It’s good for what ails ya!
This week gave us a good excuse to talk about Patapon. It’s back! Well, in remastered-for-PS4 form, anyway. The rhythm-action title was one of my favorites on PSP. I need to get this new version.
Over on the PlayStation Blog, Sony has an interview up with producer Hiroyuki Kotani and sound designer Kemmei Adachi, as well as a . The duo has some neat production insights, including how the art direction and design came to be (“I remember writing in the design doc that this would be a game for adults with good taste and an interest in art”), who dug this game (“40% of players were women”), and even a few tips for newcomers (the game can be tough!).
My favorite part has got to be this back and forth about the singing in Patapon:
Who did the singing?
Kotani: My son! (Laughs) I thought it would be fun to have children sing, but since we didn’t have the budget to hire, I asked my son to have a 𝓀go. (Laughs) At the time he was about 10. We threw the little bundle of energy into the studio and asked him to sing for us!
Adachi: It was our first time doing it that way, so it was as difficult as you might expect. It was really hard to have a child maintain the energy needed. It was the summer holidays and he just wanted to play, and he got brought into the studio when h💙e was still half asleep.
Kotani: He laid down the ya-ho-hois and woo🧜-ha-has while listening to the b💙acking track.
Adachi: It was all done quite spontaneously. Before working on Patapon, I’d worked on LocoRoco, which was a similar approach. My voice is actually in that game too. I got up in front of the mic and laid down some chorus and gradually added to it. Patapon ended up quite similar in terms of the method.
Kotani:. We rigged🌱 it up so my son could hear me through the mic, and I sang an improved little song based on the backing track and had him copy me. Turns out even the recording utilised call and response! (Laughs) It felt a bit like a concert.
As for that free theme, you’ll just need to enter an email address and name one of the in Patapon on the blog post. Pon, Pon, Pata, Pon!
[PlayStation Blog]
Published: Aug 2, 2017 11:00 am