During a recent edition of Iwata Asks, President of Nintendo Satoru Iwata got a chance to sit down with the creator of Super Smash Bros Masahiro Sakurai for a chat about his latest project, Kid Icarus Uprising. While talking about the features of the game, the conversation started off with a discussion about just why Sakurai decided to pick the long dormant Kid Icarus series to revamp.
Hopefully this won't be the last we see of Pit
Iwata mentioned, “After Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out for Wii, I didn’t think the right course was to make a game in the same series right away. So I said, “Let’s do something a little different.” Also, the new hardware, the Nintendo 3DS, was coming out, so to appeal to consumers, I wanted you to make something the in-house Nintendo development team wouldn’t. I made those two requests.”
Sakurai replied, “After I’ve thought about those requests and other various factors, I thought we would make a shooting game with air battles and land battles. At the same time, I wondered if we couldn’t revive a stalled series from the Nintendo lineup. I thought of which titles would be effective, and the central protagonist, Pit, is an angel who can’t fly, so I thought it might be interesting if he could fly via a kind of magical power and headed down toward earth.”
Also making the decision easier was the popularity of Pit in fighting game Super Smash Bros. Brawl where he made his first appearance since the NES and original GameBoy. People liked him so Sakurai thought the choice was obvious.
Sakurai also touched upon what kind of player Uprising was aiming for, “At first, I thought a lot of light games – like Touch Generations – for casual users would come out for Nintendo 3DS, so I wanted to make a solid game for gamers.” Sakurai explained, “I want people to play hard” and one way of making sure of this was the innovative Fiend’s Cauldron which allowed you the chance to change the difficulty to your liking. Play on a much harder setting and the rewards as well as the risks are greater, while playing lower also allows less skilled gamers the chance to play too.
Kid Icarus Uprising came out last Friday and it seems fans of Sakurai, Pit and gaming in general are pleased with this resurrection of a once forgotten hero. With development of the game now complete Sakurai and the team at Project Sora will now begin work on the highly anticipated next Smash Bros title for both Wii U and 3DS.
