Dear Reader:

You are viewing a story from GN Version 3.1. Time may not have been kind to formatting, integrity of links, images, information, etc.

Kirby's Epic Yarn wasn't originally a Kirby game, and featured a completely original character

by rawmeatcowboy
06 October 2010
GN Version 3.1

The information from this Iwata Asks feature comes from Iwata, producer Etsunobu Ebisu (Good Feel), director Kentaro Sei (Good Feel), planning director Atsushi Kouno (Good Feel), producer Nobukatsu Matsumiya (Nintendo) and coordinator Emi Watanabe (Nintendo)…

- Kirby’s Epic Yarn was developed in Good Feel’s Tokyo office
- this is Good Feel’s third project with Nintendo
- the game was originally set to be called Keito no Fluff, or Fluff’s Yarn
- it was going to star a character named Fluff, and would take place in a world known as “World of Yarn”
- the original idea for the World of Yarn came from the director of Wario Land Shake, Madoka Yamauch
- the original design document was intended to show off the yarn concept and a world with “warmth”
- the design document’s visuals were made by Kouno alongside a Mr. Shinsaku, head of Good Feel’s design department
- the design team brought in various cloth items and even touched various yarn
- Matsuyama was shocked when he saw just the first page of the document, as he had never seen a game like this before
- the staff spent three months working on a prototype
- when the prototype was finished, the team felt that something wasn’t right
- Watanabe, a more casual gamer when it comes to action games, didn’t find the first couple of stages too fun
- in Summer of 2009, Nintendo proposed that this title become a Kirby game
- Ebisu wasn’t sure if he wanted to put Kirby in the game, as the people who’d made the original character would presumably like to have that character make it into the final product
- Ebisu found it very persuasive when Kirby was put into the game, and helped breathe new life into the project

link