between rooftops. Some stages feature areas of water, which kill a character on contact. Areas end with a boss encounter. Before boss encounters and outside levels, players can use gathered Ouki to raise any character's stats; these include health, strength, attack power, and special abilities and upgrades to abilities such as jumping. These are gathered from destroyed crystals in each area. There are three crystal types to find; red, blue and yellow, which are progressively more difficult to destroy. Dying at any point ends the game, forcing players to restart the level. Development During the late 1990s, Square launched an initiative to foster talent within the company; small teams of younger developers would work with a smaller budget to create experimental titles for the PlayStation; one of these titles was Soukaigi. Soukaigi was developed by Yuke's, a company best known for their sports titles. Among the production cooperators was Solid, a subsidiary of Square dedicated to working with third-party developers. According to different sources, Yuke's was approached by Square, who were impressed at the technical prowess demonstrated by their wrestling game Power Move Pro Wrestling; or Yuke's approached Square with an ambitious gaming project which required funding and a publisher. The game was produced by Square's Yusuke Hirata, and directed and written by Nobuhiko Amakawa of Yuke's. Amakawa created the story concept of a fantasy set in modern-day Japan. While games based on Japanese folklore had seen little success at the time, Square allowed Yuke's total creative freedom and Amakawa decided to go ahead with the concept. The characters were designed by artist Natsuki Sumeragi. Enemy designs were handled by Takeshi Tanaka. The various level areas were based on the Japanese regions in which they were set, although they were made more fantastic due to the game's premise. Soukaigi included full voice acting, with several prominent Japanese actors portraying the main cast; Square told Yuke's that they need not be concerned with the casting budget, which was large enough to surprise Yuke's staff. The game featured two and a half hours of real-time cutscenes integrated into gameplay. Music The music of Soukaigi was composed by Hiroki Kikuta, who had previously scored Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana. Kikuta acted as composer, arranger and producer for the soundtrack. The musical production was handled entirely by Square. The expanded storage capacity of the PlayStation allowed Kikuta to include live orchestral music.