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A portion of an Iwata Asks featuring...
Satoru Iwata – President of Nintendo
Shingo Matsushita – Software Planning & Development Team
Yurie Hattori – Software Planning & Development Team
Hitoshi Yamagami – Software Planning & Development Team
Masato Maegawa – CEO of Treasure Corporation
Atsutomo Nakagawa – Director of Treasure Corporation
Yasushi Suzuki – Art Director
Yamagami: At first, it was developed with the title “Glass Soldier.”
Maegawa: The frail-looking protagonist was like a blade of grass, so we tried to go with “Grass Solider.”
Yamagami: However, at the time all the game titles were in katakana, so it turned into “Why don’t we think up a title with kanji?”
Iwata: At the time, it wasn’t uncommon for games and their katakana titles to be buried what with all the games being released. But what was the motive for deciding on “Sin & Punishment”?
Yamagami: Coincidentally, at the time, one of the development titles from the information development team (possibly referring to EAD) was “Red and Black”…
Iwata: You mean “Perfect Dark”11?
Yamagami: Yes. “Red and Black” was the name used during development even though it was eventually sold as “Perfect Dark,” but we thought that if there was a “Red and Black” then “Sin & Punishment” could work as well. We added a subtitle that allowed players to get a feel for the theme of the game. At this point, when we discussed with the young staff members, they proposed, “Why don’t we write ‘Earth’ but read it as ‘star?’” and we went, “That’s good!” We made it fit the theme of the story, so the title turned into “Successor (Keishousha) of the Earth.”
Story Feedback
Iwata: You mean “Perfect Dark”?"
Perfect Dark was developed (and published) by Rare. Nintendo had nothing to do with it, cause they didn't want to publish M-rated games at the time.
Same goes for Conker's Bad Fur Day. Nintendo feared that game would ruin their family friendly image if people saw the Nintendo logo on the box, so they let Rare publish it themselves.
Yep, I saw that too in the credits, and I read on the "Red and Black" stuff a while back.
@tendoboy1984
I remember the Nintendo logo in both Perfect Dark and Conker's Bad Fur Day (unless you live in Europe, THQ published Conker over there). I think the "EAD" part is a mistranslation.
Right.
Really the only Rare created game Nintendo had rights to at the time was Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie (Banjo as a character/series was owned by Nintendo at the time unless I read the copyrights wrong).
Perfect Dark, Jetforce Gemini, Conker, etc. were published by Rare and owned only by Rare (yet Nintendo had their hands in mostly marketing and probably some quality check). This is why when Rare was sold, all of the characters and series went to Microsoft no problem (even Banjo and crew, I guess Nintendo didn't need him all too bad).
Also, Nintendo obviously owned the rights to the Donkey Kong Country/DK64 games developed by Rare.
But most of Rare's original creations were owned by them. When Rare was sold to Microsoft, those creations went with them, except for the DKC/DK64 games of course.
It's somewhat similar to Insomniac (even though Insomniac is independent, while Rare was partially owned by Nintendo). Sony publishes and has exclusive rights to the Ratchet and Clank/Resistance series, but Insomniac is free to develop and publish other games by themselves (I think).
You're right about Insomniac. Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidary, but Insomniac and High Impact are independent. They just choose to stick with Sony since Sony retains the rights to the R&C and Resistance games (Universal always had ownership over Spyro and Crash in the PS1 days, however). Sucker Punch is just 2nd party like Rare once was (they're first game was an N64 exclusive published by Ubisoft).
But Sin & Punishment is also a very mysterious name.
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So will Insomniac ever branch out from Sony and develop games for other platforms?
What about Bungie? They seem tied to Microsoft due to the Halo franchise, though they are now independent again.
Not entirely true.
I'm pretty damn sure that Nintendo owned the Killer Instinct franchise. They wanted their own fighting series to counter things like Street Fighter and Virtua Fighter, but they had no experience making fighting games, so they had another company do it, hence Rare. But it was firmly established that it was "Nintendo's fighting franchise".
Which is why I'm still rather fuzzy on the whole consistent rumor that they're "making a KI3" thing, unless Nintendo sold the rights to that series with them. When they made KI1 and KI2, they were pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo, not even "Second Party", but First, like Retro is now.
I know Rare owned Banjo because they took it with them, and also Jet Force Gemini, Conker, and Perfect Dark. But KI and Blast Corps, I'm fairly certainly, were Nintendo owned properties. As was Goldeneye, at least for the time that Nintendo had the Bond license. Which is precisely why Rare and Microsoft had to get Nintendo's permission/involvement to make a remake of that game, or put it on XBLA, because Nintendo published it, and had the rights to it.
But hey, semantics, right?
Also not true. Microsoft owns the Halo franchise outright, even if Bungie started the game on Mac. Which is why Halo Wars was made by someone else, and which is why MS will no doubt eventually go ahead with a full blown Halo 4, with or without Bungie's involvement.
Kind of like, similarly, how Sega owns the the Shining (Shining Force, Shining in the Darkness, etc.) series, even though the original games were developed for them by Climax. Or how games like Mother and Kirby are owned by Nintendo, even though they were developed by HAL.
That's not always the case of course, that the publisher owns the IP, not the developer. But in these cases, it is.
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... ese_Ad.jpg
Cool info nevertheless.
@tendoboy1984
This. Even in the image of the Japanese ad I linked, it just says the game was "Distributed Exclusively by Nintendo". Rare themselves had all of the copyrights.