Little King’s Story is on deck. Beyond that Marvelous has many more games coming to North America and I asked Marvelous rapid fire questions about them.
What is happening with Marvelous USA? Last year you were setting up a base and this year Xseed is handling all the publishing.
Yasuhiro Wada, President: We were planning to do it, but the most important thing is to have our titles released in the US. Because of the situation of what’s going on in the economy and in our company the best way was to give the titles to Xseed and have our titles published that way, for now.
In Arc Rise Fantasia we’ve seen the Luminous Arc characters appear in the game. How do they fit in?
The characters from the Luminous Arc series, you can challenge them during the game and even after you finish it you can keep challenging them. One of the main crossover characters will appear as a really strong boss.
Little King’s Story has Hell Mode, will Arc Rise Fantasia have any new features for the US?
We’re still creating the US version so nothing is set in stone, but I’ll convey your message to the development team.
I guess this is more of an Xseed question, but Arc Rise Fantasia has an awesome pre-order bonus. Are you planning to promote that in the US?
Jimmy Soga, Public Relations Manager: We’ll definitely have some kind of incentive.
Half-Minute Hero is such a unique title. Didn’t the project start as a flash game?
It was a small game for flash and it was a half-minute, just the hero part. On top of that you have the Knight mode, Princess mode, and Evil Lord mode [in the PSP version].
The whole story is about a saga about a five hundred year battle. The first hundred years is about the hero. The second hundred years is about Princess, and so on and so forth. When you play all of the different modes you can see the big picture of what’s going on.
Yoshiro Kimura, Producer of Little King’s Story: Within thirty seconds you can go through a hundred years. In a 150 seconds you go through five hundred years!
It’s seems kind of like a risky title to develop.
YW: Little King’s Story, No More Heroes, they’re all considered risky titles.
YK: Titles like Half-Minute Hero, Little King’s Story, No More Heroes, everything relies on Wada-san’s decisions. The greatest thing about Wada-san is that he counts on us to finish the titles, he lets us finish what we want to finish.
Have you ever thought about making a sequel to Chulip then?
YK: I do want to make it! I want to make a game with an urban area and have a little kid going around kissing people. I want to have a little kid basically going around kissing beautiful women, gay people, straight people, everything.
Actually, can you ask someone else to make it for me? Because I want to play that game.
What’s Discipline about? It looks really strange. [Editor’s note: Discipline is a WiiWare game created by Kazutoshi Iida who worked on Tail of the Sun for the PsOne.]
YK: You’ve been talking about risk, this is our riskiest title, but I love it. Worldwide, everyone will be shocked. The genre is an adventure game, it’s a game that you enjoy the world view.
Is Xseed handling this?
YK: We want to release it in the US and Europe, but it’s a risky title so Xseed might say no. [laughs]
How’s Rainy Woods coming along?
YW: The project is still going give it a little more time and we can talk about it.
For No More Heroes 2 is there going to be a difference in the level of violence between the Japanese and American versions?
YK: With No More Heroes and Little King’s Story we’re always thinking of the US and Europe first for those type of titles and then bringing them back to Japanese and toning them down for the Japanese audience.
Little King’s Story comes out on Tuesday with new features like an extra hard difficulty level and a never before seen monster from the US art contest.
Published: Jul 17, 2009 04:03 pm