Submit a news tip



Iwata Asks

Nintendo has published a new Iwata Asks focusing on Nintendo 3DS Guides: Louvre. You can find the full discussion here. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto both participated in the discussion.

Nintendo shared an interesting tidbit about the name for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds in the latest Iwata Asks. According to director Hiromasa Shikata, the company considered calling the 3DS release “The New Legend of Zelda”.

In Japan, A Link Between Worlds is called Triforce of the Gods 2. Nintendo decided to stick with A Link to the Past’s original Japanese name while adding the “2” because “it didn’t feel out of place,” series producer Eiji Aonuma said.

Somewhat surprisingly, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds doesn’t incorporate a direct top-down view.

The development team implemented a “trick” so that the perspective would come off well. As a result, elements like the Link character model and rupees are actually set at an angle, which allows players to see character faces and bodies when looking above.

As revealed in the latest Iwata Asks:

Early on in the development for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, Nintendo came up with the idea of Link being able to enter walls. The thing is, there wasn’t really a set direction as to how the team could make this element enjoyable.

One of the game’s programmers showed interest in seeing how turning corners on the walls would affect things. This eventually led to a bare-bones prototype which was completed in about a day.

The prototype (pictured above, via Iwata Asks) ended up as a very different project compared to A Link Between Worlds’ final result. It featured an angled viewpoint rather than top-down perspective, not to mention a Toon Link character model.

Source

More: ,

I’ve thrown together a summary of the Super Mario 3D World Iwata Asks, as the original discussion is quite long. There are definitely a number of interesting points, plus some talk about the future of the Super Mario Galaxy series. Without further ado, here’s the summary in full:

– No upending the tea table from Miyamoto this time
– Miyamoto “only needed to be involved with occasional spot-checks in areas where I wanted to take a closer look”
– Hayashida: “To be upfront about it, ever since we started developing Super Mario 3D Land, we thought about making Super Mario 3D World in continuation afterward.”
– The team originally wanted to include a multiplayer mode in Super Mario 3D Land
– Team initially started out at 40-50, was at about 100 at the end
– The team has tons of ideas for Mario’s transformations
– Cat transformation forms a pair with Statue Mario
– When you turn into Cat Mario under a certain condition, he can make bonus coins appear with Ground Pounds
– Moving multiple Marios was considered before, but wasn’t tried since the team thought it’d be too taxing from a control perspective
– Double Mario came about when a staffer made a mistake with the placement tool and put in two Mario players
– NOA staffers said Mario 3D World has a high replay value
– Free Camera Mode is in single-player mode only
– Captain Toad’s Adventure was put in so that players ” would try it out as a way to experience a game in which you control the camera yourself as you would in a 3D Super Mario game.”
– Motokura insisted on putting in the secret character
– This character loses its ability when in cat form
– This character also becomes a black cat when transformed
– The Luigi Bros. game and the secret character appear after reaching the end once
– Luigi Bros. appears on the title screen
– If you have New Super Luigi U data, you can play from the start
– Hidden Luigi pixels are included in the game
– Random button randomly assigns characters before each course
– Can do a Ground Pound to steal someone’s double power
– Random selection is also available in single-player
– Hayashida on the stamps: “We had always wanted to do something with Miiverse, and I tried posting, but the world is full of people who can draw well. I can’t draw, so I couldn’t get into it.”
– Over 80 stamps are in the game
– Some stamps you get deep in the second half
– Mii characters of other people online show up as Sprixies
– When you clear a course, the ghost of the person who cleared it will replay through that gameplay
– Time Attack Ghost will appear, which is the ghost of another player who’s clear time is just a little faster than yours
– The team had a strong desire to call it “3D World” from the beginning
– Miyamoto realized “Land” was for handhelds and “World” was for home consoles
– Miyamoto: “Some opinions against it arose along the way, and there was a time when it looked like it wouldn’t fly, but it’s a name with a lot of thought behind it that suggests anyone can feel easy playing the game and that it’s a culmination of all the fun of a 3D Super Mario game, so the name had to be Super Mario 3D World, and in the end that’s what it is.”
– Koizumi says he had some regrets about some things when making Super Mario Galaxy, which he feels he was able to address with 3D World
– Koizumi has long wanted Luigi to appear alongside Mario in a 3D game, and also felt Galaxy was more geared toward boys
– With Peach’s inclusion, he feels this has been addressed
– Miyamoto: “Just so there is no misunderstanding, I should point out that this doesn’t mean we’ll never make another Super Mario Galaxy game.”
– Koizumi: “When we first started making Super Mario 3D World, Miyamoto-san asked me if this was going to be more like Super Mario Galaxy or more like Super Mario 3D Land. When we made Super Mario 3D Land, we had our eyes on the form of this game, so we made it this way without any hesitation.”
– Miyamoto: “The same team can’t make both at the same time. And we can’t bring in a second party and slap the name Super Mario Galaxy on it. I suppose we could idealistically make both in Tokyo, but we want to do something new too, so there was that dilemma.”
– Miyamoto “Personally, I would like to take on a variety of new challenges with Super Mario Galaxy and design 2D Super Mario games in an easy-to-understand way within certain restraints.
– Iwata: “Either way, to fans of Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario 3D World is in no way a different beast that they won’t be able to enjoy.”

Nintendo has gone live with a new Iwata Asks for Super Mario 3D World. You can find the full discussion here. Prepare yourself for seven page of talk between Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and the game’s developers!

The following is an excerpt from the latest round of Iwata Asks about the development of Wii Sports Club. Specifically, these quotes relate to the game’s online functionality (Miiverse included) and how the team (including folks from Namco Bandai, who helped the game along) tackled various issues that they came across:

“When we thought about how we want people to have fun with Wii Sports on the new hardware, the Wii U console, there was no way, given the expectations, that we couldn’t prepare online gaming. So as we began development, we set online gameplay of Tennis — the representative sport of Wii Sports — as our first goal. [We wanted to] pour our energy into how we could make [online gaming] fun.”

“In a typical online game, the information of the button presses are sent to your opponent, and the inputs are synchronized between the players, but for this game you have to send complex information from the gyro sensor and accelerometer of the Wii Remote Plus controllers, in addition to information from the buttons, which was a brand new challenge.”

– Nintendo EAD Takayuki Shimamura

Specifically regarding Miiverse:

“So we thought about how [Miiverse] should work. But if we were to simply implement Miiverse to a sporting game, the winners would probably write cheerful comments like ‘Yay! I won!’ But I bet the losers would hardly write anything at all, like ‘Oh I’m so frustrated I lost.’ We were concerned that Miiverse would become a cruel place. We also thought many people who play Wii Sports would have never played competitive games online.”

“Everyone has a hometown or someplace where they live, so we thought about setting it up in a way as if at first you join the sports club in the area where you live, and if we made sports clubs for the various states and provinces, each of the regions could compete.”

– Nintendo EAD Takayuki Shimamura

Via Polygon

When the Wii Sports Club app makes its way to the eShop early next month, players will be able to obtain the download for free. Keep in mind though that you’ll need to fork over $2 for a Day Pass or $10 for permanent ownership.

Nintendo is also including a free 24 hour trial for all Wii U owners. That means you won’t have to spend any cash during the first day that you use Wii Sports Club.

Nintendo has also confirmed, per the latest Iwata Asks, that you’ll receive another free 24 hours when each new sport becomes available. That means you’ll earn a free 24 hours when baseball launches, another 24 hours when golf arrives, and a final 24 hours when boxing becomes available. This allows players to sample the different sports without forcing an immediate purchase.

You can read more about this, as well as an explanation of Wii Sports Club’s pricing, after the break courtesy of the latest Iwata Asks.

When Wii Sports Club launches next month, just two sports will be available: tennis and bowling. Golf, baseball, and boxing will be added at a later date. However, Nintendo did offer up some details on the three upcoming sports additions in the latest Iwata Asks, summarized as follows:

Golf

– Use the GamePad and the TV screen
– Place the GamePad on the floor first, as shown in Wii U’s concept video back at E3 2011
– Ball is shown on the GamePad screen by your feet
– Fairway is on the TV screen
– Play like real golf
– If you face the Wiimote Plus toward the GamePad by your feet, the head of the club appears on screen
– If you twist the Wiimote Plus controller, the club head also turns
– Hit in that position and you can hit a fade and so forth
– Coming “soon”

Baseball

– Swing the Wiimote Plus like a bat
– Pitcher uses the GamePad
– Also similar to the Wii U concept video
– Look into the GamePad and choose a course and type of pitch

Boxing

“For Boxing, we’re considering a lot with regard to network compatibility and so on. I think you’ll have to wait a little longer for that.”

Source


With the launch of Wii Sports Club just a couple of weeks away, Nintendo has put up a new Iwata Asks. You can check out the full discssion here. We’ve also rounded up footage included in the Iwata Asks above.


Manage Cookie Settings