interview

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 13 Comments

In a recent issue of Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream, producer Yosuke Hayashi was asked about the inclusion of Marin in Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Warriors Legends. The character made it in as part of the Link’s Awakening DLC Pack.

Hayashi touched on why Marin uses a bell, her appearance, and movements. Head past the break for our full translation.

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More: Hyrule Warriors, Hyrule Warriors Legends, interview, Nintendo Dream, top, Yosuke Hayashi

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in DS, News | 18 Comments

EA once had plans to create a Pokemon competitor for DS, according to Nic Watt. Watt is currently at Nnooo, but previously worked at EA as a creative director.

In a recent episode of the GameHugs podcast, Watt stated:

“Working with EA was a completely different experience [to working with a small studio] as we had the longest prototyping period I’ve had for any game I’ve worked on: it was amazing. EA wanted this game where the idea and it was going to be their Pokémon game. They didn’t have an RPG in the handheld space and they really wanted one. We did a lot of paper-based prototyping for the battle mechanics and even made a whole card game. Then we got the people from Criterion – who worked on Burnout and with the studio – in [to test it]. That’s the good thing when you have a company of 300 people, you can just ask ‘do you guys want to come in and play our game for the afternoon.’ The team did find it hard because the prototyping was so long, and a lot of things got reset from time to time. But by the time I left, it still had not hit full production and I know that was really tough for a lot of people.”

Even though EA put quite a number of development resources into the mystery project, it never saw the day of light. It’d be interesting to see what it looks like!

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 2 Comments

In an interview with Nintendo Life, Dragon Quest VII producer Noriyoshi Fujimoto spoke about the decision to remake the game. On the decision to bring it to the handheld rather than Sony platforms, Fujimoto explained:

“There are two reasons. One is that Nintendo 3DS is a portable system and I thought it was a really good fit for DQVII. The second one is that, in Japan, Nintendo 3DS is the most popular hardware, so I thought it would be a really good opportunity to get DQVII to more fans.”

Fujimoto was also asked about Nintendo’s involvement. Regarding this, he said:

“The sheer translation volume of Dragon Quest VII is more than 2 times Dragon Quest V, so it’s a gigantic game. It was really hard to make the business decision to localize the game. With Nintendo, we were able to work it out and work hand-in-hand and make it happen together. To be completely blunt, it’s like Nintendo took half of the bill!”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News, Switch, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

Next week, DrinkBox’s Severed will land on the Wii U eShop. It’ll be the second release on Nintendo platforms from the indie developer. Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition previously released on the Wii U eShop.

Regarding Guacamelee’s sales on Wii U, DrinkBox told NintendOn:

“We were very satisfied with the performance of Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition on the Wii U so are excited to be bringing Severed to the Wii U/3DS. I’m not sure if cross buy will boost the game’s sales but we really just wanted to give the Nintendo player base the option to decide how they wanted to enjoy Severed.”

DrinkBox was also asked about the possibility of Severed on NX or something new entirely. There’s nothing to announce, but the company does hope to work with the platform in the future.

“Maybe? We don’t even know what the NX is so it is impossible for us to say. What I can say is that we’ve been happy to work on the Wii U and 3DS so hopefully can continue that relationship with Nintendo’s NX – whatever it is!”

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More: DrinkBox, Guacamelee: Super Turbo Championship Edition, interview, sales

Posted on 8 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in News, Wii U eShop | 0 comments

At gamescom last month, Nintendo of Europe conducted an interview with Dan Adelman, a former employee of Nintendo of America and currently the business partner of Thomas Happ, who created the Metroid-like game Axiom Verge, which is out now on Wii U. The full interview can be found here – below are a couple of interesting excerpts from the interview:

Nintendo of Europe: It sounds like Tom had a very strong vision of what he wanted the game to be from the start. For example, the heads-up display in the game is very minimalist in a similar way to Metroid and other retro games. Is that kind of aesthetic part of the design philosophy for this game?

Dan Adelman: Yeah, I think a lot of Tom’s philosophy in terms of game development is about not overloading the player with information. So, for example, when you start out in Axiom Verge, you start off in the middle of a room, and you can try to go either right or left, and this actually takes inspiration from Metroid. You try to go to the right, and you’re blocked, so you have no choice but to go to the left and then, instead of having a tutorial that says, “Go here. Press this button to jump,” you’re basically in a place where you need to jump and you try all the buttons and you figure it out.

I know he put a lot of effort into teaching the player how to play without making it a tutorial, or writing up a lot of text, and so there were only like one or two places where I remember he struggled. When we brought the game to PAX East, we observed people playing the game. There’s one button – the L Button – that you can hold down in order to lock your position and aim in any direction, and at different events there were a lot of people who just didn’t get it. They didn’t pick it up on their own, so that was one instance where Tom actually had to add in a line explaining how to do it.

NoE: Was it tricky to get the difficulty just right? Did you ever find people saying the game was too tough?

DA: Not too many. I think, at shows when people just pick the game up cold and they don’t know anything about it, they’ll fail a lot and give up too easily. I think when people play at home, and they sit down and try to digest it, they’ll learn pretty quickly.

NoE: It’s got a learning curve like all those classic games.

DA: Yeah, like anything else. One thing I actually really like about the game is that, if you take your time as you’re playing it, there’s usually a way to destroy the enemy in a way that means you’re still safe, or just avoid the enemy entirely.

So if you tried to run right through everything and just keep blasting like in Contra, you’ll probably get taken out pretty quickly, but if you think, “Alright, there’s an enemy up ahead. I’m going to climb up on this platform and shoot down on him. He can’t reach me up here!” If you notice those environmental cues, you can actually make things a bit easier on yourself. It’s only later in the game where you have to fight creatures at close-quarters.

NoE: Does Axiom Verge take advantage of Wii U’s unique hardware features in any way?

DA: Yeah, there are a couple of really important ways. My favourite is the fact that the map is on the Wii U GamePad touch screen at all times. I know that the first time I played Axiom Verge, I had to keep pausing the game to see where I needed to go next. A lot of modern games in this genre will just draw an arrow and say, “Go here next, and then go here next,” and it holds your hand. This game doesn’t do that. You figure out where you need to go next by looking at the map and saying, “Oh, where have I not explored yet? Let’s try to get there”. I was constantly going back and forth, and back and forth. Having the map always available makes it very user-friendly. The other feature, of course, is off-TV play, which is very convenient for people who have to share a TV – they’ll still be able to play!

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More: Axiom Verge, Dan Adelman, indie, interview, Tom Happ

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in GameCube, General Nintendo, News | 8 Comments

Grasshopper Manufacture made Killer7 for the GameCube and PlayStation 2 in partnership with Capcom over a decade ago. Goichi Suda, known for his work on projects like No More Heroes, directed the game. Now he’s interested in seeing it return.

Speaking with Hardcore Gamer, Suda51 said:

Basically, you are staying faithful to the vision so that new audiences can see it as intended. That’s exciting. Are there any other old works that you have done that you are hoping to revisit, to give this type of remastering treatment?

I feel that Killer 7 is the hardest of my games to play. I want to and feel that I need to do something about that. A remake, or remaster or something like that… (Sly grin.)

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 15 Comments

Hisashi Nogami, producer of Splatoon, was interviewed in last week’s Famitsu. There weren’t any major revelations, but Nogami did share some interesting tidbits. We now have some news about those who have been playing Splatoon online.

The ratio between Turf War and Ranked Battle players is roughly fifty-fifty. New players tend to concentrate on Turf War while those who have played for long time usually focus on Ranked Battle. The recent update increased point bonuses for Turf War, which perhaps made some people to go back to that mode. Of course, there are also people who have always enjoyed Turf War since launch.

The interview also says that there were many players during the end of 2015 and start of 2016, which may have been due to the holidays and start of the new year. The current numbers have dropped off in comparison, but there is still a stable number of players.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 4 Comments

GameSpot caught up with Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice creative director Matt Kraemer to learn more about the game. Much of the discussion pertained to how this title improves upon the original and listening to fan feedback.

Per usual, we’ve rounded up the interesting responses below. For the full discussion, head on over to GameSpot.

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More: interview, Mat Kraemer, Sanzaru Games, SEGA, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, top

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 6 Comments

IGN has now published its full interview with Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Run. Among the responses, Miyamoto touched on when development truly began, the various modes, the fact that it’s a different experience compared to the console games, pricing, and more.

We’ve rounded up the interesting comments from Miyamoto below. You can read IGN’s full article IGN.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Mobile, News | 6 Comments

With Super Mario Run, Nintendo will be attempting to attract players who aren’t entirely experienced with Mario titles or games as a whole. However, that doesn’t mean it’ll be devoid of challenge for longtime fans.

Nintendo developer Shigeru Miyamoto wouldn’t divulge what we can expect from Super Mario Run’s later levels. He did say, however, that Mario fans won’t have to worry about easily making it to the end.

Miyamoto teased:

“A big point with this game is, ‘How can we make this a game that people who aren’t good at games can play the game and enjoy it?’ But also at the same time, we’ve been making Mario games for a long time, and we know how to make them challenging. So if you’re a Mario fan, I don’t think you have to worry about that part of it.”

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