June 23, 2010

Yoshio Sakamoto And Yosuke Hayashi Talk 3DS, Metroid

Eurogamer managed to grab some time with Nintendo’s Yoshio Sakamoto and Yosuke Hayashi at E3 where they talked Metroid and 3DS. Here’s some excerpts…

Eurogamer: What are those shared goals with Metroid: Other M?

Yoshio Sakamoto: We really wanted to bring new gameplay experiences to this project. We have a lot of communication from Metroid fans, and we know what they want to see. It’s a challenge to pack everything in that they want.

In terms of our ambitions, the best way to put it is to say that we really want to overcome the expectations of game design. While we’re trying to do these things that people have been clamouring for, we also don’t want to do things the way people expect, because then there’s no surprise.

On top of that, we have to make it accessible for anybody to play. As to how this would be manifested in an action game, I should leave that to Mr Hayashi to respond. Certainly, in terms of working on this project, we don’t think of ourselves as Nintendo and Team Ninja anymore. We’re just one team working on this game.

Yosuke Hayashi: I’ve mostly made 3D action games so far in my career, and so far I’ve realised that you can really introduce a lot of actions people can initiate when you have a lot of buttons in a control scheme. Equally, when you have that many buttons, you lose a lot of players, simply because of how complex the control scheme has become.

What we wanted to challenge ourselves to do this time was to use only the Wii remote as the controller, but to still have the game at the forefront of action games. We wanted to bring in all of the people who had been left out of 3D action games so far, and I’m talking all the way back to the NES Metroid.

Everyone who was once comfortable with that control scheme can now play the game again, but in a new 3D world. It was a new challenge to us, but one that felt very exciting to work on.

Eurogamer: Speaking of new experiences, what are your thoughts, as designers, regarding the 3DS?

Yosuke Hayashi: Platforms really have changed so much, and the best way of thinking of the newest ones is to think of how it’s different from the one preceding it. I’m very much interested in thinking about how to design for the 3DS, starting with that viewpoint of: 3D – what do we do next?

It’s too early to start talking about ideas, but I can’t wait to tackle that question properly. We’re going to need to go for totally new approaches with 3D, just in terms of working with games in which the player can now judge the distance between objects much more realistically. I think I’m going to be learning a lot from the first few attempts people make, and I look forward to making my own forays into that environment.

Yoshio Sakamoto: Thinking about 3D gameplay, having a system where you don’t need glasses is a very encouraging development. We really want to avoid any hurdles that stop people from experiencing the content. But in terms of how that pairs up with gameplay, the most important thing is that you have a really good concept that really incorporates all of those features.

I don’t think I can say that I have that idea yet, but the basic experience of having things pop out of the screen really seems to make people happy. We’re going to see a lot of new ideas emerging. There’s something essentially mysterious about interacting with a 3D visual at the moment, and that alone might be enough to create tons of new game ideas.

Eurogamer: Finally, given your history with the WarioWare series, those games seem to be really useful tools for introducing new games consoles to people. Do you have any ideas for Wario in the near future?

Yoshio Sakamoto: Every time we see new hardware, I definitely think about, “Okay, how would Wario’s twisted mind deal with this?” I’m not ready to think about it properly just now, but there’s almost certainly some fun for him to have on the 3DS in the future.