Playtonic

Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 7 Comments

Playtonic published a pair of new updates for Yooka-Laylee today. We have some new music as well as the reveal of a new character.

First, have a listen to a challenge tune composed by David Wise below.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/246382673″ params=”color=ff5500″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Players will hear the above tune during a section of the game which features Kartos. Yooka and Laylee will come across the minecart character several times, “and together they’ll hit the tracks in search of paper-shaped golden nuggets.”

Designer Kev Bayliss says of Kartos:

“In true Playtonic fashion, we wanted to make this character as fun as possible. He’s old school, so we wanted him to look old fashioned, rather than modern. He actually looks like a bad DIY project by myself, and I’m sure I’ve seen some of his body parts lying around in my shed at home! Yooka will be taking advantage of Kartos and his services, as he is for ‘hire’ at various stages in the game. And why not? After all, his slogan is ‘Mein Kart ist Ihre Kart’ after all!”

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 7 Comments

Kevin Bayliss was at Rare for over 20 years. Now he’s with Playtonic, the developer behind Yooka-Laylee. It actually sounds like he’s been assisting the team for some time, but he’s joining them in an official capacity.

Bayliss was one of Rare’s first employees. As graphics director, he helped come up with characters for well-known titles such as Battletoads, Killer Instinct, Diddy Kong Racing, and Star Fox Adventures. Bayliss also worked with Shigeru Miyamoto to create the modern Donkey Kong and sidekick Diddy for Diddy Kong Country.

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

Genei Ibun Roku #FE is one game we just spoke about not having off-TV play. On the other side of the spectrum, however, Yooka-Laylee should support the feature.

Playtonic told one fan on Twitter last week:

Off-TV play is one of the Wii U’s better features, so it’s always nice when it can be included!

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More: Playtonic, Team17, Yooka-Laylee

Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

IGN is continuing its coverage of Yooka-Laylee. In the latest video, Playtonic’s Gav Murphy talks voice acting. Check it out below.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Videos, Wii U eShop | 5 Comments

IGN has posted a soundtrack sample from Yooka-Laylee, which you can listen to below. The music is from World 1.

Grant Kirkhope, the composer of Yooka-Laylee, also shared the following words:

“Erm…it’s only the first bit that sounds that way maybe, the rest of the music is skewed towards each area that it fades to like in the original Banjo-Kazooie, and I think that Caribbean feel that you’re hearing might be because I’m using the marimba for the main melody at the start. I used the marimba because it features so heavily in both the BK games.”

“Honestly I don’t mind what people hear when they listen as long as they like it! I think once people know what the different variations of the music were written for it’ll all fall into place (at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!).”

“I asked Gavin (Price) for a brief description of the different areas that I needed to write the variations for, but that was about it. Obviously Steve Mayles complains most of the time when it comes to the music – some things never change even after 17 years, I’m used to it by now.”

“I think any composer worth their salt can get a pretty good idea in their head before they even start writing music when they get a description of the thing they’re writing for. For example if someone says it’s a frozen ice mountain I’d be thinking about pizzicato strings, celeste and glockenspiel before I’d even written a note. Or if it was a lush green forest I’d be thinking about using nice warm winds like bassoons and clarinets. Writing music is all about using your imagination, the images tell the story but it’s the music that lets you know how to feel.”

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 10 Comments

Playtonic has revealed a brand new character for Yooka-Laylee as part of a feature on IGN. Above is a look at Rextro Sixtyfourus, an old-school dinosaur character who acts as guardian of the arcade machines hidden on each level. Players will find at least one secret arcade game in each world, which provides a Pagie when completed.

Mark Stevenson, who previously worked on the Donkey Kong Country series, Donkey Kong 64, and Kameo, designed Rextro Sixtyfourus. Here’s what he had to say about the character:

“We decided on using a dinosaur pretty early on as this is a creature that naturally associates with a past era. Then I think mostly my inspiration came from work I’d done previously on characters for the Donkey Kong 64 game. From this work I knew the kind of forms we had to create due to low polygon counts, so this inspired the shapes used to create Rextro’s blocky feet and hands that are virtually cubes. All the polygons in Rexto have hard edges as well: this affects how the light shines on him meaning you can basically see all the polygon faces as individual facets.

“I wanted Rex to to feel like he captured the era of games from my early career which also included work on the Donkey Kong games on the Super Nintendo. Finally just to reinforce the retro aspect some more, I created a custom shader that creates a scanline effect on Rextro to make him look like he’s being viewed on an old school CRT TV.”

“He evolved quite naturally really, the only part of him that we really took some time to settle on was his accessory around his neck which started out as a red tie very much like Donkey Kong before we settled on a medallion made from one of the game’s Play Tokens to reference his crucially important task.”

Check out the video below for a look at Rextro Sixtyfourus.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Images, Wii U | 24 Comments

Playtonic posted a new Yooka-Laylee update on its website today. You can find it in its entirety here.

One of the notable excerpts from the update is a look at a new NPC, pictured above. Playtonic describes here as follows:

“One new character you may have spied in a recent issue of Edge is the slender lass below. Crayoned by our own Kev Bayliss, this yet-to-be-named NPC will require Yooka and Laylee’s assistance on the very first world of the game. Obviously she’s forgot to turn the iron off or something and they’ll need to go and get the spare keys off her landlord.”

Playtonic also unveiled a new piece of art at EGX last week, which was made by Dean Wilson. We’ve attached it below.

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

Nintendo UK and Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic Games just wrapped up a stream for Super Mario Maker. The full recording can be found below.

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 5 Comments

Tomorrow, Playtonic Games will be appearing on a live stream to show off some levels they’ve created for Super Mario Maker. Nintendo UK shared the news on its Twitter and Instagram accounts earlier today.

You can watch the live broadcast at the following times on the Nintendo UK Twitch page:

– 9 AM PT
– 12 PM ET
– 5 PM in the UK
– 6 PM in Europe

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Posted on 9 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in General Nintendo, News | 2 Comments

Speaking with Examiner, executive VP of sales at Nintendo of America Scott Moffitt spoke about the company’s commitment to indie titles and developers.

Moffitt told the site:

“We’ve really been embracing the independent development community and there is a lot of really great indie content coming to our platform, more so than [before] on Wii or predecessor systems. Our eShop is stocked with great indie games, so we try to rotate them through and promote them from time to time with developer support.”

Examiner also asked Moffitt if Nintendo will work with Playtonic when it comes time to promote Yooka-Laylee. Regarding this, he said:

“We’ve show a much more open stance to indie developers, so never say never.

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More: indie, interview, Playtonic, Scott Moffitt, Yooka-Laylee