Sakurai: No premium Smash Bros. DLC currently planned, more
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, News, Wii U | 28 Comments
Videogamer has posted a new interview with Super Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai. Sakurai fielded questions about paid downloadable content for the Wii U and 3DS games, plus much more. Read on below for the Q&A.
Mario Kart 8 director on choices behind the Nintendo DLC tracks, small tweak to improve lightweight racers
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 3 Comments
Another interview with Mario Kart 8 director Kosuke Yabuki has popped up online – this time from GameSpot. Yabuki was asked about how the team decided on the Nintendo franchises for DLC tracks, revealed a small tweak made to improve the lightweight racers for collisions, and more.
Read on below for some excerpts from GameSpot’s interview. You can find the full thing here.
More: interview, Kosuke Yabuki, Mario Kart 8, top
Mario Kart 8 director on the game’s DLC
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 1 Comment
IGN passed along a few questions to Mario Kart 8 director Yasuke Kabuki as part of a new interview. Kabuki talked all about the racer’s DLC, and a tiny bit about amiibo.
Read on below for IGN’s full Q&A. Be sure to check out the site’s full article here.
More: Amiibo, DLC, interview, Mario Kart 8, top, Yasuke Kabuki
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker devs on the game’s creation
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 9 Comments
Polygon recently caught up with Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker director Koichi Hayashida and producer Shinya Hiratake. The two spoke about how the game came to be, and shared plenty of development information.
Read on below for a summary of the interview. Also be sure to check out Polygon’s full piece here.
Hayashida on how Captain Toad came about…
“We began with Super Mario 64. While Super Mario 64 was quite an interesting game, we heard that roughly 20 percent of gamers found it too difficult,” he said, brandishing a copy of the Nintendo 64 game. We kept that comment that the game was too challenging and made games like Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World with that in mind.”
– In making 3D Land and 3D World, the team felt it was getting away from a fundamental design principle that made Mario 64 so special
– This was the idea that the levels were a sort of “diorama” or a “garden in a box”
– The studio was able to get back to that idea with the Captain Toad stages in 3D World
Hayashida on how Miyamoto suggested making Captain Toad into its own game…
“At the completion of 3D World, Mr. Miyamoto said, ‘That worked well; I think we should create a single spin-off title just featuring Captain Toad.’ The start of the conversation was, ‘Let’s take a lot of the elements that we have in 3D World and incorporate them’ into what eventually became Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.”
– The team started out by making 100 stages
– Two issues: Toad couldn’t jump, and they were still basically making Mario stages
– Action felt limited without being able to jump
– Since Toad can’t jump, this also means enemies are overpowered
– The team addressed this with the plucking action, and by implementing some stealth
– The process of making a level begins with what mechanics/gimmick they’re interested in
– Stage set in the haunted house was originally a puzzle stage
– The two devs wouldn’t confirm/deny a similar approach of making more Nintendo spin-offs with other franchises
“When we were doing 3D World and creating these diorama-style worlds… we tested them using Mario as playable character. Because Mario has ability to jump, the types of stages we came up with became impossibly large. Mario made those stages too big, which broke our whole goal, so… it worked out that we had this character there.” – Hayashida
Video: Reggie on getting consumers to upgrade to Wii U, Nintendo’s broad audience, competition
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, Videos, Wii U | 1 Comment
More: interview, Reggie Fils-Aime, top
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker originally imagined as a Zelda game
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 11 Comments
Shinya Hiratake is the director of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. It was many years ago that he thought about a game concept that would take place in a series of small diorama-like levels where the hero couldn’t jump. Players would move the camera around the diorama and guide the hero to the exit.
Who was the hero, you ask? Why, Link of course! Hiratake felt that if he removed the jumping mechanic from a platformer, he could greatly shrink a game’s levels. However, he believed that the concept wasn’t a fit for the Mario universe since most of those characters can jump. It was then that The Legend of Zelda’s Link came to mind.
Aonuma: Zelda Wii U looks even better than before, update at E3 2015
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 129 Comments
This week’s issue of Famitsu has an interview with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. While much of the discussion focused on Majora’s Mask, the magazine also managed to ask a couple of questions about Zelda Wii U.
Aonuma mentioned that many styles were considered to suit a Zelda game set in a wide world before deciding on the current visuals. On the topic of graphics, Aonuma teases: “Now it looks more amazing than what was shown at E3.”
Aonuma additionally notes that the enemy shown in the debut trailer is something not previously seen in the series as you have to come up with a strategy while escaping on horse. He stresses that “If an enemy like this appears, how would you beat it?” is a situation which the team has tried to include in the game.
So when will we see Zelda for Wii U again? Aonuma thinks that Nintendo may have new things to show at E3 next year.
More: Eiji Aonuma, Famitsu, interview, top, Zelda Wii U
Aonuma sheds new light on Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D – origins, changes, New 3DS tease, more
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in 3DS, New Nintendo 3DS, News | 27 Comments
Despite having only been announced last week, Famitsu already has an update on The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D. The magazine spoke with longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma about the remake.
A portion of Famitsu’s interview covers Majora Mask 3D’s origins. According to Aonuma, after Ocarina of Time 3D released, they considered what to develop next. Shigeru Miyamoto came to Aonuma and said, “If we ported Majora’s Mask to a portable device, wouldn’t it play more smoothly than the original as it is possible to put the game in sleep mode at any time?”
Miyamoto: Nintendo aims to create game ideas “that could have never happened before”, no news about VR yet
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 63 Comments
Earlier today, Telegraph published an interview with Nintendo’s legendary video game creator Shigeru Miyamoto. Much of what Miyamoto had to say focused on the Pikmin Short Movies, but there was time for a few other topics as well.
First, when it comes to what other companies are doing, Miyamoto remarked:
“What the other companies are doing makes business sense. But it’s boring. The same games appear on every system. At Nintendo we want an environment where game creators can collaborate and think of ideas for games that could have never happened before.”
And when asked about virtual reality, Miyamoto stated:
“I have nothing to tell you about Nintendo’s involvement in virtual reality. We have nothing to announce yet.”
More: interview, Shigeru Miyamoto, top
Nintendo looking into potential amiibo compatibility for third-party companies
Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 17 Comments
Everything we’ve seen thus far of amiibo has been limited to first-party content. However, Nintendo is now looking into ways its third-party partners can integrate figures into their games.
Nintendo of America licensing manager Damon Baker told IGN:
“We’re having those conversations and we’re still early on because amiibo isn’t even going to launch until later this month. We’re excited to see how that pans out but there’s a ton of interest from our third-party partners and we’re looking at what makes sense in terms of business models and levels of integration. There are really creative ideas that are coming through and we are working towards some opportunities for next year.”
Marketing director David Wharton also said:
“Think about our implementation for our products, it’s really developer-centric. It’s really about opening up new capabilities and new ways of extending the value of games and bringing the functionality into games. As a company we’re interested in as many different creative explorations of that functionality. Exactly what that’s going to be in the future, not only for third-party but first-party, that story has yet to be written. We’ve got a couple of examples of how it’s going to look today — but imagine the future, the sky is the limit.”
