Several months ago, Shin’en revealed that the company was hard at work on its second-generation engine for Wii U. Both of the studio’s upcoming titles for the console – Art of Balance and FAST Racing Neo – are taking advantage of the upgraded tech, Manfred Linzer confirmed to us.
Linzer, CEO of Shin’en, said that the two games are actually just using “a subset of our new engine”. However, “we are pretty happy with the results,” he told us.
Linzer explained, “With FRN we wanted to get more realism. That was not possible with our old tech. So we implemented a lot of new stuff that allows us to get there. We are still learning but we think we are on a good way to create a really special Wii U game.”
While Art of Balance and FAST Racing Neo are taking advantage of the new engine, “Art of Balance is more on the ‘stylized’ side and FAST more on the realism side.”
We are sworn to secrecy regarding the engine’s capabilities, but know that Shin’en has managed to implement a number of improvements and a few new graphical effects. Some of these were previously used “in an ad hoc way, and not in a unified system.” According to Linzer, “Now everything blends nicely together which we need to get on a new level.”
More details for Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth have come in from Famitsu. You can find them below.
– Can visit the Velvet Room over the course of the game
– Persona 3‘s Elizabeth and Theodore, and Persona 4?s Margaret and Marie will provide support
– While Marie is singled out as not being an official resident of the Velvet Room for this game, she is still set to give her unique brand of mouthy assistance
– Specifics on this haven’t been detailed yet
– Every party member will now be able to enter the Velvet Room instead of only the protagonists
– Velvet Room’s layout will change
– Has a pair of mysterious locked doors
– Elizabeth has two main jobs this time
– She’ll have requests that players can go out and fulfill in exchange for rewards
– Nature of these requests are mostly mum
– They’re said to be jotted down in a specific “Request Notebook” whose contents are based on the Seven Wonders of Yasogami High School that previous trailers have depicted
– Complete quests to trigger special events
– Elizabeth’s second role is as a nurse that players can visit after making trips to the game’s labyrinths
– Heal your party health-wise and status effects-wise
– Theodore runs the workshop
– Defeat the Shadows in the labyrinths to obtain the raw materials necessary for developing equipment and consumable items at Theodore’s workshop
– He wears pink and red apron with a heart in the middle
– There’s a backstory to this but the details haven’t been shared
Retro City Rampage: DX’s first update will launch tomorrow, Vblank Entertainment has confirmed. A trailer for the patch can be found above.
We have a few more details about the GBA Virtual Console on Wii U, including file sizes for various games. You can find the information rounded up below.
– Supported controllers: GamePad, Wii U Pro Controller, Wii Remote which has a Classic Controller (Pro) attached to it
– Once again, there is a smooth screen option, two display options, can go full screen or original resolution
– Colors are more vibrant than the 3DS Ambassador games
– Games chug very little
– Look through the original manual in various languages
File sizes:
Advance Wars – 62MB
Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga – 63MB
Metroid Fusion – 57 MB
Kirby & The Amazing Mirror – 57MB
WarioWare, Inc: Minigame Mania – 55MB
F-Zero Maximum Velocity – 55MB
Golden Sun – 82MB
Yoshi’s Island: Super Mario Advance 3 – 51MB
The Wonderful 101, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, and Game & Wario all recently received price drops on the Wii U eShop. There’s one more first-party game on sale as well. Going forward, Wii U owners can purchase the digital version of SiNG Party for $20.
Renegade Kid has set a rather high funding goal for Cult County on Kickstarter. In order to secure all donations, the studio will need to raise $580,000.
That kind of high target raises an important question: what will happen to Cult County if the campaign doesn’t reach its goal? Fortunately, Renegade Kid co-founder Jools Watsham confirmed to Polygon that it will still be made, but development would take much longer.
Watsham said:
“We will make Cult County regardless of what happens with the Kickstarter campaign,” Watsham said. “It will take a lot longer for us to complete Cult County if the minimum goal is not reached, though.”
Blast ‘Em Bunnies isn’t on Wii U, but it is on 3DS. Why is this so?
Developer Nnooo explained on Twitter:
@GoldMetalSonic We didn’t have access to Wii U dev kits when we were making the decision about which platforms to develop on.
— Nnooo (@_Nnooo) April 2, 2014
Nnooo seems to have left the door slightly ajar regarding a potential Wii U version in the future. But for now, the studio is focusing “on the core platforms first.”
@GoldMetalSonic No, but we need to focus on the core platforms first.
— Nnooo (@_Nnooo) April 2, 2014
Yacht Club Games shared another small update about Shovel Knight’s status on Kickstarter yesterday.
The studio “can see the light at the end of the tunnel” and the game “is essentially complete.” As of now, Yacht Club is polishing and addressing remaining bugs.
Yacht Club’s Kickstarter message in full reads:
We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Shovel Knight is essentially complete, as we continue to polish and fix bugs that crop up. These little changes have made huge improvements in these final days. It’s so close! As production winds down, we’ll have a stable candidate for each version of the game for submission: and then we can announce a final release date!
