Successfully released in Japan where it has earned a coveted score of 34 out of 40 from Famitsu magazine, Phantom Dust is an anime-inspired game set in a post-apocalyptic era where chaos has forced people underground for safety. Players must journey above ground in a quest to learn who and what was behind the destruction, but the surface is a place of deadly evil filled with unimaginable abominations. It is also home to mysterious particles known only as Phantom Dust, a force unlike any other that has given some members of the human race unimaginable super powers. Recently we were given the opportunity to find out more about the game from Yukio Futatsugi, the director of Phantom Dust.

Snackbar Games: Thank you very much for agreeing to speak with us regarding Phantom Dust. If you could, please give us a little background on yourself, as well as what your role has been within this project.

Yukio Futatsugi: For the Phantom Dust project, I served as director, overall manager of the game production work. The main works I have been involved in up until now are Sega’s Panzer Dragoon 1, Zwei, and the third issue in the Saga series. (as game designer) After that, I worked at Konami and SCE before joining Microsoft.

SBG: First off, what was the inspiration for the game’s setting and style? Post-apocalyptic wastelands aren’t exactly new territory, but Phantom Dust’s literally crumbling cityscapes have a compelling disarray about them…

YF: First of all, the core theme is fighting action using supernatural powers. The game combines card game and action game elements, and to realize the concept, I adopted the supernatural powers theme to permit a great range of action in the game in a setting where that would not seem out of place.

Next, I had to justify why people would have this super powers, and I decided that the power was the result of personal will, and that it would affect the world as well. Nostalgia and joy, or regret, memories one wishes to forget — how would these aspects of people’s memory affect the world? Based on this image, the entire map was drawn.

SBG: How many different mission locations will there be, and is the player A