After
Keio Flying Squadron was released to critical acclaim, the developers at Victor Entertainment started talking about developing a sequel. Production on the game began in 1994 with the title
Keiō Yūgekitai 2, with director Yasushi Endo, game designer Satoru Honda, programmer Teruhito Yamaki and composer
Tsukasa Tawada getting the ideas together.
3D video games were popular at the time, but the developers chose to stick to
2D, initially developing the game for the
Sega CD. This was due to them having little experience in 3D game design and considering the idea of turning anime characters into
polygon models terrible. Six months later, the developers heard of Sega's plans to release the Saturn in November, so they changed course. However, they did not know the console's technical specifications, and could not really use the development equipment even when it arrived. They were so focused on learning how to make games on the Saturn that they could barely think about doing
3D polygon graphics. Over time the Saturn and
PlayStation began focusing primarily on 3D polygon graphics, which angered them. They decided that they would never use the Saturn's capabilities. The game was going to be a graphically enhanced version of the first game, but was made into its own game with a different story. The game's art and graphics were done by Naomasa Kitatani, Kenji Kawashima, Yoshiyuki Ozaki, Nobuyuki Ikigame, Daisuke Fukuda, Akito Kuroda and Masaru Yokōra, while the character designs were done by Hiromasa Ota. The characters originally had sprites that were more in line with their anime designs, and Rami would have also carried a
Frog Hammer. The game was planned to have different features, including video backgrounds,
3D bonus stages, and real
photographs for most of the items that the player would pick up. The specifications for the Saturn had changed a lot at the time, so the developers spent time testing the console's capabilities.
Keio Flying Squadron 2 was Victor's next big project, although they were also developing a couple of other Sega Saturn games:
Metal Fighter Miku and a port of
4D Sports Boxing (later
Center Ring Boxing). However, development continued past that month. The game was later renamed
Keiō Yūgekitai: Katsugeki-hen, and the video backgrounds, 3D bonus stages and photographed items were cut. The characters' sprites had to be redrawn in
2.5D due to limiting the range of movement and making parts of the platformer stages almost unusable. The
Sumida River stage was originally going to be a platformer stage, but was changed to a shooter stage when Endo had issues implementing Kusatsu, the Arrow of Hope. Due to this, the bow and arrow set has stationary locations throughout the stage and cannot be obtained. An "extra mode" and score display were added late in development before the game was finalized. The bonus stages were originally planned as a series of minigames based on Japanese fairy tales, such as
Urashima Tarō and
Momotarō, but the idea was dropped due to time constraints.
Sasuke Sarutobi, a ninja
monkey, was planned to appear as an enemy in the game, but was cut. The Martial Arts Tournament was planned to have seven participants, but five of them ended up being scrapped, with only
Benkei Musashibō and
Missionary Xavier making the final cut. They include: •
Kojirō Sasaki - A handsome young
swordsman who wields his -inch long sword Bizen Nagamitsu, though he usually carries a drying pole on his back instead. He was also to have a
penguin-like
swallow as his subordinate. The musical instruments, which included koto,
shamisen, percussion instruments and drums, were recorded using the
Yamaha SY99. The game features animated cutscenes produced by
Studio Pierrot, who also produced the cutscenes in the first game. The Japanese voices were recorded and directed by Susumu Aketagawa at Magic Capsule and Avaco Creative Studio. Rami was the only character in the first game with spoken dialogue during gameplay, but this time the enemies and bosses also had dialogue. In response to overwhelming requests,
Miho Kanno, who was appearing in advertisements for the
Victor V-Saturn and releasing singles under Victor's music label at the time, reprised her role as Rami, reuniting with
Jōji Yanami and
Keiko Yamamoto, who reprised their roles as Dr. Pon and Grandma, respectively. Kanno stated that upon hearing about the game, she felt a sense of parental affection because Rami was popular and loved by everyone at the time, considering her a character close to her hometown of
Saitama Prefecture. Producer Toshiyuki Nagai took care to create an atmosphere in the recording booth so that she could enjoy her sessions. Yanami also replaced
Yusaku Yara as the voice of Grandpa.
Mika Kanai provided the voice of Himiko and replaced
Akiko Hiramatsu as the voice of Spot. For the boss characters, Tawada used a sample of his own burp from a sound effects library for Musashi Sakaimari, and created Daidarabotchi's (the game's final boss) voice and sound effects by recording Fujiwara's voice and applying various effects to it, such as
pitch-shifting it down. Tawada planned to use the Saturn's built-in sound engine for everything, including the music, but the voice clips took up a lot of memory space on the disc, so he decided to use
Compact Disc Digital Audio instead. Merchandise such as
T-shirts and sweatshirts with Rami's face was also being planned by JVC at the time. The game contains a
debug mode, which can be accessed by entering a
cheat code on the start/options screen. ==Release==