At PAX East 2020 in Boston, Gematsu sat down with Platinum Games executive vice president and studio head Atsushi Inaba, and senior vice president and game designer Hideki Kamiya to talk about the recently Kickstarted
The Wonderful 101: Remastered, the newly announced Kamiya-directed hero game
Project G.G., and the newly established Platinum Games Tokyo.
Find the full interview below.
Gematsu: The Wonderful 101: Remastered was announced as a Kickstarter project in early February, and a May release date was announced later in the month. Can you explain what from the funding went into the game itself?
Atsushi Inaba: “Well the actual reason we decided to do a Kickstarter campaign was not for funding at all, it was more about gauging interest in
The Wonderful 101. This is a game we’ve always wanted to revisit at some point in time, so we thought it would be a good opportunity to bring the fans together—to unite them—and gauge interest. And in essence, to release the game. So it wasn’t really about the amount of funding at all, it was about self-publishing, bringing fans together, and revisiting
The Wonderful 101.”
Just to clarify, what is the money that was crowdfunded being used towards?
Inaba: “First off, the money is going towards the production of all the goods—I don’t know if you’ve seen all the tiers and their rewards, but those cost money to produce. The rest of the money is going towards the additional content that will be added to the game. All that costs money, and it takes time and work to port the game to the additional platforms. I want to clarify that we didn’t do the campaign to ‘get money’ or anything like that—that wasn’t the point of it. The main goal was to bring the fans together, gauge interest, and find a good way to revisit and release the game.”
Is there anything in the base game that is being added beyond the stretch goals?
Hideki Kamiya: “For both myself and for Platinum Games,
The Wonderful 101 is one of our largest games, both in volume and content. So I didn’t feel it was necessary to add anything to game itself, and it would’ve actually created unbalance. So there isn’t anything that will be added to the game in terms of extra levels or characters. However, back in the Wii U days, there were some things that we couldn’t implement, a lot of which concerns user-friendly features, playability, giving the player directives, and the like, which will be added in this version.”
I wanted to speak a bit about that, so I’m glad you brought it up. The Wii U version utilized both the GamePad and TV screens. How is the game being consolidated into a single screen this time around?
Kamiya: “When I was originally developing the game on Wii U, I figured that a picture-in-picture would be necessary, but in the end there were two screens. Since it’s a one screen game in the newer versions, we’re going back to the picture-in-picture design. And this time around we’re able to add better playability and user-friendliness that was not possible on the Wii U, such as adjustments of the screen, moving it around, and making the game more accessible for current players. Another thing was obviously the drawing of the shapes on the GamePad, which is not going to be featured in the new version. Originally I had planned on using the joystick to do that. So in a way we are actually going back to the original version that I planned. In this new version, you will be using the joystick to draw.”
That includes the Switch version?
Kamiya: “(Nods.)”
This may be a bit of a sensitive topic, but in the release date trailer, there was no mention of Nintendo in the copyright. Can you clarify ownership of the IP, or why Nintendo wasn’t mentioned?
Inaba: “Unfortunately, I can’t talk about the details, since it’s between Platinum Games and Nintendo, but as I said before, it’s thanks to the kindness of Nintendo that this release is possible.”
When we first spoke about The Wonderful 101: Remastered back in September, Kamiya-san mentioned an Xbox One version as a planned stretch goal. Can you speak a bit to what happened there?
Kamiya: “That’s very true, and we did plan and want to release on Xbox One. But the fact of the matter was that the original engine for the game and the engine for the Xbox One are very different, and it’s not easy to port like the other systems. So as a result of that, unfortunately and regrettably, we had to relinquish the Xbox One release.”
Is an Xbox One version something you would rule out entirely?
Kamiya: “It’s just a very costly thing to do and we don’t have the ability to do it in-house. I don’t want to say it will never happen. If the right things come together and we get enough money, it might be possible, but it’s just an expensive thing to do. We did want to do it—it’s purely for that reason that we couldn’t.”
With The Wonderful 101 coming to additional platforms, does that open the doors for other Nintendo-published projects from Platinum Games to come to additional platforms?
Inaba: “I really don’t know. The fact is that a lot of those IPs are owned by Nintendo, we’re just the developer. So you’d have to ask Nintendo if they’re willing to do it. It’s not something we really have control over ourselves.