Seth Delackner is a rarity: born and raised in the U.S. and directing videogames for a Japanese company in Japan itself. His first game, Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06, developed a passionate following for the clever way that it transformed Nintendo's wildly successful DS handheld videogame system into a portable acoustic guitar. We gave you our impressions earlier this morning of a revamped version of the game, which will be published by Ubisoft under the name Jam Sessions. Now it's time to hear from Delackner himself in this exclusive interview.

Where did the idea for Jam Sessions come from? How long ago was this?When I joined Plato in February 2006, we thought I would be writing Eigozuke 2. Plato had just released Eigozuke for the Nintendo DS, a wildly successful [English language training] game in Japan that grew out of their PC/Mac game series. But Plato had no in-house DS programmers and no development kits. For some reason they had confidence in my ability to pick up the development kit when it arrived, and both teach myself the SDK and write the sequel at the same time.

It turned out that the first game was such a huge hit that Nintendo really wanted to continue the relationship as it stood, with us providing the know-how and them the programmers. But we still had a lot of enthusiasm to develop a DS product, since the touch screen provided such inspiration for new kinds of games. So we spent a week or so trying to think of a new concept. Our other product lines were well and established, so we wanted to do something that felt new, something that we would all want to use ourselves. Someone proposed "Music" and all of us got a bit excited. I suggested all sorts of musical instrument toys, though the one I was most interested in building was a drum/effect sequencer with a simple touch interface.

I put together a prototype in a week or so just to be sure we would be satisfied with the audio quality of the DS--especially when using its external speakers--and we were happily surprised by the clarity of the audio hardware. But we had an unrelated meeting with Nintendo coming up in one week to discuss other things, and [Plato president] Kosuke Asakura asked me what might have the most impact as a demo. I said that my simple guitar idea would be easier to get to a fun state, since it just involved a line across the screen that the user would strum to play up and down chords. I raced along in the time that I had remaining and threw in some weak stock guitar samples; yet when we sat down with it and were able to play the famous four chord opening from [Deep Purple's] "Smoke on the Water," everyone could feel the electricity in the room. That's when we knew we should focus all our energy on perfecting the guitar, rather than try to make other instruments or a suite of instruments.

What was your musical background before the game?I have always loved music and wanted to play an instrument. Though both my parents can play the piano, they never pushed me to into lessons. My father actually is really strong at improvisational piano playing, and when I have more time I hope to get his CD published. They both provided me a rather unusual musical environment when I was growing up, with the first artists I remember hearing at home being The Beatles, The Talking Heads, and Tangerine Dream, which was until my college years my favorite band. The closest I ever got to learning the guitar was about one month in college when I practiced until my fingers hurt, and I decided it was not for me, especially since I use a computer all the time to write code and having my fingers in pain while I was typing was not a fun prospect. About four years ago I hired a pianist to give me lessons once a week, and I was really enjoying just being able to improvise a little and then go home and spend some hours playing with Reason 2.0.

How long did it take to develop the Japanese version, Hiite Utaeru DS Guitar M-06? What was the most complicated part of making this game?From receiving developer kits in mid-March of 2006, to sending in our final master for approval took eight months. For the first half of development I was the only programmer working on the product. The most complicated part of making the game was just putting together a usable graphics library from scratch; none of us had any experience on the DS, and I had never worked on a platform that was so limited in its graphics hardware. But the most complicated piece of the actual game is a part no one will really notice: the way that we play back the guitar samples to make them sound as natural as possible. If they noticed of course, we would have failed.

What was the response to the game from Japanese gamers?The initial response was great. We started with an exclusive release on Amazon with no availability in stores until a month later. During that period we only had advertising on Amazon and our own websites, and yet as soon as it was released we were seeing people playing it on YouTube, and the first several user reviews on Amazon were really heartwarming. An older man wrote to say that he had always wanted to play the guitar but never could; he sat down and played along while his daughter was playing the piano. While he sang and strummed along, he started to cry. We got support calls from people who had never used a D-pad complaining that their thumbs hurt from pressing it so much, and while I feel for them, I am overjoyed that we managed to bring in people who had never touched a D-pad!

What about the Japanese media?On the negative side, the game is very much a tool that demands that the user try to engage. But if you try to sing the songs, if you let yourself go and just play for the musical enjoyment of it, it is very rewarding. We marketed the game very openly that way, never suggesting it was a traditional goal-oriented game, yet some users still bought it thinking they would have some rhythm to match or high score to try for. It has gotten some good magazine press from non-videogame lifestyle magazines, and it has appeared on a Saturday morning television show, so I am really happy that it seems to speak more to normal people than the hardcore gamer audience. In-house, we have had a lot of fun taking a song on paper, written the way a normal guitarist would expect, and playing with that.

Why was there no option to save songs in the Japanese version?If you mean an option to enter your own lyrics and score for a song, we felt like this would be something too time consuming for most people to enjoy. If we are talking about the recording feature in the international release, again, I wrote most of the core engine in only eight months. We really wanted to give people that feature, but we also were looking at the schedule and did not want to release something rushed and unfinished. The Japanese release focused on getting the core game play just perfect, rather than spreading ourselves thin on getting everything sort of working.

Will there be a way for gamers to share their songs with their friends?The songs in the game are not shareable. The recordings the user makes can be played back in the device, but we wanted to emphasize the social experience of the game, which is sitting there with a friend, playing a song live, and singing along. The recording feature was added more at the request of guitarists so that if they were out and about and had a new idea for a phrase or even a whole song, they could play it on the DS and then play it back at home later, kind of a notepad for a guitarist.

Even as inept with musical instruments as I may be, I still feel as though Jam Sessions allows me to create short songs that sound good--to me anyways. Is there something in the software that holds the gamer's hand in the background and makes the resulting songs sound better?Well, we went into a recording studio with a professional musician playing a truly beautiful guitar. I forget how much it cost, but it was more than I make in a month. So when you strum that chord, what is coming out from your hand is the sound of a talented and expert musician. I hope it sounds good! When a user plays a chord, it plays back that single chord perfectly. If they play back multiple chords, we play it back in a way that should sound as close as possible to what happens when you quickly play back multiple chords.

What did you think of the videos on YouTube and other video sharing sites of people playing the Japanese version?At first I was really happy to see that so many people were bringing the game into their lives and then felt proud enough of it that they wanted to share their playing with the world. That said, I hope people watched the better videos that are up there, since some of the videos show really fluid picking and even some quality singing. Some of the videos show people that haven't really understood the concept that you should not play every note with the same strength, that if you pick more naturally then you will get a much more natural sound.

What tips do you have for people like me who aren't good with instruments, but want to get good at the game?The default set of chords covers a wide range of popular music styles, but I find I really enjoy the sound of the diminish (dim) chords and the minor chords a lot more. They have a rich tone that I have fun just playing with when I am sitting on the train improvising, rather than trying to play a particular song. I am nowhere near the best player in our office, but I find people seemed to react a lot better to my playing after I learned a simple picking technique. You play a strong down chord, then without waiting a full beat, just sweep back with a slow (and thus soft) up chord, then let go of the d-pad and swing back again for an color picking note or three, which adds some nice percussiveness. Really, the best tip I think is to not care too much about making mistakes. The fun of it is accidentally discovering a sequence of chords that makes you hum.

If that is too mystical, try just playing a down stroke followed by an up stroke quite fast, but then wait a moment before playing the next down stroke. Give it some space to breath.

Enabling reverb makes everything sound a little better. Set it to maximum and it is almost like you are in a stadium.

Some people who are really really computer-minded try to touch the guitar string almost like a button, barely moving their hand at all. Move! Really strum your way across the whole screen and help your hand to learn how to vary the speed of your picking.

When you play Jam Sessions, do you play it with a stylus or a guitar pick?Personally I play with a stylus but I hold it very close to the tip, almost like a pick. Most of the other guys in house play with guitar picks, because they also play guitar at home and I think it feels more natural for them. Please don't play with just your finger, because even if it feels easy at first, you can achieve much more fluid and rapid picking with a stylus or pick as you get better.

Last question: how did you end up in Japan designing videogames?I grew up mostly in the San Francisco Bay area, and I love big cities. In university I spent half a year abroad studying in Paris, and later I lived in New York. That experience made me dissatisfied with the endless gridlock and long commutes in California, and I started to think of moving somewhere new. Around that time three years ago I took a vacation to Taiwan and Japan to visit a childhood friend. I ended up spending three weeks in Japan going all over the place, but after my first evening in Tokyo I was sold: the food, the vibrant night life and the sense that the public infrastructure is years ahead. In California and New York I probably went out only once a week to see friends, and we all watched the clock dreading the sleepy drive home at the end of an evening. Living in central Tokyo, every night of the week you see people go from their offices out to restaurants and bars and they stay out late because it's just a short taxi or train ride to get home.

When I got back from that vacation I met with my boss and told them I was moving to Tokyo as soon as our current release cycle finished, and they were gracious enough to agree to let me telecommute from Japan. I spent the next year and a half doing just that. Then I started looking for a company actually in Tokyo to work with; since I really enjoy working with Apple's Cocoa toolset, I asked a friend at Apple Japan which companies in Tokyo were actually developing software in town. She mentioned Plato as a good company, I emailed them and interviewed with the owner a few days later, and he must have seen something he liked, because he offered me the opportunity to create their DS development team. We received some developer kits shortly thereafter, and during the initial months of development of DS Guitar, I somehow managed to both learn the DS API from scratch and prototype my first game.