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In the Summer of 2000, Yoshihiro Okamoto (岡本 吉弘), a producer at Bandai, met with Yuri Shibamura, the writer responsible for Alfa System’s Elemental Gearbolt (1997). Okamoto was close friends with the president of Alfa System, Tetsuya Sasaki (佐々木 哲哉), and the two had worked together on Next King: Koi no Sennen Ōkoku (1997) (Shibamura 2003) (Okamoto 2003), an RPG co-developed by Alfa System and their partner MARS.Despite drifting apart after the project was finished, Okamoto and Sasaki maintained contact with one another, and so it was in April 2000 that through Okamoto, Bandai requested Alfa System to create a pitch for a Neon Genesis Evangelion game (Shibamura 2003). A few months later, Sasaki traveled to Bandai’s office building in Nakano with Shibamura in tow.
Meeting Okamoto for the first time, Shibamura proposed developing an Evangelion game around a new engine—“Karel 3,” an upgrade of the “Karel 2” engine that was currently being used for Gunparade March (2000). As Shibamura explained to Bandai’s executives, Karel 3 would leverage the more powerful technology of the PlayStation 2 to create a more engaging and immersive simulation. Furthermore, Karel 3 would be built around a Game Master AI that would oversee the behavior of the game’s NPCs, and this entire engine would also be designed around Evangelion with the aim to “recreate the atmosphere of Evangelion” (Shibamura 2003). Bandai accepted the initial proposal and Alfa System set to work on a prototype, later delivering it to Okamoto. In turn, Okamoto proceeded to lock himself in an office and play the game for several hours straight (Okamoto 2003b). Pleased with the freedom granted by Karel 3, Okamoto called Sasaki—who forced Shibamura to pick up the phone (Shibamura 2003b)—and expressed that Bandai would be moving forward with the game’s production (Okamoto 2003b).
Three years later, at the Tokyo Games Show held in September, Bandai unveiled Neon Genesis Evangelion 2, a “world simulator” (ワールドシミュレーター) developed by Alfa System (Game Watch 2003). The following month, on October 30th, Bandai and Alfa System held a joint press conference in Tokyo celebrating the completion of the game. Present were both Hideaki Anno and Shibamura who each offered a few words on the game. For his part, Anno expressed that while he had no intention of making an “Evangelion 2,” the simulationist aspects of the game meant that anyone could now make their own Evangelion narrative (Game Watch 2003b), a sentiment that reflected Gainax’s own independent origins. Shibamura revealed that Evangelion 2 employed a Game Master A.I. modeled on Hideaki Anno, dubbed, “Anno A.I.” (Dengeki 2003). Shibamura had spent time interviewing Anno on his creative process regarding Evangelion (Nakagawa, 2004), and so as a result, the Anno A.I. controls the world as if it were Anno himself, tracking the behavior of characters and their relations to one another. On November 20th, the game was finally released.
Neon Genesis Evangelion 2 was part of a broader initiative celebrating Evangelion through a spate of new projects. Led by Evangelion‘sDVD release, “Renewal of Evangelion,” this included Alfa System’s Neon Genesis Evangelion 2; another Bandai produced Evangelion game, this time a training simulator for Docomo’s i-mode mobile platform; a re-release of the raising simulator Ayanami Raising Project for the PlayStation 2, now featuring Asuka; two CDs published by King Records; and finally, new model kits, art books, and telephone cards.
While Alfa System had received the offer to develop an Evangelion game before Gunparade March‘s release, considering the influence of Evangelion on Gunparade, the opportunity was serendipitous. Since 1995, Evangelion had seen a smattering of adaptations and spin-offs, including visual novels, raising sims, tabletop RPGs, and a host of analogue-based video games ranging from solitaire to hanafuda and mahjong. An Evangelion video game was far from a new concept. These games offered two points of attraction: first, they allowed fans of Evangelion an opportunity to re-immerse themselves within the world of the anime and re-experience their favorite moments within a novel medium. For example, Neon Genesis Evangelion (Sega-AM2, 1996) billed itself as an adventure game that recreates the experience of being the director of a TV production (TVディレクター感覚の番組制作ADV). Second, following the ethos of dōjin culture, these games parodied the original Evangelion production and explored “what-if” stories, defamiliarizing the characters and setting. In Ayanami Raising Project (Gainax, 2001) players take on the role of guiding Ayanami for a year, possibly altering the course of her fate. Alfa System’s take on Evangelion follows and goes beyond these two approaches, heavily drawing upon Gunparade March’s ludic structure.