Nigoro onwhy La-Mulana was held up, sequel chances, 3DS/Wii U interest
A portion of a C3 interview with Takumi Naramura, Director of Nigoro...
C3: The game encountered some problems when it came to get it localised for Western WiiWare markets. Can you perhaps clarify for us what the problems were that prevented the game from becoming available to western Wii owners?
Naramura-san: We had to deal differently with Japan, North America and Europe. I knew that ratings were different depending on areas and PAL is required for Europe. Therefore, we made it easy to switch regions. A problem was the matter of download content. It was approved in Japan, but it wasn't in North America. Then, the modification that we did for North America caused another problem in Europe. We had difficulties to iron out all of those issues.
C3: Are you allowed to comment on how the process of getting a game approved for a WiiWare release in Japan differs from its counterparts for the North American and European markets?
Naramura-san: I can't say exactly what happened, but we couldn't get the download content approved even nearly one year after releasing it in Japan. Finally, we had no choice but to omit it. On this point, it would be nice if the approval processes are unified, such as in the App Store and on Steam.
Rudy: Do you have any plans to make another game similar to LA-MULANA, or even perhaps a sequel if the reception it gets is good enough?
Naramura-san: Like LA-MULANA, the best thing I do is to create a type of game where players explore huge world. I'd like to do it, but it is quite tough to make the something the same scale as LA-MULANA. Even if we got a high evaluation, I don't want to make it into a series easily. In the case that we do make a sequel, it should be a continuous story and world. However, the LA-MULANA ruin is collapsed. Is there any way I can make such a sequel??
C3: What can we expect next from Nigoro, here in Europe (or in the west in general, for that matter)? Are any of your projects on the way to any Nintendo console? Whether you have any or not, what do you think of the 3DS and Wii U as systems to develop for? Could we see LA-MULANA on the 3DS eShop as well?
Naramura-san: We are going to concentrate on creating PC games for a while because it was very tough work for us to release the game on a consumer game machine. To release for consoles is an opportunity for many people to play our games. We hope to keep going if we can, but we don't have many resources to port our games to consoles. We are happy to deal with someone who ports and publishes our games, though! I am so attracted to 3DS, Wii U and XBLA, indeed.
C3: The game encountered some problems when it came to get it localised for Western WiiWare markets. Can you perhaps clarify for us what the problems were that prevented the game from becoming available to western Wii owners?
Naramura-san: We had to deal differently with Japan, North America and Europe. I knew that ratings were different depending on areas and PAL is required for Europe. Therefore, we made it easy to switch regions. A problem was the matter of download content. It was approved in Japan, but it wasn't in North America. Then, the modification that we did for North America caused another problem in Europe. We had difficulties to iron out all of those issues.
C3: Are you allowed to comment on how the process of getting a game approved for a WiiWare release in Japan differs from its counterparts for the North American and European markets?
Naramura-san: I can't say exactly what happened, but we couldn't get the download content approved even nearly one year after releasing it in Japan. Finally, we had no choice but to omit it. On this point, it would be nice if the approval processes are unified, such as in the App Store and on Steam.
Rudy: Do you have any plans to make another game similar to LA-MULANA, or even perhaps a sequel if the reception it gets is good enough?
Naramura-san: Like LA-MULANA, the best thing I do is to create a type of game where players explore huge world. I'd like to do it, but it is quite tough to make the something the same scale as LA-MULANA. Even if we got a high evaluation, I don't want to make it into a series easily. In the case that we do make a sequel, it should be a continuous story and world. However, the LA-MULANA ruin is collapsed. Is there any way I can make such a sequel??
C3: What can we expect next from Nigoro, here in Europe (or in the west in general, for that matter)? Are any of your projects on the way to any Nintendo console? Whether you have any or not, what do you think of the 3DS and Wii U as systems to develop for? Could we see LA-MULANA on the 3DS eShop as well?
Naramura-san: We are going to concentrate on creating PC games for a while because it was very tough work for us to release the game on a consumer game machine. To release for consoles is an opportunity for many people to play our games. We hope to keep going if we can, but we don't have many resources to port our games to consoles. We are happy to deal with someone who ports and publishes our games, though! I am so attracted to 3DS, Wii U and XBLA, indeed.
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