Masahiro Sakurai explains Kid Icarus’ uprising on 3DS
Speaking to Techland, Kid Icarus: Uprising producer Masahiro Sakurai described how the new 3ds franchise revival came about. Essentially, all in the distinguishing characteristics with the video game came into the picture separately.
Initial, Sakurai decided that he wanted to make a shooting video game for Nintendo’s new handheld, which he knew would be much more powerful than the DS. Then, according to Sakurai, “Mr. Iwata said, ‘Maybe you may like to do some Nintendo franchise,’ and I felt that if the match was great, then there’s surely room for that.” Sakurai was thinking Star Fox, but “the game design incorporates a lot of various views; for instance, flying and shooting sideways, or turning around and shooting behind — and I felt that there were some restrictions with Star Fox in this regard.” (Of course, Star Fox ended up on 3DS anyway.)
It was only after coming up with the game concept that Sakurai learned with the 3D screen, and “quite by chance or luck, [Nintendo] discovered that to be a quite excellent match with the gameplay idea.”
Sakurai also proved that he’s basically as clueless as the rest of us about the renewed popularity of Pit, the protagonist of an inscrutable NES game about shooting mice, collecting hammers and being turned into an eggplant. “I believe — and it is possible to recognize this from the original video game, too — that he has sort of this carefree, worry-free sort of air about him, and that, I think, provides a positive outlook for the player and relieves some with the stress that you get from a lot more serious games.”
