Whether the PSP Phone is in development or not, Nokia doesn’t care. They’re not afraid. When asked what he thought of the idea of the PSP Phone Jaakko Kaidesoja, head of Nokia Games, responded that he’s “not scared about anybody.” He goes on to say that “the real question is how do they [Sony Ericsson] do it? Can they create a link between the PSP games and a phone? Can they do the multiplayer and online stuff? We’ve been doing this for two years and it hasn’t been easy.”
Good questions! The N-Gage mobile gaming platform actually looks like it’s shaping up and Sony hasn’t even officially announced a PSP Phone. We’ll be intrigued to see if anything comes of all these rumors but, in the end, we’ll probably just stick to our PSPs. Nokia have nothing to be afraid about, and why should they with technology like Morph in the works?
Continuing our previous chat about N+, the upcoming PSP and DS platformer is David Geudelekian from Atari. As a producer, he helped bring the indie game over to the handheld scene. Find out more in our exclusive interview.
What caught your eye about N? What made it so appealing to bring to the console side? David Geudelekian: I had been playing N since 2005, and on top of simply being one of the greatest platform games of all time I had always thought that this would make an excellent portable game! The organization of the gameplay into 5-level episodes make for an excellent translation to portable gaming with each level usually lasting under a minute and each episode just over the two minute mark. The simple but stylish graphics would translate well too, and even the run-and-jump gameplay seems perfectly suited for the often interrupted attention-spans of the average portable gamer.
%Gallery-12730% Do you think there’s a market for indie games in the handheld arena? David Geudelekian: Absolutely! There is already the success of casual indie games in the handheld and mobile phone market. Now not every indie will be a perfect fit with handhelds but I think a lot of the features that tend to define an indie game; size of project, scope of complexity, graphical presentation, etc… all seem to lend themselves well to the specs of the current handheld consoles. More importantly, I feel as though there’s a lot more creativity and innovation in handheld and online-console space than in the standard boxed-console games space making the handhelds excellent bedfellows with the original concepts that are being created by the indies.
Sony recently opened up a downloads service for PSP. Do you this as another avenue for indie games to be developed for? David Geudelekian: I would hope so; the PSP has some very competitive features that would lend themselves very well to the indie space. Other than just the aesthetic and mechanical differences between the PSP and the DS, the PSP has permanent expandable memory allowing indie game designers to really go nuts and concentrate on refining their ideas rather than having to work around memory issues or the like. Likewise, the PSN has fewer restrictions on their incoming content (likely because it’s struggling to catch up to the well-established XBLA) but again, on the PSN right now the indie designer has far more freedom to create the game that they imagine, whatever the size and shape.
Finally, what attributes are you looking for in a potential game to publish? Any advice for would-be devs out there? Mare & Raigan: My ideal game would love movies, long walks on the beach, and holding hands. David Geudelekian: I’m always looking for gameplay and passion first. If I see an idea, demo, or game out there that is fun and playable and is dripping with the love of its designer or design team, I’m usually 90% sold. Passion is crucial; it’s often the big thing that separates the established market from the indies. Much like an unsigned band toiling away in their basement, garage or practice space; the indies have the opportunity to take as many months or years to refine and pore over their “album” without the mass-market concerns of making a street-date or meeting a certain expectation from outside forces. My advice for would-be devs is to really think about what “going mainstream” really entails; its potential benefits and detriments. Basically, once you decide to try to go mainstream, you will have a lot more cooks in your kitchen. The publisher might have loved the game that brought you to their table, but might immediately start mentioning ways in which they would want to see it changed. My advice for up-and-comers is to balance your passion and protectiveness of your baby with the reality of what you wanted to get out of taking the game mainstream in the first place; you probably wanted a lot of people to see and play it, you might have even wanted to have most of those people buy it and play you, generally you probably wanted the world to know. Just know that these desires will inevitably change aspects of the original idea, so my biggest piece of advice is to approach the publisher with an open mind and a willingness to at least come to the table. So many issues can actually be vetted out to the mutual benefit of both the publisher and the original design, the important thing is to stay communicative and willing to compromise because in the end you will always own and have made your original baby and nobody can take that away from you
We don’t know what Nippon no Asoko de is about. It looks to be a traveling game of sorts. Perhaps it’s one of those non-games that are all the rage these days? With its cute graphics and charming art style, we’re intrigued. However, without fully understanding what the gameplay is, we find ourselves scratching our heads. We don’t know much about this mysterious new title, but one thing is clear: we doubt this will ever get an American release.
The mind-bending dimension-shifting puzzler, echochrome, will be receiving a playable demo next week. Japanese gamers will just need to access PlayStation Spot and download the demo to their systems. We don’t know if it will be DRM-free or not. We hope we can offer it to you next week, because this might be one of the few opportunities we’ll have to play the title on PSP, unless SCEA decides to bring it over.
Metanet’s latest game, N+, recently took Xbox Live Arcade by storm. With a pending PSP and DS release, we chatted with the development team about what handheld players can expect from this challenging, community-driven platformer.
The original N was a surprising success. What do you think made it appeal to such a wide audience? Mare & Raigan: It’s very addictive, in part because it’s not easy — the more you play, the more you learn and the better you get, the more you want to keep playing. Hundreds of levels provides a lot of options for players, so that if they get stuck on a specific level they just play a different level rather than giving up. Online replays allow them to show off their talents to the world and be competitive. The simple presentation focuses the player’s attention on the gameplay and puts the spotlight on the movement of the ninja. N references old school games like Lode Runner and Jumpman, titles that inspire nostalgia in the older gamers, and the injection of modern physics and collision plus the hilarious ragdoll deaths makes it appeal to younger gamers. N has something for everyone!
%Gallery-12730% What inspired both of you to create such an extreme ninja platforming game? Would you compare it to other platformers on the market? Mare & Raigan: Playing a lot of freeware platformers made us realize that 2D run+jump games still had lots of potential, even if the industry was ignoring it. N/N+ is definitely a bit different than most platformers. It’s more puzzle-y in that you can’t just run and jump as you go, you need to plan routes to a certain extent, and try to find a path that works. Paradoxically it’s also a bit more frantic, since death happens much more frequently than in most games. Basically, there was a game that we wanted to play (N) that didn’t exist yet, and since the rest of the games industry wasn’t going to make it, we knew it was time to take matters into our own hands
What kind of audience do you expect to find with the console and handheld versions of N+? Mare & Raigan: Our main target demographic is ninja-haters and anti-ninja activists — people who refuse to buy into the typical heroic image fabricated by the liberal left-wing media. They’ll enjoy seeing ninjas repeatedly zapped, crushed, blown up, and otherwise put in their place. Take that, ninjas!
What changes had to be made in order to appeal to the handheld audience? Mare & Raigan: The handhelds are somewhat easier than the original, in terms of difficulty level and the overall learning curve. Controlling the ninja still feels very loose, but players will not need to make (for instance) half-pixel adjustments to their movement. The team went to great lengths to make this game more palatable to a wide audience. The levels still get incredibly hard at the end though! Even the most hardcore of N fans will be challenged.
Did you consider changing the visual style of the game, to make it seem more “modern”? Mare & Raigan: What could be more modern than minimalism?! If anything the graphics in N are postmodern; they were heavily influenced by Deridda’s poststructuralist critique of gaming’s bourgeois, elitist culture. We reject logocentrism and other forms of artificially imposed order! On the other hand, they could also be said to be post-postmodern, or even pseudo-modern, as they are firmly grounded in our belief that the individual’s action is a necessary condition of the cultural product. Go PoPoMo! Woo! (In N+, you can find the original minimal graphics in Pure Mode, and have the opportunity to try the new graphics, with fancy pixel art and much more detail, in Plus Mode. Plus Mode graphics seem much less guided by the principles of PoPoMo, which handheld audiences should love.)
Are there any helpful hints you can give for future players, new to the game on PSP? (Please, we need to know. We suck at this game!) Mare & Raigan: The more you play, the better you’ll get. Try to stay calm and take deep breaths, there is a definite zen state that needs to be achieved — the more you stress about dying, the more likely you are to screw up. Just relax! Check out some highscore replays for inspiration, and confidence that the level *is* possible. Dying all the time is no big deal — other games use death as a punishment, but in N+ it’s more of a helpful suggestion that you might want to consider a different route. If you get stuck, just try a different episode and come back to it later. Above all, resist the urge to throw the PSP.
What do you hope to see from the level design community of N+? Mare & Raigan: In N, the community managed to find all sorts of weird bugs and glitches we didn’t know about, and (ab)use them to make some pretty weird and interesting levels; we’re hoping this happens with N+ as well. Definitely the best thing about the user-made maps is the creativity, we’re hoping to see lots of new ideas or concepts for levels that we hadn’t considered.
Does the advent of digital distribution make it easier for indie devs to make the jump to the console scene? Mare & Raigan: It does make it easier, but it’s still a fairly huge, and costly, jump. We considered doing the work in-house, but were too excited about our next project (which you can read about on our blog), so we decided to outsource development of N+, and tried hard to team up with developers who had experience on the different consoles. There are definitely more doors open now than there were even 5 years ago, but developing for consoles is a lot more work than developing for PC, and has a higher cost than developing for PC (because of the necessity of dev kits, QA/testing, localization etc). It’s 100% great to have the opportunity, though.
Has Sony contacted you about developing for the PLAYSTATION Network? Do you see N+ expanding to the PSN? Mare & Raigan: Yes, however due to an exclusivity clause in our XBLA contract, it may not be for a while…
===== Stay tuned for part two of our N+ interview tomorrow.
According to EGM’s Quartermann, their top guy for all things rumorlicious, something “Patapon-related” will be popping up on the PlayStation Network. It seems that this unique rhythm game might actually be getting some sort of spin-off.
Patapon has barely just been released in the west and already we’re hearing rumblings of a sequel or a spin-off. Hey, we’re not complaining; we’re just a little surprised. It would be nice to have another Patapon game, little eye people and all.
In case you’re interested in Wild ARMs XF but haven’t read our interview with Akifumi Kaneko, then perhaps this brief English trailer will grab your short attention span. In just one minute, the trailer tells you every basic detail you’ll need to know about the title’s gameplay. This comes in as a nice little info-jolt as this PSP-exclusive strategy RPG will be out soon — March 11 to be exact.
It took forever to translate the names of these new Japanese PSN games, but we finally got them. Recently hitting the PlayStation Network over in the land of the rising sun are four PlayStation classics: Ide Yosuke no Mahjong Kyoshitsu, Baroque Syndrome, Wai Wai Bowling, and Um Jammer Lammy.
Three out of the four games were not released outside Japan; the only one that was seen in the west was Um Jammer Lammy – a rhythm game spin-off of PaRappa the Rapper. The Ide Yosuke game is yet another Mahjong game, while Wai Wai Bowling is, um, bowling. Lastly, Baroque Syndrome is a prequel to the PS1 RPG Baroque (which is also available on the PSN, at the same time ported to the PS2).
While there’s really only one or two titles that are worth getting on that list, it still is quite annoying that the Japanese PS1 game library is way better than ours. When will our library start flooding with more and more PS1 games?
The price of the Lexar 4GB Memory Stick continues to plummet. For those cheapstakes out there (that includes us), FRYS.com is offering this 4GB card for $30. Considering you can now download PS1 games, full PSP games and more on the PLAYSTATION Store, it seems like most everyone will want to upgrade. We’re quite pleased with the amount of music, videos and demos the 4GB card can hold (although we’re keeping an eye out on the 8GB Memory Stick!).
Go to FRYS.com to take advantage of this great deal.
The price of the Lexar 4GB Memory Stick continues to plummet. For those cheapstakes out there (that includes us), FRYS.com is offering this 4GB card for $30. Considering you can now download PS1 games, full PSP games and more on the PLAYSTATION Store, it seems like most everyone will want to upgrade. We’re quite pleased with the amount of music, videos and demos the 4GB card can hold (although we’re keeping an eye out on the 8GB Memory Stick!).
