Yoko Taro Expresses His Love For 'Ikaruga' In New Interview

The ceaselessly wonderful Yoko Taro recently expressed his love for the classic Treasure developed shoot-em-up Ikaruga in a new interview and how it has influenced his work in making games.

Following the recent release of Ikaruga on the Switch, it seems that Yoko Taro cannot contain his enthusiasm for the cult shmup.

In a new interview with Famitsu and kindly translated by those nice people at Siliconera, Yoko Taro talks at length about how much Ikaruga influenced his work on games such as Nier: Automata.

Famitsu: What do you like about Ikaruga?

Yoko Taro, superfan: First, I’d like to talk about how the music synchronizes with what is happening on the screen. Iuchi-san, the planner and director of Ikaruga, was also in charge of making the music. Thanks to this, the stage progress matches the music as well. That is one part of what makes Ikaruga amazing. Stage 2’s music starts off with a sense of speed to go along with the opening scene, but as the screen starts scrolling slower, the song goes slower as well. How they mixed music and the sequences together was really groundbreaking, and it left such an impact on me that I stole it for the Nier series.

Famitsu: Has Ikaruga influenced your work in any way?

Yoko Taro: It doesn’t stop at just an influence! In Drakengard, you have magic and non-magic missiles that couldn’t shoot each other down. That is basically Ikaruga. Also, the enemy bullets in the Nier series was also very much influenced by the game. Actually, please write that I stole it, okay? In bold.

Famitsu: Let’s leave it at a homage.

Yoko Taro: Leaving aside my joke… Speaking seriously, Ikaruga influenced how I synchronize the game sequences with the music. Combining the two in a way that appeals to people’s hearts is a task that’s quite difficult. This sort of technique has been a hurdle for developers to overcome since the early days of gaming history, and I think Ikaruga is the first game to actually do it. Because, up until then, BGMs were only split by different scenes in each stage. In that regard, I believe Ikaruga was a game-changer in gaming history.

Famitsu: And you’re saying that’s how the sequences in Nier: Automata came to be.

Yoko Taro: Hmm, I don’t think so. It did have an influence, but I don’t think it was as successful as in Ikaruga. You see, we forced in transformation gimmicks to bosses, and while music rises to fit the moment, that’s just a scripted event, as the developers don’t know when the player will beat the enemy.

In another scene in Nier: Automata, the boss movements match the rhythm of the music, but that was just forcing it so that the movements would follow the length of the music, and not something the players could control in an interactive manner. If it were done properly, the music would increase in fervor when you do massive damage, or something like that where you feel the game via the music. That’s incredibly hard for the creator to control, and something that’s always troubling. But it’s because it’s done so well in Ikaruga that it shines so brightly.

Yoko Taro is known to be rather irreverent, but a lot of these responses are actually quite interesting and shed new light on how much games like Ikaruga have had an impact on his work.

Anyway, now that we have Ikaruga on the Switch it seems that this particular superfan of the game is very happy to play the game again.

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A Labor of Love: How to Craft Your Company's Core Values

When you"re interviewing applicants to join your company, you want to make sure they"re the right fit. It"s not just about whether or not they have certain skills--it"s also about whether they reflect your organization"s mission and values. One of my go-to interview questions is: "Describe an experience in your last role where you took initiative and created or implemented a process."

I like that question because it provides insights that resonate with our company"s core value of taking initiative. This has the dual benefit of giving us the opportunity to share our values while determining whether the applicant personifies them or has the potential to do so. We"re a proactive group, so in every interview, we tie questions back to our core values. And it goes even further than that: In our company, we tie our core values to pretty much everything.

Delineate what distinguishes your company

Core values guide how an organization thinks and behaves; they"re the bedrock on which business decisions are made and successful relationships are formed. Once defined, core values should be visible in every aspect of company operations: from sales and marketing to internal reviews to employee check-ins. At our quarterly offsite meetings, we review each core value and give shout-outs to individuals who"ve exemplified them.

As a nod to their esteemed place in our company culture, our core values are painted prominently on one of our office walls:

Take Initiative: Be proactive, challenge each other, take risks and adapt.
Be Passionate: Care about your work and take pride in what you do.
Have Fun: Create a positive work space and build strong relationships.
Value Teamwork: Approach problems with a "we over me" mentality.
Ensure Growth: Learn and evolve personally, professionally, as a team and as a firm.

These values are such a huge part of our company that we can"t fathom a time before they existed. But they"re not inherent to any organization. You have to create them--we had to do it, too--and it can take a lot of work. But it"s a labor of love: Your core values already exist, you just have to identify, define and delineate them.

But don"t rush it. The process of developing our core values was neither quick nor easy. Once we realized the need for organizational values, we knew we wanted to develop them together, as a team. This bottom-up approach made sense because we wanted all team members and our existing culture to guide and inform what"s important to us.

We found that the best time to brainstorm core values was during our weekly company meetings. We"d split up into small groups, and each would list the qualities that they believed we embodied. Once we had each team"s list, we noticed overlap and patterns--which was reassuring. The qualities of "taking initiative" and "being proactive" were so similar that it made sense to combine them.

We also didn"t want too many or too few. Our team decided that five was a reasonable number that"s easy to remember, while thorough enough to cover all the bases. Then we narrowed the full list, chose the most important values, and workshopped them into concise statements. That"s how the core values list above was born.

However, that doesn"t mean the list is static. In fact, a few months later we decided to combine "have passion" and "have pride" into one core value and add "have fun" as its own standalone value. It more accurately represented our team and our overall purpose.

For nearly two years we"ve worked under the guidance of these five core values; I believe they still accurately reflect our team. We also recently realized that these values embody our account service team as well. Because of this, we now promote our core values in sales and marketing materials as a differentiator for our agency. We"re proud to share the values that drive our organizational decisions and direction.

Ready to define your core values?

Our core values are more than just words. They are our way of life. If your business is creating or updating its core values, here are some lessons we"ve learned:

Companies with strong cultures are known to perform better than those without. Although creating and leveraging core values may seem daunting, the impact to your company culture can be tremendous. So, gather your team and get ready to brainstorm!

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