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Shinya Hiratake

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Polygon has published some new comments from Captain Toad game director Shinya Hiratake and producer Koichi Hayashida. The two discussed a variety of topics, including why it was brought back for Switch and 3DS, its future, and more.

Here’s a roundup of what was shared:

Nintendo’s Koichi Hayashida wants to see Captain Toad “featured in a variety of games”. It also seems as though Hayashida would be interested in having the character end up in Mario Kart. That information comes from the latest issue of GamesMaster, which contains a short interview with the Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker producer.

When asked what he foresees in the future for Captain Toad, Hayashida said:

At this stage we don’t know. I personally want to see him featured in a variety of games. I’ve even ‘secretly’ emailed the director of Mario Kart to see if he’d consider including Captain Toad, but I haven’t heard back from him yet!

Director Shinya Hiratake also answered the same question. His thoughts are as follows:

Through the development of this game I’ve grown even fonder of Captain Toad. he can’t jump, and struggles to defeat his opponents, but it’s precisely that he is not a powerful character that he can show us his unique take on all these situations. as a developer of his game, and one of his fans, I look forward to seeing where he goes next.

Did you know that it’s possible to execute a spin attack in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker? That’s something that director Shinya Hiratake shared in his Miiverse interview earlier today.

Below are his full comments:

“This might be going off on a bit of a tangent, but another one of the questions we received was ‘Why did you include an attack for Captain Toad where he gets dizzy from spinning around?’ This action is actually supposed to be Captain Toad attacking enemies with his backpack! We added it in because we wanted to give his backpack another purpose besides preventing him from jumping! We also wanted to add another means of attack besides throwing stuff, for players who have got used to playing the game!”

If you haven’t seen the spin attack before, you can get a look at it in the video above.

Source

A rather large Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker interview has been posted over on Miiverse. “MariChan” chatted with Shinya Hiratake, the game’s director.

Hiratake talked about Captain Toad’s development, amiibo support, and more. You can find the interview in full after the break.

Nintendo Life recently caught up with Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker director Shinya Hiratake and producer Koichi Hayashida. Among the topics discussed include potential interest in having Captain Toad, Toadette and the other Toads appear in more of their own games down the road.

Regarding this, Hayashida commented:

Here in the development team we’ve really come to love Captain Toad and the Toad Brigade from Super Mario Galaxy! We’re really happy to have been able to make a game where they are the main stars. I hope we’ll be seeing them pop up in all sorts of other places in future.

Hiratake also shared an interesting comment when asked if there are any other franchises or Nintendo settings he feels would suit the diorama puzzle mechanics:

In Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, it feels like we managed to recreate the fun of the games we used to play on the NES, but with a modern twist. I worked on this project in parallel to the NES REMIX series [titles available on the Wii U eShop and 3DS] where we pick up some of the best bits from games on NES. I was thinking it might be interesting to turn some of the games there into box worlds like this too. Those of you who enjoyed the Time Attack mode in Captain Toad: Treasure tracker might also like the Time Attack challenges in NES REMIX. I hope you try them out and enjoy!

And lastly, it sounds like we won’t be learning what Captain Toad has tucked away inside his backpack anytime soon. Hiratake said, “I think we’ll keep the contents of Captain Toad’s backpack the biggest secret of this game.”

Source

IGN published a new interview with Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker producer Koichi Hayashida and director Shinya Hiratake. The two commented on various topics, such as Shigeru Miyamoto’s influence on the game’s development, how Toadette was made playable, and plenty more.

Head past the break for a few noteworthy interview excerpts. Be sure to check out IGN’s full piece here as well.

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

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.


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