If you notice one thing about Gaijin Games current profile of titles, there’s one thing the unites them all: they all have released on Nintendo’s WiiWare service. Say what you will about Nintendo’s service, such as the lack of hype for games and the underdeveloped infrastructure, but Gaijin Games as seemed to found a good niche working with Big N.
This is in part that all three members of the team have a strong background with Nintendo, so “it was certainly a comfort zone” says Alex Neuse, Creative Director of the team. While they are licensed for all consoles, and don’t see themselves as a Nintendo-only team, they found that the Wii offered control that was special and unique, and in the case of BIT.TRIP Beat, offered the best control scheme on the market.
I actually asked what Alex had to say about developers “taking a dookie on the Wii,” (my question, not his) or treating the system as something not worth paying attention to. What he said blew me away: “Developers who take a dookie on Nintendo are cowards, in my opinion.”
Of course, Alex followed it up, explaining that Gaijin Games views the Wii as still a system of untapped potential. Alex points out that Nintendo has always been on the cutting edge of control design, and that the Wii remote has still not been fully tapped. In defense of his fellow developers, he says that “I think that developers are kinda scared of it because they feel the need to do something unique with it.” He argues that the fact that Sony and Microsoft have come out with their own motion controllers shows that there is a market and a potential for this new way of interacting. “If you want to make amusing fun games with unique ways of interacting with them, maybe the Wii is your platform. And I think it is ours, at least for now.”
