Yoot Saito

SEGA Talk Podcast #34: Seaman (1999)

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The often requested episode of SEGA Talk is here! Barry and George discuss Seaman, Yoot Saito’s strange SEGA Dreamcast experiment. Learn how the idea came about, the speech recognition tech that made the game possible, what Yoot has been up to since and more!

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New Dreamcast documentary speaks with Masayoshi Kikuchi (Jet Set Radio), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Rez), Rieko Kodama (Skies of Arcadia), and more

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To celebrate the upcoming 20th year anniversary of the SEGA Dreamcast, the Japanese YouTube channel Archipel has decided to go talk to Japanese creators that worked on software for the Dreamcast. This is just the first part and the people they got from SEGA is pretty crazy:

Hiroshi Iuchi (Ikaruga), Kenji Kanno (Crazy Taxi), Masayoshi Kikuchi (Jet Set Radio), Rieko Kodama (Eternal Arcadia/Skies of Arcadia), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Space Channel 5 / Rez), Tetsu Okano (Segagaga), Yoot Saito (Seaman), and Hiroaki Yotoriyama (Soulcalibur)!

Its nice to see some of these creators sit down and talk about their time working on the very iconic Dreamcast, pretty excited to see part two of this documentary series. If you haven’t seen Archipel’s content, you should totally check out other documentaries they have done.

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Yoot Saito hints at a Seaman return

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“Don’t Panic!” That’s what the t-shirts read in a tweet from Seaman creator Yoot Saito (it’s also on the cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I doubt there is a connection). The tweet reads “Seemingly, a new project is being started. Guess what from the web-address on their back.” with the web address linking to www.seaman.ai which is currently shown as being under construction. We’ve covered a lot of Seaman news over the past five years, with the most notable headlines being “Nikkei reports that Seaman’s being revived on the 3DS” in 2012, “Nintendo trademarks point towards a new Seaman game” in 2013 and “Devolver Digital wants to make a new Seaman game” in 2015.

Could the mystery project be a remaster, a sequel, a Nintendo exclusive or a team up with a developer like Devolver Digital? Perhaps a Kickstarter will soon be launched? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Yoot Saito to host Classic Game Postmortem for Seaman at GDC 2017

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What?

The 2017 Game Developers Conference is just a little over a month away, and just last week it was announced that Japanese game designer Yoot Saito is set to host a behind-the-scenes look at the hit Dreamcast game Seaman in a Classic Game Postmortem. Yes, that’s right, I said “hit”. Despite the quirky nature of Seaman, it went on to become one of the most popular Dreamcast games in Japan – even outselling Shenmue!

The postmortem is set to be an hour long, and given Saito’s unique ideas for games it is sure to be an incredibly interesting discussion. The conference runs from February 27 to March 3, and date and time for the Seaman postmortem are still to be determined. You can learn more about the postmortem and GDC 2017 here.

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Seaman creator returning to the gaming industry

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lancado-primeiro-no-dreamcast-seaman-mostra-um-perturbador-homem-peixe-que-conversa-com-o-jogador-por-meio-do-microfone-do-videogame-1344280599341_956x500.0Yoot Saito the Seaman creator who also developed games like SimTower and Odama will now be returning to creating more video games. He announced this while speaking at the fourth annual BitSummit festival in Japan where he said he needed to get out of R&D and back into making video games for money.

“That’s the motivation. Computer games make money.” – Yoot Saito (Seaman Creator)

Seaman creator’s last released title was 2012’s luggage friendly 3DS title Aero Porter and then Earthbook which was a iOS app that no one cared about according to Saito, which ended up losing money. He didn’t go into specifics as to what he wanted to do for his next game but he didn’t rule out a spiritual successor but said the average player isn’t ready for a brand-new genre. I have to agree with Yoot Saito, while I would love a new wacky crazy genre created by him, I don’t think the average gamer would care, sadly.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a spiritual successor to Seaman, even if its just a mobile phone app. As long as the microtransactions to don’t take away from the game’s unique fun factor. Who knows, it could be the next wacky app to make it big. What are your thoughts on Yoot Saito returning to game development?

[Source: Destructoid]

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Seaman creator on Iwata, talks about canceled Seaman 3DS game

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We know that Seaman creator and IP right holder Yoot Saito has been trying to get a Seaman game off the ground for a long while. We know that in early 2008 he tried to revive the game on mobile devices with Gabo, where your fish is more evolved into an actual ape, this is a year after Seaman 2 released on Playstation 2 in Japan. The game never got a release. We also know that as early as 2012 that Nintendo had been thinking about reviving Seaman on the 3DS and in 2013 Nintendo even tradmarked ‘Mysterious Pet: Legend of the Fish with a Human Face’, which sounds like a game we all know and love. Yoot Saito finally spills the beans on Seaman 3DS which he admits he was working on for awhile, in his farewell post to late Satoru Iwata.

He also talks about how he first met Iwata back in 1996 and how he gave him the job of looking for different types of games for Nintendo platforms. Saito also talks about how his suggestions lead to the Wii controller’s speakers and how him and Iwata experimented with StreetPass technically back in the original Gameboy days. It is a really a fantastic read and shows you why Satoru Iwata will be sorely missed in the video game industry. He was one in a billion. Read the translated blog post after the jump!

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