Yuji Naka's Kiwi

[Beeth]

Surely anyone with an interest in videogames knows of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’. Sega’s spiked and speedy, bold blue mascot is as synonymous with consoles as Nintendo's Super Mario.

This week sees the arrival of a new character from the inventor of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’, Mr Yuji Naka, now working out of his new studio Prope Ltd. So we grabbed this opportunity to quiz the man on all that is new and different for his latest creation 'Ivy the Kiwi' released for Nintendo DS and Wii on Friday.

uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/blog/article/16367/another-surprising-hero-from-sonic-creator-yuji-naka.html



Not sure whether this has already been mentioned, it's released on the Friday and, by the sounds of things, Yuji Naka has been very involved in the process of its development. Whether this is a good thing or not remains to be seen.

[ShayMay]

It's clear to me, from this, that Naka's an idiot.
Firstly, what's with Sonic "creator"? He only programmed the first game, I thought? "Co-creator" would be far more accurate.

Y!: How would you describe the gameplay within Ivy the Kiwi 'in a nutshell', what kind of challenge can players expect?
YN: The main challenge is to help Ivy the Kiwi find its mother. But for repeated play-through I have prepared other challenges too, for example to collect 10 red feathers from each stage.

Er... no, mate. That's the story and one challenge. Congrats on explaining the gameplay, there is no doubt in my mind as to what is going on.

A kiwi is a bird which cannot fly, so it was interesting to see a bird that cannot fly move around quite quickly to reach its goals.

So... it's just Sonic the Hedgehog, then?

YN: The main influence was actually Sonic the Hedgehog. With Sonic we could introduce completely new game control, which I wanted to repeat with my new game 'Ivy the Kiwi'.

I'll take that as a yes.

Not interested in this. Have no clue what the gameplay's all about, and the art style looks horrible.

[madhair60]

I played the DS game about 4 months ago, and it's completely scuppered by awful stylus input.

Wii version will be worse.

Edit: Also, Yuji Naka is an irrelevance.