What's this? Donkey Kong, mystery developers, and Britney Spears? A must-read article filled with need-to-know information!
Billy just called in from Las Vegas with an update on the D.I.C.E. Roundtable, which included Shigeru Miyamoto. We managed to wring out some interesting information from the legend for you, so check out the highlights:
- Miyamoto had confirmed to us what he had said before and what Konami had said earlier that a Metal Gear game was in fact being developed for the GameCube. He also clarified that as of yet, there are no plans for GBA connectivity as some have misunderstood his earlier comments.
- Kirby's Air Ride is being developed by HAL, which is no big surprise. The game seems to be a mixture of Mario Kart and standard Kirby fare with Kirby sucking up enemy powers on the fly, booster arrows, and shortcuts.
- Speaking of HAL, Miyamoto has said that the developer's staff has "increased considerably". This would obviously mean that HAL is working on more than what's been shown; when the matter of a Super Smash Brothers Melee sequel was brought up, Miyamoto said he didn't know, but he's still joking about putting Sonic in a Smash Bros. game.
- A new Donkey Kong game was mentioned, with no hint of a specific developer. No comment was made about it showing up at this year's E3.
- Wario World is being co-produced by one of Nintendo's internal developers and a second party that Miyamoto mysteriously wouldn't reveal.
- When asked about online plans, Miyamoto responded in a way that made it seem like it isn't going to be happening this year. However, when asked about Nintendo's plans for networking GameCube titles (via LAN), he smiled and laughed, saying he couldn't talk about them.
- According to Nintendo, 70-80% of all GameCube games released during the rest of this year will offer some sort of GBA connectivity. (This doesn't include third-party games.)
- The North American version of The Wind Waker will be altered slightly from the Japanese. Miyamoto said that some tedious sections of the game would be cleaned up. Here's a spoiler-filled example (highlight to see): As players of the Japanese game would know, there is one section of the game where Link needs to collect pieces of the Triforce. Some people found this tedious, so the North American version of this portion of the game has been simplified somewhat. The end result will not affect the story or quality of the game one bit.
- Finally, it just so happened that Britney Spears was in London at about the same time as Miyamoto was last week. More people showed up to see Miyamoto than Spears, which should come as no surprise to any of us.
Those were the highlights of the 45-minute roundtable. Look for the full transcript this weekend!
