Nintendo is preparing to distribute e-book content for the 3DS through its own service. Over 300 titles will be offered in Japan when it launches this fall, according to publication Nikkei. At least initially, it seems as though Nintendo will be targeting children.
Just a short while ago, Nintendo published the official Iwata Asks for Mario & Luigi: Dream Team. It’s only up in Japanese at the moment, but a number of details from the discussion have already been translated.
For an overview of what was shared during the Iwata Asks, check out the summary below.
-The producer and director are the same as the last three games. The producer was the director on the original.
-About six months after Bowser’s Inside Story the team was throwing out ideas, one of them became the basis for the dream system.
-They considered going with Bowser again for the Dream System, but decided to limit themselves to Mario and Luigi as playable this time so the series didn’t loose its roots.
-The idea to have many Luigis battling and moving in the overworld was a separate one that came before the dream system, but they wanted a system that used the second screen.
-The team hadn’t considered this game would come out in the 30th anniversary of the character and be part of a ‘Year of Luigi’
-To get the DreamTeam Alpha up and running too 1.5 years for Alpha Dream. Game has been in development for over 3 years, since the last one.
-They had so much stuff this time they even went into a Gamma Phase, which Iwata notes as unusual as games typically only have Alpha and Beta. The reason was the switch from 2D to 3D backgrounds and the length of time they spent on the game.
-They chose sprites because it’s part of the Alpha Dream heritage…but also because they had few 3D production resources
-The 3D Mega Luigi model was done by a 3rd party after they realised there was a limit to doing that in 2D.
-A challenge was shifting from drawing sprites for 8-way movement on DS to 16 way movement on 3DS.
-They couldn’t even just flip the sprites for the other direction due to the ‘L’ on Luigi’s hat.
-They banned themselves from flipping the sprites for Mario too, because of Mario’s right arm going up when he jumps.
-They had 5-6 staff working on the character animations for all the characters in the game.
-The requests and suggestions by Nintendo on Alpha Dream were not always accepted and often required meetings, or discussions with the SPD producers. Sometimes both parties got annoyed with each other.
-They talk about including an easy mode. For example, when active, a hint block will appear when you redo a battle after dying, or a Slow Mode will activate if you continually fail a brother attack so you can time your move more easily.
-The Mario & Luigi RPG series is also quite popular with women.
-A Hard Mode unlocks for experienced players after clearing the game. Even the producer has trouble with it, it’s so difficult?He even died during the tutorial.
-The put a lot of extra stuff into Dream Team after hearing fans say they wanted to play more of M&L RPG 3. There’s special requirements for battles, like ‘no damage KO’ which will earn you points, once you have enough points you will earn a reward.
-The producer says long term fans shouldn’t worry – the series is still the same, despite the switch to 3D worlds for Dream Team
A new Club Nintendo year was ushered in today. That means rewards will soon be revealed for members who reached Gold/Platinum status.
Just when will we be hearing news regarding this year’s prizes? Very shortly, apparently. An image posted to the main Club Nintendo page mentions, “Thank you to our Elite members. Gifts are coming soon.”
Nintendo has typically sent out Gold/Platinum rewards at the end of the year. I imagine that will be the case once again this year.
Ah… how nice is this? After confusing Wii U owners countless times as to whether Batman: Arkham Origins’ Deathstroke DLC would be made available on the platform, Warner Bros. has finally confirmed that the pre-order bonus will in fact be distributed on Nintendo’s console. Simply reserve the game before release and Deathstroke should be yours.
Hopefully Warner won’t backtrack on this. We tried contacting the publisher a couple of times, but never received any sort of response about the Deathstroke situation.
– Vicarious Visions CEO Guha Bala
It’s weird to hear people still talking about the Wii, even though the Wii U has only been out for about half a year. For some reason it feels so much older once you’ve jumped to the Wii U!
Despite the fact that Capcom canned the project, some hardcore fans of the now-unreleased Mega Man Legends 3 have decided to go ahead and make their own version of the game in 8bit, classic Mega Man style. That’s not all though: They’re also getting help from two former Capcom employees that worked on the Legends series, Hideki Ishikawa and Makoto Tomozawa. Ishikawa was the character designer for the series and Tomozawa composed the music. Both will be helping out by contributing box art and music to the game.
“The ability for players to stop playing whenever they feel like it is inherent in the form. This is not a bad thing; this is a good thing. It is part of the game-design landscape. And if you learn to worry less about insisting that everyone who starts finishes, and put your attention on the advantages this fact of gaming gives you, you will not find a more personally liberating moment in game design than in designing your end.”
“Putting down the controller somewhere before the final climactic scene in a video game is not a sin. It is an intrinsic part of our art form. I never finished the first BioShock, yet it remains a game I thoroughly enjoyed. Grim Fandango? Never finished it. But I sure as hell use it as an example in design discussions! I have never finished a single Z, but, man, they are fun (usually).”
– Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe
I’m not sure I entirely agree with VandenBerghe. Like it or not, a game is a piece of art just as any other media experience is, and as a piece of art if you want to judge it you should first experience everything the game pushes you to experience. Single player campaigns are part of this, but so are things like multiplayer modes or side-content, and judging it without fully experiencing (to the degree the game wants you to) those things isn’t necessarily fair.
