Wild Hearts S devs on what it was like developing for Nintendo Switch 2 without knowing exact specs

Wild Hearts S, which just recently launched, is one of the earlier games on Nintendo Switch 2. That means that Koei Tecmo was working on it for quite some time and before developers were informed about the hardware specs.

In an interview with Famitsu, director Takuto Edagawa spoke more about the origins of the port. He noted that with Nintendo Switch 2, Koei Tecmo was hoping the game could reach its full potential.

Edagawa told the magazine:

“We heard about the specs in advance and realized we could develop it for that. As for the original version, we had hoped to achieve slightly higher sales. Although those people who played the game rated it very highly and we really felt the love for Wild Hearts. We felt the title still had potential, and we took up the challenge again in order to deliver it to people who didn’t know the original, or who hadn’t had a chance to play it.”

Edagawa went on to talk about what it was like developing the game for Nintendo Switch 2 and the challenges involved given that the team didn’t know about the exact specs early on. He shared the following on that front:

“Since it was before launch, we had to develop it in a state without knowing exact specs. That was a little difficult, but it’s the same with any hardware. We struggled a little with knowing the performance of the hardware when it came to things like CPU process management but also simply the change from three to four players was quite a challenge too. Partway through it was even so tough, I regretted making the change, but was relieved when we finally made it a reality.”

We also recently translated some comments from the Wild Hearts S team in which they commented on why they didn’t add new content and spoke about wanting to make a sequel. Read about that here.

Translation provided by Simon Griffin, SatsumaFS, and Philip Proctor on behalf of Nintendo Everything.