Just after the launch of the Majesco-published
Major Minor's Majestic March, the latest collaboration between creator Masaya Matsuura and artist Rodney Alan Greenblat since
Parappa, Gamasutra
caught up with the artist as he returns to the game space after eight years.
So what's Greenblat been up to in the four years since Gamasutra
spoke to him last?
In the last four years? [laughs] Well you know, I took a break from the game business in about 2004 and just went back into the studio. And started working on paintings and sculptures. Made a lot of paintings, had a couple shows, it was really great. And I was expecting to keeping going in that direction.
But [Masaya] Matsuura... Actually, it was more meeting Majesco. They had this idea to kind of reunite the PaRappa team, to make a new game. So when I heard about that, I became all of sudden interested in going back to video games.
He later explains the challenges and pressures in working on a large property like
Parappa 2, and why he felt it would be easier this time around:
It wasn't even Sony behind all that. Just a lot of things that happen when something gets so big. There were just too many people involved. And it was really hard to weed through the decision making process.
If you wanted to change something, and even if you knew everyone knew it had to be changed, it was really hard to figure out how that was going to get done.
Whereas here, when I met the Majesco guys, I realized I could talk to them, and chat about whatever. They had a real good sense of my work... even my fine art work.
And they really know the business very well. They know how to balance what they know will reasonably sell, along with more cutting edge stuff. They develop their own games, along with publishing ports of Japanese stuff...
I think it's a great business model, because it isn't riding everything on just one thing.
When we were working on PlayStation, it always felt like we were trying to make mega hits, these big games, and it was a lot of pressure.
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature interview with Greenblat on
Major Minor and his return to games (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
