Megaman 9: old school is good!
Looks like going back in the past to make new version of game is trendy. So here's Megaman 9!
Megaman 8 looked like that:
It came out in 1997 on Playstation and Saturn, 10 years after his first apparition on the NES. It was a good platform game, but every gamers at this time were more interested in 3D games. So it gone unnoticed, and there was no follow up to the main Megaman series... until last month with the Megaman 9 annoncement!
And that's Megaman 9:
It's old school! The game is clearly inspired by the NES Megaman games (it uses the sames sprites, the same color limitations, etc). Most of the Megaman episodes were on NES so why not doing another NES-like game for the core fans?
With the digital markets (Xbox Live, PSN, Wiiware) we can today make games for a core audience. There are less money to lose if it doesn't sell well, expecialy with a game like that which require a very small team.
But that Megaman 9 is above all the approach of an old game designer, Kenji Inafune, that became producer since then and his happy to return as a designer.
At the time of the first Megaman he worked on almost every aspects of the game even doing the box visuals. Since then he became producer on several Capcom games (Dead Rising, Lost Planet). It's the idea of going back to a small team that motivate him to take the designer position again.
If the game is a success we can hope for a lot of old school games. Seriously, working in a small team is very cool (I know that in the Raving Rabbids team)! No endless meetings, no communication problems because all the team is in the same small room. That's what the agile development methods try to recreate in bigger team, but that's not always easy to make these methods working well.
Credits: the quotes are taken from a GamesRadar.com interview of Kenji Inafune.
It came out in 1997 on Playstation and Saturn, 10 years after his first apparition on the NES. It was a good platform game, but every gamers at this time were more interested in 3D games. So it gone unnoticed, and there was no follow up to the main Megaman series... until last month with the Megaman 9 annoncement!
And that's Megaman 9:
It's old school! The game is clearly inspired by the NES Megaman games (it uses the sames sprites, the same color limitations, etc). Most of the Megaman episodes were on NES so why not doing another NES-like game for the core fans?
With the digital markets (Xbox Live, PSN, Wiiware) we can today make games for a core audience. There are less money to lose if it doesn't sell well, expecialy with a game like that which require a very small team.
But that Megaman 9 is above all the approach of an old game designer, Kenji Inafune, that became producer since then and his happy to return as a designer.
For the first time in many years, we are developing an 8-bit game. This opportunity has awoken my spirit as a game designer. I've stepped closer to the designing team to get more hands-on with the graphics and game design. I've been more involved in the actual creation process this time, and even designed the bosses!
Game development nowadays is done as a very large project, and the scale makes it harder for creators to optimize their abilities and potentials. When I first developed Mega Man, the team was only 6 people. The project was short-handed in one way, but that also helped each of us get involved in every detail. It was so much fun. It might have been the best time for the creators.
The newest installment cannot be managed by 6 creators, but we are leading the project with a small team relative to modern development. Each one of the members is fully involved in every aspect of game development, and the efforts are about to bear the fruit of a solid and interesting product.
The newest installment cannot be managed by 6 creators, but we are leading the project with a small team relative to modern development. Each one of the members is fully involved in every aspect of game development, and the efforts are about to bear the fruit of a solid and interesting product.
Credits: the quotes are taken from a GamesRadar.com interview of Kenji Inafune.