8. Battle Someone At Least Once

Lastly, would you say something to the fans?

Oh...right...that question! (laughs) You were bound to ask it, so why didn’t I think of something?

(laughs) I do suppose you’re not the type to say, “If anything, check out this one single feature!”

Yeah, I don’t do that. (laughs)

But if you were to convey a message to fans of Kid Icarus?

I think many different players enjoying it in many different ways would be the best of all.

That has been a common theme in your game development that began 20 years ago with Kirby’s Dream Land.^{17 17} Kirby's Dream Land: The first game in the Kirby series. Released for the Game Boy system in 1992.

Right. But this time, there’s an element of playing a rail shooter, following a fixed plot along predetermined points.

There are Air Battles, but you can’t fly around the sky wherever you want.

Right, but I suspect that the way it plays and feels will be quite different for each person. At the same time, I believe the players will devise all sorts of tactics for playing this game.

Each person can choose his or her own tactics freely, so personality comes out in strategy.

But while I think some people may only play solo...

It is a substantial game even for single players.

Nonetheless, I want those people to battle someone at least once.

Then you can see a difference.

Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but the more you experience matches, the more you’ll see.

When you battle others, you come to see parts of the game - like various strategies and tactics - that you hadn’t discovered yourself. Then it gets more fun.

As a developer, I would be happy if they notice that.

Yes. Development did last a long time.

At first we didn’t have the Nintendo 3DS development kit, so we started making it on a PC. Oh, and for a while we were using a Wii to make it! (laughs)

That’s how early, compared to the other Nintendo 3DS titles, you began development.

I wrote a project proposal and the script right away. And when Project Sora wasn’t even up and running yet, with a small team we began making videos of prototype Air and Land Battles

You made those so that when a bunch of new development staff members joined you could get them on the same page by saying, “Let’s make something like this!”

Right. As you can see, what we made doesn’t differ much from the overall image of the final version. There wasn’t any deviation in policy from the beginning of the project, but in order to apply it to the Nintendo 3DS system and maximise its performance, we had to work hard.

Because you started developing the game so early on, getting it to run really well on Nintendo 3DS took much longer than what we originally anticipated. But now that the game is finished, I feel the efforts were well worth it. Good job working on it for so long. I’m glad we could talk about so much today.

It was a pleasure. Thank you!