GoNintendo 'End of Day' thought - RedLynx chats about their upcoming WiiWare release, MotoHeroz!

Got a real fun one for you today! I had the opportunity to talk to RedLynx about MotoHeroz, a WiiWare game I've chomping at the bit for. Hopefully the interview helps convince you that the title is worth your cash! Check that out as I call it a night. See you in a few, short hours.

Did you know that MotoHeroz is hitting WiiWare this Thursday? You better know, because I've been talking it up for weeks now! I've gone hands-on with this game, and it's definitely the real deal. I can't remember the last time I had this much fun with a WiiWare game! Ever since that hands-on session, I've been dying for the final game's release.

Now we're just over a day away from launch, and we've got a special surprise for you! Antti Ilvessuo, Creative Director of RedLynx, was nice enough to answer some questions about MotoHeroz for us. He even chats a tiny bit about the 3DS in general! Hit up the full interview below, and just try to not get psyched for MotoHeroz. Go ahead, I dare you...

GN: What made you decide to work on a title for WiiWare?

AI: After the success of Trials HD on Xbox LIVE – so far it has sold something like two million copies, including the base game and both DLCs – we really saw digital downloads on consoles as a great new opportunity for us. So we began diversifying onto new services. WiiWare was a natural one to look at and a perfect fit for this project.

GN: Have you found the file size limit to be troublesome?

AI: MotoHeroz was designed from the beginning for WiiWare, so we didn’t have a problem with the file size limit. In fact, we have come up with a unique way to put objects into our world, a method that saves a huge amount of memory.

If this had been a port, maybe we would have that kind of difficulty, but when you design a game for a platform and understand its capabilities from the outset, you don’t run into this issue. Our philosophy is: Play to the strengths, not the limitations, of each platform and hardware. Don’t try to pull a trailer with a sports car.

GN: What did you learn from Trials HD that helped in the creation of MotoHeroz?

AI: It would be hard to pick out just one thing, since we are always working on a number of game projects at the same time. For example, DrawRace 2, 1000 Heroz and Trials Evolution were all in development at the same time MotoHeroz was, so there are always ideas flowing back and forth.

Probably one thing that stands out would be just how addicting time-based Leaderboards where you are playing against your friends’ scores online, whenever you want to, is a really appealing game mechanic. It’s something we’ve learned across all our games.

But that’s not the only appeal of MotoHeroz, we actually think Party Rally – the four player local multiplayer -- will be the most popular way to play.

GN: A lot of WiiWare devs ignore online content but you're embracing it. Was that the plan from the start?

AI: Definitely. We have a lot of experience and expertise working with online content, external servers for Leaderboards, that kind of thing, so bringing that to MotoHeroz was pretty easy for us. As said, it’s a very appealing game mechanic too for the player, when implemented in a fun way that keeps you challenged.

But for players who don’t like online play and who don’t always have friends around for local multiplayer, we built the single player Story Adventure in such a way that there is lots to do – you can go back through the game’s 60+ tracks and try to get the silver and gold medals on each run, you can try and find and collect all the hidden Ancestor Spirits, and look for all the other secrets in the game.

We really think the levels are different enough and challenging enough that it actually is fun to go back and play them again and get better at them. There’s no luck involved in the game – you simply get better at some things over time.

GN: MotoHeroz not only plays great, it looks great too. How did you come up with the unique visuals?

AI: Thanks! What we did was look at about 100 different games on the service and try to come up with the best way to create attractive looking backgrounds within the size definitions of the service. Once we established those guidelines, we set our artists loose and let them go to work...don’t ask me how an artist’s brain works though! The result though is a world with an incredible feeling of depth and richness.

GN: Is the MotoHeroz title something you'd like to expand upon for other digital shops, such as the Nintendo eShop?

AI: Is that a sneaky way of asking us if we are doing a 3DS version? :) That isn’t something we’re working on right now. The 3DS is a really cool piece of hardware and Nintendo always takes care to build platforms that put games and gaming first, so it could make sense for us. But let’s see how our little game does on WiiWare first. We’ll see, we’ll see.

GN: How long has MotoHeroz been in development?

AI: We’ve been working MotoHeroz since the beginning of 2010, although some of the work with the prototype began earlier than that. The game itself was actually finished in July, but we had some delays come up because of localization approvals in Europe.

So we hope everyone knows now: September 15th, in all regions, MotoHeroz is yours to play and try!

Huge thanks to Antti Ilvessuo for answering our questions!