Dave McCarthy spills the beans on EA Playground

It seems that a lot of hype has been building for Electonic Arts latest video game, EA Playground. Currently being developed by EA Canada, it’s slated to be released for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Dave McCarthy, the executive producer for the game, was recently interviewed by IGN and had a lot to say about their project.

He discussed four things: what the game is about, the controls, multiplayer, and surprisingly the storyline. The game, McCarthy said, is intended to capture “the sheer fun of being a kid.” Set in a playground, they filled it “full of interesting characters, cool collectables, and most importantly, a mix of easy to pick up and incredibly fun playground games.” He even mentioned a single-player campaign mode, but we’ll go into that later.

With regards to controls, he assured that the Wii and DS versions of the game would take advantage of the unique controls of both systems. He mentioned of the use of the stylus in the DS for a game he called Bug Hunt and the microphone for Spitballs. He also said that there are a lot of other games but he “won’t get into all the games and mechanics quite yet.” Oh phooey.

With regards to multiplayer, it seems that this title is ideally a party game, and it is “the ideal way to play EA Playground. Whether you do four-player local parties on the Wii or wireless sessions on the DS, you’ll find that all games are multiplayer supported and that frantic simultaneous play is the order of the day.” This could be interesting considering that Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Party 8, and DK Jet are all set to be out this year as well.

The full article awaits after the jump!

It seems that a lot of hype has been building for Electonic Arts latest video game, EA Playground. Currently being developed by EA Canada, it’s slated to be released for the Nintendo Wii and DS. Dave McCarthy, the executive producer for the game, was recently interviewed by IGN and had a lot to say about their project.

He discussed four things: what the game is about, the controls, multiplayer, and surprisingly the storyline. The game, McCarthy said, is intended to capture “the sheer fun of being a kid.” Set in a playground, they filled it “full of interesting characters, cool collectables, and most importantly, a mix of easy to pick up and incredibly fun playground games.” He even mentioned a single-player campaign mode, but we’ll go into that later.

With regards to controls, he assured that the Wii and DS versions of the game would take advantage of the unique controls of both systems. He mentioned of the use of the stylus in the DS for a game he called Bug Hunt and the microphone for Spitballs. He also said that there are a lot of other games but he “won’t get into all the games and mechanics quite yet.” Oh phooey.

With regards to multiplayer, it seems that this title is ideally a party game, and it is “the ideal way to play EA Playground. Whether you do four-player local parties on the Wii or wireless sessions on the DS, you’ll find that all games are multiplayer supported and that frantic simultaneous play is the order of the day.” This could be interesting considering that Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Party 8, and DK Jet are all set to be out this year as well.

Finally he let loose some info on the Single-player campaign. He said that “given that we’ve designed EA Playground for kids of all ages, we wanted to offer a twist to the traditional single-player campaign experience that kids could easily relate to.” He clarified this by adding that “what we’ve done is populated the game with a wide selection of cool looking stickers you can collect based on playing various games, completing special dare challenges, and exploring areas of the playground world.”

EA Playground is slated to be released on the third quarter of 2007, so we can expect a lot of competition in the realm of Wii and DS parties this year. We still have to wait and see if the game is really everything it claims and whether or not it appeals to the young and young at heart (or mind).

Via IGN