Was Laputa's style an inspiration on the Jak and Daxter games?
I think the steampunk look on this film surely had an effect on Japanese games like some of the Final Fantasy installments and Skies of Arcadia, but watching it, one game I thought of was the first in the Jak and Daxter series. They both have small countryside villages with pre-WW1-esque tech, lots of steampunk mechanical flying machines and motorcycle-like hovering "zoomers", a child hero, and the major theme of the ruins of a lost civilization with their own incredible technology and robotics.
I know that Disney's Atlantis film often comes up when people talk about what "borrowed" from Castle in the Sky, but I wonder if anyone at Naughty Dog has ever acknowledged Ghibli as an influence on that game.
When I dreamed of Broadway, I never pictured the elk antlers.