Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails heading to the Wii U eShop
Rhodri Broadbent, who has previously worked on Fable, Star Fox Command, The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character, and Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims, is now making a game for the Wii U eShop.
Broadbent is bringing “Scram Kitty and his Buddy on Rails” to the platform. There’s only a logo to see for now, but a few gameplay details have already emerged. You can find those below along with commentary from Broadbent.
– Release planned for this year
– Scram Kitty lives in the TV
– Play the buddy on rails
– 2D shooter
– Whiz about the interior of spaceships disposing of enemies with colorful little jets of gunfire as you bounce and grind off networks of rails
– Kind of like Smash TV and Jet Set Radio
– There’s some second screen magic that has the TV broadcasting the buddy on rail’s actions, overlaying it with splashes of action and commentary that turn the 2D action into something that’s as energetic and engaging as a Japanese game show
– Broadbent: “I like it when you have experiences with family. They hate touchscreen because the stress, but they enjoy the passive thing of watching you play the game. My brother used to enjoy watching me play Speedball 2.”
– A link exists between the two screens that has the buddy on rails sending items across to scram kitty in order to progress
– This link extended through Miiverse
– Broadbent: “We want to make it so that it can translate messages that you send into an assist mode. You know in Street Fighter 4 and you get a super finish and everything goes crazy and it feels awesome? We want to make it so you can send those abilities to other players. So if you beat a boss or do something in a certain time, that can be translated into an assist item for a friend.”
– Gary Lucken helping with the visuals
Head past the break for a few more quotes, including Broadbent talking about meeting Shigeru Miyamoto when he was with Q-Games:
“It was possibly the most embarrassing moment in my life. Because everyone knew that I was a Nintendo fan – well, everyone was a Nintendo fan at Q, but there was a focus on me. And then the producer says to Miyamoto ‘I asked Rhod why he moved to Kyoto, and he says it’s because of Nintendo’. Everyone started laughing, Miyamoto did his humble thing – and I just collapsed in my chair. I crumpled up into a ball, and then realized I was crumpling into a ball in front of Miyamoto. That must have been strange for him.”
“I think there’s potential to have a hit on Wii U in its first 18 months. To get a game out and have it when the system’s starting to ramp up with the Miiverse, to be involved in that will be good for us from a business point of view.”
“I don’t think anyone reasonable was expecting Wii U to go out the gate like the Wii did. For any of the new platforms to really fail requires a shift in humans that I’m not aware of yet, in terms of people not wanting good content. The 3DS showed quite clearly that if you say this machine has a new Mario, and it’s got this and this and this…. In Japan last year the 3DS had an amazing year, and if they start translating that sort of excitement to other platforms then I absolutely believe not just in Wii U but in the grand console future. Video games are something to be cherished and celebrated, and there’s no one better at doing that than Nintendo. It’s that simple – it only takes one game to turn a platform around. People will buy a platform for one game, and when they’ve got the system they’ll buy more games. It’s just about finding that one game.”
