Ready at Dawn on the struggles of porting Okami to Wii

Ready at Dawn was sadly shuttered last year, but during the span of the studio’s twenty years in operation, a port of Okami for Wii was a passion project that the company worked on. In a recent interview, co-founder Dawn Andrea Pessino spoke about what went into making it happen and the struggles involved.

Things began when Ready at Dawn and Capcom were talking during GDC many years ago. Pessino indicated that the challenges started due to a lack of resources from Capcom. Not much was provided and everything was in Japanese.

Pessino had this to say regarding Ready at Dawn working on Okami for Wii during an interview with MinnMax:

“We talked about it a lot… we loved the game so much and we took some pretty drastic measures. We hired all new people, we had a different office so there would be zero interference. It was done purely because out of passion. What Capcom gave us – they had nothing, I mean they had a hard drive with all the assets and the code on it – all Japanese. It was a little bit like a research trial or a forensic analyst trying to reconstruct a crime scene, trying to reverse engineer this thing.

The people that we put on it were really great because making it work, figuring it all out, making the controls work with the Wii, making it work on the Wii – and it worked great, it was quite good. It was a completely separate process. … It was done purely for the love of it.”

Pessino went on to say that the team thought that the Wii port had the chance to do well commercially, especially given the natural fit for Okami on the platform. However, it sadly was a sales flop.

Capcom has since gone on to re-release the title on multiple platforms with its HD version, including on Nintendo Switch. And now the company is working with original director Hideki Kamiya on a sequel, giving the franchise another spot in the spotlight.

Kamiya himself recently revealed that Okami takes place in the same universe as Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, The Wonderful 101, and The Viewtiful Joe. Read about that here.