Kid Icarus: Uprising

My Style

First of all, congratulations on completing the game.

I was able to play the final version before this interview, and its richness, and an unparalleled sense of volume really came across, just like when I played Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl1for the first time.

Thanks.
1. Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl: The first game in the series, Super Smash Bros., was released for the Nintendo 64 system in January 1999. The second game, Super Smash Bros. Melee was released for the Nintendo GameCube system in November 2001, and the third game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, was released for Wii in January 2008.

Broadly speaking, the Kid Icarus: Uprising game has two modes, right?

Yes.   A single-player story mode and a battle mode for up to six players.

When I saw the battle mode, one of the things I thought was that this was how the Super Smash Bros. games would look like in 3D. In many ways, like the fast pace, for example.

I think a good number of people feel the same way. I think some people, when they first saw the multiplayer battle video for Nintendo Direct this time2, were taken aback by the whirl of activity.

2. Battle video for Nintendo Direct: The Nintendo Direct held on February 22, 2012. Nintendo Direct is an Internet presentation where Nintendo directly delivers the latest information on its products.

Actually, many people now know what kind of game Super Smash Bros. is, but when we first announced it for Nintendo 64, people didn't fully understand its concept right away.

It's easy to misunderstand things that look similar but are actually completely different. So I'm worried that people will misunderstand battles in Kid Icarus: Uprising as well. For example, the rules are somewhat like that on an FPS3, but there are only three controls in this game compared to more than ten that you can find in a standard FPS game.

3. FPS (First-person shooter): A genre of shooting game with 3D space displayed from a viewpoint as if the player him or herself is in the game.

With Kid Icarus: Uprising, you only use the Circle Pad, L Button and Stylus to control the game.

Right. You use the Circle Pad to move, the L Button for attacks, and the Stylus for aiming. A crosshair appears on-screen in the same way as an FPS, but this game is something of a very different nature. Once you play it, I think people will understand that these controls make sense.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo1" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

When Super Smash Bros. came out, regardless of its distinctive strategic elements, people compared it in the context of previous fighting games, and some had said, "It's approachable, but a little bland and shallow." So after the game went on sale, we started the Smash Bros. DOJO!!4 website and visited media entities and people who looked like they might understand and explained it to them in our efforts to continue communicating the appeal of this game. This was around 1999, before I moved to Nintendo.

Over ten years ago.
4. Smash Bros. DOJO!!: An official website for Super Smash Bros. where game creator Masahiro Sakurai explains the controls, offers advice on how to enjoy the game, and introduces stages and characters.

Back then, unlike today, it was not common to talk about these information through the Internet, and Super Smash Bros. looked at first glance like it was similar to games up to that point, but it wasn't, which was difficult to convey.

It took quite a lot of time and energy until Super Smash Bros. spread to a large number of people.

Yes. But eventually it found a broader support base.

That's right.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo2" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

That's part of my style, you might say. I think more people are starting to pick up on it.

Not just Super Smash Bros., but the Kirby Air Ride5 and Meteos6 games were like that as well.

5. Kirby Air Ride: An action racing game released for the Nintendo GameCube system in July 2003.
 
6. Meteos: A puzzle game released by BANDAI Co., Ltd. (now NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.) for the Nintendo DS system in March 2005.

Like the more you chew it, the more flavor comes out?

Rather, since the rules are so different from convention, people who are especially used to games may have a difficult time comprehending it at first.

Trying it a little isn't enough to immediately understand how fun it is, right?

Right. I don't at all intend for it to be that way, but there seems to be a hurdle at the start. Of course, people do take it different ways and have their own preferences.

Is that because when you think about the structure of a game, you don't use the conventional game flow but add in twists and changes?

It isn't twists and changes so much as disassembly and reassembly.

Disassembly and reassembly? In other words, you break down the elements of conventional games and then reconstruct them your own way.

That's right. For example, there are all kinds of game genres, like fighting games and puzzle games, and each one has its own "fun core." First, I try taking away everything unnecessary around that core.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo3" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Yes. Then, it's like I place the fun core somewhere else and build around it again.

What kind of disassembly and reassembly was there for Kid Icarus: Uprising?

That's difficult to explain. No matter what I might say, there are parts you can't understand without actually playing it.

Oh. Then can you explain disassembly and reassembly using as examples games that everyone knows, like Super Smash Bros., Kirby Air Ride or Meteos?

It applies to so many things that if I were to explain what lies behind Super Smash Bros., it would fill one or two whole books!

But I do think I could offer a simple explanation about some standout elements.

I've told you about how we originally made Super Smash Bros. as an antithesis to 2D fighting games, haven't I?

Examples of Disassembly and Reassembly

We talked about that during the session of<a href = "/interviews/wii/ssbb/6/0"> "Iwata Asks" over Super Smash Bros. Brawl</a>.

When you hear fighting games, you can't help but to think of having to execute fancy combos.

Fighting games had developed in a way that the person who can pull off combos the best gets stronger and stronger.

But I do like the organic, ad lib nature that happens distinctively in fighting games, rather than learning specific ways to get stronger.

As a player, however, aren't you really good at unleashing combos? You seem to have been very good at it.

Oh no, I can only do easy ones. If I looked good to you, that was because I was winning at reading my opponent.

Recently, I played a new fighting game that had a combo practice mode, but no matter how much I practiced, I could only do about 5 of the 16 available. Really, I was like, "I can't play today's fighters!" I'm also not as young as I use to be.

But I had sensed that for a long time, so instead of asking players to pull off specific combos that require instant elaborate manipulation, I wondered how I could bring out an element of ad lib.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo4" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

To you, the element of ad lib was the fun core of fighting games.

Right. Every time you fight, your opponent's reactions change. Instead of set combos, how to react to changing situation is more important. That became the basis of the idea of cumulative damage.

Oh, so that was a reason behind the idea of being able to blow away your opponent when their cumulative damage had built up?

Come to think about it, didn't we talk about this before?
As a matter of fact, it’s a really simple thing. Fighting games seems to be like it’s about making specific combos, but I wondered how we could draw out that element of ad lib that I liked so much and thought it would be fun to have the reactions change every time. The result was putting in cumulative damage.

By doing that, what you need to do will change depending on the situation. Players will engage in more ad lib—including the by-chance happenings that occur when players who aren't very good are just punching buttons that can change the course of play. Is that right?

Now so many people have played it, so if you told them that Super Smash Bros. is that kind of game, they would understand.

But hearing this before playing it, not many people would say, "Oh, that sounds fun!"<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo5" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

When you made Kirby Air Ride, what kind of disassembly and assembly took place?

First I thought about our general notions of the acceleration and drifting.

We decided that drifting feels so good because there's risk involved. Under normal grip conditions, the tires don't slide and the vehicle is stable, so you drive with little risk. Now if you drift while you may lose control and there's a greater danger of going off-course and get it done, that feels awesome.

It feels better when you run risk. There's a return of being able to drive faster.

Right. Before anything, drifting lies at the root of the concept of Kirby Air Ride.

The design of the controls for Kirby Air Ride was unique in the way there was no accelerator button.

The A Button isn't the accelerator, but the brakes. It's unique, so it was also hard to understand. (laughs)<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo6" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Racing games had always been composed of an accelerator, brakes and the steering wheel, but you changed that.

But it wasn't like we set out to overturn the accelerator-brakes structure. This way of thinking might be like (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san's. He plays a game and designates the buttons based on what feels right.

Yes. When Miyamoto-san decides the controls, he places a lot of importance on whether the controls are matching his feelings when he plays it.

In Kirby Air Ride, the brakes aren't simply brakes. While the machines usually float, they shorten and sort of rub against the floor. We call that action "Push." When you hold down the button, you slow down, but you charge up power at the same time, so when you release the button, you release power and burst forward.

And if you pushed on a curve, you could drift, which felt great.

Yeah. The controls are the exact opposite of a conventional racing game. We did that because it suited the feeling of plunging ahead. But that may not have gotten across to the players from the beginning.

Is that because of the people who had experienced it and others who hadn't thought of the game differently?

Those who are into it really like it a lot. But even some people who had experienced it might have thought, "It's hard because it's the opposite of what I'm used to," when they first played it.

Because the controls were clearly a polar opposite than the other games they played.

On the other hand, a lot of people demanded a sequel, so many fans did thoroughly enjoyed it.

Once they get over that first hurdle that is part of your style, they can become immersed in how fun it is.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo7" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Looking around the genre, it may seem out of the ordinary, but we intended it all, and some of the fun comes from that.

That was about risk and return also. We made it by asking ourselves, "What is the risk in a puzzle game?" Usually, puzzle games have blocks that fall from above, and it feels great when all at once you clear out a bunch that have piled up high.

The game's about to end when the blocks are stacked up high and there are a lot of risk, but it feels amazing if you can get rid of them all at once. What I paid attention to was the way you get rid of the stacks of blocks. I started by doubting whether getting rid of the blocks was something you really have to do.

In puzzle games up until then, it was common to slide in a long bar or line up colors to get rid of the blocks. You wondered if there was another way.

Right. So instead of getting rid of the blocks that have stacked up, you launch them up.

What I thought of at the time was reactive force.

Yes. In other words, I thought a puzzle game could use the concept of resisting by pushing in the opposite direction as your opponent. At first, we did think of using a bomb to get rid of them, but to get rid of more, you raise them up together. In a word, I thought launching them up would be better and made Meteos that way.

A Game for Gamers to Enjoy

When we talk about what a game is, one of the topics that commonly come up is about risk and return.

A long time ago, when we were still in the Yamanashi7, you explained your thoughts about risk and return to us in the office, and that, together with the scenery that time, made a lasting impression on me.

Oh, ok.
7. When we were still in Yamanashi: Satoru Iwata and Masahiro Sakurai once worked together at HAL Laboratory, Inc. They made games like Kirby's Dream Land and Super Smash Bros. at the Yamanashi R&D Center in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan.

You drew a picture of Space Invaders8 on a white board. In that game, if you don't shoot from directly under the invaders, you can't hit them. But if you go under them, they can hit you with their missiles and that's the risk. You talked about how risk comes with return, so you can almost explain the tactics involved in a game by the relationship between risk and return. I remember that made a lot of sense to me.

8. Space Invaders: An arcade game released in 1978.

I often connect gameplay with risk and return, but I am aware that there is more to it in what makes a game fun. Like, maybe many people aren't looking for gameplay per se. I've been thinking about how we need to pay attention to that.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo8" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

But even now when I think about games, what you said that time serves as a kind of criteria.

By the way, when the first game, Kid Icarus9, came out for the Family Computer Disk System, did you play it?

9. Kid Icarus: An action game originally released for the Family Computer Disk System in December 1986. It became available on the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) in North America on February, 1987.

I thought so! (laughs) What kind of game did you view it as back then when you were a student?

That year, The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest and Metroid came out.

For gamers like me, it was the year of our dreams! Amid all that, at the end of the year, the first Kid Icarus game appeared, and it was special. While the other games made a serious impression of fighting evil, Kid Icarus appeared to give us silly impressions. Its setting was Greek mythology, but credit cards appeared! (laughs)

Yes! That kind of random stuff was the fiber of Kid Icarus. We put a lot of those elements into Kid Icarus: Uprising as well. But we didn't just put in a lot of eggplants as a sort of homage because the Eggplant Wizard shows up. Rather, while treating the story with care, we tried not to get too serious. The main hero isn't, for example, on a quest of self-discovery.

Both the enemies and allies who appear are bright and lively, and we tried to give it a boisterous feeling like in Super Smash Bros.

Why did you choose Kid Icarus this time?<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo9" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Your first request was to make an original game.

Yes. After Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out for Wii, I didn't think the right course was to make a game in the same series right away. So I said, "Let's do something a little different." Also, the new hardware, the Nintendo 3DS, was coming out, so to appeal to consumers, I wanted you to make something the in-house Nintendo development team wouldn't. I made those two requests.

After I’ve thought about those requests and other various factors, I thought we would make a shooting game with air battles and land battles. At the same time, I wondered if we couldn't revive a stalled series from the Nintendo lineup. I thought of which titles would be effective, and the central protagonist, Pit, is an angel who can't fly, so I thought it might be interesting if he could fly via a kind of magical power and headed down toward earth.

Air and land battles linked up nicely with the original game.

Right. Ever since we had revived Pit for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a lot of people wondered if we couldn't come out with a new game.

When overseas game media interviews me during occasions like E310, people asked me every year if there would be a new Kid Icarus game.

10. E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo): A video game trade show held once a year in Los Angeles.

I often asked you about the software lineup for Nintendo 3DS that was being prepared by other developers.

Yes, you wouldn't give me a moment's rest! (laughs)

Yes, but if projects similar to the one I had in mind, or one with the same kind of gameplay was underway, I thought that I might change directions.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo10" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

So you really wanted a game that would fulfill a different role.

At first, I thought a lot of light games—like Touch Generations11—for casual users would come out for Nintendo 3DS, so I wanted to make a solid game for gamers.

11. Touch Generations: A group of titles such as Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! and English Training: Have Fun Improving Your Skills (sold in Japan and Europe only) that everyone can enjoy regardless of their gaming knowledge or experience.

A game for gamers to play to their heart's content and enjoy.

And when it comes to fighting games, including Super Smash Bros., I don't want to fudge on the tactics involved.

Even if the overall game feels rough-n-tumble, you wanted to take the battle tactics seriously?

Yes. For example, in Mario Kart, the person racing in the top spot undergoes all sorts of attacks from those running behind.

That way, you don't know who will win until the very end.

That is the right way to go, I think. If I were to make a racing game, I might do it like that. But with battles in Smash Bros. and Kid Icarus: Uprising, there are hardly any elements where the computer confers disadvantages to the ones that are winning or rescues the weak.

It is true that in Smash Bros., if your opponent has built up damage, even a weaker player can KO a strong one, but in a broader view, the strong player is the one that makes results.

Of course, a strong item may just happen to be near a weak character, but we didn't make a special effort to put all kinds of strong items next to weak characters.

You prepared an even playing field so everyone can fight fairly.

That's right. But somehow beginners can play along with experts, and all sorts of varied results turn up at the end, regardless of each player's skill level.

It isn't a matter of which is right, but a matter of which option you choose.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo11" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Yes. What I'm saying is similar to, say, "because Mario Kart offers that type of play, we should take this approach that's different." We want to avoid advanced players wiping out the beginners, but rather than the computer assigning a handicap of sorts, we wanted to offset imbalances with changes at a larger scale. When it comes to the essence of the game, I want people to play hard!

Having the Players Choose

You just said that you hope people will play hard. What did you put in for that purpose?

You could say that we devised the Fiend’s Cauldron for that.

The Fiend’s Cauldron is a system for single players to adjust the difficulty to their own liking. How did that come about?

This is a clear example of risk and return.

Ah, yes, the Fiend’s Cauldron is exactly a system of risk and return.

You make a bet with yourself. It’s like you place your own skill or the abilities of your weapons and a degree of difficulty on the scales of a balance and make a bet.

Yes. But unlike regular weapons, they determine your character.

For example, it’s like choosing Mario or Link as your character in Super Smash Bros. In other words, you can choose the weapons you like in line with your own fighting style, and each weapon has its own personality according to individual skills.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo12" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

In other words, the player’s characteristics depend on the weapons you have.

Exactly. There are all kinds of weapons, but if you want better weapons, the Fiend’s Cauldron is important. In this game, we call the difficulty setting the Intensity Setting. You can choose from 0.0 to 9.0.

There are many games that allow the players to adjust between certain difficulty levels but with this game the setting levels sounds a little analogue.

The standard setting is 2.0. You can raise or lower it from there, but it costs money.

Well, not real money, but when you do things like beat an enemy, you get what in the gameworld are called hearts.

But it’s rare to bet what counts as in-game money in order to raise the difficulty!

Betting hearts means taking risk upon yourself. If you raise the Intensity Setting, you get even more back than you bet. You’ll get stronger weapons, so it gets easier to clear even higher Intensity Settings.

In other words, if you bet more money, you get more back. But what happens if you fail the challenge?

If you fail, the hearts you bet spill from the Fiend’s Cauldron and your Intensity Setting goes down a little.

And then the returns you get are smaller.

Right. However, it gets a little easier, so it doesn’t often get so difficult that you can’t clear something no matter how many times you try. On the other hand, if you don’t want to run that risk, or you aren’t confident in your skills, you can set the Intensity Setting to less than 2.0. Then enemy attacks slacken and you can march on at a good pace. At 0.0, you are virtually invincible. I think anyone in command of the controls can reach the end.

In other words, by adjusting the Intensity Setting, the enemies that appear and their strengths change.

Right. Of course, if you lower the Intensity Setting, the strength of the weapons you get and the hearts you get decrease.

So that’s what you mean by placing your skills and the abilities of your weapons on a scale. Why did you decide to adopt the Fiend’s Cauldron system?<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo13" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

We wanted to make it so not just advanced players would be able to enjoy the essence of the game, but so that good players and not-so-good players—anyone, really—can play it. After all, players exhibit quite a range of skills. Addressing the challenges presented by games is fun. I think that in the end, risk and return is linked with those challenges. By asking the players how they want to bet, they set challenges for themselves.

By taking on big risks, your joy is greater when things go well.

Yes. That was the biggest theme this time. Whether for solo play or battles, we wanted to prepare some challenging settings. We didn’t make it so you can raise the Intensity Setting because the first Kid Icarus game was difficult, but…

That’s right. The first Kid Icarus game is spoken of as a game of no middling difficulty.

In general, games get difficult in their second half, but the original Kid Icarus was pretty grueling from the very start. People have seen that message that displays when you miss—“I'M FINISHED”—over and over again, even at the first stage! (laughs)

But your game development is always like that. Even though you are incredibly good at video games yourself, you spend a lot of time thinking about what you can do so that even beginners can make it to the end. What’s more, you have a strong desire to satisfy advanced players. I would say—and I mean this in a good way—that you’re really not good at giving up anything.

It’s not a trait many people have. What do you think about that, Sakurai-san?

Unlike me, Miyamoto-san, for example, is against the players being able to choose their own difficulty.

You mean in the thinking of how the optimal level of game difficulty is something that the game creators should determine, not something you have the players choose?

Yes. The same goes for key configuration.12

12. Key configuration: A function that allows assigning different roles to different control keys.

I suppose Miyamoto-san feels that since many players will play with default settings, there should only be one key configuration that the developers determine is right, and they must take responsibility for it and putting it forth.

But I think the players should have a bit greater degree of freedom in their choices.

I suppose you belong to a different school of sorts when it comes to the way you think about specific areas of games.

I think it’s good to be in different schools since more games will be different. I personally have a strong desire for as many people as possible to play however they like.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo14" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

Yes. With Kid Icarus: Uprising, it has all kinds of elements, and you can play it through and through, but I think it’s fine if some people just fly through from the first chapter to the end and say, “Ah, that was good!” and end there.

Yes. One way of enjoying the game that I can recommend is breezing through one opponent after the next and listening to the back-and-forth between Pit and Palutena or other characters, as well as the good music, so you say, “Ah, this is fun!” On the other hand, I think it’s fine if there are people who plays it hard by changing the Intensity Setting, playing the same chapter many times, changing their weapons, and enjoying various strategies.

In that way, the Fiend’s Cauldron is a system that you made with an intention that allows for a broad variety of ways to play the game.

But the Fiend’s Cauldron is, as its name suggests, a fiendish system. When I play, I can’t help but want to turn up the Intensity Setting.

Yes. It’s pleasing when you turn up the Intensity Setting and overcome the challenges that come your way.

I suppose that is because the relationship between risk and return is balanced well.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo15" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

In Monster Hunter Tri G13, everyone boldly tries the incredibly difficult G class.

So you hope confident players will try Serious Setting 9.0 in Kid Icarus: Uprising?

The situation may be different from Monster Hunter, but I think the players’ attitudes are showing that a high difficulty is not necessarily a bad thing. In any case, we haven’t made Intensity Setting 9.0 absolutely unreasonable. You do have to make your weapons strong and think about the right powers and strategies, but I hope people will try it.
13. Monster Hunter Tri G: A hunting action game released by Capcom Co., Ltd. in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS system in December 2011.

Powers and Weapons

We said that the biggest point about this game is the Fiend’s Cauldron, but what other new elements are there?

Another thing is the power system. This is about special abilities. For example, you can jump high, or dash really fast, or prevent your opponent from attacking by changing him into an eggplant.

As an eggplant, you can’t use your limbs! (laughs)

But it isn’t okay to just recklessly choose powers. You have to consider the characteristics of your weapons to a certain degree.

You should choose powers that make the best of the abilities of the weapons you have equipped.

That’s right. But you can’t have all the powers you want. You have to fit pieces into a panel. It’s like packing a box lunch!

Another goal this time was to make it so you can use the powers and weapons both when playing solo and in arena matches.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo16" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

You mean that players can take what they have gained in one mode with them into the other mode?

We talked about how you can get powerful weapons by increasing the Intensity Setting via the Fiend’s Cauldron and overcoming challenging chapters, but can you do that in battles as well?

Yes. But in battles, if someone who keeps winning gets the best weapons, it would be unbalanced. Strong players have lots of weapons, so less skilled players would never get anything.

Strong players would love it but others wouldn’t.

For that reason, we made it so that you get weapons by something like a lottery.

So even players who lose can get good weapons?

Players who don’t move at all in battle don’t get rewarded.

In other words, you don’t get any rewards unless you work hard for it! (laughs)<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo17" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

For that reason, you can’t hope to form a battle session and then get something without doing anything. I think it is incredibly important to prioritize those who try their hardest regardless of victory or defeat.

I see. Are there other ways to get good weapons?

There’s a system called Fuse Weapons. If you combine weapons, a different type is formed with the strengths and skills of its components. You can really get hooked on repeating that to add your favorite skills to your favorite weapon. And weapon gems pile up via the StreetPass14 feature.

14. StreetPass: A feature that allows users who enable it to walk around with their Nintendo 3DS system turned on to exchange certain game data with other Nintendo 3DS users whom they pass on the street that also have StreetPass enabled.

Yes. If you make a gem, the weapon doesn’t disappear. And the strength of your weapon carries on. Restoring gems requires money, or hearts. You can make the weapon your own by paying hearts to restore the gems you have. However, if you try to get a high-power weapon, it costs a lot of money, like one hundred thousand.

But there is a way to make them cheaper. It’s called Fuse Gems. You can fuse together separate gems. This way is cheaper than directly restoring your gems. And you can grind down gems you don’t want and turn them into hearts. In other words, the more you pass people…

Right. And we plan to distribute one gem per day via the SpotPass15 feature.

15. SpotPass: A feature in the Nintendo 3DS system that when activated receives various information and content when near a wireless LAN access point. The gem distribution will continue for a limited period of time after the game release.

Players will get even richer! (laughs) Is there an ultimate goal to increasing the value of weapons like that?

No. If the value of your weapons is high—in other words, if your weapons are strong—it may confer advantage playing solo, but in battles, that isn’t necessarily so.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo18" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

For three-on-three battles, we established the rule that once your team’s life gauge reaches zero, one team member becomes an angel, and if you beat that angel, you win. When you battle, and someone with really valuable weapons gets defeated, his or her team’s life gauge drops drastically.

So if you equip weapons that are highly valuable disproportionately to your skills…

Yes. If you get done in right away, your team takes massive damage.

It is. There are characteristic differences between solo and battle modes. In order to win in single play, it’s actually slightly advantageous to have a weapon that doesn’t have a high attribute in homing. The size of the enemies is comparatively larger, so you can defeat them even without much homing abilities.

But in battles, your opponents are the same size as you, so…

Right, right. Strong homing weakens you somewhere else. Homing Shots are more important in battles than in solo mode, so rather than that, placing emphasis on other areas is more useful.

I see. In that respect, you’ve prepared a deep game with elements that will allow players to play a long time.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo19" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

That’s right. You can try out all sorts of patterns, so debugging was quite a challenge! When it came to adjusting the balance of the battle mode, we adopted a different policy than for Smash Bros.

For Smash Bros., rather than listening to the testers’ opinions, we watched videos of battles between the testers, studied their stats, tactics and traits, and determined the parameters then. Surprisingly, a lot of the times, the testers’ opinions are biased and it’s difficult to grasp the changes in the strength of the moves each day. This time, we wanted to draw out the opinions of the testers more correctly. But instead of simply swallowing whatever opinions arose, we tried first dividing into one-on-one and three-on-three teams and checking the opinions from each other’s point of view. For example, if a three-on-three team said, “This is too strong, so make it weaker,” a one-on-one team might say, “No, it has such-and-such an effect, and so you can’t weaken it.”

The conditions when you play are different than for Smash Bros., so you had each person who played offer their opinions.

Yes. After roughly establishing the essential characteristics, we gathered the tester results, and directly implemented adjustments. After all, they were the conclusions of people who had played the game intensively for months, so I thought they were significant. There were a lot of weapons, so tuning them was truly a challenge. But that resulted in broad enjoyability, so I hope people will have fun playing it together, ideally face-to-face with people nearby.
<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo20" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

(to be continued)


*The next interview will appear after release of Kid Icarus: Uprising.

After the Medusa Battle

Sakurai-san, I heard the real goal this time isn't to defeat Medusa. There's actually quite a lot after that.

That's right. We actually prepared a lot more volume for after the Medusa battle. The developments after you defeat Medusa are definitely more interesting, I think. It's more fun to enter the world of Kid Icarus without knowing anything ahead of time, so I've been keeping a lid on things.

I don't want to spoil the fun so I'd rather not say it, but I will say we've packed in quite a lot so it's highly concentrated. There definitely are developments after the battle against Medusa. One theme this time was not simply having a plain structure of Medusa versus Palutena.<img aria-hidden="true" src="https://assets.nintendo.com/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/dpr_auto/Microsites/iwata-asks/3ds/kidicarus/photo21" width="250" height="150" class="photo" />

You didn't want it to simply revolve around a battle between good and evil.

Well, I think good versus evil is all right. But in this game, multiple armies led by gods appear. They each have their own claims and way of thinking and move toward different goals. 
		In the early stages, there's a battle between good and evil—with Palutena's army, to which Pit belongs, squaring off against the Underworld Army led by Medusa. Then the Forces of Nature steps in and tries to destroy humankind for behaving contrary to the natural order and it becomes a three-way battle.
		 
		After that, mysterious invaders called the Aurum steps in. They speak a different language and their purpose is unclear. Pit allies himself with the Forces of Nature and it gets more complicated.

Nintendo 3DS

Battle Someone At Least Once