Despite being featured in Nintendo’s developer reel for Wii U at E3, Ken Levine reiterated to IGN that he has no plans to make any Wii U games at the moment. Levine, however, does appreciate the idea of being able to play a full-blown console game on the controller and likes that the “pad” features two control sticks.

“Just to be clear, there are no plans. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but we have no plans to do any games for that platform. There are things about it that, as a core gamer, really appeal to me, that have nothing to do with Fruit Ninja. I have nothing against Fruit Ninja, I respect all kinds of games, I love all kinds of games, there are just certain kinds of things that are more suited to my taste. There are some things, as a core gamer, as a guy who likes lying in bed playing… I’ve always had to sacrifice that core gaming experience when I lie in bed playing games. We’re now getting to a place with Vita and what Nintendo’s doing where that’s not necessarily going to be the case, where you can play full-on hardcore games in bed with the lights out while your wife’s asleep. I like that a lot. That means a lot to me. On the airplane? That means a lot to me as a core gamer, that you’ve got two sticks. That’s so important to me. The fact that the Wii U has got two sticks… I feel it’s like… It’s a great year for the core coming back and saying, okay, have your touch screens, have your motion control, we’ll try to make that work, and if you can pull that off it’ll be really good. But I want to have my cake and eat it too. I think these experiences are starting to allow that to happen. I love my iPad, but I mostly work on it, I don’t play a lot of games on it, because I’m not into that style or form factor, that three-minute experience.”

Levine has never been involved with the development of a Nintendo game before. Might he be more inclined to work on Wii U in the future? He did leave the door open by saying “I’m not saying it can’t happen”, so you never know what may happen.

The Irrational Games co-founder has also expressed some interest in 3DS, though hasn’t shared any plans to develop for the portable.

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Off-screen Kirby Wii footage

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii | 0 comments

Aonuma: Upending the tea table is necessary and useful

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Ever since 2004, Shigeru Miyamoto has been connected with the phrase “upending the tea table.” Eiji Aonuma delivered a speech at GDC that year, partially discussing how Miyamoto can sometimes change the direction of a game’s development when it’s heading towards completion.

Aonuma was asked to reflect back on the famous phrase at E3 last month. Does the Zelda producer find the “Miyamoto Test” to be bothersome? Actually, no. Aonuma said that he thinks that it can be “quite necessary and useful.”

“Well, back at GDC, when that conversation was presented, I think it painted a picture of Mr. Miyamoto’s role inside the company as coming in and being a really disruptive force in the development process, but I view it a very different way and I think a lot of people do. It’s that his time to come in and flip things on their head is part of the development timeline. It’s an event that happens. It’s almost a ritual in that sense. And it’s a necessary process, because I find that when he offers that feedback, a lot of the time, he points out things that I, myself, was having trouble with and maybe felt that I couldn’t solve or didn’t have a good time for or felt like we didn’t have the time for and he comes in and really gives focus to everything. So I’d really like to reinforce that fact that I don’t view the process that people refer to as ‘upending the tea table’ as something unpleasant. It’s actually quite necessary and useful.”

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Burnout Crash started out as a Wii game

Posted on 14 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii | 0 comments

Burnout Crash, a new Criterion game set for the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade, was originally a project for Wii. Director Alex Ward told Giant Bomb that the studio’s initial idea involved drawing the road with the Wiimote and user-generated content.

However, the team felt that it was “quite boring”, so the project saw an overhaul. It’s interesting to hear how what was most likely an original, retail title for Wii has become a downloadable release for PSN/XBLA.

“(Burnout Crash) started off a long time ago. The original version started on the Wii, and it was a user-created game where you drew the road with a wand, and we thought if we made Crash mode you can make it all yourself. We did that for a few months and it actually turned out to be quite boring. One of our philosophies at Criterion is just ‘cos we’ve made it doesn’t mean we can’t delete it. So if we have to throw something away and shelve it, we could talk for hours about the number of ideas we’ve just thrown away because you get there and it doesn’t quite work.”

I’m not too sure that Burnout Crash would have fit within the file restrictions of WiiWare. That might be one reason why the project is no longer slated for Nintendo’s console.

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