Tecmo’s Keisuke Kikuchi talks about new Rygar game for the Wii

Tecmo is calling in the big guns as they enlisted the help of Fatal Frame‘s producer Keisuke Kikuchi and his newly formed Team Tachyon to spearhead the upcoming Rygar: The Battle of Argus action game for the Nintendo Wii. Taking into account its humble beginnings as a coin-op arcade game, Kikuchi explains the development of this old time game and moving it onto the next generation platform.

Most gamers were slightly disappointed with Tecmo’s decision to remake the rather lukewarm PS2 version of Rygar. However, Kikuchi says that instead of creating a game from the ground up, he prefers making games based on a central theme core and build around them new and unique features based on the console. A testament to this are his well-renowned horror survival games, Fatal Frame.

He explains his game making philosophy in detail:

My game-making philosophy has always been to focus on one thing, and build the game around that one main theme. For instance with Fatal Frame it was horror, it was a scary game and the whole game was built around that one big theme. So in the case of a new Rygar, my focus was on how to best utilize the Wii control. Everything is built around the Diskarmor control using the Wii controller. Of course I could have started everything from scratch on a new Rygar project, but if I was to do that it might not have been on Wii, we could have done it for PS3, 360, PS2. However, why we focused on Wii was because of what we could do with the Wii controller. Because of that, even though the game may be based on a five year-old game, as you call it, it will still feel very fresh and very unique on the Wii system. That way I can focus on that one important thing.

Currently, they are working on perfecting the controls that Rygar’s “Diskarmor” and how flexible the Wiimote will be during the game’s combat. Also, they’re matching the game’s graphics from its PS2 base to an optimized version for the Wii.

Kikuchi also talks about how the combat will involve a lot of “muscle impact.” While it sounds a little stressful on the arms, it definitely gives a gamer a feel of what it’s like going through hordes of giant pillbugs and gleefully taking them out with Rygar’s Diskarmor.

So far, the designs and screenshots they’ve shown are beyond stellar. Hopefully, we can expect the game’s release either by the end of the year or early 2008.

Tecmo is calling in the big guns as they enlisted the help of Fatal Frame‘s producer Keisuke Kikuchi and his newly formed Team Tachyon to spearhead the upcoming Rygar: The Battle of Argus action game for the Nintendo Wii. Taking into account its humble beginnings as a coin-op arcade game, Kikuchi explains the development of this old time game and moving it onto the next generation platform.

Most gamers were slightly disappointed with Tecmo’s decision to remake the rather lukewarm PS2 version of Rygar. However, Kikuchi says that instead of creating a game from the ground up, he prefers making games based on a central theme core and build around them new and unique features based on the console. A testament to this are his well-renowned horror survival games, Fatal Frame.

He explains his game making philosophy in detail:

My game-making philosophy has always been to focus on one thing, and build the game around that one main theme. For instance with Fatal Frame it was horror, it was a scary game and the whole game was built around that one big theme. So in the case of a new Rygar, my focus was on how to best utilize the Wii control. Everything is built around the Diskarmor control using the Wii controller. Of course I could have started everything from scratch on a new Rygar project, but if I was to do that it might not have been on Wii, we could have done it for PS3, 360, PS2. However, why we focused on Wii was because of what we could do with the Wii controller. Because of that, even though the game may be based on a five year-old game, as you call it, it will still feel very fresh and very unique on the Wii system. That way I can focus on that one important thing.

Currently, they are working on perfecting the controls that Rygar’s “Diskarmor” and how flexible the Wiimote will be during the game’s combat. Also, they’re matching the game’s graphics from its PS2 base to an optimized version for the Wii.

Kikuchi also talks about how the combat will involve a lot of “muscle impact.” While it sounds a little stressful on the arms, it definitely gives a gamer a feel of what it’s like going through hordes of giant pillbugs and gleefully taking them out with Rygar’s Diskarmor.

So far, the designs and screenshots they’ve shown are beyond stellar. Hopefully, we can expect the game’s release either by the end of the year or early 2008.