Ok, so I'm being an obsessive Treasure geek again, and I found something interesting.

Now, back in 2003, Yaiman, in masks and secret disguise, did a "creator's note" interview to promote the new Astro Boy. Interestingly enough, he talked a lot about Bangai-O during the interview, and even mentioned that he hoped to do a sequel to it (looks like that wish came true). You can read the interview here: http://sega.jp/archive/creators/vol_25/1.html

The new Bangai-O is coming out so I decided to revisit that interview. I asked around about some of the parts I had trouble with and I came up with a rough translation of one of the questions that seemed interesting:

Q: Yaiman, what kinds of games have you developed at Treasure?

Yaiman: Since Treasure was founded, Gunstar and Guardian Heroes, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Silhouette Mirage, mostly working as a System Programmer.

The System Programmer is the unsung hero, but if he's the only one, he has to take the calls in the middle of the night if they find a bug before the release.

I felt a sense of crisis after working as a system programmer all the time. I approached the president and told him "Let me take a year to create something." I was able to persuade him, and Bangai-O is the result.

Bangaio started off as a remake of an X1 game called "*****" [Name purposefully edited out], but then I started to mix in Anime influences from Edeon, Macross and Layzner, and pretty soon it was didn't resemble the original, and so its being a remake became 120% a bluff/lie.

I think the president also liked it, since it was just before the game industry turned cold.

After that came out I went back to system programming on the GBA with Tiny Toon Adventures (*unreleased) and Hajime no Ippo. It also came to make a game portion. But it is although the system is also made since it is one programmer (smile). [No idea on this last line]

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So there's an interesting mystery here. Apparently Bangai-O was at one point a remake of a Sharp X1 game, but the title of that game is purposefully edited out of the interview.

But the X1 wasn't a terribly successful system (it got destroyed by the NEC PC-8801) and there's really only a little more than 100 games for it. Most of these are classic arcade ports, adventure games, and RPGs. So I decided to look through the original side-scrolling action/shooting games on the system (there aren't many) and look what I found...

Look familiar? It's called Kagirinaki Tatakai, a tape-based X1 exclusive released by Enix in 1983.

I read up on the game... Apparently it's a free-scrolling shooter in which you can control a male or female main character, with two types of shots (lasers and rockets) as well as a bomb attack.

Alas, I only know where to find X1 disk games, not tape games, so I haven't played it for myself, but it seems like a pretty good match, don't you think?

I need to track this thing down.

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8bit said:

I don't think that has character switching or unique weapons per character though, why have buttons for firing the two different weapons?

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Sylar said:

I added the Kanji name of the game. Maybe this will help us track it down!

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Linkzg said:

Very interesting.

I orginally thougth this thread was going to ask if the DC Bangai-O was a remake and the answer was going to be the N64 one.

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Thanks for the attention this has gotten. Some people have gotten in touch with me and helped me to find Kagirinaki and as well as some other off-the-radar X1 games. Kagirinaki is a very interesting design for the time it was released and it does bear some marked resemblance to certain features of Bangai-O, including Jetpack-style controls and the use of lasers and missiles. But it's not the game that Bangai-O is based on.

I can say with some confidence now, that the game being referred to in the interview is, in fact, Hover Attack. The kana version of this name fits the blocked out letters in the interview, and the sprites in this game look exactly like 4-color versions of Bangai-O's sprites. A number of Japanese sites have made this connection and it seems to be most often mentioned in connection to Bangai-O.

It's a great little game for the time it was released, too. Here are a few screenshots I've taken for you to check out:

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