Posted on 8 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 8 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 8 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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Posted on 8 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in News, Wii U | 13 Comments

Update: Even though the MCV article heavily implies it, Playtonic have just released a statement on their website that there are currently no plans for a physical release. According to statements in the MCV article, it is however “being considered”. Sorry about the confusion! We will keep you updated.

Talking to MCV, Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic revealed that Team17 will be working closely with them and will assist them in getting the game released on both digital and physical storefronts. Team17 is perhaps best known for creating the Worms series. Currently, Playtonic is targeting an October 2016 release date.

Talking about the partnership, Playtonic studio boss Gavin Price said the following:

“Team17 has significant experience in making the most of releasing a game.”

“Personally I feel it would be a great shame if after our great Kickstarter success, we delivered on our promise of a great game and then it underperformed sales-wise because we didn’t have the knowledge, or made a mistake in the way we released or marketed the game.

“Thanks to our Kickstarter backers, we’re on a really positive trajectory and Team17 is acting like a booster for us on top of that by handling non-game dev tasks.”

Talking about releasing the game on Nintendo platforms specifically, Price reassured the team’s commitment to a Wii U release, despite rumours that Nintendo’s next system might be fairly close to release.

“Nintendo is not saying that much, it’s all still very secretive – I wish I knew more. But there’s nothing said that impacts any of our current plans. There’s still plenty to look forward to with the Wii U, right now I don’t foresee anything impacting us delivering that version.”

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U | 2 Comments

The latest Yooka-Laylee comes from Polygon, who sat down with Grant Kirkhope and Andy Robinson to discuss the 3D platformer. The two commented on topics such as not wanting to copy Banjo-Kazooie, taking inspiration (and elements) from Donkey Kong Country, and more.

Head past the break for a roundup of the Q&A. You can find Polygon’s original piece here.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News | 1 Comment

At E3 2015 this week, GameXplain sat down with Grant Kirkhope and Andy Robinson to talk about Yooka-Laylee. You can watch the full half-hour discussion below.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 2 Comments

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 0 comments

Nintendo World Report has put up a new interview with a couple of folks working on Yooka-Laylee. Check it out below.

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Posted on 8 years ago by Brian(@NE_Brian) in Videos, Wii U | 3 Comments

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Posted on 8 years ago by Matt(@OnePunchMaz) in News, Wii U | 1 Comment

Playtonic’s Yooka-Laylee Kickstarter will end in just 13 hours and on its final day, it also hit its final stretch goal. A total of £2 million has been donated by backers, which means that everyone who contributed money to the project will get the game’s eventual DLC for free.

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