Star Fox Zero: Hashimoto talks about working with Nintendo, dual-screen challenges
Last week, Gamespot published a rather lengthy feature about PlatinumGames, which includes an interview with Yusuke Hashimoto. For those who don’t know, he’s the co-director of Star Fox Zero (coming out in April, worldwide), and worked on Bayonetta 2 as Director. And believe it or not, it’s something he and his team did in Bayonetta 2 that led Nintendo to have PG work on Star Fox Zero.
During the development of Bayonetta 2, the team wanted to have some sort of collaboration. Since Hideki Kamiya said he wanted Bayonetta in Mario clothes, the team ended making various Nintendo costumes for both Bayonetta 1 and 2. But Yusuke Hashimoto wanted something more… something that would also change gameplay: that’s how the Chain Chomp weapon came to be.
But that’s not all: he and his team went a little overboard, and actually added an Arwing to one of the flying sections in Bayonetta 2… without even asking Nintendo for permission first. When they got to show it all to Nintendo, they were actually pretty cool with it. After that, the company went and approached PlatinumGames about collaborating with them on a Star Fox game.
Hideki Kamiya always wanted to make such a game, but he was already busy with another project when Nintendo came knocking. Therefore, it’s Yuske Hashimoto who ended working on Star Fox Zero. He explains that PlatinumGames isn’t just doing grunt work: they have frequent meetings with Shigeru Miyamoto about the game, which is a true collaborative effort.
It’s a pretty enriching experience for Yusuke Hashimoto and his team, because while they have lots of experience making games, Shigeru Miyamoto has lots of experience making a lot of things. There’s a lot for them to learn, which makes the whole thing pretty stimulating.
In the interview, Yusuke Hashimoto also talks about what it’s like to work on dual-screen gameplay in Star Fox Zero:
Thinking about how we can make it fun, how we can make it interesting, that’s something that neither side really has [done]. It’s just new for both of us. That’s where you get stimulated: what ideas, what can we do there? It’s always fun to think about. We’ve been working with action games long enough. We understand how the players play an action game, how they respond to an action game, how they’ll move, what they’ll do in the situational stuff. What we’re making here now, it’s totally a new learning experience for us, which is kind of fun to find out.
This is a great challenge for the developers, and not only because of gameplay. After all, the game is displayed at 60fps on both the TV and the GamePad screen. It’s something PlatinumGames has never done before… in fact, it might also be a first in the industry.
Finally, Yusuke Hashimoto talks about the delay (which was announced one week before GameSpot went to visit PlatinumGames in Japan):
We want to make it feel as great as possible, give it that Platinum feel. It’s easy to say [it was delayed] to increase its quality, or whatever, but that entails a lot, whether it be visuals, or controls.”
If you want read the full feature about PlatinumGames, click here!
Star Fox Zero (Wii U) comes out on April 21st in Japan, April 22nd in North America, and April in Europe.
Source: GameSpot
