The Sonic Stadium sat down with Sonic Team’s Takashi Iizuka to talk all things Sonic Lost World. You can find a roundup of his comments below.
– Prototypes for different geometries and stages started during Sonic Generations
– Development therefore began about 2.5 years ago
– Morio Kishimoto (Sonic Colors) is directing the Wii U version
– Heido Bayashi (Colors DS) is directing the 3DS version
– Tomoya Ohtani (Sonic Unleashed) is composing
– The gadgets you use to help Sonic are from Tails, not Eggman
– Sonic X-Treme didn’t influence Lost World
– 60 FPS
– Deadly Six are a new set of creatures never encountered before called “Zeti”
– They live in a unexplored area of Sonic’s world “Lost Hex” and Eggman is trying to force them to work with him and he loses control of them and he has to team up with Sonic to try and take them out
– Nintendo exclusivity allows the team to take advantages of a second screen and Sonic has done well on Nintendo platforms
– Single-player is GamePad only
– One person controls the Pro Controller in multiplayer
– Iizuka understands some of the Galaxy comparisons, but believes people will understand that it feels and moves like a Sonic game when they play it
Young Justice: Legacy has been delayed on Nintendo platforms. The Wii U, Wii, and 3DS versions now have a “TBD” release date. This likely suggests a launch sometime in 2014.
The delay only impacts Young Justice on Nintendo systems – it’s still coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this September.
Little Orbit is apparently holding back the Nintendo versions to make them better suited on each platform. For Wii U, the team will be looking to exploit the GamePad for interesting gameplay. The Wii version, which was thought to be cancelled at one point, seems to be shaping up for release and will probably launch alongside the Wii U version.
Yesterday’s Super Smash Bros. news was highlighted by the confirmation of Mega Man’s inclusion. Obviously this took a great amount of work on the part of both Nintendo and Capcom. Mega Man is Capcom’s baby, and without their input, you wouldn’t be seeing him in the new Wii U and 3DS game.
The collaboration between Nintendo and Capcom is something that Capcom senior online/community manager Brett Elston emphasized on Twitter:
Nintendo doesn’t “care” about Mega Man more than Capcom. Those are logos. PEOPLE on both sides made SSB happen. That design is collaboration
— Brett Elston (@Brelston) June 12, 2013
Years in, I still understand the frustration. But digging to find the negative with something this positive hinders the conversation
— Brett Elston (@Brelston) June 12, 2013
Ubisoft’s two newest games, The Crew and The Division, aren’t coming to Wii U as far as we know. Still, it’s tough to knock the publisher’s support. Rayman Legends, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Watch_Dogs, and Assassin’s Creed IV are all due out before year’s end.
Tony Key, senior VP of sales and marketing at Ubisoft, recently said that the company will continue investing in the Wii U and believes it is capable of thriving on the platform.
“We did not take a big risk with all those launch titles on Wii U. [Wii U game] development isn’t expensive — some Wii U games are versions of games for other platforms, like Assassin’s Creed. And we continue to invest in that system. We have just as many titles coming on Wii U this year as we did after launch, because the system isn’t as resource-intensive to make games for it. We continue to believe that the Wii U will find its audience. We saw some good games [during Nintendo Direct this week]. We’re confident that the Wii U is a good place for us to do business, and we can make money there.”
Super Mario 3D World draws inspirations from all kinds of older Mario games. When it comes to multiplayer, the Wii U game more or less lifts the bubble mechanic from the New Super Mario Bros. releases. Players are placed in a bubble when they fall behind and are kept together with the main group.
Director Koichi Hayashida discussed Mario 3D World’s multiplayer while speaking with Eurogamer:
“I guess you could say that the one influence from New Super Mario Bros that we do feel strongly is the use of the bubble as a catch-up mechanism in multiplayer. But when we came up with this game we were actually thinking along completely different lines, and that is how to make the gameplay focused on multiplayer when you have a 3D environment, a world for people to run around in rather than just in one direction. I think that’s taking the gameplay into some very interesting and different directions.”
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon will host its annual “Video Game Week” starting on Monday. Nintendo fans will be most interested in Friday’s show, where Game & Wario and Super Mario 3D World will be making appearances.
Also worth mentioning, a demo of Watch_Dogs will be shown on Wednesday. Activision will be bringing Call of Duty: Ghosts on Thursday.
Mario Golf: World Tour was originally planned for a summer release this year. So much for that!
A slide from Nintendo’s E3 2013 analyst briefing reveals that World Tour has slipped into 2014.
The slide in question:
