Iwata Asks: Kid Icarus: Uprising (part 1)
The first edition of the Kid Icarus: Uprising Iwata Asks discussion can be found on Nintendo’s site. We’ve compiled a handy summary of the interview below.
Satoru Iwata and Masahiro Sakurai tackle all sorts of topics, including Smash Bros., Kirby Air Ride, and Meteos. Obviously Uprising takes up a large portion of the discussion as well!
You can find the summary after the break.
“My Style”
– When Iwata played the final version of the game, he thought that it had a richness and unparalleled sense of volume, as was the case when he played Super Smash Bros. Brawl
– Two modes: single-player and battle mode
– Battle mode supports up to four players
– Iwata’s impression of the battle mode was that this was how the Smash Bros. games would look like in 3D
– When Super Smash Bros. was announced for the N64, Iwata believes that people didn’t fully comprehend its concept immediately
– Sakurai is worried that some people will misunderstand battles in this game
– Example of the above: it has rules that are somewhat similar to an FPS, but there are only three controls available compared to more than ten in some FPS titles
– Sakurai thinks people will understand that the controls make sense when they play the game
– Iwata: “When Super Smash Bros. came out, regardless of its distinctive strategic elements, people compared it in the context of previous fighting games, and some had said, “It’s approachable, but a little bland and shallow.” So after the game went on sale, we started the Smash Bros. DOJO!!4 website and visited media entities and people who looked like they might understand and explained it to them in our efforts to continue communicating the appeal of this game. This was around 1999, before I moved to Nintendo. …Back then, unlike today, it was not common to talk about these information through the Internet, and Super Smash Bros. looked at first glance like it was similar to games up to that point, but it wasn’t, which was difficult to convey.”
– Even though it took much time and energy until Smash Bros. spread to a large group of people, it eventually found a broader support base
– Sakurai describes his style as his games having rules that are different from the norm, which makes them difficult to understand at first, especially for core games
– Sakurai breaks down elements of conventional games and reconstructs them in his own way
– Sakurai’s Smash Bros. team made the game as an antithesis to 2D fighting games
“Examples of Disassembly and Reassembly”
– Sakurai says that when you hear fighting games, you tend to think about having to execute fancy combos
– Sakurai likes the organic, ad lib nature that happens distinctively in fighting games
– Sakurai can only execute easy combos
– Sakurai wondered how he could bring out an element of ad lib rather than asking players to pull off specific combos that call for immediate manipulation
– In Smash Bros., each time you fight, your opponent’s reactions change
– You need to think about reacting to changing situations instead of set combos
– This became the basis of the cumulative damage idea
– Sakurai’s desire to bring out ad lib and thinking it would be fun to have the reactions every time led to cumulative damage
– For disassembly/assembly of Kirby Air Ride, Sakurai first considered people’s general notions of the acceleration and drifting and why drifting feels good
– Sakurai: “We decided that drifting feels so good because there’s risk involved. Under normal grip conditions, the tires don’t slide and the vehicle is stable, so you drive with little risk. Now if you drift while you may lose control and there’s a greater danger of going off-course and get it done, that feels awesome.”
– Drifting is Kirby Air Ride’s key concept
– “A” is used to brake rather than accelerate; there is no accelerator button, making it different from other racing games
– Sakurai says that this made the game hard to understand
– Sakurai: “But it wasn’t like we set out to overturn the accelerator-brakes structure. This way of thinking might be like (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san’s. He plays a game and designates the buttons based on what feels right.”
– Miyamoto places a lot of importance on whether the controls are matching his feelings when he plays it
– Kirby Air Ride’s brakes aren’t normal
– Machines shorter and almost rub against the floor when they float; they call this action “Push”
– When you hold the brakes button down, you slow down and charge up power at the same time
– When you release the button, you release power and burst forward
– The game’s controls are the complete opposite of a typical racing game
– The team made the controls this way “because it suited the feeling of plunging ahead”
– Sakurai isn’t sure that this was gotten across to the players from the beginning
– Some people really like Kirby Air Ride
– However, some who have played it may have thought it was difficult because it’s the opposite of what the player is supposed to do
– A lot of fans demanded a sequel
– Meteos was about risk and return
– The Meteos staff asked themselves, “What is the risk in a puzzle game?”
– Sakurai paid attention to the way you get rid of a stack of blocks
– Sakurai was doubting whether getting rid of blocks was something you really have to do
– He decided on launching blocks that have stacked up rather than removing them
– He thought of reactive force with this idea
– Sakurai: “Yes. In other words, I thought a puzzle game could use the concept of resisting by pushing in the opposite direction as your opponent. At first, we did think of using a bomb to get rid of them, but to get rid of more, you raise them up together. In a word, I thought launching them up would be better and made Meteos that way.”
“A Game for Gamers to Enjoy”
– When Sakurai/Iwata were still at Yamanashi, Sakurai told Iwata about his thoughts with regard to risk and return to them in the office
– This, along with the scenery that time, made a lasting impression on Iwata
– Iwata: “You drew a picture of Space Invaders on a white board. In that game, if you don’t shoot from directly under the invaders, you can’t hit them. But if you go under them, they can hit you with their missiles and that’s the risk. You talked about how risk comes with return, so you can almost explain the tactics involved in a game by the relationship between risk and return. I remember that made a lot of sense to me.”
– Sakurai tends to connect gameplay with risk/return, but he knows that there is more to making a game enjoyable than that; he wonders if many people aren’t looking for gameplay necessarily
– Sakurai played the original Kid Icarus on the Famicom
– Many games gave off a serious impression at the time, but Kid Icarus give players silly impressions
– The game had a Greek mythology setting, but credit cards and eggplants showed up
– Sakurai wanted to bring the random-like elements of Kid Icarus into Uprising
– The team didn’t just put in a lot of eggplants to pay homage to the original
– They treated the story with care and tried not to get too serious
– The Uprising staff looked to give the gave a boisterous feeling in in Smash Bros.
– Iwata had asked Sakurai to make a new game for the 3DS
– He didn’t think it was right to make a new game in the series right after Brawl, so he said, “Let’s do something a little different”
– Iwata wanted Sakurai to make something the in-house Nintendo development team wouldn’t
– Once Sakurai received these requests and other factors, he thought they could make a shooting game with air/land battles
– Sakurai also wondered if they could revive a dormant Nintendo series
– Sakurai thought it could be interesting to give Pit a flying ability through a magical power and head down toward Earth
– Since Pit was in Brawl, fans wondered if they’d make a new Kid Icarus
– Overseas game media were asking Iwata every year if there would be a new Kid Icarus game at events such as E3
– Sakurai often asked Iwata about the software lineup that other developers were coming up with
– If there were projects similar to the one Sakurai had in mind or had similar gameplay, he thought he may change directions
– Sakurai thought that a lot of Touch Generations-like games would come out for the 3DS, so he wanted to make a solid game for hardcore fans
– When it comes to fighting games, Sakurai doesn’t want to fudge on the tactics involved
– In Smash Bros. and Kid Icarus: Uprising battles, there aren’t many elements where the computer confers disadvantages to the ones that are winning or rescues the weak
– Sakurai: “Yes. What I’m saying is similar to, say, “because Mario Kart offers that type of play, we should take this approach that’s different.” We want to avoid advanced players wiping out the beginners, but rather than the computer assigning a handicap of sorts, we wanted to offset imbalances with changes at a larger scale. When it comes to the essence of the game, I want people to play hard!”
“Having Players Choose”
– The Fiend’s Cauldron was put in for Sakurai’s hope that people would play hard
– It’s a clear example of risk and reward
– You make a bet with yourself with the cauldron
– You place your own skill or the abilities of your weapons and a degree of difficulty on the scales of a balance and make a bet
– Player’s characteristics depend on the weapons you have
– Choose the difficulty setting between 0.0 and 9.0
– Standard setting is 2.0
– Changing the scale costs hearts
– You’ll get more back – including stronger weapons – than you bet if you raise the Intensity Setting
– The hearts you bet spill a bit from the Fiend’s Cauldron and your Intensity Setting lowers if you lose
– You’ll be basically invincible at 0.0 difficulty
– Sakurai: “We wanted to make it so not just advanced players would be able to enjoy the essence of the game, but so that good players and not-so-good players—anyone, really—can play it. After all, players exhibit quite a range of skills. Addressing the challenges presented by games is fun. I think that in the end, risk and return is linked with those challenges. By asking the players how they want to bet, they set challenges for themselves.”
– Taking big risks and getting joy when things go well was the biggest theme for the game
– Miyamoto is against letting players choose their own difficulty unlike Sakurai
– Iwata believes that Miyamoto may feel that there should only be one key configuration that the developers determine is right and must take responsibility for it and putting it forth
– Sakurai thinks players should have some degree of freedom in their choices
– The Fiend’s Cauldron allows for a broad variety of ways to play the game
– Sakurai hopes people will try the 9.0 difficulty
“Powers and Weapons”
– The power system is important in the game
– You can jump high, dash very fast, prevent your opponent from attacking by changing him into and eggplant, and more
– Can’t use your limbs as an eggplant, but you still have legs
– Players will need to consider a weapon’s characteristics instead of recklessly choosing
– Need to fit power pieces into a panel
– You can use powers and weapons while playing solo and arena matches
– You can still get powerful weapons in battles, but there is a lottery system in place
– Even players who lose can get good weapons if they try hard
– Players who don’t move in battle won’t get rewarded
– Fuse Weapons: Combine weapons to form a different type with the strengths and skills of its components
– Weapon gems pile up through StreetPass
– If you make a gem, the weapon doesn’t disappear
– The strength of your weapon carries on
– Restoring gems requires hearts
– Make the weapon your own by paying hearts to restore the gems you have
– High-power weapons will cost a lot of hearts
– Use Use Gems to make them cheaper
– Fuse together separate gems
– Grind down gems you don’t want into hearts
– One gem will be distributed each day through SpotPass
– In battle, if someone with very valuable weapons is defeated, the team’s life gauge will drop drastically
– Debugging was a challenge since you can try out all sorts of patterns
– The team used a different policy than for Smash Bros. in adjusting the balance of battle mode
– Sakurai: For Smash Bros., rather than listening to the testers’ opinions, we watched videos of battles between the testers, studied their stats, tactics and traits, and determined the parameters then. Surprisingly, a lot of the times, the testers’ opinions are biased and it’s difficult to grasp the changes in the strength of the moves each day. This time, we wanted to draw out the opinions of the testers more correctly. But instead of simply swallowing whatever opinions arose, we tried first dividing into one-on-one and three-on-three teams and checking the opinions from each other’s point of view. For example, if a three-on-three team said, “This is too strong, so make it weaker,” a one-on-one team might say, “No, it has such-and-such an effect, and so you can’t weaken it.” …Yes. After roughly establishing the essential characteristics, we gathered the tester results, and directly implemented adjustments. After all, they were the conclusions of people who had played the game intensively for months, so I thought they were significant. There were a lot of weapons, so tuning them was truly a challenge. But that resulted in broad enjoyability, so I hope people will have fun playing it together, ideally face-to-face with people nearby.
