Square Enix Talks WiiWare Advantages, Size, ActRaiser Possibilities

Author: by Staff

Talking as part of an in-depth Gamasutra interview, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King co-creators Fumiaki Shiraishi and Toshihiro Tsuchida have been discussing the flagship WiiWare launch title, touching on download limits, small game innovation, and the possibilities of seeing an Actraiser update. Firstly, when asked about how the city-building title, which launches today in North America on WiiWare for 1500 points ($15), came about - specifically the advantage of using WiiWare, Tsuchida commented: "One would be games with a single focus, I think. We can make more of those... You can tell from this game design that if it succeeds, it will probably succeed better with the Wii, as opposed to other platforms." In addition, when asked about fitting the game into the rumored 40mb-per-game space constrictions of the Wii, which lacks a hard drive, Shiraishi explained: "It actually wasn't that difficult. I think we designed the game to fit in the memory space. It wasn't so much that we had a game and had to squeeze it down. If anything, I think the size restriction helped us. I don't think we would've had this game design idea if we didn't have the memory restriction to begin with. Once we had the restriction, we had... all our artists are veterans, so if you tell them the size, they'll hit it right on. And once we started making it, in the beginning, a lot of people didn't think we could fit this game in the given size, but we were actually quite a bit under. It uses a little bit of compression, and a little bit of techniques. You can fit a lot of game in a small size." Finally, the subject of Virtual Console and classic Quintet/Enix action/sim hybrid ActRaiser came up, since Square Enix owns the rights to the title, and Shiriashi commented: "I'd like to make an ActRaiser sequel. That would be kind of fun." The full Gamasutra interview with the Square Enix duo is now available, including lots more discussion of the format, the advantages of producing smaller games, and the possibilities of the firm making more 2D titles for downloadable formats.