Another day, a few more interviews with the famous Mr. Lee. These interviews aren't quite as good as the Game Informer interview I posted yesterday, but they both come from much smaller and obviously more enthusiastic-oriented outlets. Even when the questions aren't so great, Lee's responses are still pretty brilliant. In the interests of fairness, I've tucked both behind the cut so you can check out a sample before you click over.
I've blogged about Johnny Chung Lee before. He's made the Wii Remote do some mind-boggling things. Game Informer had a talk with him about his work.
GI: As a video-game player, what do you think of the gaming landscape now? Do you think there's an acceptable level of innovation going on in the industry?
Lee: I definitely think that, at least among the traditional gaming platforms--maybe not on the Wii, but on the Xbox and the PlayStation--the way they're going about providing a gaming experience is sort of an asymptotic experience, where they're doing a very good job at it, but they're not really evolving very far beyond that. To me, probably the most interesting stuff that's going to happen to gaming in the future will be with new ways to control or interact with the system, either physically or using input devices. So actually I think games are one of the most interesting places to explore new computer-interaction techniques. I think the Wii is a particularly good step toward that, but I thing there's still a long way to go.
If you're anywhere near my age, you remember The Wizard. It's a ridiculous movie... that let you see footage of Super Mario Bros. 3 in action before the game came out. If you were around eight at the time it could do no wrong.
Todd Holland directed this greatest of Nintendo propaganda films, and reveals a lot of surprising things about the making of the movie in this interview with Ain't It Cool News. If you're all about the NES nostalgia, you want to read this.
Monki: With people, the one criticism you always hear about THE WIZARD is that it's an hour and a half NINTENDO commercial and really you only hear the name NINTENDO called out twice in the whole film. Did NINTENDO have any hand in the movie at all as far as any kind of clout or anything or is that an urban legend?
Todd Holland: In terms of content, they were at our beck and call to provide us with what we needed, which SUPER MARIO BROS. 3 was the big cue and the power glove, so we were very much... They would have to provide us with these great videogame elements that people would want a glimpse at before the release, but they had no say in the story or anything like the plot or anything.
I posted about Baroque back when it was announced about a month ago, and promptly sent an interview off to Atlus to get more info. It's come back, with answers provided by four of the key figures in localizing the game. Toward the end there are also some general questions about Atlus's status as one of the more successful Wii third-party publishers, and what it takes to make Wii games sell.
To remind you of the details on Baroque if you can't be bothered to click the link above:
Baroque is a dungeon-crawling action RPG initially released for the Saturn in 1997 and developed by Sting, a smaller developer known for working with RPGs. Since then Baroque has been persistently ported, enhanced, and re-released for a variety of Japanese systems due to its enduring popularity.
Atlus is bringing the 2006 PS2 version of the game and a recently-announced Wii version into the US, with an announced date of February 2008. The Japanese Wii version is set for release on March 18th, 2008.
The interview begins behind the cut!
Today, from the wonderful world of Japanese translations, we have an interview conducted a week ago by Hiroshi Sone of the Asahi Shimbun with Mr. Satoru Iwata, some guy from Hokkaido who also happens to be Nintendo's current CEO.
You can probably guess what the interview's about: exactly what makes the DS and the Wii such successful consoles? You may know the answer already, but check below the cut to hear about it in Mr. Iwata's own words, as well as some information about how he came to become president of Nintendo and their plans for the future of the DS.
This interview is very far-ranging and may be of more general interest if you follow the industry as opposed to just Nintendo, but there are two sections that talk about Nintendo and its approach to third-parties extensively. These should be required reading, since this kind of analysis from the viewpoint of Codemasters is valuable. Not only are they a legitimately global company, but...
... well, the two Codemasters Wii games I can think of off the top of my head are Heatseekers and the upcoming Emergency Mayhem. The former is solidly mediocre and the latter might hopefully be better than mediocre. I doubt either title goes significantly over 50,000 copies (if that far). So, to an extent, bear in mind that Cousen's company is publishing material very similar to what he sits down to criticize in parts of this interview, and that many Wii gamers would consider lame-to-crappy.
Anyway, the relevant bits of the interview are behind the cut.
I've only played a little of these two games (despite having a plush Dewy sitting on my desk), but I have a lot of respect for what Konami's tried to do with trying to bring original games to the Wii. Actually, you know, should I go pick these up? Am I missing anything?
Anyway, this Gamasutra interview with Shingo Mukaitoge, the creator of Elebits and Dewy, is interesting just to get some insight into the thought process of a man who wants to make original games in an industry driven by sequels, franchises, and clones. Would that we could have some more of him.
It seems that Elebits is slightly more popular in the U.S. than in Japan. Do you have any idea why that might be?
SM: Well I've found that mysterious myself, as well, but the Japanese market tends to purchase games that already have previous versions, like franchise games, instead of original ones. Maybe that is one of the reasons. It's not a good thing though...
Ninja Reflex seems like an interesting attempt to create a title that brings peace between hardcore and casual gamers. This Gamasutra interview with Nunchuk founder David Luntz reveals a few more interesting things about it, ranging from gameplay to its unusual development process.
[Gamasutra]: But is this an idea you've had kicking around in sort of a vague way?
DL: I wanted to make martial arts games for a long time. Growing up, I had things like nunchucks and shuriken that my friends and I would play around with. Up until this point, the ability to translate those things into gameplay has been very constricted, just by pressing buttons and a d-pad.
This lets you bring that into the realm where you're actually swinging a nunchuck with the Wii remote, and blocking and slicing with a katana, and throwing with the shuriken. To me, that was something that A) hadn't been done, and B) I know I want people to experience, because nowadays, you can't get shuriken. You can't get nunchucks.
[Gamasutra]: The way you could in the past.
DL: Period. They're banned! They're outlawed. It's state law. You cannot buy them.
Ninja Reflex
I posted about Myst coming to the DS awhile back. It's a game that almost seems perfect for the DS, but the guys doing the port don't have a fantastic track record. There's nothing for skepticism like a good developer interview, and C3 News's Adam Riley has one up with Executive ProducerManny Granillo right now.
AR: Considering the original game came out way back in the early 1990s, what do you think it is that helps keep the experience so fresh?
MG: As mentioned earlier, the Myst adventure is independent of technology. That is why it lives on in many forms. Myst is not tied to any one technology or experience. Its design "lives" apart from the way a gamer will experience it. It is very unique to Myst itself. Very few, if many others, have that ability. I was involved with another masterpiece with a similar dynamic called Sim City almost 18 years ago.
I found the rest of it pretty hard to read-- it almost read more like an interview with a marketing guy, which doesn't really make me feel any more confident in the final product. Oh well, judge for yourselves.
Back when I wrote this post about AND-OR's wardive and sniff_jazzbox homebrew games, I found myself getting really curious about the people who made it, and the general process behind DS homebrew. Most people act like these games emerge spontaneously from the internet, but wardive and sniff_jazzbox were clearly games that said something very specific. A few e-mails later, AND-OR agreed to a short interview, and here we are now! If you're curious about DS homebrew software, games as conceptual art, and programmers who make games just for fun, then just click behind the cut and be satisfied.
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