It's incredible to think that ActRaiser, a title that effortlessly blends God sim sections with side-scrolling action, came so early in the lifespan of the SNES.
A genuinely groundbreaking title, ActRaiser is fondly remembered even today – and recently inspired a remake on modern-day platforms. However, Yuzo Koshiro – who contributed a fantastic soundtrack to Enix's title – has revealed that the initial plan for ActRaiser was very different.
"My sister told me that ActRaiser was originally planned as a straight-up JRPG, similar to Dragon Quest," Koshiro says on social media, referencing his sibling, Ayano.
"Later on, at the request of the programmer Hashimoto, the action sections were added. He was heavily into Rockman at the time, which had a strong influence on the game. From that point on, it took about six months to finish the game."
He explains that he's "only hearing this story for the first time now, since the action sections were already in place when I joined the team. At that time, I vaguely recall Hashimoto-san often praising Mega Man, and that the action parts were quite strongly influenced by it."
Ayano said the same when we spoke to her back in 2023:
"Quintet had conceived the first ActRaiser as an RPG at the time. They wanted to offer a launch title in the style of Dragon Quest. But there wasn't enough time for that, and Mr. Hashimoto, one of the company founders and the game's programmer, also preferred to make an action game. Something like Mega Man 2. So we changed the concept and finished the game within half a year.
We had never made an action game on a console before. Some aspects of ActRaiser aren't that great either, I think. Sometimes you get attacked from outside the screen. That wasn't so ideal, but we couldn't make it work any better. The jumping behaviour is also a bit strange. We had problems with the angles, so it looks a bit strange. The jumping behaviour was not designed by the designer but by the graphic artist. And while the programmer wanted to make an action game, the lead planner was a big fan of Populous. And then, they combined these two concepts."
Unfortunately, Koshiro has also posted this rather terrifying AI-generated video to mark the game's 35th anniversary:
ActRaiser was followed by a SNES sequel, which sadly removed the God sim sections.