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Wii Play: Motion Developers Unveiled (SKIP, Chun-Soft, Prope, Good-Feel + more)

Can't believe this is officially the first time Naka and Ohshima worked on the same game since Sonic Adventure.

Also I wonder what this means for AQI? Did Ohshima indeed leave?

Come on Nintendo, get Arzest and Prope together again for a brand-new IP!
 
So much amazing talent for something I'm so not interested in. :/

I did know Oshima left AQ/Artoon? Wow, when did that happen, I wonder who he took with him?
 

Boerseun

Banned
Maybe I'm trolling. I really don't know. But these are some brilliant teams. And I really want them working on something that isn't Wii Play Motion. I'm sure it'll be fun in the end. But man, this is some of the most talented people you will find in the Japanese games industry. There isn't a single dud among them. Rather put them to work on ten budget-priced games with 10 to 15 hours of gameplay each. Come on, Nintendo, Wii need it.
 

bolt7

Banned
Played this games a couple of times now and nearly finished it (yes, it's short but re-playable) and it's quite fun. Considering you get a Motion Plus enabled Remote with it, it's worth the purchase. The mini-games are good, but some are better than others (which is probably due to the fact it was created by so many devs.) For example, the Ice-Cream stacking mini-game is very short and doesn't have a heck of a lot to it, whilst the Teeter-Targets game has around fifty levels (and is pretty much a game in itself.)

What impressed me most was the Spooky Search mini-game. It's been the first time since Let's Tap (I think) where the remote is used in a different way. You spin around and point the remote around the room, listening to noises coming from the wii remote and searching for ghosts. When you find one, the remote chimes and you pull the ghost back into the TV and capture it Luigi's Mansion style. I thought it was very cool; but it's one of those things that's unfortunately fun for about five minutes.

Veggie Guardin' has to be my favourite. It's surprisingly fun and the
bosses
are silly / awesome.
 

apana

Member
Well at least Nintendo is putting food on the table for all these Japanese game designers. I'm very impressed by the success of Wii Party in Japan and maybe Wii Play Motion will replicate that.
 
I went through the credits on YouTube and found Arzest and NdCube's listings:

ARZEST Corporation

Producer
Yoji Ishi (Artoon, Sega) (Development Producer in Blinx 1 and 2, one of two Project Managers in Sonic Adventure and the sole Project Manager in NIGHTS into Dreams, one of two Producers in Panzer Dragoon and one of four Producers in Ristar Genesis)

Directors
Naoto Ohshima (You all know him ;) )
Yutaka Sugano (Artoon, Sega) (Software Support in Sonic Adventure, one of the Object Placer in Sonic 2 as well as the sole Special Stage Object Placer in Sonic 2 as well, Special Thanks in Panzer Dragoon)

Game Design
Tomohide Hayashi (Artoon)
Mikio Kume (Sega)

Program Directors
Yuki Hatakeyama (Artoon, Sega) (one of the two Field Program Supporters in Sonic Adventure)
Shinji Iseki (Artoon)
Minoru Ogawa (Artoon)

Programming
Kenji Miyakawa (Sega, this was seemingly the closest and most sensible match)
Koichi Watanabe (Two listings, one that shows an Artoon game and some Nintendo games, another that shows no Artoon or Sega games, take your pick, the former has just one extra letter)

Art Director
Masamichi Harada (Artoon, Sega) (Art Director of Blinx 1, one of the two Art Directors of Blinx 2, and a Lead Field Artist in Sonic Adventure, one of the Attraction Designers in Knuckles Chaotix)

Graphic Design
Yoshihide Sasagawa
Akira Kokai (Two listings, one shows no related games with the correct name, but another with a similar name with two Sega games)
Koki Mogi (Artoon, Sega) (One of the Planet Designers of Ristar Genesis)
Hiroyuki Kawaguchi (Artoon, Sega) (one of the many Artists of Blinx 1, and in Sonic CD the Art Director, one of the Landscape Designers, and one of the Animation Visual Directors, wow)

NdCube only has two people in the credis; Atsushi Ikeda and Kenji Kikuchi, both of which were Hudson folks and were in most if not all MP games. Ikeda was in the Iwata asks for Wii Party, Kenji is a new Hudson folk no known before, only bringing the known count to four.
 
I went through the credits on YouTube and found Arzest and NdCube's listings:

ARZEST Corporation

Producer
Yoji Ishi (Artoon, Sega)

Directors
Naoto Ohshima (You all know him ;) )
Yutaka Sugano (Artoon, Sega)

Game Design
Tomohide Hayashi (Two different listings, one with Artoon games, and another with loads of Sega games)
Mikio Kume (Sega)

Program Directors
Yuki Hatakeyama (Artoon, Sega)
Shinji Iseki (Artoon)
Minoru Ogawa (Artoon)

Programming
Kenji Miyakawa (Sega, this was seemingly the closest and most sensible match)
Koichi Watanabe (Two listings, one that shows an Artoon game and some Nintendo games, another that shows no Artoon or Sega games, take your pick, the former has just one extra letter)

Art Director
Masamichi Harada (Artoon, Sega)

Graphic Design
Yoshihide Sasagawa
Akira Kokai (Two listings, one shows no related games with the correct name, but another with a similar name with two Sega games)
Koki Mogi (Artoon, Sega)
Hiroyuki Kawaguchi (Artoon, Sega)

NdCube only has two people in the credis; Atsushi Ikeda and Kenji Kikuchi, both of which were Hudson folks and were in most if not all MP games. Ikeda was in the Iwata asks for Wii Party, Kenji is a new Hudson folk no known before, only bringing the known count to four.

Ahh, so that's where Artoon's staff went! I didn't recognise their names! IIRC, quite a few Artoon staff joined EAD Tokyo as well (Developers who have a close relationship with Nintendo, who go bust always seem to wind up back with Nintendo in the end...)
 
Ahh, so that's where Artoon's staff went! I didn't recognise their names! IIRC, quite a few Artoon staff joined EAD Tokyo as well (Developers who have a close relationship with Nintendo, who go bust always seem to wind up back with Nintendo in the end...)

Really? :) Where did you hear this?
 
Also, MAQL's site confirms that Artoon was behind Last Story:

hp_ls001b2.jpg


Can't find such a shot of Cubic Ninja or Zoo Resort, which I'd assume were by Artoon. But really, even if MAQL still acknowledges them as an entity, it's not really Artoon as it was meant to be without Ohshima and the mass amounts of Sega folks he brought with him to Arzest, so what ever anyone thought of Artoon at least being a big Sega spin-off company by Ohshima, just replace the name with Arzest and you're good.

Nintendo should buy or at least partner up with Arzest, especially if they already have Artoon folks at EAD Tokyo (which I actually would assume worked on 3D Land, as supposedly that was by a seperate team from the Galaxy team, imagine; Mario by Sega, and we want Nintendo to make a Sonic game. :lol

Arzest can be a vital new asset to Nintendo, having one of the top minds behind Sonic and a lot of folks who were around since the Genesis era can really give Nintendo another talented team that fits with their philosophy. Hudson would've been the same, but we got NdCube now which is almost the same thing now.

Having Arzest's first game be Wii play Motion and Ohshima's team at Artoon having made at least 6 Nintendo platform games (Not even counting TLS, Cubic Ninja and Zoo Resort, depending if he formed Arzest before those were made) as opposed to merely 3 on other platforms (Blue Dragon, Vampire Rain, and Echoshift) shows that they prefer Nintendo platforms in the first place.
 
Also, MAQL's site confirms that Artoon was behind Last Story:

hp_ls001b2.jpg


Can't find such a shot of Cubic Ninja or Zoo Resort, which I'd assume were by Artoon. But really, even if MAQL still acknowledges them as an entity, it's not really Artoon as it was meant to be without Ohshima and the mass amounts of Sega folks he brought with him to Arzest, so what ever anyone thought of Artoon at least being a big Sega spin-off company by Ohshima, just replace the name with Arzest and you're good.

Nintendo should buy or at least partner up with Arzest, especially if they already have Artoon folks at EAD Tokyo (which I actually would assume worked on 3D Land, as supposedly that was by a seperate team from the Galaxy team, imagine; Mario by Sega, and we want Nintendo to make a Sonic game. :lol

Arzest can be a vital new asset to Nintendo, having one of the top minds behind Sonic and a lot of folks who were around since the Genesis era can really give Nintendo another talented team that fits with their philosophy. Hudson would've been the same, but we got NdCube now which is almost the same thing now.

Having Arzest's first game be Wii play Motion and Ohshima's team at Artoon having made at least 6 Nintendo platform games (Not even counting TLS, Cubic Ninja and Zoo Resort, depending if he formed Arzest before those were made) as opposed to merely 3 on other platforms (Blue Dragon, Vampire Rain, and Echoshift) shows that they prefer Nintendo platforms in the first place.

You've just echoed exactly what I said 6 months ago when Arzest were revealed as one of Wii Play Motion's developers. All of the developers of this game have had strong ties/good relations with Nintendo in the past.

I fully expect Arzest to be working on a game for Nintendo as we speak (along with Prope, who will become one of Nintendo's most important independent dev partners. Mark my words)

Nintendo snapping up a dead developer's staff/ former partner dev staff in some roundabout way (be it through direct hiring or maintaining relations with an off shoot startup developer like Arzest) is Nintendo's MO. They did the same with Flagship (with most of the staff joining EAD and HAL - Kirby Mass Attack being largely developed by former Flagship staff), Hudson (who are now basically known as NDCUBE), Argonaut (Q Games), former EAD staff (Vitei) and some Skip staff (who formed Asobism, who made Freakyforms and Vanpool, who made Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland)

The only dev who kicked the bucket where they didn't seem to bail out the staff members seems to be Cing (unless they're working on something in secret...)
 
What do they say about Club Penguin Game Day? Artoon or AQ?

it's Artoon, since when the game was unveiled, Disney has a PR showing Artoon by name.

If you're asking about on MAQL's site, I can't navigate it well as it's all in Japanese.

You've just echoed exactly what I said 6 months ago when Arzest were revealed as one of Wii Play Motion's developers. All of the developers of this game have had strong ties/good relations with Nintendo in the past.

I fully expect Arzest to be working on a game for Nintendo as we speak (along with Prope, who will become one of Nintendo's most important independent dev partners. Mark my words)

Nintendo snapping up a dead developer's staff/ former partner dev staff in some roundabout way (be it through direct hiring or maintaining relations with an off shoot startup developer like Arzest) is Nintendo's MO. They did the same with Flagship (with most of the staff joining EAD and HAL - Kirby Mass Attack being largely developed by former Flagship staff), Hudson (who are now basically known as NDCUBE), Argonaut (Q Games), former EAD staff (Vitei) and some Skip staff (who formed Asobism, who made Freakyforms and Vanpool, who made Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland)

Huh, not heard of Asobism, are they hand Vitei (knew of them) like second party or fully independant? I've never heard of Vitei making non-Nintendo platform games so they always seemed to be a Nintendo team anyway.

Q-Games seems more of a Sony company outside of SF, haven't they made a lot of Pixeljunk games? Not only that, they REALLY talked trash about the Wii. :/

Didn't know that Mass Attack was also made by ex-Flagship folks, I remember hearing that Flagship folks at EAD made Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.
 
Huh, not heard of Asobism, are they hand Vitei (knew of them) like second party or fully independant? I've never heard of Vitei making non-Nintendo platform games so they always seemed to be a Nintendo team anyway.

They're a new company that was just recently founded by the lead director of Chibi Robo and Chibi Robo Park Patrol (twas set up in 2009 IIRC). They've only made one game (Freakyforms) and seem to be second party ALA Vitei.

Q-Games seems more of a Sony company outside of SF, haven't they made a lot of Pixeljunk games? Not only that, they REALLY talked trash about the Wii. :/

Dylan Cuthbert has publicly stated that his company is 50-50 Nintendo/Sony (which if anything is weird since he's had bad experiences with Sony in the past, while he actually wanted to continue to work at Nintendo but couldn't because of legal non-competition restrictions)

I think you might be getting Q-Games confused with Q-Entertainment (who always trash talk Nintendo and have never supported them outside of Meteos, which was Sakurai/Sora's game really)

Didn't know that Mass Attack was also made by ex-Flagship folks, I remember hearing that Flagship folks at EAD made Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.

This is true. The lead director of Skyward Sword was also the director of Minish Cap (which is why the two games feel so similar!) EAD don't have separate "handheld" and "console" teams for Zelda though. It's all just EAD. The same staff who worked on Spirit Tracks also worked on Skyward Sword.
 
I think you might be getting Q-Games confused with Q-Entertainment (who always trash talk Nintendo and have never supported them outside of Meteos, which was Sakurai/Sora's game really)

No, I'm certain it was Cuthbert who said he wouldn't to a SF for Wii because he saw the Wii as a mere toy (in the insulting sense).
 

Shikamaru Ninja

任天堂 の 忍者
As best I can remember:

1. Flagship was not a development studio but more a planning / coordination group. The Zelda games they worked on were developed by Capcom Production Studio 1. The Kirby games they worked on were developed by Dimps. The Fire Emblem games they worked on were with another company (besides Intsys).

2. Hidemaro Fujibayashi was a former Capcom developer. He left Capcom during/after Minish Cap and officially joined Nintendo.

3. I think there generally is two projects being handled by each EAD producer / group. There is some type of lead for each sku, but the overall production teams over lap. So there are 2 teams, but by the end it looks like one team.

4. Most of those ex-Flagship developers went to Engines I think. Which has some small staff from SNK as well. Mainly a company that helps other developers with their games.

5. EAD Tokyo has been hiring experience developers for a bit. Some of which could possibly include people from Amuzement Vision, Artoon, Square-Enix, Koei, SEGA. But it usually is 1-2 guys. Not like an entire company being absorbed.

6. Guys from EAD/SPD (Nintendo) and Q-Games/Vitei hangout. Kyoto coterie.

7. Wasnt former members of CING spotted creating a new company that concentrated on visual novels? Non game related this stime.
 
You've just echoed exactly what I said 6 months ago when Arzest were revealed as one of Wii Play Motion's developers. All of the developers of this game have had strong ties/good relations with Nintendo in the past.

I fully expect Arzest to be working on a game for Nintendo as we speak (along with Prope, who will become one of Nintendo's most important independent dev partners. Mark my words)

Nintendo snapping up a dead developer's staff/ former partner dev staff in some roundabout way (be it through direct hiring or maintaining relations with an off shoot startup developer like Arzest) is Nintendo's MO. They did the same with Flagship (with most of the staff joining EAD and HAL - Kirby Mass Attack being largely developed by former Flagship staff), Hudson (who are now basically known as NDCUBE), Argonaut (Q Games), former EAD staff (Vitei) and some Skip staff (who formed Asobism, who made Freakyforms and Vanpool, who made Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland)

The only dev who kicked the bucket where they didn't seem to bail out the staff members seems to be Cing (unless they're working on something in secret...)
Another good example is Good Feel, which is made up of former Konami Osaka staff (ie: the Goemon team) or Grezzo being ex-Square staff (Mana team). Nintendo's also gitten pretty close to Arika (old Capcom guard) recently.

Nintendo's really been doing this awhile in Japan though, it started in the early 2000s with Nintendo involved in forming companies like Brownie Brown or Genius Sonority.
 
Another good example is Good Feel, which is made up of former Konami Osaka staff (ie: the Goemon team) or Grezzo being ex-Square staff (Mana team). Nintendo's also gitten pretty close to Arika (old Capcom guard) recently.

Nintendo's really been doing this awhile in Japan though, it started in the early 2000s with Nintendo involved in forming companies like Brownie Brown or Genius Sonority.

Yeah, like this.

Funny because they made new IPs or franchise games, including Artoon with Flingsmash.

Arika made Endless Ocean and the 3D Classics line, Grezzo made Line Attack Heroes (which did come out, but as a JP-only WiiWare game dispite being shown in English at E3 2009) and the recent Zelda ports/remakes, and GF with Fluff's World of Yarn being turned into Kirby's Epic Yarn and Wario Land: Shake It.

Hopefully we'll get a mascot platformer or at least something a bit more traditional than Flingsmash from Arzest on Wii U.
 
1. Flagship was not a development studio but more a planning / coordination group. The Zelda games they worked on were developed by Capcom Production Studio 1. The Kirby games they worked on were developed by Dimps. The Fire Emblem games they worked on were with another company (besides Intsys).
Yep, Flagship was a planning studio, like Armor Project or Mistwalker. They were originally formed to write the scenario for Resident Evil 2 I believe.

Also, wasn't Engines the company that Intelligent Systems worked with on the GBA Fire Emblems?
 

Shikamaru Ninja

任天堂 の 忍者
Yep, Flagship was a planning studio, like Armor Project or Mistwalker. They were originally formed to write the scenario for Resident Evil 2 I believe.

Also, wasn't Engines the company that Intelligent Systems worked with on the GBA Fire Emblems?

Engines has done a lot of small work for Nintendo. They helped with Personal Trainer Walking, and a few Fire Emblems (GC and GBA).
 
The CING spin-off was Rika Suzuki and a few CING managers. Bellwood was already formed in 2009 and they owned the CING web domain after they filed for bankruptcy. Don't know what they're doing now.

Noise is working with NamcoBandai now.
http://www.noise-games.com/contents/?page_id=181#p01

Those came out in 2009.

Also, I just created Arzest's wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzest

It's small of course, but I think it's good and clean. What do you think? :)

And... what happened to our favourite muffin?! :'(
 
http://www.arzest.jp/en/index.html

Looks like Arzest recently helped out with some Mii Plaza features!

Now how about an actual game guys, you definitely seem to be shockingly close to Nintendo, hell, how the fuck did Nintendo allow a 3rd-party to work on such a key aspect of the 3DS' hardware?! o_O

Buyout imminent?

Also, I'm waiting on a user to upload the credits of Mario Party 9, once that finally happens, we'll know once and for all just how much of ND Cube consists of ex-Hudson folks.
 
I went through the credits on YouTube and found Arzest and NdCube's listings:

ARZEST Corporation

Producer
Yoji Ishi (Artoon, Sega) (Development Producer in Blinx 1 and 2, one of two Project Managers in Sonic Adventure and the sole Project Manager in NIGHTS into Dreams, one of two Producers in Panzer Dragoon and one of four Producers in Ristar Genesis)

Directors
Naoto Ohshima (You all know him ;) )
Yutaka Sugano (Artoon, Sega) (Software Support in Sonic Adventure, one of the Object Placer in Sonic 2 as well as the sole Special Stage Object Placer in Sonic 2 as well, Special Thanks in Panzer Dragoon)

Game Design
Tomohide Hayashi (Artoon)
Mikio Kume (Sega)

Program Directors
Yuki Hatakeyama (Artoon, Sega) (one of the two Field Program Supporters in Sonic Adventure)
Shinji Iseki (Artoon)
Minoru Ogawa (Artoon)

Programming
Kenji Miyakawa (Sega, this was seemingly the closest and most sensible match)
Koichi Watanabe (Two listings, one that shows an Artoon game and some Nintendo games, another that shows no Artoon or Sega games, take your pick, the former has just one extra letter)

Art Director
Masamichi Harada (Artoon, Sega) (Art Director of Blinx 1, one of the two Art Directors of Blinx 2, and a Lead Field Artist in Sonic Adventure, one of the Attraction Designers in Knuckles Chaotix)

Graphic Design
Yoshihide Sasagawa
Akira Kokai (Two listings, one shows no related games with the correct name, but another with a similar name with two Sega games)
Koki Mogi (Artoon, Sega) (One of the Planet Designers of Ristar Genesis)
Hiroyuki Kawaguchi (Artoon, Sega) (one of the many Artists of Blinx 1, and in Sonic CD the Art Director, one of the Landscape Designers, and one of the Animation Visual Directors, wow)

NdCube only has two people in the credis; Atsushi Ikeda and Kenji Kikuchi, both of which were Hudson folks and were in most if not all MP games. Ikeda was in the Iwata asks for Wii Party, Kenji is a new Hudson folk no known before, only bringing the known count to four.

Self quote. I went back and added notable roles in notable games in most of the people listed in Arzest.

Seemingly 5 (including Ohshima) worked on Sonic Adventure.

Sadly they've been dead silent since Feb last year, only seemingly recruiting:

http://www.arzest.jp/index.html

Hopefully they're working with Nintendo and Yasuhara on something. Please? :(
 

farnham

Banned
Self quote. I went back and added notable roles in notable games in most of the people listed in Arzest.

Seemingly 5 (including Ohshima) worked on Sonic Adventure.

Sadly they've been dead silent since Feb last year, only seemingly recruiting:

http://www.arzest.jp/index.html

Hopefully they're working with Nintendo and Yasuhara on something. Please? :(

Interesting. There is a hoping they will make a good wii play sequel for wiiu
 
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