interview

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, General Nintendo, News | 0 comments

Nikkei Trendy recently conducted an extensive interview with Akihiro Hino, CEO of Level-5. There was plenty of discussion about various topics, but some of Hino’s more interesting comments came about when he was asked about plans Level-5 has for Yo-Kai Watch aside from developing new installments.

Hino said:

Opening up to global market is a thing that is left to do. We are already refining the strategy of Yo-Kai Watch for global expansion. North America is the biggest market and we are starting to create a system which is required to realize the same cross media strategy (games, anime, toys etc.) as in Japan. When targeting overseas market for a big title like Yo-Kai Watch, we commit to that title 100% and create a powerful system which manages the brand and maximizes business opportunities.

Hino was next asked if North America is the main target of overseas expansion. To this, he responded:

We are spreading out to North America and Europe at the same time. About Asia, we have already started expansion in Korea. Toys have sold very well and the TV anime has higher ratings than other anime programs. As they have been a hit, we would like to bring a movie and other things, too. We are also steadily progressing in reaching out to other parts of Asia.

The first Yo-Kai Watch game launched in Japan back in July 2013. A sequel came out in July of last year. We’re still waiting on a Yo-Kai Watch title to arrive overseas… which hopefully will happen sooner rather than later!

More: Akihiro Hino, interview, Level-5, top, Yo-kai Watch, Youkai Watch

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, 3DS eShop, New Nintendo 3DS, News, Wii U eShop | 6 Comments

Polygon has some extensive comments from Tyrone Rodriguez and Edmund McMillen about The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. There’s plenty of talk about why the game didn’t make it to Nintendo platforms until now, and what changed to make it happen. Additionally, we learn why Rebirth is planned for New 3DS only (rather than bringing it to the original 3DS as well).

We’ve rounded up the various comments below. You can find Polygon’s original article here.

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More: interview, Nicalis, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, top

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U eShop | 3 Comments

During the latest Fragments of Silicon podcast, Natsume’s director of operations Graham Markay explained why the company passed on localizations of the recent Medabots games. He explained:

[…] not every game that’s made in a particular territory, such as Japan, is always made with a worldwide release in mind. Another thing to consider is that we’d have to use Rocket Company’s engineers and programmers in regards to localizing a game. Even if we were to translate it, they’d have to be available. We reached out to them and told them we wanted to do more. We had a great time back in the day on the GBA releasing those four Medabots games, and on the Gamecube. Unfortunately, the stars have not yet aligned. Hopefully there’s a game that they have time to partner with us on.

[…] I would’ve loved to have brought [Medarot 7 and Medarot 8] over to the US. It just doesn’t seem like the right timing now. Then that begs the question of when would be the right timing. Maybe when their team frees up, but then when’s that going to be? When we’re free, they’re free, is it still going to be viable for the 3DS market at the time? We haven’t given up. It’s not like they reached out and said, “Hey, we need A, B, and C to make this happen.” We both looked at our calendars and unfortunately they were involved with something and weren’t available at the time.

Markay also revealed that Natsume’s GBA Virtual Console games will begin arriving on the Wii U eShop starting in June. This includes the Medabots titles AX and An RPG Adventure.

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More: Graham Markay, interview, Medabots, Natsume, Virtual Console

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News | 1 Comment

It took some time for Intelligent Systems to settle on the visuals for Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. Speaking with USgamer, art director Takako Sakai explained how the style changed throughout development.

Originally, the team wanted to “recreate the same pen touch” found in American comic art. But “some visual elements made the game a little bit harder to play”, which led Intelligent Systems to make “some light revisions” – resulting in the graphics we see in the final code.

Sakai’s full comments are as follows:

When we set out to recreate the feeling of [American] comic art, and tried to recreate the same pen touch—that kind of feeling to the actual stroke… We noticed that some visual elements made the game a little bit harder to play. So we made some light revisions there, and landed on the style you see in [S.T.E.A.M.] now. At first, we [created] a color palette that was really faithful to the printing technology of the time. But once implemented, we found that it did make the game a little bit hard to play in some situations. So we made adjustments as appropriate—as little as possible—as we went. And where we ended, you’ll notice the enemies have sort of a colder, bluer palette to them, whereas your allies have a warmer palette—a lot of orange and red.”

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More: Code Name: S.T.E.A.M, interview, Takako Sakai

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS eShop, Videos, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

More: Image & Form, indie, interview, SteamWorld Heist

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 4 Comments

One of the most prominent difficulties faced by the Mario Party development team was gameplay balance. That’s according to director Shuichiro Nishiya from Nd Cube and Nintendo producer Jumpei Horita.

Speaking with Nintendo Life, the Nishiya said:

Ensuring the gameplay was balanced was indeed the toughest challenge during development. The game is based first of all on the outcome of rolling dice, so depending on your luck, the game could end very quickly, or Bowser might never be able to catch up. We encountered a number of possible issues we had to resolve in order to balance fairness with fun. Through our test plays, we came up with various ways to help those lagging behind. For example, players who are out of the game can provide items to their team mates, Bowser Jr. can offer dice to Bowser when he’s falling behind, and so forth. Thanks to these additions, the outcome of the game is up for grabs right until the very end. Of course, even with all our careful adjustments, if you end up rolling nothing but “1” you still won’t have a chance of winning.

Horita also chimed in. According to him, “the outcome of the roll is 100% pure luck”, even though some have believed that the game controls it by some means.

I just want to add an extra point here. I often hear or read doubts about the fairness of the dice roll, that it might be controlled somehow by the game. I assure you that the outcome of the roll is 100% pure luck. That said, even when you’re down on your luck, you can still take advantage of the minigames to survive Bowser’s onslaught and stay in the running. There are plenty of ways to turn the situation around so I encourage you not to give up until the very end!

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More: interview, Jumpei Horita, Mario Party 10, Nd Cube, Shuichiro Nishiya

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 21 Comments

TIME has put up another round of quotes from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. There is plenty of additional mobile talk (such as how he isn’t a fan of the term “free-to-play”), but other topics were discussed as well. Iwata commented on the Wii U’s launch price, how Shigeru Miyamoto’s involvement with the New 3DS led to the inclusion of super-stable 3D, how the characters in Smash Bros. are technically toys, amiibo, and rumors about Netflix’s live-action Zelda series (which are apparently inaccurate).

We’ve rounded up Iwata’s comments below. If you’re interested in checking out TIME’s original report, head on over to this link.

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More: interview, Satoru Iwata, top

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch | 47 Comments

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata touched on the company’s new gaming system, NX, during an interview with Japanese publication Nikkei. He suggested that the company’s plan is to surprise gamers, as simply expanding upon existing hardware makes things “dull.”

Iwata’s full words:

“However, if you only expand upon existing hardware, it’s dull. In some shape or form, we’re always thinking about how we want to surprise players as well as our desire to change each person’s video gaming life.”

That’s all that was shared about NX. We’ll have to wait until next year for any concrete details!

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More: interview, Satoru Iwata

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 105 Comments

Yesterday, a short video surfaced in which Masahiro Sakurai stated that Mewtwo DLC for Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS was nearly finished and will be released “pretty soon”. But that wasn’t the only significant piece of information shared by Sakurai.

According to Sakurai, Takamaru from The Mysterious Murasame Castle was initially considered as a fighter for the new Smash Bros. entries. Unfortunately, he didn’t make the cut due to the perceived lack of familiarity among Nintendo fans. This took place before development on Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS actually began.

We’ll also mention that Sakurai is aware of the crazy Miiverse requests for fighters, like Goku and SpongeBob. Naturally, there’s no way such characters would make it into Smash Bros.

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More: interview, Masahiro Sakurai, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS, top

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U eShop | 1 Comment

Two Gunman Clive games have been made thus far. Could creator Bertil Hörberg eventually work on a third entry. Possibly, but don’t expect to see an announcement anytime soon.

Speaking with Nintendojo, Hörberg said:

I don’t know; it won’t be any time soon but I’m not against the idea of another sequel in the future. If I do create a Gunman Clive 3 or continue the series even further I think I will shake up the formula a bit more and do something a bit different. GC2 started as a very straightforward sequel with basically just more levels. I think it grew to be a bit more ambitious than that in the end, but it still follows the first game very closely in terms of the core gameplay and structure. Honestly I don’t really know where to go from here thematically; in GC2 I tried to make everything feel grander and more dramatic. He’s already been to space and traveled around the world, fought dinosaurs and giant robots, so I don’t know how I’d top that to make his next adventure feel like a clear step up again.

Hörberg also commented on his interest in porting Gunman Clive 2 to additional platforms. Wii U remains one system that could receive the game.

For now my goal is port the game to more platforms, but I haven’t made much progress with that yet, so it’ll be some time before I get started on a new project. I have a few loose ideas but nothing solid yet and I’ll spend some time prototyping before I decide anything.

Yes, possibly (Wii U as one of those platforms). My plan was to start with the platforms the first game was on (iOS, Android & Steam), as I want everyone who played that to be able to get the sequel, and then move on to Wii U and possibly other consoles. But we’ll see how many versions I’m able to do before I want to move on to a new game, so I’m not promising anything definite yet. The 3DS version made up for the vast majority of the total sales for GC1, but I don’t feel I can disregard the other platforms after one game, and it shouldn’t be too much work to port it. As I mentioned though, I haven’t gotten very far yet and it’s going pretty slowly still.

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More: Bertil Hörberg, Gunman Clive 2, indie, interview