Krome Studios’ upcoming side-scroller about a pink haired cat-girl weilding a rather large sword hasn’t had to work too hard to stay on my radar this year. Based on an original IP that was first developed as a comic, and name dropping 2D inspirations like Strider are easy paths to the center of my heart, but also only part of the picture on what we should expect.
In June Atari stepped up as publisher, stretching the title’s reach to include PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC download for this Fall, so it seemed like a good time to hit the team up with some of the questions I’ve gathered since first hearing about the game, which Krome Studios’ Co-Founder and Creative Director Steve Stamatiadis was good enough to take the time to answer.
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As you may have heard earlier today, Sony Online Entertainment gave word that Ronimo Games’ WiiWare RTS plans to invade the PlayStation Network later this Fall. As part of the move, the game’s unique brand of animated mayhem and civilization conquering strife is getting a bump in the visual department as well as the online features.
Always looking to learn more about HD-ness, I managed to catch up with Ronimo’s Fabian Akker to find out a bit more about the work involved -
“The cool thing is that we had little work on the HD graphics, most of the assets were made in HD and then scaled down for Wii, so it was mostly just exporting the original high res files for PSN.
The visuals in the HD PSN version are really sharp and crisp, it helps the characters a lot. For instance you can now clearly see the skull belt on the viking berserker which was just a yellow blob on the Wii, so especially for our artists it’s great to see all these cool details as they were meant to be seen.”
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Outside of E3, there aren’t many videogame themed events to attend in Los Angeles. Still feeling withdrawal from this year’s show, I was happy to find TETRICIDE, a video game themed art show curated by Walt Gorecki at Pehrspace.
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On the last day of this year’s E3 Expo I met with Sam Roberts at the unassuming Indiecade booth for an interview in which we talked about the festival and the games it aims to support. I expected to see a lineup of interesting titles and hear a spiel about independent games’ superiority to their mainstream counterparts.
Instead, I saw a lineup of outrageous, nearly mind blowing titles and had a fascinating discussion with Sam about the role independent games serve in the relation to the overall games industry.
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As with previous years at E3, Nintendo again invited a select few to join them in one of the Convention Center’s Theater rooms for a developers’ roundtable event, the climax of a day beginning with their press conference and ending with Shigeru Miyamoto and company speaking with press in a smaller setting for an hour and a half.
Somehow we managed to get on the list this year, and it was hard not to feel like tagging along with an elite club, especially because of the strict rule that no recording devices were allowed.
Miyamoto brought out members of Nintendo’s own elite club – The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword’s producer Eiji Aonuma, and Nintendo 3DS hardware producer Hideki Konno.
The talk that followed focused primarily on Zelda: Skyward Sword, the 3DS, and 3DS games – namely Nintendogs + Cats, Steel Diver, and Starfox, with most of the time restrained to those topics.
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In addition to what Sega was showing at their booth, Aileen had a chance to attend a few closed door sessions, including High Voltage Software’s Conduit 2.
The sequel to the Wii shooter didn’t receive the same highlighting the first game did at Nintendo’s Press Conference last year, but HVS has plenty to say about how they approached this newest entry in the series based on the reception to the original, and how several new additions to the game make them confident that the title can satisfy gamers looking for a solid FPS on the Wii.
High Voltage was even accommodating enough to let Aileen record the session, so you can catch an early work-in-progress demo for the single-player portion of the title with Producer Joshua Olson, after the break.
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Since Aileen was already checking Ivy the Kiwi?, it made sense to stick around and find out more about the games spewing from XSEED’s new arrangement to stock the PSP with Falcom titles.
I’m going to say that the games are probably in the best hands possible, because it didn’t take her long to find a very enthusiastic Falcom fan among the XSEED ranks.
Give a listen to hear about skill items, deadly yellow gauges, gathering materials, and many more bits from both Ys Seven and Ys: The Oath in Felghana.
You can also catch the latest trailer for Ys Seven after the break.
[direct download] [RSS Feed]
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Aileen caught up with XSEED Games this week to try out Ivy the Kiwi? on Wii, but also found out plenty more about the DS version as well as some info about the digital versions in the works for DSiWare and WiiWare and how they differ from the retail copies.
Thanks to the magic of audio, you can hear about it straight from XSEED Games at the show. You can also check out some video of the game after the break.
[direct download] [RSS Feed]
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Last night Giant Robot held a Pre-E3 event with Gaijin Games and Attract Mode, and our own Aileen Viray managed to sweeten the event and grab some photographs for us [ed]
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Skeptical Cat feels very ignored with all this E3 business going on around the office. All Skeptical Cat has heard this week is bullets and swords and something about the three d’s of gaming – meanwhile only Skeptical Cat seems to realize that the litter box doesn’t clean itself.
Skeptical Cat isn’t very interested in these things, but was bribed to pitch in with a shiny Natal experience pass to replace his old collar. Skeptical Cat feels that gaming needs to connect with its roots, especially in offering us more games about delicious characters – and maybe more Chu Chu Rocket, Skeptical Cat approves of more games where foolish mice are eaten.
Skeptical Cat feels that Ivy the Kiwi would taste very good, maybe even more so than a Kolibri, but Skeptical Cat feels catching one requires careful planning because Kiwi’s seem tricky.
Skeptical Cat remembered the nice XSEED rep he met when that game about cats inheriting the world came out, and went for a visit to learn more about Kiwis.
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