try out new things, too.
Why did you decide to establish your new company, Hakama, Inc.? It’s with Yoshifumi Hashimoto, president and representative director of Hakama as well as Marvelous game planner Shirou Maekawa.
We’ve translated the full interview, which you can find below. The main focus was Rune Factory 4 Special and topics like bringing back the game for Switch, but there was also some brief Rune Factory 5 talk.
In last month’s issue of Nintendo Dream, the Japanese magazine published an interview all about the Rune Factory series.