Another round of Hero Bank details have emerged. Perhaps most interesting of all is that Toshihiro Nagoshi is producing. He’s mainly known for his work on the Yakuza series, where he has directed or produced each entry.
Below is the latest on Nagoshi’s new 3DS game Hero Bank:
– Features middle-school-aged kids who raise virtual heroes
– Battles are done for fame and prestige
– Hero is Kaito Gosho
– Kaito’s virtual warriors fight “Hero Battles”
– Hero Battles are extremely popular popular government-sanctioned sport
– Winners can potentially earn tons of cash for future upgrades
– The audience and your sponsors want you to win in flashy, exciting fashion
– The way you fight and emerge victorious can greatly affect the purse you earn at the end of it all
– Do well, and you can upgrade your heroes and even purchase new, more powerful ones which require more money to keep in one piece
This week’s GameStop ad is now live. The main highlight this week is Assassin’s Creed III for $20.
The Wii U isn’t doing so well right now in a number of respects. It’s not selling like Nintendo hoped it would. Numerous third-party publishers aren’t supporting the system. Consumers still haven’t caught on with messaging.
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is, however, taking full responsibility for the Wii U’s struggles. Speaking with CNN, Iwata said: “We are to blame”.
“We are to blame. We relaxed our [marketing] efforts, so the consumers today still cannot understand what’s so good and unique about the Wii U. Because we’re always trying to be unique, it takes some energies on our side to [make] people understand the real attractions about whatever we are doing.
Nintendo pushed out a new 3DS firmware update a couple of days ago that allows users to backup save data. But not all titles are compatible with the functionality.
The games below do not allow for save backups:
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon
Cubic Ninja
Monster Hunter 3G
Reel Fishing 3D Paradise
Pokemon Rumble Blast
Freakyforms Deluxe
Pokemon Dream Radar
Senran Kagura Burst: Guren no Shoujotachi
Sengoku Musou Chronicle 2nd
Nintendo’s GBA Ambassador games cannot be backed up as well.
Choosing Pokemon characters for Smash Bros. games can’t be an easy task at this point. Well over 600 characters exist at this point, and only a small selection can be included on the Smash Bros. roster.
Director Masahiro Sakurai explained to NowGamer that the team looks at a few things, such as popular Pokemon, Pokemon featured in the movies, and what makes them unique.
He said:
“Well first of all, we talk with the Pokemon company. What’s the hot Pokemon? What Pokemon are in the movies right now? And really do a lot of research on that front. For example, X and Y are coming out – of course, we haven’t done any market research because they’re not out yet, but we look at the animated series or movies and anything like that and again, find out which ones are going to be central to any of conversations in Pokemon going forward. But it’s not just that – going back to just what we talked about, what’s unique about them? Where do they fit in with the rest of everything else? What do they have? It’s a combination of those things.”
Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai was recently asked if all characters who have previously appeared in the series will be back for the Wii U and 3DS games. The short answer is no.
Sakurai explained that the team simply doesn’t have enough time “to fully recreate every single character who’s been in Smash Bros at this point.”
He said:
“I can answer that: no. We don’t have the time to fully recreate every single character who’s been in Smash Bros at this point. Adding new characters is not a simple addition – it’s really multiplication. The amount of work, adding a character is multiplied and becomes bigger and bigger as you go. We can’t because of the amount of work it takes. However, I do believe I understand that each character has its own set of fans out there who really like that character. So we’re not going to cut characters out of the way, we’re going to put in as many characters as we can, we really want to do that, because it’s good for the fans and good for all of us. But in the event that we do have to cut some characters, I’d like to apologise in advance to those fans.”
Shigeru Miyamoto and Reggie Fils-Aime have responded to comments from Kotaku stating that Nintendo may be playing it safe this year.
First, here’s the full exchange with Miyamoto:
Kotaku: One of my senses is that the games [you have at E3] are fun but they feel safe, like this is not a Nintendo taking risks this year. Is this a safe year for you guys?
Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo: So I don’t look at this as us playing it safe, because, whenever we make a game, we’re striving to create new experiences for people. Certainly from outside the company and even internally we have a lot of staff members who are talking about, we should create new [intellectual property, as in characters or series]. To me the question really comes down to: What is new IP and, by definition, what is a new game? And I think there’s a lack of understanding about the difference between the two.
And so, from my perspective, a lot of people say, ‘Oh, you should make new characters and those would be fun games,’ but creating a new character doesn’t necessarily mean the game is going to be fun. You really need to be focusing on creating a new gameplay experience that’s fun and unique.
And so even with a game like Pikmin 3 where our focus is on perfecting the Pikmin game design, we’ve really finally felt like we’ve created a new gameplay style even within the Pikmin franchise.
Nintendo is open to exploring a free-to-play Animal Crossing game, but it doesn’t sound like there are immediate plans to pursue this route.
Animal Crossing lead designer Katsuya Eguchi told GamesBeat that finding a business model appropriate for a free-to-play entry is imperative. Additionally, they would need “to determine what we’re going to make available from the beginning.”
“I think the main thing that we need to think about before even considering doing something like that is to determine what we’re going to make available from the beginning. I think that’s key in deciding whether we do something like that. If I find a business model that works, however — that works for Nintendo and the end-user — then I can’t say that [free-to-play] is something we wouldn’t consider.”
Eguchi also drew a comparison to the demographic playing Animal Crossing and the audience in Japan who enjoy casual free-to-play smartphone titles.
“When you look at our main audience in Japan, they are definitely that audience that has smartphones. [They are] women in their late teens and early 20s. They are certainly playing free-to-play games on their smartphone.”
