Last time I spoke with you, I covered some of our basic game features. Today, as promised, I’d like to share some of our development secrets with you so that you can learn about how we made this incredible game.

We began work on the game in January 2006, while most of our company was still working on the .hack//G.U. series for PlayStation 2. We hand-picked a team of our 10 most obsessive developers which constantly grew in number as the project progressed. The team expanded from 10 to 20, 30 and eventually 65 people, which were all working on the game for the last 9 months of development. Our basic concept for the game was to eliminate the lines between traditional animation and video games. This is a pretty serious goal! We knew that to meet this goal, we would have to produce a game the likes of which nobody has ever seen.

Fundamentally speaking, I think CyberConnect2 is good at action games. After gameplay, we pay a lot of attention to graphics. With Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, we knew we couldn’t just advance our graphics technology by just one step – we had to aim for two steps. Everyone here is a fan of every type of animation such as cel animation, cartoons, CG, and flash. Of course, the NARUTO TV series was our biggest influence for this project. I know a lot of fans feel that Japanese animation is unique because it has a special hand-drawn look to it. It’s hard to totally nail down exactly what it is, but we studied a ton of animation to make sure our game had these same qualities.

We also upgraded our development environment to take on this game. We started using LCD graphics tablets which allow us to use a stylus to create hand-drawn textures. We also installed round tables over the artists’ workstations to prevent light reflections from interfering with their work. This is an example of some of the steps we took to create CG graphics with a hand-drawn feel.

Our animation team regularly watched the NARUTO animated series while they worked to keep the same sort of tempo of movement and frame progression. As you can see, each animator has three monitors at their desk. The one on the left allows them to see the graphics as they will appear in the game, the one in the middle is the CG tool program, and the one on the right plays animation throughout the day as inspiration and reference material.

Of course, we have a lot of reference material beyond animation. We have almost 1,000 NARUTO comic books and NARUTO-related magazines and books in our office library.

We also have a huge DVD collection. The list of these little animation secrets go on and on, but the key one is that everyone working on the game loves NARUTO. I really believe this group loves NARUTO more than any other group in the world.

These are some of the elements that helped us create NARUTO: Ultimate Ninja STORM. I think the game will really satisfy fans and also be accessible to people who may not know much about NARUTO.

Thank you all for this great opportunity to talk about the game. It comes out tomorrow – Tuesday, November 4th – so I really hope you all get a chance to check it out!

I’m sure some of you that have seen our trailers for the game have thought “I bet this is just a pre-rendered movie” – but it’s not! Everything from all of our trailers is 100% real-time footage from the game running on PLAYSTATION 3 hardware that you will all be able to experience when the game is released next week.

Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm features two main game modes for players to enjoy – “Free Battle Mode” and “Ultimate Mission Mode.” In Free Battle Mode, you can play as one of 25 characters from the animated series. The battles aren’t strictly one-on-one either – you can bring two support characters into every battle, who will help you out in short bursts. This is the same three person team structure as the TV series, but now you can create your own teams with all sorts of original combinations. We’ve put a lot of effort into our battles to make sure they match the look and feel of the animated series. You can perform all sorts of amazing moves with your favorite characters and even fight on walls and run over bodies of water.

Ultimate Mission Mode lets you take on 101 missions across Naruto’s Hidden Leaf Village, which acts as a hub for the game. Here, you can acquire new Jutsu moves, purchase items, and even chow down on a bowl of noodles at the Ichiraku Ramen shop! The game’s storyline covers episodes 1-135 of the Naruto animated series, so it’s incredibly comprehensive. In addition to the head-to-head battles, you’ll encounter huge boss battles, races through the forest and tree-climbing battles in this mode.

At the strong request of our fans in North America, the game offers full voicing in both English and Japanese with all the original actors from the animated series. We’re also going to be releasing downloadable content for the game well into next year. It will mostly focus on new support characters and missions and best of all, it will all be FREE!

These are just the basics of the game, but if you want to check it out for yourself, we have a playable demo that you can download from PSN right now. In my next post, I’m going to give you an exclusive look at how we made the game, so check back here soon!