February 18, 2008

A Hole in However Many It Takes: Hot Shots Golf Brings its Zany Fun to PS3
By Louis Bedigian

“The franchise was becoming a little conservative so we looked to breathe new life into the series.”

Hot Shots Golf: the inventor of surreal golf. It’s the game that brought a unique edge to the sport when all others were trying to stay on par with Tiger Woods. It has spread its joy on multiple PlayStation systems, and in 2008 will finally make its way to PlayStation 3 in the form of Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds.

Masashi Muramori, President and Creative Director of Clap Hanz, says that there are two main improvements being made to Out of Bounds. “(1) The online features are now a standard feature, (2) the Advanced Shot mechanic has been added. The first is an online upgrade, and the second is an improvement in the offline feature.”

What are the goals of this edition? Are there any new challenges?

Masashi Muramori: The franchise was becoming a little conservative so we looked to breathe new life into the series. The result of that, as answered above, are the Advanced Shot system and a more extensive online experience. Our overall goal for this title was to challenge ourselves to add more depth to the gameplay and make it a richer experience.

While most golf games shoot for reality, Hot Shots has been memorable for its fantasy courses. Tell us about the courses, old or new, that are being brought to Out of Bounds.

MM: For HSG:OB we've actually focused on being more "realistic" – from the course layout design to the outside feel an open environment should give. Of course, this was largely affected by the fact that we're going Hi-Def, but as you can see, the grass and trees are created very "realistically."

The environments are gorgeous.

Can you give us an idea of what it's like designing these courses? Is it similar to what developers of pro golf games do – take pictures and study the layout of real courses?

MM: We've done real courses in the past, specifically the Fujizakura Country Club and the Kawana Course, both very prominent Japanese courses. For these, we measured and took data to re-create the golf courses in the game.

When we create fictional courses, we don't look at and study real courses as much, we try to take abstract aspects of several courses and mesh it together.

Will players be able to customize any aspect of a course?

MM: At the moment, we have no plans for course construction type features. However, to a certain degree, it does depend on how much demand there is for such a feature.

But it would have to be something where the players can construct courses with relative ease, in a stress free manner. In addition, it cannot be too time consuming of a task, so the feature itself would have to be a very well made tool.

What's going on with the swing techniques? Are there any new ones for Out of Bounds?

MM: We tried to create a swing system that feels closer to real golf. As golf is a game where "feel" is very important, we've tried to bring back the "analog" feel with the Advanced Shot system so the player experiences emotions that they would experience playing golf such as hope and angst. In real golf, you're not sure if you've hit the ball hard enough to reach the green, or you're not sure how the ball will be affected by the wind, etc. and you're fixed on the ball as it comes down - those are some of the sensations we hoped to recreate with the new shot system.

Some of the camera angles appear to be more dynamic on PS3 than in any of the previous iterations. Talk about that and the camera controls and/or auto adjusting views.

MM: Since this is a title for the PS3, we've looked to step up the camera work for a more authentic representation and show various camera angles that have never been displayed before.
I think, in broad terms, to make the cameras look more real, one could either pursue creating a more real looking game, or show the game in a way that people are accustomed to seeing it so the experience feels more authentic for the player.

For HSG:OB, we took the latter approach, using camera angles and effects that you might see in real golf broadcasting. Examples of this would be close-ups of the character's expression after hitting a shot or showing how close the ball landed on the green with rings (widely used in Japanese golf broadcasting). Hopefully, this will give the game a different type of authenticity.

Are any new characters going to be featured in Out of Bounds?

MM: Aside from two characters (Gloria and Suzuki), all the characters will be new for Out of Bounds.

As character animation becomes more lifelike, how do you deal with the change in language from Japanese to English? Does this require a whole new set of facial animations?

MM: We understand that facial animation is the leading technology in more life-like, cinematic games, where dialogue plays a big part of the entire gameplay experience. Because of the nature of this franchise, it hasn't really been a priority to differentiate facial animation sets between languages at this point. However, it is something we'll explore for implementation in the future.

What are some of the changes that occurred when going from Japanese humor to American humor? How many jokes/scenarios needed to be altered or re-written?

MM: I think most of the Japanese humor doesn't translate well to American humor, so I would guess that about that at least a fifth of the content is altered in some way. It depends on the joke/scenario but some of them are completely re-done.

Thank you for your time.

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