1UP: OK, so my first major question for you is why are you basing this on a five year-old PS2 game? It seems like you're going through so much trouble to create a new control scheme that lets you whip the Diskarmor using the Wii Remote, you redesigned the character, and you're creating new enemies and bosses, and you're redoing a lot of the graphics. It seems like if you were going to go through this much trouble then you might as well have made a whole new game.
KK: My game-making philosophy has always been to focus on one thing, and build the game around that one main theme. For instance with Fatal Frame it was horror, it was a scary game and the whole game was built around that one big theme. So in the case of a new Rygar, my focus was on how to best utilize the Wii control. Everything is built around the Diskarmor control using the Wii controller. Of course I could have started everything from scratch on a new Rygar project, but if I was to do that it might not have been on Wii, we could have done it for PS3, 360, PS2. However, why we focused on Wii was because of what we could do with the Wii controller. Because of that, even though the game may be based on a five year-old game, as you call it, it will still feel very fresh and very unique on the Wii system. That way I can focus on that one important thing.
1UP: So basically, by using the PS2 Rygar as the core, it frees you up to concentrate on perfecting the Wii controls, since the level design is already there, the animations and physics are already in place, and the majority of the graphic data is already complete.
KK: Yeah, the basic stage design might be the same, but first of all the last game was developed by another person, so I had nothing to do with it, but the previous version was known as an insect-killing game because of those rolling bugs, so you'd kill many small enemies, which all looked like rollers -- because they were -- which was criticized, of course. This time I've created bigger enemies that are human-based. Before you'd slash through many, but this time I want to focus on each impact, the soothing feeling of a big attack.
1UP: I asked in this way because I saw that fan reaction was quite excited when they saw the new character design, but that opinion turned pretty irate when gamers found out that the 'new' Rygar was actually an old Rygar. I figured it'd be worth getting to the root of it so people could understand where you're coming from.
KK: I want this game to be a strong and powerful game, I want you to have to use your muscles while playing this game. The original PS2 version, the Rygar character you saw on screen used to blend in nicely with the background and environment. I purposely made Rygar look the way he does now so he always stands out, whether he's in a dungeon, he always looks out of place. I totally expect some people to criticize our decision to use the PS2 Rygar, but once you play this game and feel how it plays, I'm confident people will 'get it.' Hopefully once you get to play it and people read your opinion, it'll change any negative thoughts there might be on the matter.
