Talking preservation and Assault Suit Valken with Masanori Yagi from M2

destructoid.com:

With the impending release of Rainmaker Productions’ port of Assault Suit Valken: Declassified, I got the opportunity to talk with the development director of the project, Masanori Yagi, at the legendary developer M2. M2 has been in the porting business since 1993’s Gauntlet IV for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Since then it has grown to be one of the most respected developers for porting games to new hardware.

Rainmaker Productions approached M2 to port Assault Suit Valken to modern consoles with the purpose of providing a version that was re-translated and uncensored. In 1993, The North American version was published by Konami for the SNES as Cybernator. While the game itself was largely unchanged, character portraits were removed, text was cut, and a rather grisly ending scene was omitted entirely.

As the development director, Yagi-san describes that “My main duty is to set the direction of the game, create the specifications and then manage the development team to bring the game to completion based on these specifications.” He notes that this includes collecting information on the original game, consulting with the creative director at Rainmaker, Ollie Barder, and “examining additional elements for playing the game on modern consoles.”

However, he also notes “I fell ill in the middle of development this time, so I had to leave the practical side of things to another member of the team who came in to help me and kept an eye on the situation. We believe that we have created a product that can satisfy our users, and this is entirely due to the efforts of Rainmaker Productions and our development staff. On the other hand, if there are any shortcomings, it will be entirely my fault.”

Harsh.

M2 is considered to be the