They invited us to sit, and we chatted a little about how interesting it was to find a game developer at Design Festa, and so on. We began to look at their game, and I noticed the lack of bulky development cartridges protruding awkwardly from the DSes. Then I noticed a stack of proper DS game cases, at the other end of the table. “Oh! You’re published!” I remarked, and grabbed a case to look at. “Who’s your publisher? Skip. Hang on, Skip?”

“Yes,” said the older of the two men.

“Skip who did Giftpia?”

“Oh! You know Giftpia?” He seemed surprised.

“Yes, of course. We love Giftpia.”

“I was Giftpia’s director.”

My proverbial jaw hit the proverbial floor. I think Rebecca’s crashed through to the water pipes and may have been responsible for some electrical problems later in the day.

“And... and Chibi-Robo?” I asked, using my real, attached jaw.

“Yes, I also directed Chibi-Robo.”

“Oh my god. Do you mean for Gamecube, or the new Chibi-Robo for Nintendo DS?”

“Ah, no, I was not involved with DS Chibi-Robo. Its director is my, er... my junior. My kohai.”

We were talking to Kenichi Nishi, Skip’s star designer, if Skip has one. Becca and I had ridiculous, big grins on our faces, like the kind you see on a kid meeting Santa Claus, and Kenichi was grinning away as well, because, as he explained, he was so happy to meet, by chance, a pair of foreigners who were fans of Giftpia. Rebecca suddenly remembered she was carrying her DS, which is covered in Giftpia stickers, so she produced it from her bag, and that made Kenichi’s day. You can read his side of the story here and here.

(Well... I guess maybe you can’t.)

The younger man was Fumihiro Kanaya, who programmed Skip’s bit Generations games (among other things); the woman painting the character was hikarin, an artist and animator who was Giftpia’s art director; and the woman not wearing a matching promotional t-shirt was Miki Tashiro, a manager at Skip. We all had a big ol’ conversation with much excitement and animation, and, well shucks, it was just a magical moment for everybody. Basically we are best friends with Skip now, and you don’t get that every day.

Following the spontaneous orgy we then had, Kenichi and his team showed us their new game, Archime-DS.

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