WayForward Director Says Nintendo Changed The Way He Looks At Making Video Games

I'm glad he had a positive takeaway from last year's collaboration. It's no secret that Reboot Camp saw underwhelming sales and reception, likely won't be getting a follow-up, so hopefully Yars will fare better.

If only Silicon Knights took notes from Nintendo.

@nintendozach To be fair, neither of those were actually developed by Nintendo. Intelligent Systems and Grezzo are both still independent companies despite mostly working on Nintendo properties.

@Not_Soos Wow. Just wow.

@HatesCheese That's exactly what I said the first time I saw the color xinquilothonetxez.

I sure wish he’d tell us what makes them so different. I guess the color analogy is cool though.

I like their out of the box thinking even if it sometimes to their detriment

Paper mario TOK's ring battles are undoubtedly unique and peaked my interest, but they grew stale and its easy to see its flaws after playing through the game. New gimmicks are fun but it stole Pape Mario's identity for the past decade. I like nintendos weird side in moderation

@nintendozach When you're in a creative role for most of your life, games don't feel like games, they feel like a canvas. So it's not hyperbolic of him to say he felt creatively enlightened when working with Nintendo.

Reboot camp was trash, he should be ashamed. Horrible graphics and lacking a proper multiplayer. Plus the map editor was terrible. How could they take a beloved game and make it bad?

Would be nice if he gave a more detailed response. I went to art school. My professor asked me what color is this wooden table and I said brown, she said that if it was simply brown, it would look very boring, look closer, the tables woodgrain has many variations of brown, yellow, red. Look at concrete, a rusted metal shovel, a blue door, what makes all these things interesting to look at is the subtle variations in color and texture. Now I’m aware that this director is probably not talking about color but a thought process. That’s what I would like to hear more in-depth about.

@nintendozach the comment from the Wayforward director is not about the games. It’s about the way Nintendo makes games.

I wasn't too excited about Yars, but I keep forgetting that Advance Wars on Switch exists and I need to pick up a copy sometime soon.

@nintendozach Look, I'm just tired of people blaming Nintendo every time Game Freak puts out another janky Pokemon game. If people are going to criticize something, they should at least know what they're talking about first. Most of the studios they actually own (Nintendo EPD, Retro, MonolithSoft, etc.) are legitimately brilliant, and deserve to be recognized and talked about individually.

It almost sounds as this guy's been enlightened. Beautiful. Doesn't get me interested in Yars in any way, but certainly there is something that makes Nintendo so Nintendo.

Oh, and @Not_Soos ... just amazing! Did you know you've made up a brand new unique word, I thought "no way this whole trip comes straight from this guy's mind" ... I searched google with the color you've created, the only result is this page here on NL! Beautiful!

...the comment section here is very negative.

I figured Yars was the Wars Team's roll-off project. Similar demographics of "esoteric weird stuff only weirdoes like me remember." I still find it amusing they made a strategy game for Nintendo when everyone thought they would make a search action, and then turn right around and make a Search Action for an IP best remembered as "Panzer Dragoon in the Acid only the 70's could create"

The color of.. professional game design. So many developers making games that are merely imitating good video games. But their gameplay loops don’t come full circle and don’t introduce new elements with any cadence

The horrible port jobs they did on River City Girls 2 and Contra: Operation Galuga changed the way Switch gamers look at WayForward.

@nintendozach It's a figure of speech. Maybe not the most common one, but common enough that I already knew what it meant. The guy's just saying that working with them changed the way he thinks about game development. The fact is a lot of teams and companies in the same industry will have dramatically different ways of doing things, especially when they're all too secretive to check notes with each other about what works and what doesn't. With how long they've managed to hang around at the top of the gaming industry, it'd be weird if Nintendo didn't have a few unique quirks or tricks up their sleeve that other game companies could stand to learn from.

Him be like: "Their genius is... it's almost froightening."

@nintendozach They’re not all infallible, but they all make excellent use of the colour xinquilothonetxez, which lends the games an undeniably* unique and vibrant aesthetic.

_{*Those who have xinquilothonetxez-specific colour-blindness may deny this.}

@nintendozach That is absolutely what he said. You're taking the humanity out of his words. His job as a creative is to be abstract, not robotically analyzing everything like what you're trying to do...

And I'm speaking as someone who is on the creative side, so I absolutely resonate with what he's trying to say, as I've had epiphanies of my own.

I really wish this game would have released as the full trilogy and included the DS game with the same cast. It also never went on sale, so hard to justify at full price. I'll just go play the originals instead

@Axecon There are two DS games you know, although the latter one doesn't have the same characters.

I enjoyed it ok. I agree the $60 price tag was too high though. I wonder if we'll ever get a Battalion Wars remake/reboot? Probably not since this may have not done as well as hoped? I enjoyed the Gamecube game and didn't play much of the Wii game.

@Hoshiko I imagine there's more info in that article but it's behind a paywall

@Yalloo Haha, thank you. I tried to come up with a word that wasn't just a bunch of random keys but actually had syllables that could be pronounced to make it a bit more realistic. And I tried to make it long enough that it hopefully wouldn't match any words that already existed. I did still wonder whether a match would come up in Google, but I didn't bother searching to see. I also couldn't remember how I spelled it, so every subsequent use of the word was just copied and pasted from the first time I typed it out, to keep it consistent, lol.

@Gummi Yeah, I'm aware, just a huge opportunity to leave out Dual Strike. But maybe it was cut out because it's not as fondly loved as the first two in that trilogy. Days of Ruin had cool mechanics but it would be weird to include with such a different cast.

@Maxz It's good to see a fellow brother of the color cult. May we tickle the corneas of every nonbeliever with the feather of enlightenment so they, too, may peer beyond the veil. It is our sacred duty for the good of hue-manity.

By the way guys, there's actually 51 shades of grey, but y'all aren't ready for that conversation.

I'm actually enjoying Reboot Camp a lot. It's my first Advance Wars game so I have no opinion on how good it is compared to previous games but I find it very good and fun. Lack of online multiplayer isn't an issue for me since I play local multiplayer with my friends. The "toy-like" aesthetic of the units doesn't bother me and actually looks fine. Game is very engaging, challenging, and fun and I'm wishing they would release Dual Strike as DLC but I can see that won't happen which is a shame. At least I can play that on my Miyoo Mini Plus!

@Not_Soos So now you're posting completely unrelated comments to the articles and including NSFW stuff? This literally reads like a fetish thing, take it somewhere else. Kids use this site.

@nintendozach I’ll take the words of the Wayforward director in that he actually learned a lot from Nintendo in how to best make games.

Also: There are tons of aspects he could have learned. Efficiency, financial aspects, marketing, creativity, team management, ….

And yes, I actually do think Nintendo is one of those special places where Willy Wonka could work his magic.

@Not_Soos thanks! I appreciate the thought process. And man, looking at this thread, it seems like it's catching on too.

@Not_Soos You were being off-topic, included NSFW content, but you're surprised that your comment got removed? Again, it read like a fetish story, that doesn't belong here on a platform for video games aimed at children. If you want to run wild with obscene stories, take your "fun" elsewhere.

@Not_Soos oh wow, I came to see it with my own eyes. I find it a bit extreme as well tbh. It was a fun little joke about a new colour, and the article was exactly about that. How is that NSFW, I also don't get it. Looking at Nintendo news isn't NSFW then XD
But hey, just like in the real world there are jealous and frustrated people all over the place who only feel like they exist when they're undermining others. Hope they feel good about themselves now. All in all, it was a harmless joke, and I found it pretty elaborate as well. It doesn't really matter. Maybe there will be a more suitable article in the future to post it again XD

The world would be a much duller place without Nintendo…

@nintendozach are you glad you fought this bizarre fight?

@JohnnyMind I had no idea about this, what's the article header? Kinda sucks NLife buries the best articles of the month underneath daily drivel.

A color that doesn't exist...interesting metaphor.

on one hand, it's nice to see they had a good experience making reboot camp.

On the other, I can'T forgive nintendo for pretty much giving up on that game and not updating it at all for the past year despite numerous issue.

I do think that Yars look pretty neat

@Blue_Dread it is a very good game. it'S a shame that the versus mode has no way to save a game in progress so if it ever crash you lose everything (which happened to me a couple of time)

@nintendozach Paper Mario Origami was one of my favourite games. It might not be the RPG you want but it felt like an older style Zelda which I really appreciated.

I like some wayforward games like the mummy demastered and alien infestation, and I love their shantae series, even backing their shantae half-genie hero kickstater and platinum it when it released back then, oh and I love their new river city girls series too.

It's cool that they're so close to nintendo, I hope they're going to be partners for a long time

@nintendozach Man, if it's a hyperbole you are being too literal, according to Cambridge Dictionary:

"We use hyperbole /haɪˈpɜ:bəlɪ/ to exaggerate. We sometimes do this to emphasise something, to add humour or to gain attention. When we use hyperbole, we often make statements which are obviously untrue"

He's not even talking about colour, like @Friendly explained

@nintendozach
If it was up to some fans, all Paper Mario games would have the exact same mechanics as TTYD.

It would be like Bethesda, no innovation.

@JohnnyMind Thanks, reading it through right now!