Many fans were curious as to why the upcoming One Piece Unlimted World Red had an original story rather than something closer to the original series. Producer Koji Nakajima sat down with the folks over at Siliconera to go over the thought process behind that and a few other aspects of development, here’s a summary:
- Re-writing parts of the One Piece storyline was exciting for him from the perspective as a fan
- Nakajima wanted every One Piece game he produces to focus on a side story or certain arc, to further explore the game’s universe
- After all characters for the game had been created, they are tweaked to be consistent within the One Piece universe
- He wanted the game to feel like adventuring as Luffy and living the adventurous life of a pirate
- That meant not just focusing on battling, but fishing and other elements
- With the Red update, the emphasis on battling was re-focused with the additional of the coliseum along with characters Boa Hancock and Trafalgar Law
- The game has giant boss battles and Nakajima said the Red Dragon fight was one of his favourites
- Unsure what’s next for the series, but contemplating releasing One Piece Unlimited Cruise in North America (previously only released in Europe)
Miiverse has received another update today. While there isn’t anything too substantional, Nintendo has made a couple of changes that should improve your experience.
First, all versions of Miiverse now let you write posts and comments on multiple lines. The Wii U and 3DS versions of the social network now also let you show up to three of your favorite game genres in your profile.
You can find the full overview of today’s update from Miiverse’s Marty below.
Three new Virtual Console games are on track for the Japanese Wii U eShop next week. Super Mario Advance (GBA), Kuru Kuru Kururin (GBA), and Kunio-kun no Dodgeball da yo Zen’in Sh?g? (Super Famicom) will be out on July 16. Pricing is set at 702 yen for the GBA games and 823 yen for the Super Famicom title.
Nihilumbra was one of the many indie titles showcased for Nintendo platforms at E3 this year and the folks over at Mii-gamer sat down with developer Beautiful Games to talk about their design process and more, here’s an excerpt of the interview:
7. Nihilumbra is your first game to be released on Nintendo platforms. Why did you decide to bring Nihilumbra over to the Wii U? What is your opinion on the Wii U? Is it a good platform?
Kevin: When we started developing Nihilumbra, the WiiU didn’t exist at all, but as soon as we saw it announced we thought that it was a great platform for our game, mainly because it’s mechanics. It would be really hard (if not impossible) to port Nihilumbra to a console with a typical controller, but with that touching interface… it was perfect.
Sometime later, in a convention, we met someone from Nintendo Europe and we showed him the game. “We think that this game would be great on a WiiU” we said, “Well, what can we do to make it happen?” he answered. Everything was really easy an natural after that.
I guess that I have two different subjective opinions about WiiU, as a game designer and as a gamer.
As a game designer, I would say that it’s absolutely great. I always say that it’s the best thing that happened to console hardware since they added joysticks to controllers. With it we can make games that weren’t possible before, we can introduce asymmetric local multiplayer because, for the very first time, we have two different screens and two different input modes at the same time in one console. Really, as a game designer, I am constantly having new ideas of games that were not possible before.
As a gamer, I would say that I am concerned about the same stuff that concerns everyone: The games. It seems that there are not too many great games right now. It’s impossible to predict the future, and I’m no analyst. Let’s just say that, if Nintendo manages to build a strong base of games, it will have everything it needs to be a great console.
You can check out the full interview here
(Thanks to Mike for the tip!)
Yoshi’s New Island has sold modestly well but it appears that Nintendo are looking to push it even harder in Japan when it launches there later this month. They’ve released a couple of short TV spots for the game, which you can check out below.
