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While Switch owners are still waiting on Dragon Quest XI, the RPG technically came out well over a year ago. That leaves some fans wondering when we’ll see the next true entry in the series. Creator Yuji Horii commented on that very subject during a panel at the computer entertainment developers conference CEDEC + KYUSHU 2018.

Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino moderated the panel, and asked Horii, “How is the 12th entry going?” That prompted Horii to say, “I actually already came up with the keywords, but I can’t say anything here. (Laughs.)”

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime was in attendance at The Game Awards where Nintendo unveiled Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s first DLC pack character. After the show ended, IGN caught up with the executive to talk about what fans can expect regarding future additional content in the future.

Reggie shared the following:

Masahiro Sakurai is so closely associated with the Smash Bros. series that it can sometimes be easy to forget about his other projects. But back in 2012, he managed to successfully bring back the Kid Icarus series with Kid Icarus: Uprising on 3DS.

Kid Icarus: Uprising earned a great deal of praise, though some players were a bit frustrated by the controls. That’s one of the reasons why fans have been interested in seeing it ported to a new system – like Switch perhaps? However, in a recent interview, Sakurai shot down the idea.

In an interview with French outlet Le Monde, former Nintendo artist Yoichi Kotabe revealed information about a nearly historic partnership that ultimately failed to pan out.

According to Kotabe, Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli fame was given an offer to work on a game for Nintendo. Miyazaki had some interest in the partnership and came up with an idea in which players would see the eyes of an insect. Unfortunately, since he was busy, the collaboration with Nintendo was abandoned in the end.

Since the announcement of Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu and Pokemon: Let’s Go, Eevee, some fans have questioned if the titles could be viewed as a spin-offs. However, in a new interview with director Junichi Masuda, he made it clear that it wasn’t the case. Masuda mentioned in the game’s official Japanese strategy title that the new Switch games “aren’t spin-offs” and are instead “core Pokemon titles.”

Masuda also addressed the possibility of having future Pokemon entries be compatible with Pokemon GO. He explained that if the functionality is well received in Pokemon: Let’s Go, “then we’ll think about maybe having future titles also be able to connect to it.”

Shumpalations has translated a classic interview with Yasuhiko Fujii. Fujii previously worked at Nintendo, and more specifically, on Super Metroid as a programmer.

At one point, Fujii was asked if there were any scenes in Super Metroid that were his ideas. That prompted him to recall how he snuck in a reference to a girl he was dating by the movement pattern of a certain group of Evir enemies.

This holiday season will be especially important for Nintendo. The heavy hitters of the year – Pokemon: Let’s Go, Pikachu / Eevee and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – are finally launching, and the company will need success in order to reach its goal of selling 20 million Switch systems this fiscal year.

The holidays are also important for Nintendo due to the high amount of sales collected during the period. Reggie said that “in the Americas, about 60% of our revenue during that time frame.”

In Europe and Japan, Nintendo recently shipped a Minecraft-themed New 2DS XL system. The design was based around the Creeper, one of the game’s hostile mobs.

Lydia Winters was one of the staffers at Mojang heavily involved with the creation of the new look. Winters was able to talk about working on the design, including a couple of scrapped ideas.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda series has experimented with many different visual styles over the years. Nintendo aimed for realism with Twilight Princess, but before that, Wind Waker offered a completely opposite feel with its cel-shaded look.

As part of an interview published in the newly-translated Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion book, art director Satoru Takizawa commented on the series’ ever-changing visual style. Takizawa had this to say on the topic:

Starlink: Battle for Atlas

We’ve known that Virtuos worked on the Switch version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas. But as it turns out, the studio was extremely involved and handled a significant amount of development on Nintendo’s console. GamesIndustry spoke with senior technical director Jonathan Boldiga about what the process was like.

According to Boldiga, creating Starlink for Switch wasn’t easy. Ubisoft apparently “had very high standards in terms of what they wanted on the Switch platform” and the team had to do what it could to maintain visual parity across Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. In the end, Boldiga believes they were able to deliver “one of the best-looking Switch titles out there.”


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