Hi there!
So in the last episode, we looked at how this
weird action platformer, shooter, greek mythological
...thing called Kid Icarus came into existence.
Now, upon its release in December 1986, the
game received generally positive reviews,
and moderately high sales, too.
Nothing mind blowing, but enough to secure
a sequel for the GameBoy 5 years later.
But after that, the series went pretty much
silent, with no word of a third entry.
Until 21 years later, that is, when Nintendo
released Kid Icarus: Uprising, an on-rails
shooter for the 3ds created by none other
than Super Smash Bros’ Masahiro Sakurai.
But how did this game come about?
Well, lut us find out, as we journey through
Kid Icarus: Uprising’s development history!
It was early 2008, and director Masahiro Sakurai
had just finished work on Super Smash Bros
Brawl.
Now, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata thought
that starting work on the next entry in the
series right away wouldn’t be ideal, so
he suggested, “let’s do something a little
different”.
Now, at the time, work was just beginning
on Nintendo’s new handheld console, the
3ds, so Iwata requested that Sakurai develop
a game to be released alongside this new system.
And so, Sakurai began brainstorming some possible
ideas.
He figured that Iwata would want something
a little different, the type of game Nintendo’s
in house developers were unlikely to come
up with.
Plus, he wanted to challenge himself.
But what kind of game would be an interesting
challenge for him?
Well, one genre that was almost non-existent
in Japan was the shooter.
Sure, there were a few titles here and there,
but Sakurai thought that the large majority
of “good” shooters came from overseas,
instead.
Plus, a shooter would emphasise the planned
stereoscopic 3d feature of the 3ds, which
was to be the console’s main selling point.
Eventually, he settled on the basic premise
of a game that switched between air and land
battles.
You would fly into enemy territory in the
air, then fight battles on the ground.
And so, with this idea in hand, Sakurai met
with Nintendo to present his proposal.
And in October of 2008, his project was approved
by the company.
Around this time, he meet with Iwata again.
During this meeting, Sakurai asked Iwata,
“Should I stick with a Nintendo franchise
for this project?”
Iwata responded, “If you think your project
would be a good fit for one franchise or another,
let's think about it then.”
Hmm, was there a franchise that would fit
with his air and land battles idea?
Suddenly, he was struck with an idea.
It was late 1986.
The year had been packed with all sorts of
influential grand adventures - The legend
of Zelda, Dragon Quest, Metroid - but one
game was not like the others: Kid Icarus.
Rather than pursuing a serious, adventurous
tone, the game tackled greek mythology with
an upbeat and often comedic tone.
Although it was set in 500 BC or so, characters
had credit cards!
Plus, your character could be turned into
an aubergine!
Now, the main character from this game, an
angel called Pit who couldn't fly, particularly
caught Sakurai’s attention.
What if he gave the character a limited amount
of time in the air - this way, he could have
the game seamlessly switch between air and
land battles.
When he suggested reviving the Kid Icarus
series, Nintendo were fully on board!
Once he got this go-ahead, Sakurai found an
office space to rent out, and established
a company to develop the game - “Project
Sora”.
Now, this office certainly left a little to
be desired: according to Sakurai, “The window
glass was razor-thin and wind drafts leaked
through them”.
Nevertheless, he started recruiting members
to his new company, and development of this
3ds Kid Icarus shooter began in earnest.
The first thing Sakurai began working on,
was finalising the project plans and designs.
He looked at the genre of shooters and starting
taking away all the necessary elements, until
he found what he described as the “fun core”
- the part of the game that made it enjoyable.
After this, he began putting together an outline
of the game’s story.
Yes, this early on!
You see, in his experience, stories in games
often tended to be kind of irksome - in his
words, “For example, games that take forever
to get through the intro and won't let you
start playing, or games that go through the
trouble of being fully voiced and wind up
having their tempo all messed up as a result.
I just want to enjoy the game”
He knew that the story in this new Kid Icarus
game would have to be finely tuned.
It had to tie in with the gameplay, so what
was happening plot-wise matched up with the
gameplay, and it mustn't ruin the game’s
pacing - but at the same time, if it was too
stripped back, then it would be kind of pointless.
To get this difficult balance right, Sakurai
made the decision to write the entire game’s
script himself - that way, he wouldn’t have
to keep explaining things to the game’s
writer, plus he could play to the game’s
strengths and dance around its weaknesses
- in other words, he would be in complete
control.
As he put it, “With a game like Kid Icarus,
which features air battles where the gameplay,
dialogue, and music needed to fully mesh with
each other, it was vital that the story and
game were one and the same and could easily
be fine-tuned.”
After this, he and the team began actually
putting together some gameplay.
He knew that the game would require the camera
and the player to be moved separately.
But, how could they go about doing this?
The 3ds, lest we forget, had only a single
control pad and controlling the camera with
the D pad would be far from ideal.
Then Sakurai struck upon an idea.
What if they used the touchscreen as a sort
of controller!
However, Sakurai thought back to some DS games
he had played where the touchscreen was used
to control the character.
He described playing these games as “trying
to steer with oars”.
It was decided instead that the touchscreen
would be used to accurately aim - it would
be just as accurate as a mouse, if not moreso!
Oh, I should mention, the team were constructing
all of this gameplay under far from ideal
conditions.
Preparation for Nintendo’s 3ds system were
still very early on, so Project Sora had no
development kits or anything like that, and
knew very little about the 3ds, besides the
basic hardware layout and, obviously, the
3d ability.
They had to develop the game using Nintendo
Wiis and PCs.
Not exactly ideal.
Another important aspect was the music - although
it would have been possible to simply score
the game with a mix of energetic, upbeat ditties,
it was important to Sakurai that the music
did more than just serve as a constant backdrop
to the gameplay.
In the game’s initial plans, it was clearly
written that “to match the whirlwind of
changing events in the air battles, the music
will need to match every development.”
And so, Sakurai decided to bring on his first
composer to the team, Takahiro Nishi.
Now, it was clear pretty quickly that Sakurai
had some high expectations for the soundtrack,
so he and Nishi worked together to assemble
an army of composers.
Namely, Motoi Sakuraba, who composed the game’s
main theme, Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada,
Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Natsumi
Kameoka.
Wow, that is a lot of musicians.
Now, this motley crew employed a mixture of
both synthesised instruments, and real orchestral
ones too.
They had to constantly keep in mind the idea
of the music matching the gameplay, which
led to a set of tracks which were constantly
changing as they went on.
This presented a bit of challenge for Natsumi
Kameoka, who was in charge of recording the
tracks with the live orchestra.
The tracks were constantly speeding up and
slowing down, and often had incredibly specific
tempos, like 120.00096 bpm.
The percussion was used so much that the mallets.
According to Kameoka, these orchestral recording
sessions were “an incredible undertaking”.
However, they proved to be worth it in the
end, with the soundtrack receiving a lot of
praise from all around.
Now, one completely new element to the game
this time around was the Fiend’s Cauldron,
a way of allowing the player to perfectly
customise the difficulty to their own ability
level.
Before starting a level, the player could
choose the difficulty on a slider, which would
decided how difficult the enemies would be
to defeat, how strong their attacks would
be and so on.
If the player chose a high difficulty, they
would be rewarded with a greater chance of
receiving strong weapons or extra life hearts.
This risk and reward system allowed players
to play at a level that suited them, without
upsetting the balance of the game too drastically.
Now, as the game began nearing completion,
the team worked extra hard to ensure the game
looked as good as it possibly could on the
3ds.
It became clear that in order to get the game
out in a finished, polished state, the release
date would need to be delayed by a year.
And so, for this last year, the team carefully
went though the game, carefully pushing the
3ds to its graphical limits, and fixing bugs,
too.
And so, on the 22nd of March, 2012, Kid Icarus:
Uprising was released unto the world!
Critical reviews of the game were extremely
positive, with it even receiving a perfect
40 out of 40 from coveted japanese games magazine
Famitsu.
Sales too were high, with the game even helping
to raise the sales of the 3ds itself!
And so, it was proven that everything Sakurai
touches becomes a runaway success!
Haha, no, but I do think that Sakurai is an
incredible game designer, and is sort of underrated
in comparison to, for example, Miyamoto.
Now, I think the Smash games are great, really!
I mean, I’m pretty terrible at fighting
games in general, but of course I can recognise
how brilliantly put together the Smash games
are.
However, if what many people predict turns
out to be true, that Smash Ultimate will be
Sakurai’s last Smash game, then I’m really
excited to see what other weird little projects
Sakurai gets his hands on in the future!
But not after he’s taken a long long holiday
first.
I think he needs one more than literally every
other person.
Hi there!
Thanks for watching to the end!
So if you didn't see it, last week's episode
was about how the precursor to this game,
Kid Icarus for the NES, was released.
Click here to check it out!
And if you enjoyed this, maybe you'll enjoy
some of my other episodes too.
I hope so, anyway!
Ok, until next week, seeya! (sorry about my
croaky voice - I just drank a mug of coffee)
