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Metroid Designer Talks Metroid Prime II, EyeToy

Posted by simoniker on from the irish-metroid-featuring-shamus dept.

Thanks to C+VG for their interview with Yoshio Sakamoto, a key designer on the Metroid titles, and now manager of Nintendo's notable R&D1 development studio. He talks about Sony's EyeToy USB camera game ("...if it's quite a unique product it's a shame Nintendo didn't come up with that kind of idea"), Retro's in-development Metroid Prime sequel ("my involvement with Metroid Prime II is like my involvement with the first one - I am advising them as to what kind of flavor they have to adhere to, and the kind of storylines possible"), and makes it clear that Nintendo are actively working on follow-up hardware ("Nintendo is always working on the next generation of systems, be it handheld or console game machines.")

2 of 19 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Eye Toy? by Acidic_Diarrhea · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I believe there was a video game simulating a sport (I can't recall which one but it might be the new NBA Live from EA) where you could transfer a photograph from your PC to EA's servers and then download that photo to your PS2 to create a new character in the game to use on your team. That's my hazy recollection of it - although I'm hoping this jogs someone's memory and they can fill in the details. The long and short of it is that from what I recall this was a software based solution without the inclusion of any camera. You supplied the picture and EA (or whatever company it was) formatted it to be received by your PS2. The Eye Toy, on the other hand, is an actual camera that you plug into your PS2. I suppose more game companies could use the Eye Toy as a means to getting your face onto a character, like the situation described above, but it seems like it will be a niche market and the method of sending a picture to a server seems like it would be more customer-friendly.

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  2. Re:Eye Toy? by edwdig · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Perfect Dark originally had support for face mapping, but it was pulled after Columbine. You needed a GameBoy, the GameBoy camera, and the GBN64 transfer pak. The transfer pak and camera never really caught on, so not many people would've been able to use the feature if it was included.

    Nintendo did have some game called Talent Studio or something like that. Not sure of the details, but it's probably what you're thinking of. I remember you could create custom characters in it; I think that included mapping your face in somehow. But it seemed like a product that would only stand a chance of being successful in Japan.