When you think of Goichi "Suda51" Suda's Grasshopper Manufacture, the out-there developer behind hip titles like No More Heroes, you probably wouldn't expect them to announce a video game based off the Evangelion anime series. Not without a very good reason, anyway.
"Eva and Rebirth of Eva games up to now have largely put you in the role of someone in the series, letting you be Shinji or pilot Unit 01," said Rebirth of Evangelion Sound Impact producer Kei Hirono in an interview published in this week's Famitsu magazine. "I thought a different approach might be possible. We started talking about taking the visuals and music that make up Rebirth and putting them into a game somehow, and it eventually melded into a rhythm action game."
"I think the sound element of Eva is really impressive," Suda added. "The soundtrack has such a major impact. That's why we suggested a rhythm game."
Sound Impact marks the first game project from Kazutoshi Iida in a while; he's a director who's attained a measure of notoriety in Japan for titles like Tail of the Sun and Doshin the Giant. It turns out he's also an enormous fan of Eva's music. "Our sound staff has worked hard to remix the music," he told Famitsu. "We have Shiro Sagisu, composer on the original, checking everything. We have an incredible person heading our sound department in Akira Yamaoka, and he's putting his magic into this. The result is a sound package that's hard to believe is coming from a PSP. It's so good, I'd like to bring it into a club event to see how well PSP sound can stand up to a club's sound system."
"I think it's a new thing for a licensed game," Suda noted. "This is Kazutoshi Iida's work all the way through, and I think you can get a sense of his love for Eva as you play it. In a way, I think it's high-quality enough that you can treat it as an official part of the series. That's how spiritually close Iida is to [Eva producer] Hideaki Anno as he's been working on this. I think this is the best game he's worked on in his career."
Sound Impact, when it comes out in Japan September 29, will be available in a special edition that includes a soundtrack CD, T-shirt, and a unique set of Audio Technica earphones. "I was very anxious about the project," Hirono said, "but it's wound up being a brand-new type of game, one that's very pure and deep. I really think it's a new genre of game, and it's something I hope a lot of people try to witness for themselves. You really need to touch, hear, and see this game to see everything that's fun about it, I think, so I'd like to prepare a demo or some other way to give people hands-on experience with it."
