ARMS producer details the game's creation process, says design was similar to Mario Kart in many regards

Kosuke Yabuki, the producer of ARMS, hosted a panel at GDC today to give some insight into the game's creation. Some finer points from the presentation have been listed below.

- Mario Kart and ARMS are like siblings
- lessons learned on Mario Kart helped to form many aspects of ARMS
- Yabuki considered the possibility of creating a fighting game where the camera was position behind the player’s character
- fighting games typically use a side-on perspective to make it easier for the player to judge the distance between combatants
- the goal was to create a fighting game using the spacing and control from a Mario Kart-esque behind-the-character camera
- this lead to a rudimentary 3D prototype with fighters whose arms extended across a boxing ring
- Yabuki said early on, ARMS felt a bit like a shooter as well
- very few of the prototypes that the R&D teams design at Nintendo blossom into commercial games
- this is because Nintendo expressly looks for game ideas that deviate from existing game styles and fashions
- “If [Shigeru] Miyamoto asks me the question: “What’s different about this, and I don’t have an answer, then I’m finished.”
- at first only the fist extended, but the devs found that the action on screen was too slight and unsatisfying
- this was changed to the whole arm extending, which really clicked with the dev team
- the team did not feel that the extendable arm function needed to be explained in the game’s fiction
- using a behind-the-back camera allowed the team to flesh out the 3D stages
- the team put “a lot of effort and thought” into the characters’ clothing in order to get across that this is a serious sport
- the work on Mario Kart's fictitious logos and brands was parlayed into creating ARMS' characters
- ARMS was also inspired by Mario Kart's element of luck
- Nintendo used AI matches to ensure that no one particular combination was significantly better or worse than another
- a lot of time was spent considering the characters’ athletic bodies
- in pursuing the art and technique of good game design, no experience is wasted, as, “Good game design is universal.”