Entrevista a Shin’en Multimedia (Nano Assault Neo)

– Hello Manfred and thanks for giving us the opportunity to make this interview. First of all, who are you, Shin’en, and what is Nano Assault Neo?
Hi, i’m one of the founders and CEO of Shin’en. Shin’en is in the games business since 1999 and developed for GBC, GBA, DS, Wii, 3DS and now also for Wii U. I’m mainly responsible for programming and game design of our
titles.

Nano Assault Neo (NAN) is our first Wii U eShop production.

– You have already released another Nano Assault game -the original one- on 3DS, which will be soon released in Europe as Nano Assault EX, via 3DS eShop. What differences can we expect between the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS version?
NAN is a complete new game, not a port of the 3DS version. The gameplay is very arcade like and supports even two players. We focused a lot on the online rankings to bring back the 80ties feeling of achieving high scores and comparing to other players worldwide.

– The shoot’em up genre is sadly not huge nowadays, but its fans are very enthusiastic. What do you think players will like the most in this game? Will the more hardcore and experienced shmup fans be satisfied with it? And what about those who are not used to this kind of games?
The first reaction of the game shows that players love the arcade style game play and the stunning visuals. The two player mode is also praised by a lot of players. In general NAN is very accessible, no matter if you are a core shmup player or play such a game for the first time.

– Nano Assault Neo is a Wii U launch digital game. How long have you been developing it? When did you decide to make this game and why did you choose Wii U? How was the development?
It took around 7 months from zero to the finished game. We quickly figured out that the exceptional power of the Wii U would make a perfect arcade game possible. The Nano Assault universe has a very distinct visual style and the Wii U allowed to explore this style even further then we did on the 3DS. The development was very smooth and we are happy we finished such a high quality game in that short amount of time.

– The game surely looks amazing, and the fact that it’s the smallest eShop game (in terms of file size) is astonishing. Some of your other games, such as FAST for WiiWare, look even better than most of retail games. How do you do it? Any special trick?
Our goal for each game is to surpass what we did before, and if possible also every other game in that genre. From this mindset we simply push things until we reached the best possible. Anything else would be boring for us and the players i guess?!

– Performance or graphics? What is more important for Shin’en?
For us that’s the same. Pretty graphics at 20fps are no more pretty. And 60fps with bad visuals also doesn’t help that much. You always have to find the right balance between both.

– Tell us a bit about how you use the features of Wii U, especially the Gamepad. And what about Miiverse?
In NAN the player can anytime switch gameplay from the TV to the GamePad and play then without any TV at all. In two player mode one player uses the TV as display and the 2nd player uses the GamePad as display. We also stream the GamePad camera capture to the TV in two player mode. Our game uses the standard Miiverse integration, so people can talk about NAN directly with each other.

– Nintendo has done great improvements on its online strategy, and the eShop is a key part of it. How do you feel about the new Wii U eShop? Do you think Nintendo has understood what the smaller studios need?
Nintendo already made big progress with the 3DS and the Wii U eShop seems to be the perfect place for our upcoming games. We also enjoy very much that we can freely patch our games to add functionality and improve things.

– The hardware of Wii U is very controversial, probably due to the unpolished ports that have arrived as launch games and the console’s new structure. Have you encountered any problems when developing the game?
Not at all, but i think thats because we wrote all rendering and some processing code new for the Wii U. So we were able to utilize all of its power right from the start. We were not forced to keep old concepts from previous consoles.

– Now let’s speak a bit about the future. What can we expect from Shin’en in the near future? Any new games on the horizon?
We already work on our 2nd Wii U eShop game and we will release Nano Assault EX for 3DS in the next weeks. We also will release a new Jett Rocket game for 3DS in early 2013.

– Would you like to team up with a company like Nintendo to create a new AAA game? If you were given the opportunity to take any Nintendo franchise and make your own installment, what would it be? Would you accept the challenge of creating a new F-Zero?
We get these questions asked very often and we are happy that people honor the quality we put into our games. Our company doesn’t reach out to do so called AAA games with millions in budget and hundreds of people working on it. That would be no more a Shin’en game. We try to create games that surpass the experience of AAA games and have our own mark on it.

– And finally, what is your favorite game this year?
For me personally it was ‘Journey’ from That Game Company.

– Thanks again for the interview and hope the game becomes a huge success. Looking forward to playing it on 30/11!
Thanks a lot!

Inicio | Español | English